LETTERS
Religion Lesson
Who would have predicted the Catholic Church would become the world’s best example of why the cover-up rarely works?
Events in the child molestation scandal are breaking so fast that anything written about it risks becoming outdated overnight. Nevertheless the basic truths will remain the same:
& #149; By failing to deal with the problem decades ago, the church allowed many more molestations to occur.
& #149; The moral authority of church leaders, even including the Pope, has been undermined and will take years to restore,if it ever can be restored.
& #149; Decent, innocent priests who have served the church faithfully have fallen unfairly under suspicion.
& #149; The financial cost to the church will be astronomical, in settlements and donations withheld.
& #149; Until the church truly takes responsibility for the damage it has caused, healing cannot begin and the story will not go away.
In Southern California, Bishop Tod Brown of the Diocese of Orange has been much more forthright about the church’s past failures than has Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles. Those differences will probably be reflected in how quickly parishioners and others put the scandal behind them.
Meanwhile, by strongly denying and denouncing accusations made against him, an Orange County priest demonstrated the absolute essential lesson of crisis communications: You must speak for yourself,and on the first day,or others will define the story and you will never recover.
Lori Haigh, who received a settlement because a priest molested her 20 years ago, accused Msgr. Lawrence Baird, now the spokesman for the Diocese of Orange, of ignoring her plea for help with the other priest and instead kissed and touched her.
Baird held a press conference and was adamant in his denial of the allegation. His defense appeared in the same news stories that carried Haigh’s accusations. So, instead of being assumed by readers to be guilty of the claims made against him, Baird created substantial doubt about their validity.
Organizations should learn the same lesson. If you are not guilty, stand up for yourself. Don’t hide behind the excuse that, “It’s in litigation,” or your fear that the media wants to “sensationalize” the story. Speak for yourself, or don’t complain when others speak about you!
Bill Furlow
Furlow Corporate Communications
Soda Quackers
Some of our state legislators spent their recent days pushing a plan to tax soda. Yes, soda. The measure was defeated, but now there’s a revised bill to ban soft drinks in schools. Why are we even discussing this? According to state Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, soda is the main reason for childhood obesity. She believes taxing soda would bring a source of income that will enable a marketing campaign against children drinking soda. I’m not making this up. We are in a middle of a state budget crunch, with companies laying off workers on a daily basis, and this buffoon is picking soda as her life battle.
Still, the problem is not that some wacko has come up with an idiotic idea, but that it had (and might have in the future) a chance of actually becoming law. Since the Republican Party has decided to embrace the far right wing of its constituents, California has slowly turned into a one-party state. I would be mad at the Democrats for their illogical ideas, but how can I ignore the path by which they came to control the state in the first place? I don’t believe the Democrats were the ones who brought folks like Pat Robertson to California to change the face of the Republican Party to one of Extremists.
Yesterday I chatted with a guy from New York who shared with me his surprise at finding out how far to the left our state really is. He had always thought California was John Wayne and Ronald Reagan country. Oh, the GOP still invokes Reagan’s name all the time, but his spirit is somewhere back in the 1980s and his legacy has been changed to fit the one issue (abortion) of the zealots running Republican organizations.
Barbara Hiller Johnson
Santa Ana
El Toro, Cont’d
Gambling casinos, new military bases, huge commercial developments? It appears that some public officials are not paying much attention to the will of the people.
Measure W is now the law. Although our first priority has been to kill an unneeded and environmentally disastrous airport at El Toro, we fully expect every public official, elected or appointed, to follow the law, and support a park-compatible reuse of El Toro.
We appreciate the Navy promise to fully honor the intent of Measure W in its disposal of El Toro MCAS property, and we fully expect the Navy to honor this promise.
We expect the same from our county government. The county should cooperate fully with Irvine plans to annex the base property. The planning for El Toro reuse should be done by local planners, led by the city of Irvine, not by Gary Simon and his crew.
It’s time for government at all levels to finally do the will of the people at El Toro.
Michael Smith
Mission Viejo
