Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Cardinal Law Will be Remembered for his Failure to Protect Children

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Cardinal Bernard Law, a "prince" of the Catholic Church who oversaw the Archdiocese of Boston from the mid--1980's until just after the start of the new millennium, has died in Rome following a long illness.

Law and Cardinal John J. O'Connor of New York were point men in Pope John Paul II's effort to return the American faithful to the more orthodox precepts of the Catholic religion.   The pair were so staunch in their support of the Vatican's right-wing dicta that they were dubbed Cardinals "Law and Order."

Some members of the Church hierarchy regarded Cardinal Law as overly ambitious and eager to earn the accolades of Rome - and some felt that he had designs on becoming the first Pope from the United States.  All of those ambitions were tossed into a cocked hat when the massive scandal that involved the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests began breaking in and around the Boston Archdiocese.  It soon became apparent that Cardinal Law had "handled" the potential of a scandal by shuffling pedophile priests from one church to another and covering-up their records of abuse.    His actions brought harm to hundreds of additional children.  He literally became the face of priest sex-crimes in America, a fact headlined in almost every press notice of his passing.

Cardinal Law was recalled to Rome by Pope John Paul II in 2002 and given an assignment there.  He remained in Rome until his death yesterday.

Cardinal Law has always been a person of interest to me.   As a former child abuse investigator, I saw Law's overt concealment of serious crimes as a textbook example of how persons of power and influence always struggled to maintain and nourish their demons in the darkness while the less-privileged were dragged out into the open and forced to own theirs.  Law built a house of cards as he played "hide the pedophile," and eventually his fragile structure of subterfuge collapsed.

I also have followed Cardinal Law's career over the years because he is the only Cardinal of the Catholic Church that I have known personally.    He served as the Catholic Bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese from 1973-1984, a section of real estate covering all of southern Missouri.

As a practicing Catholic at the time I had the opportunity to see and interact with Bishop Law on several occasions, including once where I spent an exceptionally boring evening in Willow Springs, Missouri, in a small group listening to him drone on at a training for Parish Council members.  The last time I saw Bishop Law was in my hometown of Noel, Missouri, where he was leaving the local Catholic Church and heading back to his home in Springfield.  Shortly after that brief encounter he was appointed to the position of Archbishop of Boston - and then a year later he was elevated to the rank of Cardinal.

Bernard Law was active in the United States civil rights movement of the 1960's, and he served the Church with dignity and honor during his early years as a priest and bishop.  Sadly it will not be those achievements for which he will be best remembered.  Law's ambition and poor judgment teamed up to lead him into some very bad decisions - decisions which ultimately brought harm to children and shame to his beloved Church.   It is for those awful choices that he is being remembered today.

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