Being a judge means you’re going to have to make some tough calls. That’s obvious. We ran an editorial this weekend highly critical of Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Borris’ plea agreement with Albert Lee Schildknecht (pictured above in his mug shot), the one-time music director at St. Timothy Catholic Church convicted of sexually assaulting a woman when she was 16 years old and living in Costa Mesa.

It was a bad decision in our view and we made our case in the editorial so no need to rehash that. But I have to get something off my chest. I’ve heard from some that there was chatter out there speculating why we didn’t name Judge Borris in our initial report about the plea agreement. I understand some readers might think we were trying to cover for the judge. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is, we just blew it. I blew it. It’s no excuse, but I was pretty stacked up with work that Friday and I didn’t give the original article a close enough read apparently. It’s an obvious omission. Whenever you do an article about a controversial decision readers want to know who handed down the judgment. I know that and I should have asked the reporter to add that information. Later, I found out it was Judge Borris.

Then I heard there was speculation that perhaps the judge cut Schildknecht a deal to stay out of prison because he’s also a Roman Catholic. Again, not true. If you check the Orange County Superior Court’s website profile on Judge Borris it says he’s Methodist and is a member of the Orangethorpe United Methodist Church in Fullerton.

I understand why sex-abuse activists and victims are angry. I am too. And as a Catholic I’m especially ashamed, too, not only at the sexual attacks, but how they’ve been handled by some of my church leaders. I’m not going to name names or point fingers because the truth is there are a lot of people who failed. And every time I get defensive about it I try to catch myself. We cannot minimize the pain and suffering and we must not forget what terrible things were done — they must remind us to be ever-vigilant so that this sort of evil never happens again.

On the other hand, though, I feel compelled to point out that not everyone involved in the church is a depraved maniac. There are so many heroes in the archdiocese out there fighting for social justice for the most vulnerable among us. We must be careful not to go on witch hunts. Idle speculation tends to lead to that.

I remember back in the early ’90s when Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was falsely accused of sexual abuse. I greatly admired him and was sure the allegations were wrong. The biggest tip-off was how open he was about the accusation. He stood there and bravely took all of the questions reporters had for him and firmly denied the allegations, but in a rational not a peevish way. I also recalled a Sunday afternoon a couple of years prior to that when I was running the desk at City News Bureau in Chicago. We received a fax hours before the evening news about a priest being removed from his post after an allegation of sexual abuse. It was about the worst way the archdiocese could have announced the news if it wanted it covered up or at least buried. Sundays are slow news days so an announcement like that was bound to lead off the late afternoon and evening newscasts. That was typical of Cardinal Bernardin. He understood that after a breach of trust as serious as that the only decent thing to do is fully disclose the information. As it turned out, Bernardin’s false accuser later recanted and not only did the good Cardinal forgive him Bernardin made time to pray with his accuser before he died of AIDS. It’s a beautiful story and one that should remind us that not everyone in the church is bad, no matter how terrible others may behave.

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