Repelled by the worst in the Church, yet held by the best









The first time I visited the downtown Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, I found myself in a side chapel that Cardinal Roger Mahony had dedicated to "healing" the victims of clergy sexual abuse. I was shocked to see dozens of school photos left behind by victims or their families that looked just like my brother: the same shy smile, the shock of hacked-off hair.


We had grown up Irish Catholic in the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s and '70s, when the abuse was rampant. But I'd never discussed the scandal with my brother. So I called him, and he told me this story: During a trip to Tijuana to build houses for the poor, the teacher, a member of a religious order, tried to climb into his friend's sleeping bag. The friend kicked him out. Another boy probably didn't.


Chilled by this near-brush with abuse in my own family, I avoided the cathedral for months. But eventually I returned. With the latest round of revelations about Mahony working to shield molester priests from criminal investigation, friends once again are asking why? Why do I call myself Catholic?





Like most Catholics, I reject a good deal of the dogma. The ban on women in the priesthood and views on gays that drove many of my friends and family members out of the church are just as offensive to me.


But over the years I have practiced the religion on and off, on my own terms. And I still see myself as one of the faithful. Or perhaps the loyal opposition is the right term.


It's partly tradition. I grew up in a surprisingly insular Catholic world, given that the San Fernando Valley had no "Catholic" neighborhoods. In my mind, the Valley was made up of parishes — St. Mel's, St. Cyril's — not neighborhoods, each with its own character.


Families came with giant broods of nine, 10, even 13 kids. I was envious. They were so boisterous and jolly. With only four children, our family seemed meager by comparison.


I value my Catholic education. I did 12 years of Catholic school, barely. Because of my poor behavior, some years I would not be invited back and my mother would have to beg the principal to readmit me.


When I got to college, I found to my surprise that I had been fairly well educated, with the glaring exception of history class, where we spent an inordinate amount of time on the Counter-Reformation.


Like many Catholics, I love the pageantry of the church rites. The gilded censer of incense at Benediction. The altars to Mary we built in shoe boxes, lined with blue velvet.


My father grew up with Bishop Buddy of San Diego. When he came to visit our family in full medieval regalia, we were told to genuflect and kiss his ring. Then the bishop put on swim trunks and dove into our neighbor's pool. The about-face was delirious.


We were taught moral values that have faded from modern life, but have a place today, like purity and penitence. Life was full of miracles, from the lame at Lourdes throwing away their crutches to the crown of thorns plant in our backyard. My father told me the shrub always bloomed in blood-red bursts right at Easter.


As Catholics, we were also taught to help the sick and poor by performing good works. I volunteered as a candy-striper at the hospital. We wrote the boys in Vietnam and knitted them bandages. I doubt my bandages, with gaping holes where I had dropped stitches and wildly vacillating widths, were of much use. But I loved making them.


Those hand-knit bandages also went to the leper colony on Molokai. This was but one of the gothic horrors we Catholics were wont to dwell on. St. Agatha, whose breasts were torn from her chest as part of her martyrdom. St. Sebastian, who was pierced by arrows. It didn't occur to me until years later that outsiders would find the iconography distasteful; I found the stories thrilling.


My best friend and I were faithful correspondents, and when our soldier pen pals returned, they offered to take us to Disneyland. I was bitterly disappointed when the nuns forbade it.


Although they wouldn't say why, it was pretty clear what the nuns feared. We were only in middle school, but the race was on to protect our virginity.


Keeping us virgins through high school was the primary goal of the nuns and many of our parents. We girls wanted to play along, really we did, at least in the beginning. But no surprise, the boys had other ideas. They too were supposed to be saving sex for marriage. But you would never have guessed it by their behavior.


I never figured out how the girls got one message and the boys got another. In the end, we picked the boys over the nuns.


During this period, the church began to lose many of the people I grew up with. Girls were getting pregnant and trying to hide it from school and family, with disastrous consequences. The nuns suspended at least one girl who reported that her friend was in trouble, in callous disregard for both students' welfare.


The clergy were held to a different standard, as I saw for myself one Saturday. I was sent out to walk my brother home from a sleepover at a household headed by a single mother, a rarity in our world. Sprawled unshaven at the breakfast table, in an undershirt and boxers, was the assistant pastor. He appeared utterly unconcerned that I had seen him in a compromising position.


And really, his secret, if he even bothered keeping it secret, was safe with me. I never mentioned it to teachers or my parents. It wasn't clear they would have cared. Priests had absolute dominion over us. Parents were happy for any help keeping us in line, with the back of the hand if necessary. Who would have believed me?


So although I had no idea priests were molesting children, I was well aware of sexual hypocrisy in the church. Thoroughly disgusted, I picked a college as far away from my upbringing as I could. UC Berkeley had 35,000 students, 100 times the enrollment at my all-girls school, and was the opposite of insular.


On campus, I rarely mentioned my Catholic background. I thought it made me seem even more hayseedy than I already felt in a new world of prep school students and sophisticates.


But around the edges, I never renounced Catholicism completely. A friend from high school and I sneaked off to the Newman Center, the Catholic campus ministry, for Sunday Mass.


