A little background is in order here... Bishop Amat HS and Damien HS are sister Catholic schools in the San Gabriel Valley here in SoCal. Halfway through my junior year at Damien during Christmas break of 1966, there was a major shakeup of the entire teaching/coaching staff, precipitated by the football team having a losing record. Every coach in the school was fired either immediately or given notice that they were out at the end of the year. It was hardly noticed in all of this administrative mayhem that the school had also hired a new vice principal; Fr. Martin O'Loghlen who was transferring from our arch rival Bishop Amat... I've known Martin O'Loghlen since 1967 and I consider him a friend. He's always had a reputation as a good administrator who just couldn't keep his hands off the women, so the current scandal breaking over him comes as no surprise. The girl involved is the same age and class as myself and Diane, although I've never met her... The New York Times... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/12abuse.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 BTW- the parish that he's being removed from is Holy Name of Mary in San Dimas, CA. He is also conducting the Confirmation classes for current Damien students, including my grandson...
I read this story in the Asbury Park Press yesterday. This problem is almost as old as the Church itself. Had two cases of it at my HS in Dayton, Ohio around 1970.
It's almost surreal, the depth and extent of the problem. I attended Catholic schools through the 8th grade, was an altar boy, and never was aware of anything bad going on. I had nuns for my entire time, and never even got whacked with a ruler. There was another story in the NY Times recently on the problems in Ireland, as bad if not worse than the US problems.
I don't know, AJ. Why don't priests use book marks? I think I can guess the punch line but I have not heard this joke before.
:roll: :x BTW- just one, final, sinister note for this story... My daughter emailed me last night and casually mentioned that she had visited Fr. O'Loghlen in his office at Holy Name of Mary not too long ago. She was surprised to discover that one entire wall of his office was covered with pictures of her daughter...my granddaughter, Megan. Let's hope the church finds a nice island for him to live on like they did for Fr. Damien... ...........JO'Co
That's really scary. Every day in Houston it's something, yesterday a black evangelical pastor was accused of having sex with an underage parishioner, today a 21 y/o man was arrested for sexually assualting a 4 y/o. I'm sure in the next week we'll have another revelation of a teacher having sex with a student, a boyfriend sexually assualting his girlfriends daughter. Man's inhumanity to man is just frightening.
My theory on this is that we have desensitized ourselves to crimes that were unspeakable in prior generations through media and what passes for entertainment. Not to say some of these horrific crimes didn't happen before but today there is little outrage.
Todays Headline....the father of the musical group the 5 Browns has admitted to sexual abuse of his 3 daughters when they were young.