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	Doctrine Watchdog Hounded by Lawsuit William Levada: The Comment Some Say Sounds like an Endorsement Birth Control Is Stirring up Trouble for the Prefect By William Lobdell Religion News Service [Portland OR] Downloaded August 22, 2005 In 1994, then-Archbishop of Portland William Levada offered a simple answer for why the Oregon archdiocese shouldn't have been ordered to pay the costs of raising a child fathered by a church worker at a parish. In her relationship with Arturo Uribe, then a seminarian and now a priest in Whittier, Calif., the child's mother had engaged "in unprotected intercourse . . . when [she] should have known that could result in pregnancy," the church maintained in its answer to the lawsuit. The legal proceeding got little attention at the time. And the fact that the church - which considers birth control a sin - seemed to be arguing that the woman should have protected herself from pregnancy provoked no comment. Until last month. That's when the woman, Stephanie Collopy, went back into court asking for additional child support. A Los Angeles Times article reported the church's earlier response. Now liberal and conservative Roman Catholics around the United States are decrying the archdiocese's legal strategy, saying it was counter to church teaching. "On the face of it, [the argument] is simply appalling," said Michael Novak, a conservative Catholic theologian and author based in Washington. That the "unprotected intercourse" argument was offered in Levada's name made it especially shocking to some Catholics. The former archbishop is the new chief guardian of Catholic doctrine worldwide as prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That job was last held by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict XVI. (Levada, 69, was transferred from Portland to the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1995, where he served until his appointment to the Vatican on May 13.) William Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights based in New York, said the legal language was "simply code for, 'What's wrong with you, honey, aren't you smart enough to make sure condoms were used?' " And that, he notes, is completely counter to the church's teachings, which hold that using contraceptives is "intrinsically evil." Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, a group that supports abortion rights, said Levada's defense was an example of how, "if something will cost the bishops money, they will use any argument whatsoever - like any other corporate entity - that will get them off the hook. It's a disgrace." Levada was on vacation and unavailable to comment on the controversial legal stance, but the attorney who came up with it, Richard J. Kuhn, said he wrote Levada's answer to the complaint strictly from a "common sense" legal perspective, without regard to Catholic teachings. However, Kuhn, an outside attorney who was hired by the archdiocese to handle the case, questions whether Levada ever saw the document. "I doubt that the archbishop would have gotten a copy of the pleading," he said. He said his best recollection about the proceeding was that he worked exclusively with the risk-management department for the Archdiocese of Portland. Kuhn said the defense he raised was probably based on his suspicion that Collopy got pregnant to keep Uribe out of the priesthood. "The archbishop shouldn't be criticized for something I did that didn't have anything to do with Catholic doctrine," Kuhn said. "It would be a different story if we sat down together and said, 'Let's do this.' " The Portland archdiocese also doubts that Levada was closely involved. "We understand that the attorney handling the case did not speak with Archbishop Levada on this issue, and that the archbishop had no input," said Bud Bunce, the archdiocese's director of communication. But the fact that Levada may not have approved a legal argument filed under his name troubled some. "Whether a bishop likes it or not, he has ultimate responsibility for a legal argument made on his behalf or upon behalf of his diocese," said the Rev. Richard McBrien, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame. "Archbishop Levada would have - or certainly should have - known what his lawyers were arguing on his behalf." But among the archbishop's defenders is William Shea, director for the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross. He said it would be impossible for Levada to review each legal document, and if the defense motion wasn't approved by him, the mistake was not "earthshaking." "This is not a big deal," Shea said. "It's a slip. It shouldn't have happened, and once it is called to their attention, it won't again." Collopy's lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Portland was dropped in 1994 when the Denver Province of the Redemptorists, a religious order that ordained Uribe that same year, agreed to pay $215 a month in child support if Collopy stopped the legal action and signed a confidentiality agreement. In July, after having earlier battled Collopy in court when she asked for additional child support, the Redemptorists announced that they would provide more support to her son.