I met Catholics and ex-Catholics, including former nuns and priests, who were carving out spiritual lives and fighting for social justice. When I got involved in journalism, I stuck to my roots, working for an anti-war publication for soldiers overseas.


With the revelations of the rape and abuse of children who reminded me of my brother, I saw an even scarier side to the monolithic authority the clergy wielded than I had imagined. But many of the victims and advocates who fought to rip the secrets from church files and place them before the public were Catholics. Catholics fighting to make the church and the world a better place. Just as I was raised to do.


So I'm a Catholic because I still hope to fulfill the ideals of my youth and do some good. And I'm not going to let anyone — not Mahony or anyone else in the clergy — define what that is for me. It's between me and my conscience, just as I learned in Catholic school.


gale.holland@latimes.com





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The Lede: Video of Pope Benedict’s Public Farewell

During his final farewell address, Pope Benedict XVI describes the joys and challenges of his papacy via CNN on YouTube.

As our colleagues, Rachel Donadio and Alan Cowell report, Pope Benedict XVI held his final general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday, a day before he withdraws from the public for a cloistered life of prayer and meditation.

Before tens of thousands of people gathered in the square, the pope acknowledged the difficulties he faced during his papacy, describing “moments of joy and light but also moments that were not easy.” At times, when the “seas were rough”, he said that “the Lord seemed to sleep.”

From the full text of his address:

When, almost eight years ago, on April 19th, [2005], I agreed to take on the Petrine ministry, I held steadfast in this certainty, which has always accompanied me. In that moment, as I have already stated several times, the words that resounded in my heart were: “Lord, what do you ask of me? It a great weight that You place on my shoulders, but, if You ask me, at your word I will throw out the nets, sure that you will guide me” – and the Lord really has guided me. He has been close to me: daily could I feel His presence.

[These years] have been a stretch of the Church’s pilgrim way, which has seen moments joy and light, but also difficult moments. I have felt like St. Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee: the Lord has given us many days of sunshine and gentle breeze, days in which the catch has been abundant; [then] there have been times when the seas were rough and the wind against us, as in the whole history of the Church it has ever been – and the Lord seemed to sleep. Nevertheless, I always knew that the Lord is in the barque, that the barque of the Church is not mine, not ours, but His – and He shall not let her sink. It is He, who steers her: to be sure, he does so also through men of His choosing, for He desired that it be so. This was and is a certainty that nothing can tarnish. It is for this reason, that today my heart is filled with gratitude to God, for never did He leave me or the Church without His consolation, His light, His love.

An English translation from the Vatican of Pope Benedict XVI’s last general audience before his formal resignation on Thursday.

On Twitter, the pope’s account, @Pontifex, which has more than 1.5 million followers, posted:

Shortly after he announced his resignation, he asked on Twitter for people “to pray for me and for the church, trusting as always in divine providence.”

From St. Peter’s Square, people posted photographs from the crowd, including a shot of the pope arriving in the so-called popemobile, on his way to deliver his final farewell.

As my colleague, Laurie Goodstein reports, the church faces, among its many challenges as cardinals gather to select a new pope, the wounds caused by sexual abuse cases involving minors all over the world that have been mishandled for years.

In St. Peter’s Square, the pope also spoke briefly in English to the crowd.

The pope spoke in English, and asked Catholics to pray for both him and the new pope.

I offer a warm and affectionate greeting to the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors who have joined me for this, my last General Audience. Like Saint Paul, whose words we heard earlier, my heart is filled with thanksgiving to God who ever watches over his Church and her growth in faith and love, and I embrace all of you with joy and gratitude. During this Year of Faith, we have been called to renew our joyful trust in the Lord’s presence in our lives and in the life of the Church. I am personally grateful for his unfailing love and guidance in the eight years since I accepted his call to serve as the Successor of Peter. I am also deeply grateful for the understanding, support and prayers of so many of you, not only here in Rome, but also throughout the world.

The decision I have made, after much prayer, is the fruit of a serene trust in God’s will and a deep love of Christ’s Church. I will continue to accompany the Church with my prayers, and I ask each of you to pray for me and for the new Pope. In union with Mary and all the saints, let us entrust ourselves in faith and hope to God, who continues to watch over our lives and to guide the journey of the Church and our world along the paths of history. I commend all of you, with great affection, to his loving care, asking him to strengthen you in the hope which opens our hearts to the fullness of life that he alone can give. To you and your families, I impart my blessing. Thank you!

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Billie Joe Armstrong Comes Clean About Rehab















02/27/2013 at 08:00 PM EST



Last September, Billie Joe Armstrong made headlines when, during his band Green Day's performance at the I Heart Radio Music Festival in Las Vegas, the rocker unleashed a profanity-laced tirade that took aim at everyone from the concert's promoter, Clear Channel, to Justin Bieber.

The meltdown forced Armstrong to enter an outpatient rehab program for a month and in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the frontman, who turned 41 this month, reveals his struggle to get sober.

"I'm a blackout drinker," he reveals. "That's basically what happened [that night]."

