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Cardinal Law on the ropes
Ten years ago, in the midst of an earlier pedophile scandal, Law called down the wrath of God on the media. Now the media are giving him hell
BY DAN KENNEDY

[Cardinal Law] A Newsweek cover featuring Bernard Cardinal Law's haggard face and the headline SEX, SHAME AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. A New York Times editorial fastidiously avoiding the suggestion that Law resign -- but concluding that "voluntary retirement . . . might be an appropriate way to demonstrate how seriously the church is taking this matter."

A nationally syndicated column by that quintessential Boston Catholic, Mary McGrory, arguing that Law has "lost moral authority," and thus cannot "expect to continue in office."

A cartoon by Tom Toles in which an offstage critic hectors Law, "When the problem is repeatedly failing to protect your children, a father's role is usually prison time."

And just to show that Toles isn't the only commentator who's envisioned the cardinal in stripes, an "Explainer" in Slate headlined WHY ISN'T BOSTON'S CARDINAL LAW IN JAIL? (The answer: Massachusetts is not among the 18 states that "require all persons to report knowledge or suspicion of child abuse.")

For Cardinal Law, things have gone very bad very quickly. It was only a couple of years ago that he was named in a lawsuit by those accusing former priest John Geoghan of sexually abusing them when they were children. At the time, the notion of dragging Law into the case seemed like it might be either a publicity ploy, a Hail Mary pass (pardon the metaphor), or both.

But the local media began chipping away. The Boston Phoenix published the first breakthrough story last March: a piece by staff writer Kristen Lombardi showing that,

for years, archdiocesan officials hushed up Geoghan's

pedophilic ways and transferred him from parish to parish. Lombardi wrote several follow-ups, including a story last August detailing the Church's heavy-handed legal tactics against victims of pedophilia by its priests (see the Phoenix's coverage online at www.boston phoenix.com/pages/cardinal.htm).

Then, in January of this year, the Boston Globe set in motion what was to become an avalanche. Many of the Globe's stories -- reported by Spotlight Team editor Walter Robinson's shop -- were based on previously secret legal documents that the newspaper obtained by going to court, detailing how Law and other archdiocesan officials covered up the depredations of Geoghan and numerous other priests. The Boston Herald has made important contributions, too. The most recent was a piece last week reporting that New Hampshire and federal authorities may bring criminal charges against several Massachusetts priests who brought their victims across state lines.

The latest count: 10 priests suspended by the Archdiocese of Boston for what have been described as credible allegations of sex abuse; and perhaps 80 former, retired, or deceased priests who have been similarly accused.

According to Monday's Globe, the counting continues.

ALMOST EXACTLY a decade ago, Cardinal Law lashed out at the media for what he saw as their excessive coverage of another notorious pedophile priest, James Porter. "We call down God's power on our business leaders and the political leaders and community leaders. By all means we call down God's power on the media, particularly the Globe," Law was reported as saying in an angry outburst during -- of all things -- an antiviolence march.

Now the media's power has been called down on Law and the Catholic Church. And though it might seem like hell to the hierarchy, the result has been to expose a myriad of heinous acts -- many of them crimes -- that had long been kept secret. That's good for everyone.

Regionally, the Portland Press Herald, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the Manchester Union Leader, and the Springfield Union-News have all covered the story extensively, pushing local Catholic officials to identify and suspend alleged pedophiles in their own churches. The Providence Journal has gone so far as to call for Law's resignation -- a step neither of the Boston dailies has yet taken, although the Boston Phoenix did recently (see "Cardinal Law's Shame," Editorial, February 1). This past Sunday, WCVB-TV Channel 5 broadcast a tough editorial in which president and general manager Paul La Camera declined to call for Law's resignation, but said that "he may need to accept that resignation might serve as the ultimate act of reconciliation for him and his Church."

