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	Unable to Write a Wrong By Kevin Cullen Boston Globe January 26, 2010 http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/01/26/unable_to_write_a_wrong/ RHODE ISLAND -- Bill O'Donnell is a Boston guy. He was born in Bay Village before it was called Bay Village. He lived in Boston for years. But his wife, Jean, is a Rhode Island girl, and so they live in Woonsocket. One of Bill O'Donnell's simple pleasures is sitting in his living room every week and reading the Rhode Island Catholic, the diocesan newspaper. A couple of weeks ago, he found himself reading a column about the importance of a Catholic education, written by a certain Bishop John B. McCormack. "I did a double take," he said. "I didn't think it could be that John McCormack." Oh, it was. It was the same John McCormack who, when he was in charge of personnel in the Archdiocese of Boston, treated complaints about priests who sexually abused kids with the same level of concern as you would complaints about kids throwing snowballs. There was a wonderful nun named Sister Catherine Mulkerrin who worked for McCormack, and her job was to talk to the tortured souls who were raped by priests. When the complaints piled up, Sister Catherine, one of the few heroes in this whole mess, told McCormack they had better warn parishioners in the parishes where some of the abusive priests were stashed. McCormack refused, because that would amount to scandal, and McCormack believed that avoiding scandal was far more important than kids avoiding the evil, wandering hands of sociopaths in Roman collars. McCormack became a bishop and got lucky when prosecutors decided they didn't have the laws to go after him for putting so many kids in harms' way. Instead of jail, he gets to reside in the bishop's residence in Manchester, N.H. And he gets to write, without a hint of irony, a column with lines like this: "Do you remember someone who left a great impression on you?" The person who left a great impression on Jeff Thomas was a priest named Brendan Smyth, because Smyth raped him when he was a second grader at Our Lady of Mercy School in East Greenwich, R.I. Smyth operated in the Providence diocese in the 1960s. The bishop of Providence, Thomas Tobin, will not give communion to congressman Patrick Kennedy. Nor will he give Thomas and Helen McGonigle, Thomas's childhood neighbor also attacked by Smyth, the names of diocesan priests credibly accused of abuse. But Tobin will give McCormack some prime real estate in his diocese's paper. "Unbelievable," Thomas said. "Publish the enabler and ignore us." I called the Rhode Island Catholic and spoke to its editor, a very nice guy named Rick Snizek, who said the opinion page is the purview of the chancery in Providence. I called the chancery, and another nice guy named Mike Guilfoyle, spokesman for Tobin, said McCormack's column was part of a series written by 13 bishops throughout New England. Catholic newspapers use them at their discretion, and Guilfoyle said this month was simply McCormack's turn. The Pilot, the Boston Archdiocese's paper, has apparently used that discretion not to print McCormack's column. I'd like to think it was on purpose, given the wreckage McCormack left in the archdiocese, not to mention the archdiocese's continuing outreach to victims of sexual abuse. But I couldn't confirm that, because Pilot editor Antonio Enrique would not talk to me when I went to his office. He didn't return a phone call or an e-mail. If The Pilot does run McCormack's column, they can simply use the headline that ran over a column about addiction, written by someone else, in the Jan. 15 issue. It reads: "Do Not Enable." Guilfoyle said the Providence Diocese has received only one complaint about McCormack's column, "from a fellow in Woonsocket." That would be the great Bill O'Donnell, whose letter expressing outrage has not been printed. "Guess what," O'Donnell said. "I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to print it." Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com
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