Leading up to that infamous performance, Armstrong was struggling with a dependence on pills for anxiety and insomnia, combined with a heavy drinking problem. After the concert, he agreed to enter an outpatient rehab program for a month.

Although he declines to specify what type of medications he was taking, he tells the magazine, "I started combining them to a point where I didn't know what I was taking during the day and what I was taking at night. It was just this routine. My backpack sounded like a giant baby rattle [from all of the bottles inside]."

Armstrong, who has been married to wife Adrienne since 1994 and has two sons, Joseph and Jakob, also reveals how hard it was to go through withdrawal.

"That was gruesome, laying on the bathroom floor and just feeling like ... [pauses] I didn't realize how much of that stuff affected me." He also opens up about the toll it took on his family: "I kept [the withdrawal] away from my sons pretty good ... [And my wife] knew the deal. I'm sure it was rough for her to see me going through this."

Now, the musician insists he's on the mend and no longer drinking. "I want to put on good shows," says Armstrong, who will resume touring with Green Day on March 10 in Pomona, Calif. "I want to be reliable." 

Armstrong also admits maintaining his sobriety will be a challenge. "There is still the obsession for alcohol," he says. "There's also sleepless nights. But I have to work on it every day. Because I know what goes on out there … I've got to watch my step."

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Huge study: 5 mental disorders share genetic links


WASHINGTON (AP) — The largest genetic study of mental illnesses to date finds five major disorders may not look much alike but they share some gene-based risks. The surprising discovery comes in the quest to unravel what causes psychiatric disorders and how to better diagnose and treat them.


The disorders — autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia — are considered distinct problems. But findings published online Wednesday suggest they're related in some way.


"These disorders that we thought of as quite different may not have such sharp boundaries," said Dr. Jordan Smoller of Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the lead researchers for the international study appearing in The Lancet.


That has implications for learning how to diagnose mental illnesses with the same precision that physical illnesses are diagnosed, said Dr. Bruce Cuthbert of the National Institute on Mental Health, which funded the research.


Consider: Just because someone has chest pain doesn't mean it's a heart attack; doctors have a variety of tests to find out. But there's no blood test for schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. Instead, doctors rely on symptoms agreed upon by experts. Learning the genetic underpinnings of mental illnesses is part of one day knowing if someone's symptoms really are schizophrenia and not something a bit different.


"If we really want to diagnose and treat people effectively, we have to get to these more fine-grained understandings of what's actually going wrong biologically," Cuthbert explained.


Added Mass General's Smoller: "We are still in the early stages of understanding what are the causes of mental illnesses, so these are clues."


The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, a collaboration of researchers in 19 countries, analyzed the genomes of more than 61,000 people, some with one of the five disorders and some without. They found four regions of the genetic code where variation was linked to all five disorders.


Of particular interest are disruptions in two specific genes that regulate the flow of calcium in brain cells, key to how neurons signal each other. That suggests that this change in a basic brain function could be one early pathway that leaves someone vulnerable to developing these disorders, depending on what else goes wrong.


For patients and their families, the research offers no immediate benefit. These disorders are thought to be caused by a complex mix of numerous genes and other risk factors that range from exposures in the womb to the experiences of daily life.


"There may be many paths to each of these illnesses," Smoller cautioned.


But the study offers a lead in the hunt for psychiatric treatments, said NIMH's Cuthbert. Drugs that affect calcium channels in other parts of the body are used for such conditions as high blood pressure, and scientists could explore whether they'd be useful for psychiatric disorders as well.


The findings make sense, as there is some overlap in the symptoms of the different disorders, he said. People with schizophrenia can have some of the same social withdrawal that's so characteristic of autism, for example. Nor is it uncommon for people to be affected by more than one psychiatric disorder.


___


Online:


http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60223-8/abstract


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Two L.A. mayoral candidates unlikely backers of business tax cut









In the debate over who should be the next mayor of Los Angeles, who would you suppose argues for elimination of a business tax to kick-start economic growth?


Not the one-time investment banker who dropped out of the race early and says killing the business tax would leave a huge hole in the city treasury. Not the lone Republican in the field, who wants more modest business tax reform. Not a City Council fiscal hawk, also a candidate for mayor, who says cutting the tax could leave the city with a $400-million shortfall.


Instead it's two liberal Democrats — City Controller Wendy Greuel and Councilman Eric Garcetti — pushing what sounds a lot like Ronald Reagan- or Mitt Romney-style "supply side" fiscal dogma. Cut taxes for business, Garcetti and Greuel contend, and the overall economic pie will grow, with benefits trickling down in the form of more jobs for Angelenos and more money in the city's general fund.





The duo's insistence on ending the tax on businesses' gross receipts puts them at odds with not only Democratic Party orthodoxy nationally but also with several figures viewed as leading watchdogs on municipal finance — former deputy mayor and investment banker Austin Beutner, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and Miguel Santana, the city's top budget official.


"It's an interesting strategy, but there is no proposal of what we would do to backfill the loss of that revenue," says Councilwoman Jan Perry, a mayoral candidate and among the more conservative city lawmakers on financial matters. "Who makes up the difference?"


