|
Church in
Crisis Ambition, defense of institutional church drove cardinals
career
By GILL DONOVAN
With the resignation of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law Dec. 13
following months of revelations about his failure to remove dozens of sexually
abusive priests from ministry, the pope has lost a man who for a decade and a
half was among the most influential Catholic power brokers in the United
States. Since the death of New Yorks Cardinal John OConnor in 2000,
Law has been the countrys senior prelate.
NCRs reporting on Law, 71, and his rise through the
ranks of the church extends back more than 35 years, revealing a defender of
the institutional church and its teachings and a bishop of high ambition who
consistently put a desire to protect the church from scandal ahead of the need
to protect children from serial abusers.
Law, of Irish descent, was born in Torreon, Mexico, in 1931, the
son of a U.S. Air Force flier who would rise to the rank of colonel. Laws
mother was raised a Presbyterian, but converted to Catholicism sometime in the
1950s. His childhood was divided between living in Mexico, Colombia, Georgia,
New York and Florida. He graduated from Charlotte Amalie High School, a
racially diverse school in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, where he was elected
president of the senior class.
For college, he chose Harvard, and while studying medieval history
there he considered a career in government. But, he told NCR in 1984,
during those years he became absorbed with the idea of the church as the
mystical body of Christ, as unity as a force for bringing people
together.
At the Catholic Club at Harvard, he was impressed by such speakers
as Dorothy Day, Jacques Maritain and Catherine de Hueck Doherty. After
graduation in 1953, he decided to become a priest. Because, he said, he wanted
to address racial inequities he had witnessed growing up in Latin America and
elsewhere, he moved to the South.
After two years at St. Josephs Seminary in St. Benedict,
La., he spent six years of study at the Pontifical College Josephinum in
Worthington, Ohio. He was ordained for the Natchez-Jackson, Miss., diocese May
21, 1961, on Pentecost Sunday.
He served for less than two years at St. Paul Parish in
Vicksburg, Miss., as an assistant pastor and then in 1963 became editor of the
diocesan paper, the Mississippi Register, where he took an editorial
stance in support of the civil rights movement. He served on the Mississippi
Human Relations Council and Mississippi Leadership Conference. His position on
civil rights met with the approval of his bishop, Richard Gerow, who had also
publicly advocated for civil rights. Because the movement was so unpopular
among many Catholics in Mississippi at that time, Laws writings led to a
significant decline in the number of subscribers of the newspaper.
In one editorial about the need for equality, Law wrote:
Until we realize that the dilemma facing us is a moral question, until we
operate in the context of virtue in our social and political lives as well as
our personal lives, the future will be even more dismal than the
present.
After Mississippi civil rights activist Medger Evers was
assassinated in 1963, Law increased his civil rights activities. His
participation at caucuses at black churches and meetings with black pastors in
the chancery attracted the attention of the Ku Klux Klan. His name appeared on
a Klan hit list. His efforts earned him the praise of Charles Evers,
Medgers brother and fellow rights activist, who in February 1966 told
NCR: Law has acted not for the Negro, but for justice and what is
right.
According to an April 22, 1990, Boston Globe report, Law
told friends during his time in Mississippi that his goal was to be the first
American pope.
Laws activism allowed him to develop ties to Protestant
religious leaders who also advocated civil rights, and he gained a reputation
as a priest with ecumenical contacts. In 1968, he moved to Washington to head
the U.S. Bishops Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs,
upon the recommendation of William Baum, Laws mentor. Baum had at that
time been appointed bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Mo. After three
years, Law returned to the Natchez-Jackson diocese as vicar general.
In 1973, Baum was appointed archbishop of Washington, and Law was
named his replacement in Springfield-Cape Girardeau. Law remained as bishop of
the largely rural Missouri diocese for 10 years.
In Springfield, he made a name for himself as an energetic bishop.
He established Hope House, the areas first shelter for battered women, a
soup kitchen that served some 250 people a day called The Kitchen, and started
a program in which parishioners could turn to their parish for help with health
care. Among his other notable accomplishments:
- In 1975, he adopted a Vietnamese mens religious order,
the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix, whose members had come to the
United States as refugees following the Vietnam War. He turned over to them a
seminary complex in Carthage, Mo., which would later become the shrine of the
Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix, and is today regularly visited by
Vietnamese-American Catholics. He sponsored a womens order of Vietnamese
refugees as well, the Congregation of Mary Queen.
- In 1981, Law drew up guidelines at the behest of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for married Episcopalian ministers
who wanted to join the Catholic church after their churchs decision to
allow women to be ordained.
