Fitting a DA for Divine Vestments

By Jimmy Breslin
Long Island (NY) Newsday
December 31, 2002

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/columnists/ny-nybresvr3067415dec31,0,1798346.column

Beautiful. I was taken by surprise by the news of Cardinal Egan's immaculate acquittal.

It was in Chicago. I never knew there was anything going on in Chicago, and he certainly had that hidden. Suddenly, his flack released the story of his being exonerated in Chicago.

To be fair, I have been advised by my friend, attorney Michael Dowd, that the matter in Chicago was caused by a complete fraud.

The acquittal still came out of nowhere. I never heard of the charges.

In looking back at the year in religion, this would be part of the general revelry tonight if I took a drink. This is a shame, because I used to have a million drinks over exciting news. And all this past year, the Catholic church has been the most exciting news of all.

Egan's press release sure was different from the day in spring when Egan finished a library dedication at the College of New Rochelle and, seeing all the reporters and cameras there to ask about a deposition in Bridgeport, went out the back door. Then he began to lope. Here he went, brushing that hair out of his eyes, and after him came the flotilla of cameras and reporters. I never had seen such a sight before in my life, the cardinal of New York running from news people as if we all were leaving the federal court in Brooklyn. He got in the car and was whisked away.

I read of Egan's new report while I was catching up with the attempted attack on me by various people working for the Catholic church, of which we all know now what that is.

Oh, they are looking to wound me. They think I'm naked before my enemies. I cannot write about the Catholic church every time out because I am supposed to be broader. Then when I don't write about them, they attack. Usually they are collar Catholics or payroll Catholics. This time, one was unique. The district attorney of Nassau County, Denis Dillon, wrote a letter to Newsday saying that of course I was wrong about his bishop, Mansion Murphy.

I don't know why Dillon is mad at me. I don't even live in his district. But his bishop is a different story. He's national. Dillon supports him. Their friends go around saying that Breslin should be fired.

That is some public servant, Dillon; he goes around in place of doing the people's work and backbites in the name of a church. Slips around in some strange fringe organization, Opus Dei, which sounds like soapsuds but is not nearly as useful. He has been around since 1974.

For the new year, I am buying him vestments, and they will be needed because I am going to Rome and I am going to have the name officially changed to the Divine Denis.

Or some would make it Denis the Divine.

Either way, he can wear the vestments.

The reception will be here in Mansion Murphy's apartment with 50 bottles of wine, properly cooled.

He threw nuns out and the diocese spent - what, $5 million? - to make over the place, including creating personal living quarters out of the top floor of the huge, great former convent. He could have put about three dozen apartments in there for people to live, but he wants to be alone.

Murphy has been even more concerned about his elegant new quarters lately. When I happened to be there one day, I saw at the rear of his mansion some cardboard boxes that had been used for shipping something gaudy to his house. I made note of it here.

Upon reading this, Mansion Murphy told somebody I know who works for him that there was a big shipment of china and glasses for his dinner parties coming and he didn't want it delivered directly to the mansion. He said this was because Breslin goes through his garbage. Murphy had the boxes delivered to the Diocese of Rockville Centre offices and from there they were taken over to his new residence by car, a few boxes at a time.

Murphy is what is known as a running story and he will be covered as such.

He came out of Boston with Thomas Daily, another beauty, who is in Brooklyn as bishop, and this fellow McCormack, who is the bishop of New Hampshire. The other day, McCormack said that a priest, Roland P. Cote, who had been caught paying for sex with a young man, was pretty much all right because he had done so outside the diocese boundary.

Above anything that has happened this year, I cannot understand a bishop allowing somebody to spend money outside the district.