Yes, his legacy is mixed at best given his horrendous handling of allegations of clerical abuse, but there’s no denying he was influential during his tenure as Archbishop and Metropolitan of Boston (1984-2002). WCVB
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Reality-based commentary on politics.
They say if you can’t say anything nice about someone don’t say anything at all.
Now we only have Brian Mcgrory to protect sexual misconduct.
Two corrections, because it is important we be truthful & clear about what transpired. Even at best, Laws legacy has to be rated far worse than mixed. This characterize his career as “mixed” reminds me of the old “other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln” joke. And second, it was not merely “allegations of clerical abuse” that he handled horribly, it was confirmed, verify, repeated, long-running & widespread sexual abuse of children by fellow priests that he covered up and enabled.
The damage he caused is ongoing. I’d prefer to say nothing at this moment, but to obfuscate the reality is to do a disservice to those who truly need and deserve our sympathy. Euphemisms and half-truths serve no good in this. The only thing that can be said in Law’s quasi-defense is that he likely would not have because quite so infamous if he hadn’t been as early a figure exposed in the church abuse scandal, When it all came out in Boston, it looked like Law was a unique figure in his coddling of abusers and hostility to abuse survivors and got the notoriety fueled by that perception Sadly, time showed the singularity of his behavior to be far from the case.
I see opinions rather than corrections in this comment and just like there is more to the Nixon legacy than Watergate, there is more to the Law legacy than clergy abuse. Both scandals rightly drove the incumbents from their respective offices, but neither should exclusively define their tenure.
Law absolutely deserves to have his entire tenure defined by this scandal, no accomplishments of his mitigate the immense suffering his evil actions were part of. Not even close.
It’s absurd and insulting to logic as well as Law’s victims to call his legacy “mixed”. We don’t need euphemisms, he was disgraced.
Finally, there is no “allegations” here, not in any meaningful way. It’s not a question of opinion. It’s confirmed abuse, sexual & otherwise, by priests that was covered up & enabled for decades. Don’t minimize it.
I stand by my post. A shameful life has come to an end. His legacy is hundreds of victims who never saw him brought to justice. Along with all the divorces, substance abuse issues, suicides, and further cycles of abuse that resulted from their victimization. His legacy is hundreds of closed Catholic churches, Catholic schools, and Catholic hospitals throughout the Commonwealth. His legacy is a priest shortage that is particular acute in Boston. His legacy is empty pews, empty classrooms, and empty seminaries throughout the Commonwealth. His legacy is zero political clout and zero moral credibility for any of his successors. Now many of us can argue that might be a positive, but I also miss the voice of the Church on issues such as the death penalty, health care, unjust war, immigration, euthanasia, and gambling. It lost it’s credibility down the board, and one would be hard pressed to look at any recent election or political issue where it’s witness made a difference.
His legacy is millions of dollars that could’ve gone to good works going instead to lawyers, victims, and cover-ups. His legacy is my once devout grandmother instructing me to put his last Cardinals Appeal that she was a lifelong donor to into a roaring fire and requesting on her death bed that “not a dime more than needed for my burial go to that cursed church”. I believe in a just and forgiving God, and it would require a Christ like heart to be big enough to forgive Cardinal Law. My mere mortal heart cannot. My universalist soteriology is put to the test by the likes of him. I find far more comfort tonight in the the words of the Psalmist who wrote “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether” (Psalm 19:9 KJV). Like Dante with Pope Boniface, it may be hard for me to resist envisioning righteous hellfires rather than eternal salvation for this fallen figure.
You make it sound as though Cardinal Law was a thorough-going renegade acting in direct contravention of his curial superiors. Had he done that, in the stead of towing the line in every respect, he’d be a hero. Rather, he chose to be Cardinal Eichmann.
It seems to me the most generous — and the only real indictment — that can be said of him is that he was a true son of the church.
You make a fair point Petr. Also it was St John Paul who gave him a golden parachute out of Boston. Friends visiting Rome once bumped into him there, and when he asked where they were from and they said Boston, he cringed a little and politely walked away.
It was obvious from the way he reacted that Cardinal Sean was appalled with the papal funeral Law is entitled too. Francis has been a great pope in a lot of areas, but he shares his predecessors blind spot for treating pedophilia as the shameful stain that it is.
I often miss the Church, my Protestant wife and I draw greater comfort in Catholic rituals than Protestant ones. During a time when she was mad at her own denomination, it was a home away from home. Yet the failure to protect kids, discipline priests that did wrong, and open the church doors to all our sisters and our LGBT brothers and sisters in particular keep us at the Episcopal parish down the street. The morning prayer service reminds her of her Methodist upbringing while the communion rite identical to the Roman one.
We appear to have a technical glitch, at least on this thread. It looks like I can edit anybody’s comment.
Actually, after checking a couple other diaries it appears I can edit comments of others on diaries I initiate. Is that intentional?