PORTLAND (OR)
The Oregonian
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Steve Duin
The chief executive is on vacation and can't be reached for comment. The lawyers and PR guys insist he never saw the incriminating document issued under his name. There's a confidentiality agreement to ensure that the sordid details never see the light of day.
Another Enron brief? Another corporate scandal update from WorldCom?
No, just a telling glimpse of Archbishop William J. Levada, recently tapped by Pope Benedict XVI as chief defender of Catholic doctrine worldwide.
Eleven years ago, Levada, then the archbishop of Portland, tendered a logical, rational response as to why his archdiocese should not be liable to pay child support for a kid fathered by a seminarian in the Holy Redeemer parish.
The foolhardy mother, Levada's minions argued in a court brief, had participated "in unprotected intercourse . . . when (she) should have known that could result in pregnancy."
That argument is petty and self-serving, to be sure, but understandable . . . except for one damning detail. Levada is a standard bearer of a church that holds that the preventive measures the legal brief was advocating for responsible sex partners are "intrinsically evil."