I've been wanting to blog for a few days but just haven't had time. I do keep a busy schedule, which probably is a good thing because it helps keep me out of trouble.
One thing I want to mention is that Friday, May 11, was the one-year anniversary of Father Gerald Robinson's conviction. I wasn't planning to write anything for The Blade, although one editor suggested it would be a good idea. But there really was no new developments to pin a story on and I'm not one for "datebook journalism" without some other overriding concern. An "anniversary of" story has to have some significance other than a mere reminder of what happened in the past.
Then the local SNAP chapter called and announced a protest Friday outside Fifth Third Field, asking for the city to remove honorary signs designating the street as "Monsignor Jerome Schmit Way."
Msgr. Schmit was a powerful cleric in Toledo who helped bring the Mud Hens to town and brought life to the diocese's CYO program. But during Robinson's murder trial, he was named by two police detectives as interfering with the investigation in 1980. It was Msgr. Schmit who, along with Deputy Police Chief Ray Vetter, knocked on the door and interrupted the second interrogation of Robinson, and then walked out with the priest. That ended the investigation until more than 23 years later when the cold-case squad reopened it.
So the one-year anniversary of the priest's conviction did have a news peg. Also, with dark irony, I found out that the honorary street signs were dedicated on April 5, 2002, the 22nd anniversary of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl's murder. What sad timing that was!
Well, I covered the press conference and wrote about it for Saturday's paper. You can read the story here. I have gotten strong responses from readers, including many loyal Catholics who feel that SNAP, especially Claudia Vercellotti, has gone too when it criticizes the legendary Msgr. Schmit, who died in 1997. One anonymous caller left a voice mail saying I was "sick sick sick" and she was sick and tired of my "anti-Catholicism" and said Claudia Vercellotti must have a lot of money to pay the Blade to write those stories. As someone once said, an anonymous letter is not worth the ink it's written with. How can you have any respect for callers who won't discuss their views civilly or even leave their name and contact info.
I wrote another article Saturday about Father Thomas Leyland appealing to the Vatican to overturn Bishop Leonard Blair's treatment of him, allegedly giving him the choice of retiring or moving from St. Rose Parish in Perrysburg to St. Caspar in Wauseon.
That case continues to draw strong responses, mostly from people who side with Father Leyland. The 69-year-old priest has had an unblemished record and only reluctantly has spoken out against his bishop, due to his strong feeling that an injustice has been done. I am like Fr. Leyland in the fact that I am a quiet and polite person and don't like to make a fuss but I simply cannot stand idly by in the face of injustice. That's one reason I am in journalism, to right wrongs and help defend those who don't have a voice or power. I think those reasons also motivate Father Leyland as a priest.
One thing I did not mention in The Blade is that I had two callers, one from the Toledo area and one from outside Toledo, who told me while I was researching that article that they belive Bishop Leonard Blair is a "mean" person. Both of these people have personal knowledge of the bishop's personality and his decisions. He seems to me to be a gentle person, quite reverent and highly educated, but I don't really know him. I have seen quite a few questionable decisions from his office since he took over as Bishop of the 19-county Toledo diocese in 2003, but I never know if he personally made the decision or if it was one of his subordinates. For example, sending a maintenance man to Kansas, Ohio, to kick out an elderly woman who was praying in St. James Church, part of a 24/7 prayer vigil seeking divine intervention to persuade Bishop Blair to reverse his decision to close the parish. The maintenance man was brusque, even threatening, to the woman and ran her out of the little rural church, crying. It was such a harsh way to handle things, especially after the diocese told me -- and parishioners -- that they could continue their prayer vigil indefinitely.
And poor Father Leyland deserves a better fate than to be forced into retirement, after 42 years in ministry, against his will, and in the midst of a priest shortage. It would not have hurt anyone to let him stay on awhile at St. Rose.
Bishop Blair certainly does have the right to appoint pastors and transfer them as he sees fit, and he will win out in the end, I'm sure, despite Father Leyland's appeal to Rome. But as a bishop, you would think he could have met with Father Leyland and discussed the situation from a pastoral perspective, with love and concern for one of his brother priests. Instead of showing genuine compassion and hearing his priest out, he made Father Leyland feel like an unwanted orphan. That's not a good way to handle people anywhere, especially in the church.
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I've got a lot more to write about, but no time now. I hope to get to it tonight sometime.
Toledo, Ohio May 14, 2007