Nationally, what's happened in Boston has spurred not only media attention from the likes of the Times and Newsweek, but also local coverage of what's going on in communities across the country. The trade magazine Editor & Publisher reports that papers such as the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call and the Wausau (Wisconsin) Daily Herald have followed up the Boston stories by reporting on what's happening in their own back yards. The Boston scandal, with its ripple effects, has also convinced some Church leaders that secrecy is no longer an option. "We could have had reporters climbing ropes outside of their building, and we would not have gotten the same information we got because of the Boston story," Philadelphia Daily News editor Zack Stalberg told E&P.

Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center for the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School, told me that the Law scandal has provoked a national outcry because it's one of those stories that had smoldered just below the surface for years before it finally burst into flames.

"I think what's happened is that something that's long been known to exist and has been a scandal has finally been dragged into the full light of day," says Jones. "I think this is long overdue. It's very much like the elephant at the table to a certain extent."

Emily Rooney, host of WGBH-TV's Greater Boston and a former local and national television news director, says of the media: "The biggest role they've played is they've cut right through the heart of this, which is the secrecy. It's all crumbled now." With Porter and similar cases, she adds, "we all believed it was an anomaly. But it's not, and that's the thing that's so distressing."

Rooney believes that the long-term effect of the media's exposure will be a positive one, both for the Church and for society. "From now on," she says, "anything that's reported will be made public. That's good."

The question, though, is whether it will lead to real, permanent change on the part of the Church. The two-decade-old track record is not encouraging.

AS JONES AND ROONEY suggest, the mess in which the Church now finds itself is an old problem that the hierarchy has never quite seemed able -- or willing -- to solve. Stories about pedophile priests, after all, first gained national attention in the early and mid 1980s, and have been a regularly recurring media staple ever since. At the same time that Cardinal Law called the wrath of God down upon the media in 1992, he also announced tough new policies aimed at rooting out abusers such as Porter. Obviously, those policies didn't work, and the way Law did -- and didn't -- enforce them has a lot to do with that.

Nearly 10 years before contributing to Newsweek's cover package on Law, the magazine's religion writer, Ken Woodward, co-wrote another cover story, this one headlined THE SINS OF THE FATHERS. In that story, published on July 12, 1993, Woodward and Carolyn Friday wrote, "In the worst scandal ever to hit the American Catholic Church, as many as 500 priests, by some estimates, have been accused of sexually molesting children. Already, the church has paid tens of millions of dollars to victims, most of whom were abused decades ago, and it still faces dozens of unsettled lawsuits. Worse, the bishops themselves have been accused by critics of coddling known offenders and hushing up victims who complain."

That nothing has changed in 10 years suggests that though the media spotlight is crucial in exposing clerical wrongdoing, it is not, of itself, sufficient to the task of addressing it.

Woodward told me that perhaps things
are getting better -- after all, the cases of
Geoghan and other pedophile priests recently exposed involve acts that took place some years ago. "What the media is basically digging up is not Father Jones in St. Aloysius's Parish who's buggering little kids, but stuff that happened in the past," says Woodward. But he adds that the Church's inability to deal with the pedophiles in its midst after all these years is nevertheless disturbing.

"What people can and are and should be saying is, `What the hell, you've known about this for a long time. Why don't you have really good, functioning systems in place?' That's the issue, it seems to me," says Woodward. "What about screening? What about monitoring the guys who come into the priesthood now?" Woodward thinks the Boston story also resonates because it shows "that even a man as careful as Law, even he can let this slide."

It was also a decade ago that 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace and a then-new producer, Bob Anderson, struck out for New Mexico to report on a sex scandal that claimed the career of then-archbishop Roberto Sanchez. Sanchez, according to their report, had not only failed to deal with pedophile priests in his archdiocese, but had also been sexually involved himself with three young women (two were 18, one was 19), despite his vow of celibacy.

"The archbishop had heard of various priests over and over," says Anderson of the pedophiles who were brought to Sanchez's attention. "But the Church would always say, `Gee, this is the first time we had ever heard anything about this guy. We'll look into it.' When in fact they had heard many things about many of these guys."

In an observation that could be made just as easily today about Cardinal Law and his advisers, Anderson says, "The Church hierarchy felt that their first allegiance was to their clergy, and not to their parishioners. So the children ended up being continued to be abused, while the clergy continued to be protected. And that seemed backwards to me."