- A 1984 NCR report noted that while in Springfield, Law
made a practice of spending each weekend with one of the dioceses 100
parishes. The stories told [in the diocese] of Law are of acts of
charity, the report said. For example, the bishop took into his
home, for four years, a local seminarians brother who was paralyzed from
the neck down from a bullet wound.
In Springfield, Law first removed a priest from a parish who had
sexually abused a minor. Fr. Leonard Chambers was removed from ministry, sent
for treatment to a facility in New Mexico and 10 months later, after completing
treatment, returned to parish work, as a pastor. Chambers was forced to retire
in 1998, after he violated a rule imposed in the 1990s forbidding him to be
alone with a minor.
Law was installed as archbishop of Boston March 23, 1984, in
succession to Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, who had held that position from 1970
until his death in 1983.
In Boston, Law remained involved in ecumenical and interfaith
discussions. In 1986, he led a group of Jews and Catholics to visit the former
Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.
During his 18 years in Boston, Law often preached against
abortion, which he once referred to as the primordial evil of our
time. In the 1984 presidential election, he attacked vice presidential
candidate Geraldine Ferraro for her support of legalized abortion. He has at
times expressed admiration for Operation Rescue, the antiabortion group some of
whose members have advocated violent protest. However, in 1995, he asked for a
moratorium on protests at abortion clinics following the shooting deaths of two
receptionists at two clinics in the Boston area by a Catholic abortion
protester, John Salvi. Law lifted that ban five months later.
One week after Laws appointment to Boston, John
OConnor, bishop of Scranton, Pa., was appointed archbishop of New York.
For the next decade and a half, Law and OConnor would often join voices
in pressing for conformity to church teachings. They would number among the
countrys most influential Catholic leaders. A New York Times
report Feb. 14, 1984, said: The assumption that both will uphold church
standards and enforce its laws has given rise to a quip now making the rounds:
Its Law in Boston and order in New York.
Sixteen years later, Law would give the homily at
OConnors funeral at New Yorks St. Patricks Cathedral. A
dramatic demonstration of support arose spontaneously after Law said
OConnors great legacy was his constant reminder
that the church must always be unambiguously pro-life. OConnor died
at the age of 80 after a long battle with brain cancer, during which he refused
to surrender his office even after extended convalescence and
hospitalization.
In November 1984, some eight months after taking over as Boston
archbishop, Law made what would later become one of the pivotal decisions of
his episcopacy: He transferred the now-defrocked priest John Geoghan to St.
Julias Parish in Weston, Mass. He did so despite having access to
extensive archdiocesan records compiled over the course of decades that
detailed Geoghans history of sexually abusing children in earlier parish
assignments.
Laws method of handling the issue of priests who preyed on
children was employed in many other dioceses across the country. However, Law
and other bishops were given extensive documented information about the tragic
consequences of such transfers in January 1985, when the bishops
conference received a report examining priest sex abuse by a group of medical,
church and legal professionals. The group included Fr. Thomas Doyle, who was
then secretary to the Vaticans U.S. ambassador. Law had earlier offered
support for the writing of the report. The report said offenders had little
chance for a cure and were likely to repeat their offenses. It recommended that
the institutional church avoid secrecy when dealing with the problem.
Laws public record in his first years as archbishop showed
firm support for the Vatican. On several occasions, his support led him to
oppose positions taken by the U.S. bishops conference. In one instance,
Law criticized the conference for opposing U.S. aid for the Nicaraguan contras,
whom the Reagan administration was funding in their fight against the socialist
government of the Sandinistas. In another, he declared that the conference
had no authority whatsoever to intervene in the Vaticans
dealings with Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, who in 1986 was ordered to
turn over authority in several areas of his ministry to Auxiliary Bishop Donald
Wuerl following complaints by right-wing Catholics about Hunthausens
leadership. Hunthausens authority was restored in 1987.
Laws criticisms of the conference may have cost him the
support of some of his fellow bishops. In 1986, he lost eight election bids
within the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, including bids for the
conferences presidency and vice presidency.
Asked by NCR in 1987 if the role of the bishops
conference should be curtailed, Law said he thought the conference was too
large and too powerful. I think theres one collegiality;
I dont think there are two or three or four. There is only a
worldwide college of bishops under Rome, he said.
In 1985, Law proposed the writing of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church and in the next 10 years would consult in the writing of that document.
Formation of a catechism had previously been left up to individual
bishops conferences, which some experts thought might speak more
effectively to members of their own cultures.
Law was promoted to cardinal on May 25, 1985.
