Just when I thought things couldn’t get stranger, this happened: The leading hench(wo)man in the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Diocese of Orange may be a judicial nominee. When I first got word that California Governor Jerry Brown had thrown Maria Rullo Schinderle’s name in the hat of potential nominees for superior court judge,…Continue reading Why Maria Rullo Schinderle should never be a judge
Book Review: The Vatican Diaries: A Behind the Scenes Look at the Power, Personalities, and Politics at the Heart of the Catholic Church; by John Thavis. Penguin Books A year after the hardcover publication of The Vatican Diaries (a book whose hardcover release date coincided with the resignation of Pope Benedict XXIII XVI and the election…Continue reading Review: A Diary of Disconnect
If someone had told me two years ago that a man like Pope Francis would be elected in 2013, I would have been skeptical. After almost 10 years of Benedict—a man with the public persona of a porcupine and pastoral nature of a curmudgeon on a bad day—who could believe that a new pope could…Continue reading A year of Pope Francis
One of the chapters of my upcoming book deals with what I call Institutional Rot, that is, why “good” people do and say bad things in the name of the institution and how children are caught in the crossfire. For an institutional culture to have this kind of crisis, the direction—or I should say, misdirection—has…Continue reading In crisis, Francis fails
The sexual abuse of teens by powerful adults (teachers, coaches, priests, family members) is a trauma double whammy: teens damaged by the abuse AND they are often blamed for the abuse by community members who say that the teen wanted it, was a slut, or should have known better. What these people don’t understand—but predators…Continue reading Predators, Alcohol and Teens … a deadly combination