Nearly seven months ago in Dallas, when America’s Catholic bishops agreed on a new policy to address clergy sexual abuse of children, they said they were on their way to regaining the trust of the faithful in their ability to lead the church.
Not all Catholics agreed that the American church was on the mend.
With the dramatic resignation last week of Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law, the church has again arrived at a moment that may mark the rekindling of a battle for the direction of American Catholicism that many bishops hoped they had quelled in Dallas.
Not in recent memory has Rome appeared to respond so directly–though after months of delay–to the outraged cries from churchgoers and their pastors.
The fall of Law, a conservative cleric widely perceived to have more clout in Rome than any other American bishop before the scandal broke, may bolster the resolve of American Catholics unhappy with authoritarian church leaders to demand a more open church.
While the heir apparent to the leadership of America’s bishops is another conservative, Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, laypeople who want a more liberal church were feeling last week that momentum was on their side.
If the laity could bring down the powerful Law, many lay groups say they can effect change across the country.
The cardinal’s resignation “is a clear sign of the emergence of the laity and priests working together,” said Claire Noonan, spokeswoman for the Catholic laity advocacy group Call To Action USA. “There is no way that Cardinal Law would have resigned due to his own conduct. He had to resign because he was not providing leadership, which was made known by the courageous response of the people and priests in Boston.”
No `governance by protest’
Boston Catholics have been outraged by revelations beginning last winter that Law and many of his assistants repeatedly protected priests who sexually abused children, moving them to new parishes and suppressing information about their misdeeds for decades.
But some experts believe that Pope John Paul II did not decide to move Law aside because of the outcry from the laity alone, but because of a combination of the financial disaster wrought by the scandal in Boston and the decision of 58 Boston priests to sign a petition last week calling for his resignation.
“I think the laity would be deluding themselves to think that the institutional church or the Vatican is going to be receptive to governance by protest,” said R. Scott Appleby, an expert on American Catholicism who teaches history at the University of Notre Dame.
Boston’s special circumstances
The situation in Boston presented special circumstances that drove ordinary Catholics en masse to protest Law’s continuing hold on his seat.
“It was all of these things piled one on top of the other and it just didn’t stop,” said Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Catholic magazine America. “We’ve never had such a paper trail of incompetence and irresponsibility of a bishop, and then the revolt of the people, and finally the priests signing the petition . . . Add onto that the talk about bankruptcy. All of it was just too much.”
Though experts say the laity should not expect to gain significant power in the governance of the church, some say ordinary parish priests may emerge with new influence.
The decision of so many priests to speak out publicly against Law could signal a more significant change in the church, said Rev. Richard McBrien, an expert on church politics who teaches at Notre Dame.
“It is of utmost importance, signaling a fundamental change in the relationships between priests and their bishops,” McBrien said. “The day of unquestioning obedience, dutifulness, and fear is passing, and this is, in the long run, a healthy development.”
Church conservatives think McBrien and others are reading too much into Law’s resignation. Theologian George Weigel, whose books include a biography of John Paul II, said he doubted the pope forced Law out.
Weigel said he believed the decision was Law’s alone, and that the pope accepted the resignation because he agreed with the cardinal’s belief that it was time for “new leadership” in Boston. To suggest that the pope ousted Law because of pressure from below is “a false reading” of the situation, he said.
Still, Reese and others said church officials believed last spring that the scandal in Boston would have blown over by now. The fact that it did not must be credited, at least partly, to the emergence of organized criticism from the laity, he said.
Particularly telling is the explosive growth of Voice of the Faithful, a lay group whose credo is “Keep the Faith, Change the Church.”
Hard-liners criticize group
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Voice of the Faithful was founded in a suburban Boston church basement last winter as the sexual abuse scandal broke. Although it began as a single-issue group focused on that scandal, its mission has expanded, so that it now advocates a wider role for the laity in all church affairs. It claims a worldwide membership of 25,000, including a chapter in the Chicago area.
As the crisis in the Boston archdiocese escalated last week, the group met in another suburban Boston church basement to vote on resolutions calling for Cardinal Law’s resignation and asking all Catholic dioceses in America to make public their records concerning priests who have been accused of sexual misconduct.
The assembly of largely suburban, middle-class Catholics approved the resolutions by overwhelming majorities.
“These are churchgoers,” Tom White, 58, said after the meeting, referring to the nearly 100 leaders of Voice of the Faithful who voted on the resolutions. “They wouldn’t have been here two years ago. They’re fighting 40, 50 years of being good, dutiful Catholics. No other issue would have instituted this kind of call for change.”
Church hard-liners, including Law, called the group anti-Catholic. Weigel criticized Voice of the Faithful and other lay reform groups for challenging church teaching on contraception, acceptance of homosexuality andthe ordination of women.
“This culture of dissent has caused substantial damage to the church,” Weigel said Friday.
But Voice of the Faithful leaders say they are only demanding their rightful place at the altar.
“We’re not going back to being `pay, pray and obey’ Catholics,” said President Jim Post, a Boston University business professor.
Signs of a new day
Over the course of the year, it has become clear that dioceses across the country have paid millions in secret settlements to victims of sexual abuse by priests.
“I have heard people say they’re never going to put another dollar in a basket until there’s a sense of where that money goes,” Post said.
The result in Boston has been staggering. Earlier this year, the Boston Archdiocese announced dramatic budget cutbacks. Recently church officials faced with claims from sex abuse victims in the tens of millions of dollars have begun to discuss the possibility of bankruptcy.
Call To Action also has demanded a full financial accounting of the sex abuse scandal from every diocese in the country, Noonan said. A handful of bishops across the country have begun releasing reports accounting for their handling of sex abuse cases. But the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II, who has carefully selected bishops who support his hierarchical, orthodox view of the church, seems unlikely to welcome demands for greater lay authority.
“Our hope is that Cardinal Law’s resignation signals a new day where all of us, the priests, the laity and the hierarchy stand together and make decisions together,” said Noonan of Call To Action. “This is watershed. It’s about trying to create a church that calls for the best wisdom from all of the people.”