BOSTON (MA)
Providence Journal
01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, August 18, 2005
BOSTON
STATE SEN. Marian Walsh (D.-Dedham) has filed legislation requiring churches in Massachusetts to submit annual reports to the state detailing their collections, expenditures, funds on hand, investments, real-estate holdings, etc.
The proposed law would apply to all religions, and their churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, tents or storefronts. But the clear impetus for the bill was two cataclysmic events in the Roman Catholic Church: the long-running sexual-abuse scandal and the closure of many venerable parishes in the Boston Archdiocese.
Senator Walsh is herself a devout pro-life Catholic (although she favors same-sex marriage). As one of the faithful, she has been outraged by the betrayal of trust by the leadership of the church under Boston's former archbishop Bernard Cardinal Law. While expressing pious shock at learning about the sexual abuse of children by priests, the cardinal spent nearly 20 years dealing with such priests by shuffling them from parish to parish.
Senator Walsh may also be indignant that a parish in her district -- St. Susanna's, in Dedham -- was among those designated to close. St. Susanna's is of relatively recent vintage, having opened in 1961. It sits on prime real estate, near the Great Plain Avenue exit of Route 128. It is well subscribed and its finances are said to be sound. The archdiocese denies it, but the suspicion among parishioners is that the real reason the parish was to be erased is the value of its land. (Belatedly, the Church gave St. Susanna's a three-year rerprieve before deciding its final fate.)