By Michael Paulson
Boston Globe
August 3, 2008
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/08/03/omalley_reflects_after_5_tumultuous_years/
[with video and transrcipt]
Some bishops would have attended an anniversary celebration. Others would have held a public Mass. Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley skipped town, checked into a monastery, and prayed.
Video Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley after five years in Boston
Transcript A talk with Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley
Five years after he was installed as the Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston, O'Malley remains in many ways the most unusual of public figures - the prince who dresses as the pauper, the leading man who hates the spotlight, the shy man prone to bouts of silence who has, in his own inexorable way, tackled one crushing problem after another, delivering the archdiocese from something close to free-fall to something akin to stability.
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| Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley arrived in Boston on July 30, 2003, confronting, for the third time in his career as a bishop, a diocese thrown into crisis by clergy sexual abuse. Photo by David L. Ryan |
He arrived in Boston on July 30, 2003, confronting, for the third time in his career as a bishop, a diocese thrown into crisis by clergy sexual abuse. But if the situations confronting the Fall River and Palm Beach dioceses had been grim, the situation in Boston was ruinous. So bad, in fact, that when Pope John Paul II asked him to move to Boston, O'Malley unsuccessfully sent a plea to the pope to reconsider.
"I dropped the phone . . . it was quite a shock," O'Malley said in an interview Tuesday. "I did ask him to reconsider, and it came back immediately with, no, this is what he wants you to do."
O'Malley ticked off the litany of woes that confronted the archdiocese that summer: parishioners angry and bolting over the abuse crisis, the church's coffers in "economic free-fall," money-losing hospitals, failing pension funds, a rapidly emptying seminary, and 1,000 lawsuits against the diocese.
"When I got here I found out that things were worse than I had feared," he said. "Things were just in very, very bad shape."
He still faces enormous challenges and has many critics. Five closed parishes remain occupied by protesters, who are also challenging church closings in church and civil courts. There are dozens of abuse claims pending, and the cardinal faces pressure from victim advocates, which he has resisted, to publish a list of all accused priests. The fund that provides benefits to sick and retired clergy is in serious financial trouble, and some priests continue to find O'Malley a remote figure.
And then there are the really big problems. Mass attendance is at historic lows. The number of priests is dwindling fast, with many expected to retire or die in the next few years. The Catholic Church's influence on public policy is diminished. And, even among its own adherents, many of the church's key teachings, on birth control, women's ordination, homosexuality, divorce, capital punishment, and abortion are disputed, contested, and, at times, ignored. A recent Pew study found that 1 in every 10 Americans is a former Catholic.
"There are still major issues facing us as a Catholic community - not just the state of our schools and our hospitals, but how will we have viable, vibrant parishes with the decreasing numbers of priests, and the sense of alienation among people who were baptized Catholics - those are huge challenges facing us," said the Rev. William P. Leahy, the president of Boston College.
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