BishopAccountability.org
	Cardinal Law's Standing Boston Globe [Boston MA] April 12, 2005 FOR MANY Catholics in the Boston area, Cardinal Bernard Law's return to public prominence was a regrettable aspect of the enormous publicity that surrounded Pope John Paul II's funeral. Even more upsetting is that Law will be among the 115 cardinals who will choose the next pontiff. But Law's presence will have some value if it reminds the conclave, which begins next Monday, that the new pope needs to ensure that Catholic bishops throughout the world do not make the same mistakes that destroyed Law's leadership of the Boston archdiocese. In 1985, Law, who was then the archbishop of Boston, was warned of the dangers that the sexual abuse scandal posed to the church throughout the United States. Yet he acquiesced in an unspoken policy of silence and denial that discouraged action on complaints about pedophile priests. Only when the scandal broke with full force in 2002 did he appoint independent lay people to create policies that gave top priority to the protection of children. Law lost enormous power when he resigned as archbishop late that year. Yet the pope rewarded him with a pleasant retirement sinecure: appointment as chief priest of the St. Mary Major Basilica, one of the greatest churches in Rome. Many American Catholics thought it would have been more appropriate to send Law to a remote missionary post. Pope John Paul, though he denounced sexual abuse by priests, never grasped the gravity of the scandal in the United States. Law and the pope were trained in tightly run clerical cultures in which loyalty was rewarded and dissent discouraged. That might have been understandable in earlier days, when the church was threatened by communism in Poland and a widespread distrust of Catholics in the United States. The next pope will struggle with challenges of a different kind: a dearth of aspirants for the clerical life, a decline in church attendance in many parts of the world, the challenge of Islam in Africa, and competition with Protestant Evangelicals in Latin America. The conclave of cardinals is part of that closed system, but occasionally a great impetus for change has come from the cardinals' deliberations. They should be looking for a leader who can empower lay people, change clerical recruitment policies to draw in a greater number of priests, and establish structures of accountability and transparency that bring problems into the open before they fester into corruption. As a young priest, Law once hoped he might become the first American pope. The scandal destroyed whatever chance he might have had for election. As the cardinals look about for guidance, they ought to consider the consequences when church leaders put the interests of the institution, as they define it, above the welfare of the people they are supposed to lead, inspire, and protect.