OMalley Looks Back, Michael Paulson, Boston Globe, August 9, 2009

O’Malley Looks Back

By Michael Paulson
Boston Globe
August 9, 2009

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/08/09/omalley_looks_back/

Last Sunday, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley marked the 25th anniversary of his ordination as a bishop. The Boston Archdiocese will hold a celebration Sept. 16, when O'Malley will headline a "priest appreciation dinner" as a fund-raiser for the cash-strapped priest pension funds.

Last Sunday was the 25th anniversary of Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley’s ordination as a bishop, and he celebrated with a Mass at St. Patrick Parish in Natick (above), dinner and a cake with the Franciscan friars at St. Anthony Shrine in Boston, and a commemorative edition of The Pilot. The big archdiocesan celebration will be Sept. 16, when O’Malley will headline a “priest appreciation dinner’’ as a fund-raiser for the cash-strapped priest pension funds.

For the anniversary, O’Malley wrote a survey of his own career for The Pilot and his blog. By far the best nugget is his characteristically wry description of how he felt in 2003 when he got the call telling him he was being named archbishop of Boston:

“My family took me out to dinner on my birthday, June 29. The phone rang. It was Archbishop Montalvo [the papal nuncio] telling me that the pope wanted me to be Archbishop of Boston. I dropped the cellphone on the ground. I thought, ‘I really need to get caller ID on this thing.’ ’’

There are other moments of humor in the narrative; O’Malley writes, “Had I known I was going to be a bishop, I would have studied much harder in the seminary.’’

He also observes that, after he was first informed in 1984 that he was going to be named a bishop in the Virgin Islands, “there was a total eclipse of the sun, which I was at a loss as how to interpret.’’

He reflects briefly on his career cleaning up dioceses wracked by abuse scandals (Boston is his third such diocese, after Fall River and Palm Beach, Fla.). He says that when he arrived in Palm Beach, where both of his predecessors had been accused of abuse, “I was fingerprinted, and, at the press conference, one of the reporters asked me whether I was a pedophile.’’ He writes that when he was assigned to Boston, “the climate in Boston could not have been more negative.’’

Summing up his experience, he writes:

“It was a very moving experience for me to be called to this service in the Church. It has been 25 years of a great adventure, for which I am very grateful. I ask the Lord’s forgiveness for my shortcomings and for help so that I may be a better shepherd in the future.’’

'Axe Murderer' film got thumbs-up from Romney

A pretty funny anecdote courtesy of McKay Coppins, the twentysomething blogger for MormonTimes:

“If Mormons had cocktail parties, I would probably tell this story at one: When my family lived in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney served as our stake president.

“Yes, yes, THE Mitt Romney. It was, of course, before his stint at the Salt Lake City Olympics and his gubernatorial term.

“One night, my parents were at Blockbuster and they happened to run into President Romney. They chatted for a bit, and my parents mentioned they were having trouble picking a movie to rent. Much to my parents’ surprise, Mitt enthusiastically suggested the 1993 Mike Myers comedy, ‘So I Married an Axe Murderer.’ ’’

Sadly, there are no more details about whether Romney is generally a fan of the Myers oeuvre.

I have to confess I’ve never seen “So I Married an Axe Murderer’’ (should I add it to my Netflix list?), but I was pretty sure it’s not a slasher film, given Romney’s faith-based aversion to R-rated films. (He told me in 2007 that, although he has seen the occasional R-rated film, at Bain he had passed up an entertainment industry investment because “I did not want to be associated with making R-rated movies or selling R-rated movies.’’)

But, despite its title, “Axe Murderer’’ is harmless by industry standards. I looked it up. It’s rated PG-13.

Mapping religious beliefs in the United States

For those of us who love maps, Gallup has put out a nifty set illustrating the religious makeup of the American states.

Catholic population

The maps are based on new data - surveys conducted earlier this year - but it conveys no big news: the Northeast is the most Catholic region, the South the most Protestant, Utah the most Mormon, and New York the most Jewish.

And the Pacific Northwest and Northern New England have the biggest percentages of nonreligious folks.

Here is Gallup’s analysis of what it calls a “remarkable pattern of religious dispersion in the US,’’ with an interesting unanswered question about Vermont:

“A good deal of the religious dispersion across the states is explainable by historical immigration patterns - particularly the impact of the large waves of European Catholics and Jews who came through ports of entry in the Middle Atlantic states in the 19th and early-20th centuries.

“The geographic concentration of Mormons in and around Utah reflects the cross-country migration of that group in the mid-1800s from Illinois and other Eastern states to their new home.

“The fact that certain states like Oregon and Vermont consist disproportionately of residents with no religious identity is more difficult to explain, with hypotheses focusing on the particular and idiosyncratic cultures of those states and/or the migration of certain types of Americans to those states over the decades.’’