I really blundered in yesterday's blog by not mentioning that the Gerald Robinson coverage is in a class by itself, therefore I did not include it in my "top 10" list of religion stories in 2007.
Here is a look back at the notable developments in 2007 in the strange case of Father Gerald Robinson:
January
* I reported a bit belatedly that Father Robinson had been hospitalized for two weeks in December for unspecified kidney problems, but was back at Hocking Correctional Institution in Nelsonville, Ohio.
* Judge Ruth Ann Franks of Lucas County Common Pleas Court threw out a civil lawsuit of a Toledo woman, filing anonymously with her husband as Survivor Doe and Spouse Doe, alleging Robinson and another man tortured and raped her in satanic rituals when she was a child. Judge Franks said the suit was filed after the expiration of the statute of limitations.
March
* Attorney Mark Davis appeals to the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals to overturn Judge Frank's decision to dismiss Survivor Doe's lawsuit. Davis (who, incidentally, has taken out billboards advertising himself "the bald eagle") argued that his client could not have filed earlier because she was unable to identify her alleged abusers at the time of the assaults, but only after recognizing Father Gerald Robinson when she saw news coverage of his arrest. Therefore, Davis argued, the statute of limitations in her case did not start ticking until April, 2004.
April
* The team of prosecutors that led to Gerald Robinson's conviction was honored by the National District Attorney's Association.
May
* Members of the Toledo chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests stage a protest outside Fifth Third Field in downtown Toledo asking the city and the Mud Hens to remove street signs honoring the late Monsigner Jerome Schmit, who was reported to have interfered with the 1980 police investigation of Gerald Robinson.
August
* A new defense team for Gerald Robinson files a 105-page appeal with the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals seeking to overturn the priest's murder conviction. Among the claims made in the appeal are that "the jury only heard one side of the story" and the evidence presented by prosecutors was "inherently unreliable, of minimal probative value, lacked foundation, and impermissibly stereotyped [Robinson] as the anti-Christ."
October
* The Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals reinstates Survivor Doe and Spouse Doe's civil lawsuit against Gerald Robinson, agreeing with the plaintiffs' claim that the statute of limitations did not start ticking "until she saw their faces/names from the television and newspaper reports about them."
* Gerald Robinson's attorneys, meanwhile, filed a motion asking the court to release the priest on $250,000 property bond and electronic monitoring, pending the outcome of his appeal, because "appellant has now languished in prison for 19 months awaiting this court's merit review of his conviction."
The motion was denied.
December
* Lucas County Prosecutors filed an 80-page brief (can something 80 pages long actually be called a "brief"?) detailing why Gerald Robinson's murder conviction should not be overturned. The response states that the priest's defense attorneys' appeal contained numerousu errors that were "factually untrue," "misleading," "totally unsupported by the record," "fantastical," or "fiction."
* Gerald Robinson spends his second New Year's Eve in prison.
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Catholic columnist Matt C. Abbott has again highlighted the Robinson case, focusing on the prosecutors' response to the priest's appeal, in his globally read column.
Here is a link.

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Anyone who doubts the veracity of the reports of global warming should take a look at Toledo's weather today. Here we are in the depth of a Midwestern winter, and the thermometer is hitting the mid-60s today. This, after a brutal cold snap last week. The weather is just freakish these days. If it were not so soggy from all the rapidly melting ice and snow, I'd head to the golf course...

Toledo, Ohio
Jan. 7, 2008.