Church's Balance of Power Shifting, by Margery Eagan, Boston Herald, June 16, 2010

Church's Balance of Power Shifting

By Margery Eagan
Boston Herald
June 16, 2010

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1255097&format=&page=2&listingType=col#articleFull

I don't want to get carried away here. But could long-suffering Catholics finally be seeing a small but significant shift in the balance of power - away from the scandal-plagued hierarchy?

On Thursday we learned that St. Paul's Catholic school in Hingham rescinded the acceptance of an 8-year old boy because his parents are lesbians.

Within hours came vehement protests from Boston's moneyed and powerful Catholic laity, then from national Catholic groups. And then the Boston archdiocese backed down, or at least half-way down, which is half-way more than I've seen it retreat before.

First the Catholic Schools Foundation, Boston's biggest scholarship provider, put the rest of area Catholic schools on notice: Do what Hingham did and you get no scholarship money, period.

Jack Connors

Then power broker Jack Connors, who'd just secured $2 million more (from EMC and Liberty Mutual) for his $60 million Campaign for Catholic Schools, made known his chagrin. Yesterday he called the Hingham school's move "embarrassing."

State Rep. Garrett Bradley, once a St. Paul's alter boy, called in to my WTKK-FM radio show all the way from the Eiffel Tower, where he was on his second honeymoon, to denounce his parish school. Typically, politicians critical of the church fear Catholic voter's ire. But Bradley was bold.

Then Catholic Democrats issued condemnations and Catholics United, another national group focused on social justice issues, began a petition drive asking Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley to forbid discrimination in all schools in his diocese, which includes Hingham.

By yesterday they were heading toward 5,000 signatures and organizer James Silts said they'll keep e-mailing names to O'Malley until he reverses the Hingham decision.

On the National Catholic Reporter Web site, subscribers sent hosannas to Boston protesters. "Praise Boston," said one. "Have they gone after the divorced and remarried, too?" asked another.

Noting that Mary Grassa O'Neill, the woman who runs the archdiocese's schools, had reached out to the lesbian couple and vowed to find them another school, a third remarked: "If they had more women in charge, none of this mess would've happened."

Conservative Catholics have been relatively mum. The most apoplectic is Boston's own inveterate letter-to-the-editor writer C.J. Doyle, director of Catholic Action League of Massachusetts. But his influence off the letters page has never been clear to me.

Yesterday Connors said he found Catholics' powerful response to the child's plight "very encouraging." Catholics "are not pleased with the way they see things going in the church," he said. "They're really disgusted. . . . People see something wrong and they want to make it right." The Gospel, said Connors, is the story of a man "who tried to help people," not shun them.

Now let's be clear: There is no sea change here.

The archdiocese is still discriminating. It has not demanded, as it should, that St. Paul's Rev. James Rafferty reverse himself.

All this may have less to do with a weakened hierarchy than with the church finally realizing: Sodom and Gomorrah is history. Plus, it's easy to criticize one priest. It's something else for the church to purge itself of its criminal-coddling bishops, and now, its pope.

Contrast this to just a few years ago. Even at the height of the sex abuse scandal, Boston's powerful Catholics and politicians hemmed and hawed for months before confronting Cardinal Bernard Law, whose garden parties were still see-and-be-seen events.

Here's hoping what happened in Hingham helps more moderate and even conservative Catholics - finally - get it, get mad and maybe even do something. For the Catholic hierarchy, again, has made it abundantly clear: They won't stand up for children anywhere until somebody makes them.