UNITED STATES
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
September 2012
Perspective
By Barry Lynn
Most summers, Americans United is happy to welcome three law clerks from three different law schools to join our legal staff for a few months and learn a little about what it’s like to work at an advocacy group.
Summer 2012 was no exception, and this year I had the opportunity to work personally on projects with each of them. I had been asked to be on a panel at the “Take Back The American Dream” conference organized by former Obama staff member Van Jones, give the keynote address at the annual convention of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and do a workshop for Save Our Schools, a grassroots public education group. …
On to the next speech. I tapped Ben Birney to assist with my keynote address to SNAP. I wanted to make the point that the Catholic hierarchy’s demands to be exempt from otherwise applicable laws often goes too far, especially in areas dealing with child abuse reporting statutes, laws dealing with statutes of limitations for sexual assault and even job discrimination.
This can be heady stuff. It required Ben to research the institution’s efforts to have civil courts use canon law – official doctrinal stands of the church – instead of standard legal principles to decide cases (a path only a few courts have taken so far).
We constructed that speech to begin with references to the recent flap over birth control and, after laying some groundwork there, segued into the issues of most direct importance to this audience of abuse survivors and their families. The reception there was good as well, and I had plenty of interesting discussions afterward.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.