Political observers believe that Garcetti and Greuel, both of whom have been identified as allies of organized labor, offer the elimination of the tax, at least in part, as a signal to the business community that they have more than one dimension.


"Mayoral candidates have to court business," said Jack Pitney, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. "There is a widespread perception that L.A. is not business friendly and anyone who aspires to be mayor has to fight that perception."


But will lost revenue from killing the tax be made up from other sources?


"It's rare that a tax cut actually pays for itself," Pitney said. "The best kind of tax cut is the kind that raises revenue and that actually has happened from time to time. It's not impossible. But the more reasonable prediction is it might end up losing less revenue than one would think otherwise."


Greuel and Garcetti reject what they say is conventional thinking. Both say they have seen the benefits of previous business tax cuts, with employers coming to the city after they were granted relief from the levy, currently the highest of its kind in Los Angeles County. They also say they would phase out the tax incrementally and only as it proved to help the city's bottom line.


It's another irony of the tax debate that Garcetti and Greuel — sharp rivals and perceived front-runners in the race to replace Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — have worked closely on previous reforms of the business levy and agree on the need for its elimination.


Greuel calls herself the "architect" of business tax reform, pointing to a 2006 council vote she led that cut the rate 15% over several years and reduced the number of tax categories from 42 to fewer than 10. The controller said the 2006 rate reduction not only brought in more businesses but that the city government also "saw more revenue as it related to those businesses coming into Los Angeles."


City budget officials say, however, that the previous tax changes came during a time of economic growth and they can't tease out how much of those increases accumulated because of the natural business cycle versus the city's tax cut.


Critics say that the incremental rate reductions of the past offer no proof that the revenue lost from wholesale elimination of the tax could be replaced. The debate has been complicated by the conflicting analysis of experts hired by the city.


In 2011, USC accounting professor Charles Swenson issued a report that found the death of the business tax would provoke such strong growth that the city would more than recoup the $400 million in lost revenue with the expansion of other taxes.


Last year, the city hired a consulting firm that picked apart Swenson's analysis, concluding that business would expand but that little of the tax revenue would be recouped from other sources. That is the prevailing view of Santana, the city's administrative officer, and outsiders like Beutner, the businessman who worked for a year and a half as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's "jobs czar."


Beutner said that in his time working at City Hall businesses most commonly complained about regulatory delays and the uncertainty of doing business in Los Angeles.


"They talked about how hard it was to get a permit, how anti-business the city is in its attitude," Beutner said. "Waving a magic wand and reducing a tax rate doesn't address those other issues."


Los Angeles only receives a fraction of property and sales taxes and other levies, but it receives 100% of every dollar brought in by its gross receipts tax, which charges businesses roughly one-tenth of a cent to half a penny per dollar of revenue.


Those tiny incremental payments add up, Beutner said. "So if you take a whole dollar in those taxes away, please show me how I get that dollar back with pennies from these other taxes," said Beutner. "It's not enough to just say, 'The whole pie grows.' Here you have a couple of progressives … espousing trickle-down. And this is the most indirect form of trickle-down one can imagine."


Garcetti agreed that many factors influence where companies make their homes, but he said "not a week goes by" that he doesn't have executives complain about L.A.'s gross receipts tax. Online retailer Shopzilla and ratings company Nielsen decided they could stay in Los Angeles, but only after getting a break on the tax, the councilman said. Online law document service Legal Zoom, in contrast, fled for Glendale and its lower rents and business levy. The company bolstered its bottom line by a few million dollars because of Glendale's lower tax, Garcetti said.


Greuel and Garcetti said they would phase out the tax over 15 years, only proceeding with incremental cuts each year if other tax revenues increased enough to make up for the money lost from the business levy. "Its not a Republican or Democratic issue," Greuel said. "It's about being responsible and being business-friendly."


Garcetti said he is a bit surprised at how his position on the tax has evolved.


"I started someplace else ideologically until I saw the impact this tax had," he said. Before, "I would have absolutely been a skeptic of things like this" tax cut, he added. "I realize [now] there are smart taxes and there are dumb taxes. This is a dumb tax."


james.rainey@latimes.com


Times staff writer Michael Finnegan contributed to this report.





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U.S. Officials Propose Sharing Drone Surveillance Data With Algerian Forces


Hussein Malla/Associated Press


In a cave in Idlib Province, Free Syrian Army fighters did a traditional dance and sang songs critical of President Bashar al-Assad.







 WASHINGTON — The American ambassador to Algeria and senior counterterrorism officials have proposed sharing more information with Algerian security forces to help them kill or capture militants in their own country and in areas just across their borders.




Their approach reflects the growing support within the administration for more forceful action against extremists in the area since the attack on a gas field in eastern Algeria last month left 37 dead, including three Americans, and focused new concerns on terrorist activity in Africa.


Under one plan, information from American surveillance drones would be provided to Algerian forces to enable them to engage in operations both inside Algeria and possibly, in a limited way, across its borders. The United States is already providing surveillance information to the French-led military operation in Mali to help combat militants there who last year seized the northern half of the country.


