Op-Ed; Lost church power is tough to regain

THOMAS KEANE, JR.
853 words
12 April 2002
Boston Herald
All Editions
025
English
(Copyright 2002)

It's not if, but when.

Sometime soon - perhaps today, perhaps in a few weeks - Bernard Cardinal Law will resign.

Then what? Under one scenario, the new leadership of the archdiocese matches deeds with words. The stonewalling stops, the secret files are opened and the chancery quickly settles with the scores of victims who still continue to surface. The church is re- energized and re-engaged. The few bad apples expunged from its midst, confession heard and absolution - in the way of monetary compensation - granted, things return to normal. The central role of the church in the spiritual and civic life of the region is restored.

Maybe, but not likely.

The story of the rise of the Catholic Church in Boston is the story of the waves of immigrants who descended upon and remade the city. Early on, the church was frequently the sole refuge for the impoverished and often scorned newcomers from Ireland, Italy and other European nations. Under William Henry Cardinal O'Connell, who ruled the archdiocese in the first half of the 20th century, the new settlers, particularly the Irish, had their political coming of age. They ultimately wrested power away from the Yankees who had so long controlled the region. "The Puritan has passed; the Catholic remains," O'Connell observed. He was followed in turn by Richard Cardinal Cushing, confidante of the first Catholic president, who cemented the status of the once immigrants.

As a result, Catholicism gained extraordinary power. Today, there are 2.1 million Catholics out of the 4 million who live in Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Plymouth counties. Neighborhoods, particularly in Boston, are defined by their parishes. Catholics dominate in politics and business, from city councilors to governor, from partners in law firms to CEOs of the area's most prominent corporations.

The church is ubiquitous. The archdiocese oversees more than 190 schools, nine hospitals and scores of residential and treatment facilities. Catholic Charities last year spent more than $40 million, making it one of the area's largest social service organizations, and assisted more than 170,000 people.

The leadership of the archdiocese is on a first-name basis with the area's politicians. Cardinal Law visited acting Gov. Jane Swift last year while she was in the hospital to give birth. He stood with Mayor Thomas Menino at Faneuil Hall when the mayor was sworn in for his third term in January.

Nor has the church been shy about exercising its political power. It has endorsed candidates and lobbied on a wide range of issues, including abortion, the death penalty and human services budgets. Even now it pushes hard to prohibit gay marriage. Telephone calls from the cardinal to a wavering pol have had a dramatic effect (losing an election is one thing; putting one's immortal soul at risk is a different matter).

Yet the source of the carefully cultivated temporal authority of the church has always been its moral authority. And the thing that cuts most deeply into moral authority is hypocrisy.

To be sure, lay Catholics have long lived with hypocrisy in their everyday lives, particularly on matters of sexual ethics. Catholic doctrine explicitly prohibits contraception, yet Catholics regularly use it. The same is true of other matters of church doctrine, including divorce, premarital sex and abortion.

Some Catholics feel guilty about this, others rationalize it away and still others have become the much derided "cafeteria Catholics," choosing whatever suits them.

But still, that kind of hypocrisy - which was itself slowly gnawing away at the church - is different from the hypocrisy that now engulfs the archdiocese. Even if they felt guilty about extramarital sex and contraception, Catholics saw those things at worst as private failings, not as sins against their fellow men and women. But rape, pedophilia and the lies told to cover up those crimes are something altogether different.

There is something mind-boggling in the notion that the same church leadership that last year prohibited a family from singing "Danny Boy" at a funeral Mass would permit priests known to be child rapists to consecrate bread and wine.

The disconnect is too much. For many, the scandals have become a crisis of theology. If the church itself does not believe in and practice its own tenets, they wonder, then why should I? And those who gave the church their unwavering allegiance now question whether they should ever do so again. They feel, in a sense, that they have been victims of some extraordinary fraud.

Over time and with reform, the church may restore some measure of its spiritual power. Without question, it will lose some members altogether. Most will probably stay, but for many their faiths will be weaker than before.

But political power? Once lost, it's hard to regain. It took the church decades to build its public credibility; in a few months, all of that has become undone. The days when cardinals held sway over mayors and governors could be gone forever.

Tom Keane can be reached at tom@tomkeane.com.

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