A Roman Catholic group representing victims of molestation by priests has called for the cancellation of a dinner Friday honoring a priest it says is tainted by the church's sex abuse scandal.
Msgr. Lawrence J. Baird, former spokesman for the Diocese of Orange and now its director of development, is scheduled to be honored as a "Defender of the Faith" with a dinner hosted by St. Michael's Abbey on behalf of its parochial school, St. Michael's Preparatory. But the regional director of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a national support group with 5,000 members, says the event should be canceled because Baird once defended a fellow priest known by church officials to be a molestation risk and, more recently, responded to allegations of sexual impropriety against himself by unsuccessfully suing his accuser for slander.
"This is not what Jesus would do," Mary Grant, SNAP's southwest regional director, said of the gala event at Mission San Juan Capistrano. "We should not hold up that kind of un-Christian behavior as a model."
Said John C. Manley, a Catholic attorney representing several people who say they were sexually abused by priests: "This is not the type of person that is a defender of my faith, and it's not what I was taught about faith. Honestly, I would rather eat out of a trash can than eat that dinner."
Baird, who has never been charged with a crime nor been subject to any legal proceedings alleging wrongdoing on his part, said late last week that he had spoken on behalf of the accused priest before being aware of information pointing to his guilt that was known to other church officials. As for the slander lawsuit he filed, he said, "Everyone possesses the right to file a lawsuit, and I pursued a legal avenue that was available to me and every citizen."
In a letter to Grant, the Right Rev. Eugene J. Hayes, abbot of St. Michael's, an Orange County institution, said the dinner -- expected to raise about $150,000 in scholarships for needy students -- is critical to the abbey's prep school fund-raising efforts. "Canceling the dinner," he wrote, "would hurt most of all the young men who depend on us for a quality Catholic education."