In a cable to the State Department last week, according to administration officials, Henry S. Ensher, the United States envoy in Algiers, urged that the pursuit of the Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the mastermind of the gas field attack, be made a priority. Toward that end, he recommended that the Obama administration tell the Algerians that if they allowed the United States to fly unarmed drones over the border area of Algeria as well as over Mali, the Americans would share the information with the Algerian government.


There was broad agreement among policy makers and intelligence officials at a meeting of President Obama’s top national security deputies at the White House last week that Mr. Belmokhtar and members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb should be aggressively pursued, according to one senior American official who insisted on anonymity so he could discuss internal deliberations. But no decision appears to have been reached on whether to make a formal proposal to the Algerians.


The idea of taking stronger action in the region has been supported in recent months by Michael Sheehan, the senior counterterrorism official at the Pentagon, and Daniel Benjamin, who until December was the senior State Department counterterrorism official. In the past, State Department lawyers have questioned whether the military action approved by Congress against Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks authorized efforts to target extremists who were not clearly linked to the group. But according to some officials, those legal arguments  have recently been overcome.  


The United States has long sought Algeria’s cooperation in antiterrorism efforts, and sharing information with a government that has jealously guarded its sovereignty would be a significant step toward that goal. During the siege of the gas plant at In Amenas, Algeria permitted the United States to fly a Predator surveillance drone over the complex, though it insisted that the drone be withdrawn after the assault was over.  


Mr. Obama announced last week that about 100 American troops had arrived in Niger in West Africa, next to Mali, to set up a new drone base to conduct surveillance flights in the region.


American officials also sense a possible change of heart by Algerian officials to move away from their longstanding policy not to conduct military operations outside the nation’s borders. Algerian officials recently told the United States that they were prepared to conduct operations in border areas, one American official said.


Mr. Belmokhtar, 40 — sometimes known as “Laaouar,” or the one-eyed, after he lost an eye to shrapnel —  was deemed to be a menace long before he drew international attention for last month’s attack. As the Algerians pressed their campaign against the militants, he took refuge in Mali, where he engaged in smuggling and kidnapped foreigners for ransom, including Robert Fowler, a Canadian diplomat and United Nations special envoy who was abducted in 2008.


By the spring of 2012, northern Mali had become a gathering place for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Other militant factions in northern Mali included Ansar al-Dine, a group largely made up of members of Mali’s nomadic Tuareg minority. Its leader, Iyad ag Ghali, has been officially designated as a global terrorist, the State Department announced  Tuesday.  The growing extremist presence in Mali became an increasing concern for Mr. Ensher as well as for Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the Africa Command, and counterterrorism officials at the Pentagon and the State Department.


Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington. Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington and Adam Nossiter from Lagos, Nigeria.



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Exclusive: All About Christina Applegate's Wedding Ring!







Style News Now





02/26/2013 at 09:00 AM ET











Christina Applegate Married: Wedding RingsCourtesy Neil Lane; Inset: Kevan Brooks/AdMedia


When Christina Applegate said “I do” with Martyn LeNoble in Los Angeles on Saturday, she not only added a new member to her family, but also a new piece of jewelry to her collection.


Neil Lane, who tells PEOPLE the piece “is not a typical ring,” designed the actress’s new sparkler.


Lane explains of the bauble, “It has a border of diamonds around it like a sleeve. We took her engagement ring and fit it in a sleeve of little diamonds to become one with the wedding band. It’s platinum and diamond inset with tiny little diamonds everywhere.”



As for the very intimate nuptials — which only about eight people attended, including the couple’s daughter Sadie and LeNoble’s daughter Marlin — Lane says, “It was just the right time. They’re a very happy couple. There is a great deal of love between them.”


–Elizabeth Leonard and Dahvi Shira


PHOTOS: SEE THE BLINGIEST STAR ENGAGEMENT RINGS!




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C. Everett Koop, 'rock star' surgeon general, dies


NEW YORK (AP) — Dr. C. Everett Koop has long been regarded as the nation's doctor— even though it has been nearly a quarter-century since he was surgeon general.


Koop, who died Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H., at age 96, was by far the best known and most influential person to carry that title. Koop, a 6-foot-1 evangelical Presbyterian with a biblical prophet's beard, donned a public health uniform in the early 1980s and became an enduring, science-based national spokesman on health issues.


He served for eight years during the Reagan administration and was a breed apart from his political bosses. He thundered about the evils of tobacco companies during a multiyear campaign to drive down smoking rates, and he became the government's spokesman on AIDS when it was still considered a "gay disease" by much of the public.


"He really changed the national conversation, and he showed real courage in pursuing the duties of his job," said Chris Collins, a vice president of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.


Even before that, he had been a leading figure in medicine. He was one of the first U.S. doctors to specialize in pediatric surgery at a time when children with complicated conditions were often simply written off as untreatable. In the 1950s, he drew national headlines for innovative surgeries such as separating conjoined twins.