Anderson adds: "I think that this is a crucial role that the press is playing, in bringing this thing to light. But I think we're kidding ourselves if we think this problem will ever be completely resolved."

Indeed, Father Andrew Greeley, a novelist and sociologist, wrote an article for the Catholic magazine America in 1993 in which he estimated that between five and 10 percent of priests were sexual abusers; that they may have victimized as many as 100,000 people nationwide; and that the Church might be paying out as much as "$50 million a year and rising" in legal settlements.

The only real difference now is that the numbers are higher. The Herald and the Globe reported last week that the Archdiocese of Boston alone may have paid some $100 million in settlements, and the Globe reported that the nationwide settlement figure could be approaching $1 billion.

PERHAPS CARDINAL LAW'S most thoughtful defender is Monsignor Peter Conley, executive editor of the archdiocesan newspaper, the Pilot, and pastor of St. Jude's Church in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

Conley certainly doesn't defend every action Law has taken. In particular, he criticizes the hierarchy for dealing with the pedophilia crisis in legalistic terms, rather than by being open and honest with Catholics. "Usually both sides prefer silence, and get it from the courts," Conley says. "With access to court records, and of course the Geoghan thing, that shifted it to the court of public opinion. You cannot have silence in the court of public opinion. And that transition -- from silence to information for the people -- has been handled terribly."

Nor does Conley criticize the media's coverage of the pedophile scandal, although he does think that it "may have been disproportionate."

Rather, Conley urges people to look at Law as someone who's trying to do the right thing in a difficult position -- as someone who inherited problems from his predecessors (indeed, some of Geoghan's misconduct took place before Law's 1984 arrival in Boston), who genuinely believed at one time that pedophiles could be successfully treated, and who finally took steps to have Geoghan defrocked -- or "laicized," as the process of removing someone from the priesthood is technically known.

"It all collapsed on Law's desk," Conley says. As for whether Law will resign, Conley predicts that's not going to happen. "He personally thought about it last fall, I know that," he says. "But the priests, behind all their anger, want him to stay and fix it. Because, first of all, we know he's capable. If you brought somebody in new it would take him six months to hit the road. He loves the Church more than he loves the position that he's been called to serve in the Church."

One thing is for sure. It's been a long, long time since the Boston power structure -- including the media -- paid the archbishop of Boston the kind of deference that he might like.

James O'Toole, in his 1992 book Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, 1859-1944, wrote that Cardinal O'Connell was so powerful that state legislators referred to him in hushed tones as "Number One" -- as in, We'd better not file this bill until we know what Number One thinks. O'Connell's opposition helped defeat a pro-birth-control ballot question ("this unholy, unpatriotic, loathsome thing," as the Pilot put it), a legislative attempt to deny state funds to Catholic hospitals, and a lottery, something the legendary James Michael Curley had supported as governor.

O'Connell's successor, Richard Cardinal Cushing, brought an avuncular, populist spirit to the post, as well as a strong public alliance with the Kennedy family.

But by the time Law's predecessor, Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, came to Boston in 1970, the city was much less willing to be guided by clerical authority. Medeiros's half-hearted efforts to support school desegregation in Boston were widely ignored, and some of the more racist elements in the white community mocked Medeiros's Azorean heritage and his accent.

Medeiros's nadir came in 1980, when he wrote a letter -- read from pulpits across the archdiocese -- warning that Catholics who voted for pro-choice candidates shared in "the guilt which accompanies this horrendous crime and deadly sin." The letter was seen as largely aimed at defeating first-time congressional candidate Barney Frank, who was running against a pro-life Democrat in the primary. Not only did Frank win handily, but Medeiros was criticized on the Globe editorial page and elsewhere for injecting himself into politics.

THOUGH LAW IS more articulate and adroit than Medeiros, he has never come close to matching the popularity and influence of Cushing, which some nostalgic types had hoped for when he arrived. For one thing, times had changed. Younger Catholics were not about to show any archbishop the kind of deference that had come naturally to previous generations. For another, Law is a cautious conservative, a favorite of Pope John Paul II, in a hotbed of liberal Catholicism. And now, of course, he has been exposed as someone who should have done more -- much more -- to protect his flock. Hence, a Globe poll showing that a plurality of Catholics thinks that Law should resign and a Herald poll that found most Catholics still don't think the hierarchy has leveled with them should be surprising only to those who haven't been paying attention.

