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	Catholic Bishop at Odds with Church to Speak at Ucsd Faculty Club By Sandi Dolbee Union-Tribune May 24, 2008 http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20080524-9999-1c24bishop.html A retired Catholic bishop from Australia, under fire for a book expressing "profound disillusionment" over the church's handling of its clergy sexual abuse crisis, said he will continue his U.S. speaking tour including a stop in San Diego next month despite requests from other bishops not to do so. "I'm not looking for any form of confrontation," said Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, retired auxiliary bishop of Sydney, during a brief telephone interview from the East Coast. "I've been invited by a particular group there, and I will be talking to that group." Both Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony and San Diego Bishop Robert Brom have asked Robinson not to speak in their jurisdictions. "Just as Cardinal Mahony has respectfully asked Bishop Robinson not to make his scheduled presentation in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Bishop Brom has asked Bishop Robinson not to make his scheduled presentation in the Diocese of San Diego," said Rodrigo Valdivia, chancellor for the San Diego diocese. Earlier this month, the Australian bishops conference rebuffed Robinson's book, "Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church," according to the National Catholic Reporter newspaper. The bishops said they had found "doctrinal difficulties" with it. In 1994, Robinson was put in charge of a task force to develop guidelines for dealing with abuse cases in Australia. Robinson writes in the book that he became convinced "a number of people, at every level, were seeking to 'manage' the problem and make it 'go away,' rather than truly confront and eradicate it." He suggests the core causes are more systemic, including a governing image that is "tied to the ideas of lordship and control." Robinson is scheduled to be in La Jolla for a free public talk and book signing beginning at 6:30 p.m. June 10 in the Atkins Pavilion of the UCSD Faculty Club. He was invited by three longtime advocates on behalf of clergy abuse victims Richard Sipe, the Rev. Thomas Doyle and Patrick Wall, who also teamed up on the book, "Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse." Those authors also will be there for the 6:30 p.m. book signing, as will Marci Hamilton, author of "Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children"; Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, author of "Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church"; and Robert Blair Kaiser, author of "Cardinal Mahony: A Novel." In September, the San Diego diocese agreed to pay $198 million to 144 men and women who said they were sexually abused by Catholic priests and other workers when they were minors. The settlement came in the midst of the diocese's bankruptcy case and two months after the Los Angeles archdiocese settled more than 500 cases for $660 million.
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