His medical heroics are well noted, but he may be better remembered for transforming from a pariah in the eyes of the public health community into a remarkable servant who elevated the influence of the surgeon general — if only temporarily.


"He set the bar high for all who followed in his footsteps," said Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general a decade later under President George W. Bush.


Koop's religious beliefs grew after the 1968 death of his son David in a mountain-climbing accident, and he became an outspoken opponent of abortion. His activism is what brought him to the attention of the administration of President Ronald Reagan, who decided to nominate him for surgeon general in 1981. Though once a position with real power, surgeon generals had been stripped of most of their responsibilities in the 1960s.


By the time Koop got the job, the position was kind of a glorified health educator.


But Koop ran with it. One of his early steps involved the admiral's uniform that is bestowed to the surgeon general but that Koop's predecessors had worn only on ceremonial occasions. In his first year in the post, Koop stopped wearing his trademark bowties and suit jackets and instead began wearing the uniform, seeing it as a way to raise the visual prestige of the office.


In those military suits, he surprised the officials who had appointed him by setting aside his religious beliefs and feelings about abortion and instead waging a series of science-based public health crusades.


He was arguably most effective on smoking. He issued a series of reports that detailed the dangers of tobacco smoke, and in speeches began calling for a smoke-free society by the year 2000. He didn't get his wish, but smoking rates did drop from 38 percent to 27 percent while he was in office — a huge decline.


Koop led other groundbreaking initiatives, but perhaps none is better remembered than his work on AIDS.


The disease was first identified in 1981, before Koop was officially in office, and it changed U.S. society. It destroyed the body's immune system and led to ghastly death, but initially was identified in gay men, and many people thought of it as something most heterosexuals didn't have to worry about.


U.S. scientists worked hard to identify the virus and work on ways to fight it, but the government's health education and policy efforts moved far more slowly. Reagan for years was silent on the issue. Following mounting criticism, Reagan in 1986 asked Koop to prepare a report on AIDS for the American public.


His report, released later that year, stressed that AIDS was a threat to all Americans and called for wider use of condoms and more comprehensive sex education, as early as the third grade. He went on to speak frankly about AIDS in an HBO special and engineered the mailing of an educational pamphlet on AIDS to more than 100 million U.S. households in 1988.


Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how HIV was transmitted.


Koop's speeches and empathetic approach made him a hero to a wide swath of America, including public health workers, gay activists and journalists. Some called him a "scientific Bruce Springsteen." AIDS activists chanted "Koop, Koop" at his appearances and booed other officials.


"I was walking down the street with him one time" about five years ago, recalled Dr. George Wohlreich, director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, a medical society with which Koop had longstanding ties. "People were yelling out, 'There goes Dr. Koop!' You'd have thought he was a rock star."


Koop angered conservatives by refusing to issue a report requested by the Reagan White House, saying he could not find enough scientific evidence to determine whether abortion has harmful psychological effects on women.


He got static from some staff at the White House for his actions, but Reagan himself never tried to silence Koop. At a congressional hearing in 2007, Koop spoke about political pressure on the surgeon general post. He said Reagan was pressed to fire him every day.


After his death was reported Monday, the tributes poured forth, including a statement from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has made smoking restrictions a hallmark of his tenure.


"The nation has lost a visionary public health leader today with the passing of former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who was born and raised in Brooklyn," Bloomberg said. "Outspoken on the dangers of smoking, his leadership led to stronger warning labels on cigarettes and increased awareness about second-hand smoke, creating an environment that helped millions of Americans to stop smoking — and setting the stage for the dramatic changes in smoking laws that have occurred over the past decade."


Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health taught Koop what was known about AIDS during quiet after-hours talks in the early 1980s and became a close friend.


"A less strong person would have bent under the pressure," Fauci said. "He was driven by what's the right thing to do."


Carmona, a surgeon general years later, said Koop was a mentor who preached the importance of staying true to the science in speeches and reports — even when it made certain politicians uncomfortable.


"We remember him for the example he set for all of us," Carmona said.


Koop's nomination originally was met with staunch opposition. Women's groups and liberal politicians complained Reagan had selected him only because of his conservative views, especially his staunch opposition to abortion.


Foes noted that Koop traveled the country in 1979 and 1980 giving speeches that predicted a progression "from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen."


But Koop, a devout Presbyterian, was confirmed as surgeon general after he told a Senate panel he would not use the post to promote his religious ideology. He kept his word and eventually won wide respect with his blend of old-fashioned values, pragmatism and empathy.


Koop was modest about his accomplishments, saying before leaving office in 1989, "My only influence was through moral suasion."


The office declined after that. Few of his successors had his speaking ability or stage presence. Fewer still were able to secure the support of key political bosses and overcome the meddling of everyone else. The office gradually lost prestige and visibility, and now has come to a point where most people can't name the current surgeon general. (It's Dr. Regina Benjamin.)


Even after leaving office, Koop continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.


"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.


In 1996, he rapped Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole for suggesting that tobacco was not invariably addictive, saying Dole's comments "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his blind support of the tobacco industry."


