NEWTON (MA)
Newton Tab
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Why do bad things happen to good people?
It's one of the central questions we look to our religious leaders to for answers. It's also a question many are struggling to answer this week following Father Walter Cuenin's forced resignation from Newton's most vibrant parish.
Cuenin was - make that, still is - one of our most beloved religious leaders, a rare public figure who had few, if any, detractors in the city. It's hard to imagine a priest more perfectly suited for Newton: highly intelligent; welcoming to our diversity; able to rub elbows with the city's elite as well as its blue-collar residents; and willing to stand up for his beliefs - even when that meant challenging church leaders and rules which demean women and gays.
But as for why this happened to Cuenin, we may never receive any more satisfying answer the question than did Job in the Old Testament. The church is by no means a democracy, and is under no obligation to say more than it chooses.
So we are left to speculate. The official reasons given by the archdiocese seem patently absurd. That Cuenin was among the first to call for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law was a likely factor. His differences with the church's stance on homosexuality, especially on the very weekend when the archdiocese was organizing a push to ban gay marriage, are suspect.