A fall from grace
A cardinal resigns, but the church crisis shows no sign of abating
In the end, there was something almost Nixonian about the fall of Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in disgrace last week under a torrent of damning disclosures in the Roman Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal. For nearly a year, Law had fought desperately to hold on to power, despite mounting evidence that he had knowingly allowed pedophile priests to continue working in the Boston archdiocese. And like Nixon, Law thought he could ride out the swirling storm of protests and resignation demands, protected by the power of his office. After all, it didn't matter what the newspapers or even the people demanded. Like all Roman Catholic prelates, Law served at the pleasure of the pope, and John Paul II had demonstrated time and again his personal confidence in the Boston cardinal, rejecting an earlier offer from Law in April to step down in the face of criticism over his handling of the scandal.
But last week, during another hastily arranged meeting with the pope, Law again offered his resignation, and this time the pope accepted. "To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes, I both apologize and from them beg forgiveness," Law said in a statement released by the Vatican. What had changed the pope's mind, some church observers say, were horrifying revelations from newly released court records showing that priests in Boston had engaged in a variety of offenses beyond child sex abuse and faced few consequences. Among the new disclosures: One priest allegedly provided drugs to young parishioners, while another seduced prospective nuns by telling them he was Christ.
"Shocked." Reacting to the new disclosures, a group of 58 Boston-area priests demanded in a letter that Law step down, further--and perhaps fatally--eroding Law's credibility among his own flock. "Rome simply didn't realize how egregious the situation was," says Chester Gillis, theology department chairman at Georgetown University. But when they read the latest chilling documents, says Gillis, "they were shocked at how extensive it was and how clear it was that the church was morally compromised." Law became the 19th--and highest-ranking--bishop to step down in the wake of sex scandals since 1990.
It was a stark contrast to happier days, when Law, a rising figure in the American church, first came to Boston to succeed Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, who died in 1983. "After Boston, there's only heaven," Law proclaimed, after arriving from southern Missouri, where he had served as bishop for 11 years. And for most of his 18 years in Boston, he built a reputation as a serious and effective leader--who had the ear of John Paul II. "He was a comer," says the Rev. Richard McBrien, a Notre Dame theologian. "He was handsome, ambitious, and close to the pope."
Law was born in Torreon, Mexico, the son of a U.S. Air Force colonel--a Catholic--and a Presbyterian mother. He attended high school in the Virgin Islands and graduated from Harvard in 1953 with a degree in medieval history. After his ordination to the priesthood in 1961, he became involved in the civil rights movement in Mississippi, where his editorials in the diocesan newspaper landed him on the hit list of angry segregationists.
A voice. As a cardinal he was progressive on humanitarian issues (he ministered to the sick, reached out to the poor, spoke out against antisemitism, and worked hard to build bridges between Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians) but kept a hard line on issues like women's ordination, gay rights, and church reforms. As head of the church's fourth-largest archdiocese, he became a leading voice for the American church on subjects ranging from abortion and marriage to national security. But liberals found him "very difficult," says Marie Sheehan, whose group advocating female priests was banned from church property. One of America's most influential prelates, Law became known for his close association with Republican politicians. He was a regular guest at the first Bush White House.
But the descent began last January when unsealed court records revealed that Law, during his first year in Boston, transferred the Rev. John Geoghan to a new parish even though he knew the priest had been removed from other parishes for molesting children. Geoghan was convicted in January of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy a decade ago, and he has been accused of preying on more than 100 children over three decades. Awards and settlements in his cases alone have cost the church more than $10 million. But that was just the beginning. Wave after wave of new disclosures pointed to a pattern of managerial malfeasance and complicity as the archdiocese shuffled other accused sex abusers to new positions of ministry.
At news of Law's resignation, survivor groups warned that the crisis is not over. "The problem in the church is much deeper and broader than Cardinal Law," says David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. "Just as Nixon's resignation didn't magically clean up politics, Law's departure won't magically clean up the church. Real healing will come only when all the truth comes out."
As unavoidable as it proved to be, Law's sudden departure came after he had begun to show new signs of confidence that he would survive the crisis. After going into virtual seclusion earlier in the year to avoid contact with reporters and angry protesters, Law had begun to venture back into the public eye in recent months, as though the worst of the storm had passed. He had resumed preaching homilies at the Boston cathedral and even met with some leaders of a dissident lay groups to discuss their concerns. And when the U.S. bishops met in Washington, D.C., in November to adopt revised rules for the removal of abusive priests, Law took to the microphone several times and spoke in favor of the plan. "Our work isn't done," he told his fellow bishops as they prepared to vote on the revised rules. "But thank God, we are in better position than we were 10 months ago."
That's a hard argument to make. As of now, at least 325 priests have been removed from duty, and the church nationwide faces hundreds of lawsuits seeking damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In Boston alone, more than 400 alleged victims have filed suit, and the archdiocese is weighing bankruptcy to avert liability for an estimated $100 million in damages.
Evidence. For Cardinal Law, the legal situation deteriorated significantly during the past two weeks. As plaintiffs' lawyers began to release some 12,000 documents on 65 priests, it quickly became evident that Law had kept priests accused of abuse on the payroll, transferring some to other parishes instead of suspending them and keeping them away from children. In one horrifying case, James D. Foley, a priest, had affairs in the 1960s with three women and fathered at least two children. Foley left one mistress as she began to faint from an apparent drug overdose. He returned to call 911, but she died. Despite expressing concerns in 1993 about Foley's conduct, Law kept Foley active in the ministry. The files also indicate that Law was aware of other priests who allegedly fondled children, ripped the hair out of a 58-year-old housekeeper's scalp, and traded cocaine for sex.
In many cases, it turns out, Law embraced the accused and the fallen. He wrote to priest Peter Frost, an admitted sexual abuser, in 1999: "It is my hope that some day in the future you will return to an appropriate ministry." The disclosures are likely to continue. Plaintiffs' lawyer Roderick MacLeish Jr. says his team inadvertently discovered a document discussing "26 priests we had never heard of" who went before a review board for misconduct in the 1990s. The archdiocese told them they would turn over those documents as well. "The iceberg," MacLeish told U.S.News, "is starting to melt."
The heat on Law only intensified when Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly, shocked by the revelations contained in the documents and emboldened by growing public outrage, sent Law a grand jury subpoena. "There was a coverup," Reilly said last week, "an elaborate scheme to keep it away from law enforcement, to keep it quiet." The intensification of a criminal case against the Boston archdiocese was a devastating blow to Law and the American Catholic Church. "The subpoena changes the kind of exposure the church faces in terms of the perjury potential for the cardinal and the potential corporate criminal problems for the Boston archdiocese," says Wendy Murphy, a Harvard law scholar, former prosecutor, and victims' advocate. "Suddenly there's a potential crime there."
With Jeff Glasser
This story appears in the December 23, 2002 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.