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	Author Ambivalent about Archbishop By John Smith Reading Eagle [Massachusetts] October 28, 2006 http://www.readingeagle.com/re/john_smith/1586904.asp Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley gets mixed reviews from Peter Manseau. The archbishop of Boston earns several mentions in Manseau's fascinating nonfiction work, "Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son," about which Manseau talked in Reading earlier this month. Writing about O'Malley's appointment in 2003 to clean up the clergy sexual-abuse mess, Manseau says that "he was all but sainted by the Boston Globe," and asserts, "That so venerable a watchdog as the Globe was all too ready to take the O'Malley bait suggests the Catholic Church pulled off its most impressive public relations coup since the Gospels turned a murdered rabbi into a king. ... "Though the new bishop meant a change of rhetoric and a change of fashion were at hand, for real change, deep change, Catholics in Boston would have to wait." "He's a warm and caring man on the surface," said Manseau when I asked him about O'Malley. That sounds like a mixed review, too, but Manseau added: "I may have overstated my criticisms. He seems to be doing as much as he can, not acting as if the scandal didn't happen or the archbishop is not the center. "The institutional response is the problem; one man couldn't do more." Manseau was unaware until then that O'Malley went to parochial school for a time just a couple of miles from where we were sitting. (Manseau has an even more tenuous connection with Berks, as his wife is a semi-distant relative of the late Gertrude Sternbergh.) O'Malley does come off a bit better in the book than his predecessors. But Manseau noted one contrast with Cardinal Bernard Law, who was forced out by his mishandling of the abuse cases. "Law at least met with the married priests (most of whom wanted to continue to serve the church)," Manseau said. "O'Malley hasn't acknowledged they exist. Law maintained the collegial connection." He said Cardinal Richard Cushing, John Kennedy's priest, was at one time "very much loved," but suggested he didn't handle problems very well later in life. Members from the two Berks clubs that have read Manseau's memoir, just out in paperback, would have thought of him if they watched "The Monastery" last Sunday on TLC. It recounted the adventures of five troubled men who spent 40 days in a Benedictine monastery in New Mexico. When in college, Manseau spent almost 40 days (a week and later a month) in a Trappist monastery in Massachusetts, seeking to determine whether that was for him. (The day for the Benedictines starts at 3:40; the Trappists, a stricter sort, begin vigil at 3:30). After much soul-searching (he had been inspired by the works of Thomas Merton), he decided he wasn't cut out to be a monk. "My parents lived in this spiritual place," he explained to one Berks gathering. "To understand this I had to pursue this. But the pull of having a wife and family was too great." He now calls himself a "cultural Catholic." He suggested that his parents may have "overtried" to pass on their faith to their children, who were also turned off by the church's treatment of their parents. His two siblings are less likely to show up at Mass than he is. He does admit positive feelings toward the "emotions and aesthetics" of Orthodox liturgy, but explained, "I am not so strong a Christian that I need a venue. I am drawn to others' worship, but not becoming one." Just maybe he'll show up in a Presbyterian church. His wife's family attended one, and now that he and his wife have a toddler, they're thinking about a return to church. And Miss Sternbergh was a Presbyterian. Contact columnist John W. Smith at 610-371-5007 or jsmith@readingeagle.com
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