BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
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See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
True compassion. The
Globe's Kevin
Cullen comes up with the
best explanation for why Archbishop Seán O'Malley was able to
wrap up settlement talks so quickly with the victims of pedophile
priests. He writes:
Also noticed by victims
was O'Malley's response to the family of Gregory Ford, a
25-year-old Newton man who says he was raped by a priest almost 20
years ago.
When Ford, who said the Rev.
Paul R. Shanley abused him, suffered an emotional breakdown a week
after Geoghan was killed, O'Malley immediately agreed to pay for
specialized residential treatment for Ford. O'Malley had met
privately with Ford's parents, Rodney and Paula Ford, and pledged
to do whatever he could to help their troubled son.
Last year, [Cardinal
Bernard] Law's lawyer had sent a legal response to the Fords'
lawsuit against the archdiocese, suggesting the parents were
negligent in allowing their son to be abused.
Rodney and Paula Ford, who had
done so much to point out the failings of Cardinal Law, were now
vouching for his successor, an endorsement that carried enormous
weight inside the tight-knit milieu of alleged victims and their
lawyers.
There will be hard times ahead for
O'Malley, especially when he attempts -- as he inevitably will -- to
assert the Catholic Church's conservative cultural agenda on issues
such as gay and lesbian rights and reproductive choice.
But his genuine compassion has
already won him more good will than Law was able to garner for
himself in nearly two decades. Even a non-Christian like me thinks
we're lucky to have him.
Copywrong. Here's something
to consider as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
goes about trying to sue
its best potential customers into
penury for sharing
downloaded music files: at least some of them might have no idea of
what they're doing.
The Media Log household makes
limited use of LimeWire,
which is the Macintosh equivalent of the better-known KaZaA. My
12-year-old son, Tim, has used it to download such classics as the
theme to one of the Mario video games as well as some Beavis and
Butt-head sound clips.
I've grabbed a few rarities that --
to my knowledge -- are not available for legitimate sale at any
price. (Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan dueting on "Just a Closer Walk with
Thee," anyone?)
Yet recently, after reading a story
about the lawsuits, I checked Tim's LimeWire settings -- and saw, to
my horror, that the program had automatically set things up so
that dozens of songs he had copied from legally purchased CDs to the
iMac were available for other Limewire users to download.
I futzed with the settings and
turned off file-sharing. Whew! But to think we could have been sued
for something a piece of software had done without our knowledge was
unsettling, to say the least.
posted at 10:52 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