He maintained his personal opposition to abortion. After he left office, he told medical students it violated their Hippocratic oath. In 2009, he wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging that health care legislation include a provision to ensure doctors and medical students would not be forced to perform abortions. The letter briefly set off a security scare because it was hand delivered.


Koop served as chairman of the National Safe Kids Campaign and as an adviser to President Bill Clinton's health care reform plan.


Worried that medicine had lost old-fashioned caring and personal relationships between doctors and patients, Koop opened an institute at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire to teach medical students basic values and ethics. He also was a part-owner of a short-lived venture, drkoop.com, to provide consumer health care information via the Internet.


Koop was the only son of a Manhattan banker and the nephew of a doctor. He said by age 5 he knew he wanted to be a surgeon and at age 13 he practiced his skills on neighborhood cats. He attended Dartmouth, where he received the nickname Chick, short for "chicken Koop." It stuck for life.


He received his medical degree at Cornell Medical College, choosing pediatric surgery because so few surgeons practiced it. In 1938, he married Elizabeth Flanagan, the daughter of a Connecticut doctor. They had four children. Koop's wife died in 2007, and he married Cora Hogue in 2010.


He was appointed surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He pioneered surgery on newborns and successfully separated three sets of conjoined twins. He won national acclaim by reconstructing the chest of a baby born with the heart outside the body.


Although raised as a Baptist, he was drawn to a Presbyterian church near the hospital, where he developed an abiding faith. He began praying at the bedside of his young patients — ignoring the snickers of some of his colleagues.


___


Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vt.; Jeff McMillan in Philadelphia; and AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington.


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For Cardinal Roger Mahony, social media is a powerful pulpit









As archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger Mahony responded to criticism of his handling of sexual abuse cases with a high-priced crisis management firm, full-page ads in Spanish and English newspapers, and a report naming accused priests.


In retirement, Mahony's public relations operation consists mainly of his thoughts and a computer keyboard. Since last month, when outrage flared anew over files showing he shielded abusers, the cardinal has thrown himself into social media to give the public his side of the story.


It was on his blog that Mahony defended himself against a public rebuke by his successor, and it was on Twitter that he confirmed, to the dismay of many critics, that he would attend the conclave to elect a new pope.





"Am planning to be in Rome and vote for the next Pope," he wrote hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation. He added, "Will be twee[t]ing daily."


It was an extraordinary pledge from a man who had tweeted just five times before and only sporadically updated his blog. But as Catholic groups, members of the public and even some Vatican officials continued to question Mahony's integrity, he became ever more prolific online.


From the Vatican on Monday, he posted his harshest assessment yet of those who have attacked him.


"I can't recall a time such as now when people tend to be so judgmental and even self-righteous, so quick to accuse, judge and condemn," he wrote. "And often with scant real facts and information."


Since the release of 12,000 pages of confidential church records, Mahony has been lambasted by church critics, victims' advocates and others. The criticism skyrocketed with Benedict's resignation and Mahony's insistence that he would cast his vote for the next pope despite having been removed by Archbishop Jose Gomez from all public duties.


Last week, three former top Vatican officials publicly discussed the propriety of Mahony attending the conclave, and a liberal Catholic group gathered 10,000 signatures online urging the cardinal to give up his vote.


The debate over his presence only grew when a British cardinal, Keith O'Brien, decided to stay home following allegations that he had engaged in "inappropriate acts" with priests decades earlier.


"I do not wish media attention in Rome to be focused on me — but rather on Pope Benedict XVI and on his successor," O'Brien said in a statement.


By contrast, Mahony has been reveling in his participation in the papal election, counting down the days and hours to his departure on his Twitter feed, slapping a Vatican City dateline on his first blog post after landing in Italy, and describing the "anticipation and expectation" on the streets there.


Mahony used Benedict's announcement as an opportunity to talk to the public about something other than the sex abuse scandal and to assert his relevance to the church two years after his retirement. As a cardinal, Mahony gets to cast a vote; Gomez, the man who rebuked him, does not.


When news of the pope's departure broke, Mahony quickly posted a personal tribute to Benedict on his blog and said he was looking forward to voting in the conclave. It would be six hours before the archdiocese press office put out an official statement from Gomez.


The post marked the start of a new level of social media engagement by Mahony. Since then, he has posted nearly daily on his blog and Twitter account.


"He obviously feels a need to be heard and understood," said Diane Winston, a professor of media and religion at USC.


Mahony launched his blog in 2009 after attending a Vatican conference on social media and was for years an occasional poster. He frequently wrote about his longtime cause, immigration, but sometimes detoured, such as one entry extolling a pizza joint in Rome.


"My favorite is the one with fresh sliced mushrooms as the main topping!" he wrote in 2009.


His recent entries have been personal, spiritual and tinged with aggrievement. In a blog post this month, he wrote that he had a religious epiphany on Ash Wednesday. With "all the storms" of the sex abuse scandal, God was calling him "to be humiliated, disgraced and rebuffed by many."


"In recent days, I have been confronted in various places by very unhappy people. I could understand the depth of their anger and outrage…," he wrote. "Thanks to God's special grace, I simply stood there, asking God to bless and forgive them."