Globe editor Marty Baron told me in an e- mail, "While there have been any number of priest sex-abuse cases throughout the country, I believe this is the first time the public has gained meaningful insight into the internal operations and deliberations of the Church hierarchy -- the repeated warnings it had received that a priest was abusing children, the Church's internal memos, how it handled communications and complaints from parishioners, how it handled medical treatment of a priest who had been accused of sex abuse repeatedly over the course of several decades, and the exact nature of the medical evaluations it was citing as the basis for putting accused priests back into service."

As for what the effects of this media scrutiny will ultimately be, Baron says, "The Church has already announced strict new policies on sex abuse in light of disclosures in the Globe. In fact, it has revised its policies several times in reaction to our stories. I'm not in the business of giving opinions, but the Cardinal himself has said that in the end all of this will be for the better, and he has said that he now believes the Church is on the right course."

Then again, that's what Law said 10 years ago, except this time he's not calling down the wrath of God upon the Globe. Maybe that's progress.

Tom Roberts, editor of the National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper that broke some of the earliest pedophile-priest stories in the 1980s, says, "For years we've been told there's just a few bad apples, and you're blowing it all out of proportion. I think what Boston says, loud and clear, is that this is no small thing. And we wouldn't have an apology and we wouldn't have all these other clerical cases of sex abuse if the media hadn't done its job. People have a right to know in any community what their leaders are doing."

Nationwide, Roberts says, the Church needs to reveal three key pieces of information: how many priests have been involved in sexual abuse; how many people they have victimized; and how much the Church has spent on legal fees and settlements. Those steps, Roberts says, would "make the apologies meaningful."

The information Roberts seeks has yet to be released. And the early signs of how the Church will change -- and be changed -- by the Boston scandal are mixed. In Massachusetts, the legislature is finally poised to make members of the clergy "mandatory reporters" when they learn of child abuse -- which means that, if Law were to orchestrate a future cover-up, he might well find himself in legal trouble, if not necessarily in prison, as Slate suggests. (Wonder what "Number One" would think of that?)

But with the state in the midst of a budget crisis, it's surely not good news that the Church has been distracted by the priest-pedophile scandal from its traditional advocacy on behalf of the poor. (Plus, the Church is now a less-than-credible conduit of aid to the poor, given its lack of clarity over how much it has paid in settlement hush money and lawyers' fees.)

The Vatican, clueless as ever, has responded by saying that men whose orientation is homosexual shouldn't be ordained. Since priests are supposed to be celibate, and the Church maintains that it condemns homosexual acts rather than orientation, that's homophobia in its purest form. And given that the priesthood and the hierarchy would, by most accounts, be decimated if gay men were somehow forced to leave, it's a fascinating, potentially self-destructive stance for the Church to take. Somebody needs to send a message to the pope: lusting for children isn't a sexual orientation -- it's a disease.

THE ONE THING that's clear is that the media's relentless attention to the pedophile-priest crisis -- and to the hierarchy's attempts to cover it up -- will change the Church in ways that can't be predicted.

"I think that eventually the anger and the frustration will subside, but it will take a generation for us to recover the trust that the people have," says Monsignor Conley, executive editor of the Pilot. "There will always be that suspicion that will linger, at least for a generation."

Will the media scrutiny lead to permanent changes in the Church? Conley's answer points to the dilemma of a powerful institution that has historically been secretive and closed to change. "I would hope so," he told me, adding that Vatican II called for "due respect for public opinion." But then he added, "We cannot be ruled by the whims of public opinion, because we know how fluid they are."

Somewhere between "whims" and "due respect" lies the future of the American Catholic Church. Whether it can navigate its way any better than it has in the past is an open question. Especially if Cardinal Law remains at the helm.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dan@dankennedy.net..

Issue Date: March 8 - 14, 2002