Archbishop Gomez Urges Action on State Senate Bill, Sb131

California Catholic Daily
August 2, 2013

http://cal-catholic.com/wordpress/2013/08/02/archbishop-gomez-urges-action-on-state-senate-bill-sb131/

Archbishop Gomez

Would target Catholic schools for child abuse, exempt public schools

The following email came to Bob McPhail, Cal Catholic editor, on July 31.

Archdiocese of Los Angeles

Moderator of the Curia/Vicar General

TO:                   Bob

FROM:            Rev. Msgr. Joseph V. Brennan, Moderator of the Curia / Vicar General

DATE:             July 31, 2013

SUBJECT:      AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ

Archbishop Gomez has asked me to send the following important message to you:

Friends, my brother bishops and I in the California Catholic Conference are asking all Catholics to contact their Assembly members and Senators and urge them to vote “No” on Senate Bill 131.

SB-131 fails to protect all victims of childhood sexual abuse, discriminates against Catholic schools and other private employers, and puts the Church’s social services and educational mission at risk. We have set up a website that will enable you to easily email your elected officials directly: http://bit.ly/18nEUiB.

More information on the bill can be found at

http://www.laarchdiocese.org/gov/Pages/SB131.aspx

It is urgent that we all act now. The State Legislature will take up SB-131 in the week of August 10th. Thank you for taking the time to communicate with your elected officials about this.

Please be assured of my prayers for you and your families.

In Christ,

Most Reverend José H. Gomez

Archbishop of Los Angeles

The following comes from a June 10 story in Cal Catholic about the bill. Information for that story came from Father Malloy’s blog, written by Gibbons Cooney.

Those wondering what Democratic supermajorities in the California Assembly and Senate will mean are finding out. In the June 7 issue of Catholic San Francisco, the newspaper of the archdiocese of San Francisco, Valerie Schmalz reported on California’s Senate Bill 131. The bill was authored by Democratic State Senator Jim Beall, (Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s 2011 Legislator of the Year) and openly homosexual Democratic State Senator Ricardo Lara. Mrs. Schmalz’s story began:

“The California state Senate narrowly approved a waiver of the statute of limitations for child sex abuse damage lawsuits – a bill that could have a devastating effect on nonprofits including Catholic Charities and Catholic schools while exempting public employers. The legislation, SB 131, would force private schools to defend claims that may be 40 years old but forbid victims from suing any public school for abuse that may have occurred before 2009, the California Council of Nonprofit Organizations said.