Mahony's blog doesn't allow readers to post responses, but Twitter does, and the feedback has often been harsh. When Mahony on Monday said the weather forecast for Rome was pleasant and rain-free, one user replied, "a good day to hide from your guilty past. #pedophile #protector."


To a tweet in which Mahony discussed "loving your enemies," another user wrote "You're a good man. But this online pity party is unseemly. Don't just praise the 'silent Jesus', act like him."


Mahony has yet to respond to any tweets directed at him. Marketing and social media strategist David Meerman Scott said Mahony was practicing "one-way communication" rather than the dialogue that defines a successful online presence.


"He's not engaging with the public, he's talking to the public," Scott said. But he added that if people find the cardinal's posts to be genuine and forthcoming, they might come to see his perspective.


"It takes guts for people to put themselves out there.... It's very easy to be quiet and say nothing," he said.


At least nine other cardinals in the 116-member conclave have Twitter accounts. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is the most widely followed, with more than 84,000 subscribers. Dolan, however, follows just one account — the pope's. (Benedict, whose handle is @pontifex, counts more than 1.5 million followers.) After about a month of tweeting, Mahony has about 1,500 followers. He doesn't follow the pope or Gomez, but follows the L.A. Times food section and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.


Mahony's online missives will probably come to a temporary halt when he enters the Sistine Chapel next month to vote for the next pope. Those deliberations are secret, and the Vatican said this week that the penalty for revealing what happens during the conclave is excommunication.


victoria.kim@latimes.com


harriet.ryan@latimes.com





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Little Clarity in Italian Vote, Aside from Anger




Italians Head to the Polls:
Italians voted Sunday and Monday in a general election that is being closely watched to see whether a clear winner will emerge.







ROME — Italian voters delivered a rousing anti-austerity message and a strong rebuke to the existing political order in national elections on Monday, plunging the country into political paralysis after results failed to produce a clear winner.




Analysts said that the best-case scenario would be shaky coalition government, which would once again expose Italy and the euro zone to turmoil if markets question its commitment to measures that have kept the budget deficit within a tolerable 3 percent of gross domestic product. News of the stalemate sent tremors through the financial world, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 200 points.


Although analysts blamed the large protest vote on Italy’s political morass and troubled electoral system, the results were also seen as a rejection of the rapid deficit-reduction strategy set by the European Commission and European Central Bank — from a country too big to fail and too big to bail out.


“No doubt Italy has an imperfect political culture, but this election I think is the logical consequence of pursuing policies that have dramatically worsened the economic and social picture in Italy,” said Simon Tilford, the chief economist of the Center for European Reform, a London research institute.


“People have been warning that if they adhere to this policy there will be a political cost, there will be backlash,” he added. “It couldn’t have taken place in a more pivotal country.”


In an election marked by voter anger and low turnout, the center-left Democratic Party appeared to be leading in the Lower House with 29.6 percent, with 99 percent of the votes counted, and in the Senate with one-third of the votes counted by midnight local time.


But that outcome did not give the Democrats a clear victory because the center-right People of Liberty Party of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was leading in several populous regions that carry more Senate seats, potentially giving him veto power and raising the prospect of political gridlock.


 Even before the final result, the election was a clear victory for the Five Star Movement of the former comedian Beppe Grillo, which in its first-ever national elections appeared to win about 25 percent of the vote in the Lower House. Italians from both right and left — and the wealthier north and poorer south — were drawn to Mr. Grillo’s opposition to austerity measures and cries to oust the existing political order.


And it was a stinging defeat for the caretaker prime minister, Mario Monti, a newly minted politician whose lackluster civic movement appeared to win around 10 percent in both houses. “Grillo had a devastating success; the rest of the situation is very unclear,” said Stefano Folli, a political columnist for the daily business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.


Either the Democratic Party and the People of Liberty Party “will form a grand coalition committed to reforms and changing the electoral law, which would be very difficult, or Italy will be ungovernable,” Mr. Folli added.


Mr. Monti’s caretaker government remains in place with full powers until a new government is formed. Appearing on television on Monday evening, Mr. Monti said he felt “tremendous regret” that during his tenure the political parties were not able to change Italy’s electoral law so as to guarantee more political stability. “It is a great responsibility of the political forces, and one of the reasons for the disaffection and distance from and the revindication of the political class,” he added.


Under Italy’s complex electoral laws, it is extremely hard for any one party to gain a strong ruling majority needed to manage an economy with rising unemployment and a credit crunch, let alone push through structural changes to the ossified economy. Instead, the parties have resisted change to protect their own power bases. 


The results of this election would appear to represent new depths of gridlock, and few experts expected any party to form a governing coalition strong enough to prevail for long. Nicolas Véron, an economist and a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based research institute, said that regardless of who ultimately controls the levers of government, “The key question is whether we can have serious structural reform.”


Italy “was a work in progress before the elections,” Mr. Véron added, “and I think investors understand that it will remain a work in progress for some time.”


Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome, and Nicola Clark from Paris.



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