Retirement of Cardinal Law

Bernard Cardinal Law resigned as Archbishop of Boston several years ago and was kicked upstairs to Rome. He recently retired from his Roman post. Cardinal Law was the bishop in charge when the whole archdiocese imploded in sex scandal, but he followed a long line of bishops who seemed incapable of addressing pederasty among the clergy.

Cardinal Law was, according to people who knew him well, a decent man, not especially charismatic, but concerned for justice. Many Church leaders over five decades admitted neither the sickness among their own priests nor their own unwillingness to protect children. A frightful stubbornness kicked in. As I teach my daughter through J.R.R. Tolkien's characters, few people set out to do wicked things, but as with Gollum, sin eventually hinders us from doing the right things if we do not address it with humility and contrition. Like Gollum, we can become monsters.

As a Catholic familiar with political persecutions of bishops and priests in history, I could understand if the bishops had taken the wayward priests out of public ministry and not told the police, but they did not even do that. They refused to address repeated mortal sin in their own and allowed that mortal sin to destroy the lives of the faithful. The bishops in Boston, as in other places, were largely immigrants and children of immigrants who had "made it" in America, and their pride made it almost impossible to admit dangerous, ongoing mortal sins by the clergy on their watch. It does not surprise me that Boston, a city where the Catholics' distaste for the WASP is often palpable to this day, became the place where the Church could not own up to its own scandal. But sometimes, as in here, God can speak and work through The Boston Globe.

Cardinal Law is an old man. Though many want to see him in irons, that is not likely to happen. He is more likely to retire to a religious community outside the United States and be buried in a cemetery for priests and religious. If you read Dante, there are special places in The Inferno for bad priests and bishops, but thinking about Hell and wishing it for anyone risks your soul more than that of the one you despise. This blog's theme holds true:

"How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure."

As Jesus said, some demons can only be cast out by prayer and fasting. Saint Anthony the Hermit, pray for us.