His relationship with The Boston Globe, whose report about
Geoghan earlier this year led to the first calls for Laws resignation,
had often been adversarial before that report was published. In 1989, Law
attacked what he called slanderous allegations when the paper
alleged he had struck a deal with President George H. W. Bush. The Globe
article said that Bush had requested Laws silence on the
administrations lack of response to the murders of six Jesuits and two
women in El Salvador. In exchange for silence, the Globe said, Law and
other U.S. cardinals would receive the presidents support of Catholic
issues such as tax money for church day cares, prayer in public schools and
opposition to abortion.
Though never a member of Opus Dei, the conservative church
watchdog group, Laws ties to the organization go back to his schooling at
Harvard when he became acquainted with two Spaniards who began an Opus Dei
chapter at the school. In 1989, he flew to Spain to ordain 19 Opus Dei
priests.
In the late 80s and early 90s, Law often consulted
with President Bush. Laws friendship and weekly consultations with John
Sununu, a conservative Catholic serving as Bushs chief of staff, were
often noted in the media.
In 1992, Bush announced the appointment of Law as the first
chairman of the Commission on Legal Immigration. Throughout his career, Law was
among the most vocal advocates for the rights of immigrants and has repeatedly
called for the lifting of the embargo against Cuba. When groups first began
calling for Laws resignation in Boston this year, his support in much of
the Hispanic community remained strong.
Law, who speaks fluent Spanish, has often been active in foreign
policy matters. In December 1989, he helped negotiate the surrender of
Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, who had taken refuge from surrounding U.S.
forces in the Vatican embassy in Panama City. Among foreign leaders Law has met
with are Cubas Fidel Castro, and Daniel Ortega, former Sandinista leader
of Nicaragua.
In 1996, Law opposed Cardinal Joseph Bernardins Catholic
Common Ground Project, which called for a renewed spirit of civility,
dialogue, generosity and broad and serious consultation among Catholics
who had become divided by opposing ideology. Law said of the project: The
church already has common ground. It is found in sacred
scripture.
Throughout his episcopacy, Law has energetically opposed the death
penalty in Massachusetts, which is one of only 12 states that currently have
not legalized capital punishment. His opposition has led him to testify at the
Massachusetts Statehouse against death penalty legislation.
In January 1993, after reports that now-defrocked priest James
Porter had sexually abused over 100 children while ministering as a priest in
the nearby Fall River, Mass., diocese, Law announced the creation of an
archdiocesan policy for dealing with abusive priests.
He further announced that the archdiocese would review all priest
personnel files and reopen cases against priests facing credible charges.
Despite this policy change, records released this November have shown that in
1999, Law wrote to Fr. Peter Frost, whose history of sexual abuse of minors was
well-documented by in the records, to say that he was considering returning him
to ministry, since Frost had gained the wisdom which emerges from
difficult experience.
Law called media coverage of the Porter case exploitive and
singled out the Globe in particular, saying, in a much-publicized quote,
By all means we call down Gods power on the media, particularly the
Globe. Saying he would take no questions about the matter, he
called Porters history of abuse aberrant.
In 1998, he offered mortgages totaling $250 million to poor
Boston-area families that were below the markets interest rate.
In February 2001, Law received national attention by denying a
5-year-old girl suffering from celiac disease, an allergy to gluten found in
bread, the right to substitute a rice wafer at her first Communion.
Illustrating a remarkable rigidity for following church teachings, Law wrote to
the parents of the girl Oct. 29, 2001: The law of the church is extremely
explicit regarding bread and wine used for the eucharistic celebration. In
keeping with the Last Supper narrative found in the gospels, the bread must be
made of wheat alone. Though the girls parents were told the girl
could still receive by drinking from the Communion cup, the family left the
Catholic church in protest of Laws decision.
The beginning of the end of Laws career as archbishop came
in Jan 2002, when The Boston Globe published an investigative report on
Geoghan that was quickly followed by the release to the public of thousands of
pages of church documents detailing Geoghans long history of abuse.
Though Law publicly apologized for his mishandling of Geoghan and
introduced a zero-tolerance policy for priests who commit such crimes, the
pressure for Laws resignation mounted as records of other Boston priests
were released to the public.
In April, Law met with the pope, who refused to accept Laws
resignation. Back in Boston, Law offered further apology and met with victims
in an attempt to regain archdiocese support.
Law and the archdiocese received renewed bad publicity following
the release of more church documents regarding more abusive priests in
November, which led him to meet once again with the pope. Facing calls for him
to step down by 58 archdiocesan priests, numerous church reform-minded and
victims advocacy groups, and local and national newspaper editorial writers, on
Dec. 13 Law received the popes approval and resigned, becoming the first
U.S. archbishop forced out of office for having mishandled sexually abusive
priests.
Gill Donovan is a writer for NCR. His e-mail address
is gdonovan@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, December 27,
2002
|
|