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	Reilly Role in Abuse Crisis Is Debated He Takes Partial Credit for Law's Departure By Brian C. Mooney Boston Globe April 11, 2006 http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/04/11/ reilly_role_in_abuse_crisis_is_debated/ Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly is highlighting his investigation of the clergy sex abuse scandal in his campaign for governor, and last week all but took credit for forcing Cardinal Bernard F. Law to resign in late 2002. The remarks, at a Democratic candidates' forum in Newburyport on Saturday, are prompting a debate among some longtime observers of the scandal, one of whom suggests that Reilly overstated his role. Others said they saw another sign that politicians in the Bay State are willing to take on the church, a step that once would have been political suicide in heavily Catholic Massachusetts. At the forum, Reilly touted his work on several issues and cited the clergy sexual abuse investigation as an example of his "guts" and "leadership." He later said his remarks should not be interpreted as an attempt to take sole credit for Law's exit. "There weren't many other people in politics that were willing to stand up to the Archdiocese of Boston in the sexual abuse of children," Reilly said at the forum. "You're looking at someone who did, and changed things forever. It changed things forever. With the guts to send state troopers into that chancery. And two days later, [Law] was in Rome, and he never came back. He never came back. That's what a difference leadership can make." Reilly was referring to state troopers, on Dec. 6, 2002, delivering grand jury subpoenas to the cardinal's residence in Brighton hours after Law had departed for Washington to meet the pope's representative in the United States. Two days later, Law went to Rome for secret meetings at the Vatican, and on Dec. 13, Pope John Paul II accepted his resignation. Eight months earlier, as the scandal engulfed him, Law had offered to resign but was told by Vatican officials to stay in his post. Reilly's campaign website highlights his investigation and he often brings it up at campaign stops. But his remarks last weekend appear to be his strongest public suggestion that he precipitated Law's departure. Maurice T. Cunningham, a professor of government and politics at the University of Massachusetts at Boston who has written about the scandal, said that "so many other forces were at work" that it was a "vast overstatement" by Reilly to suggest his actions forced Law out. "He deserves credit for taking on the church, but he was not the only Catholic politician who got tough on the Catholic Church in those years," Cunningham said. Reilly faces little risk by criticizing the church today, he said. In an interview, Reilly said it was "too fine" a reading to interpret his remarks as taking sole credit. "It was one of a series of factors, first and foremost the victims who were willing to come forward with tremendous courage," he said, and the voluminous reporting of the Globe. "The point of what I was saying was that your actions, not words, define who you are and whether or not you're willing to stand up for what you believe in, and I have done that for the protection of children," Reilly said. As for the political implications, Reilly, an observant Catholic, said: "This isn't about my faith. This is about people who abused children. That's not a political issue." Of the effect of the subpoenas, Reilly said, they ended the archdiocese's practice of "playing games with the records" of priests accused of sexual misconduct. "Everything changed from that day on," he said. In February 2003, Law testified before the grand jury. That July, Reilly's office issued a blistering 76-page report of the findings of its 16-month probe that concluded that Law and his top bishops in the archdiocese were guilty of covering up and protecting abusive priests. But Reilly and his office concluded there was no basis for indictments because of weak state laws and the absence of sufficient evidence of criminal intent. A bill sponsored by Reilly to add clergy to the list of professionals required to report credible suspicions of abuse was enacted by the Legislature. Ann Hagan Webb of Wellesley, an abuse victim, said yesterday that Reilly's effort "was unprecedented, but we were very disappointed at the time that he could not indict anyone in the hierarchy." But Webb, the New England coordinator of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said she accepted his explanation. Kevin M. Burke, a Reilly ally who was Essex district attorney at the height of the scandal and a vocal critic of the archdiocese, said Reilly surprised him with his determination. "I thought he would be more moderate, but he was very aggressive," said Burke, who is now in private practice. That Reilly talks about it in his campaign reflects a change in the political culture, said Nancy Ammerman, a Boston University professor of the sociology of religion. "It's an interesting reflection of the degree to which lay Catholics in Massachusetts are perceived as willing to take on the official church." she said. Thomas H. O'Connor, university historian at Boston College, said: "This is a transitional stage in the relationship between the political system and the Roman Catholic Church. It's moving from what had been an automatic subservience on the part of political leaders to church leaders and teachings to raising the question of whether ecclesiastical authorities are responsible to civil authorities. "These are questions I would have thought impossible 25 years ago," O'Connor said. Reilly "could be an interesting test case, a Catholic political figure taking the positions he has," he said. "Before, it would have been considered political death."
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