Reputation As Healer Hit by Haddad Case
By Michael Paulson
Boston Globe
May 26, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/26/
hospital_crisis_has_some_doubting_omalleys_leadership/
 |
| Although the financial picture at Caritas Christi Health Care System had improved vastly under Dr. Robert Haddad, Cardinal O'Malley ultimately decided the hospital system's president had to go. Photo by The Globe Staff/Pat Greenhouse |
The brief era of good feelings, it appears, is over.
For the past six weeks, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley had been on a bit of a roll, enjoying the first sustained run of good will since he arrived in Boston to great hope amid deep crisis in the summer of 2003.
But this week, O'Malley confronted yet another tsunami of controversy that threatens to swamp his effort to rebuild the Catholic Church of Boston. Once again, the archbishop of Boston found his leadership, his credibility, and his judgment being questioned.
The contretemps over O'Malley's initial decision to reprimand but not fire the president of the Caritas Christi Health Care System after multiple allegations of sexual harassment is the latest in a series of controversies that have severely damaged O'Malley's reputation as a healer and fixer of troubled dioceses, and now some prominent Catholics are wondering whether the Franciscan Capuchin friar has the administrative skills and decisive temperament to oversee the complex and troubled Archdiocese of Boston.
"If we've learned anything, it's that there has to be a bright line in terms of a decisive action taken with this kind of incident; there can't be a fuzzy type of response, and there's no way the archdiocese can move slowly," said Richard J. Santagati , president of Merrimack College, a Catholic college in North Andover. Santagati also believes that it was incumbent on the hospital board, made up largely of lay people who work in the business world, to insist that O'Malley take dramatic action.
"You'd have to be very naive not to understand the seriousness of this," Santagati said. "The head of that hospital is being viewed as a predator. It's not even a close call. [Board members] have an obligation to drive that message home quickly, swiftly, and with great passion."
O'Malley's aides and closest advisers largely rejected the contention that the cardinal mishandled allegations that Haddad hugged and kissed on the lips female employees in ways that investigators said constituted harassment. The aides said that as soon O'Malley learned of the allegations against Haddad, he initiated a series of investigations and consulted with lawyers who were specialists in harassment law and advised him to reprimand, not fire, Haddad. Then, when a story in the Globe spurred more women to come forward alleging harassment and Haddad issued a statement suggesting he had done nothing inappropriate, aides said, O'Malley quickly decided the hospital president had to go.
"He saw clearly and acted quite expeditiously," said the Rev. John J. Connolly , rector of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and one of O'Malley's closest advisers. "Cardinal O'Malley takes this issue very seriously and understands its significance. Moreover, he showed that he is someone who is willing to take the time necessary to ensure that a comprehensive, thorough process is employed and honored and that he would not rush to judgment."
The Haddad controversy follows a heady spring for the cardinal, who during his first two years moved swiftly and to considerable applause to settle hundreds of abuse cases. He then took on another huge challenge, closing scores of churches and engendering multiple protests along the way. His aides had begun to think about a time without daily headlines of archdiocesan controversies, a time when they might focus on preaching and evangelizing and rebuilding the church's battered institutions.
Buoyed by the positive public response to Pope Benedict XVI's decision to elevate him to cardinal, O'Malley reached out to the news media and the public as never before, winning considerable praise, particularly for his release of hundreds of pages of financial documents spelling out in unprecedented detail the archdiocese's assets and liabilities.
But the Haddad controversy is a reminder of the degree to which O'Malley's tenure has been marked by a seemingly unending string of crises. There have been few small decisions for O'Malley and fewer easy ones.
Some of the controversies stem from what O'Malley calls the countercultural nature of some Catholic doctrine -- the prohibitions against the ordination of women, the opposition to same-sex marriage -- that fuels controveries facing Catholic bishops throughout the West.
But, to the dismay of those who would like to see O'Malley succeed, many of the controversies of his tenure stem from more temporal matters: administrative decisions about parish closings, clergy assignments, and now sexual harassment, in which O'Malley makes an unpopular decision, triggers a public outcry, and then reverses himself. He reversed multiple parish closings in response to protests; he is also nearing a deal to sell a closed school building in Brighton to a neighborhood group that led protests against him.
O'Malley, who aspired as a young friar to be a missionary but wound up overseeing a series of dioceses, has acknowledged that administration is not his forte and that his management team needs to change. He is in the process, much too slowly for his critics, of replacing many of the church's top officials and is increasingly looking to lay boards to advise him on financial and administrative matters.
"In terms of surrounding himself with strong managers, he's been very slow to do that, but he has appointed a new vicar, he has a search going on for a new chancellor, and he's going to appoint a new superintendent of schools, and he's hoping for some new auxiliary bishops, so some of this is coming together," said Sister Janet Eisner , president of Emmanuel College, a Catholic college in Boston.
Dr. Mary Jane England , president of Regis College, a Catholic college in Weston, made a similar point. "There is a major lack of training and preparation for bishops to run major complex organizations." England said. "I don't think O'Malley is much different from the rest of them. This is a management issue, and I wish he would feel more comfortable turning to some of us who run complex organizations."
The question of how to handle the charges against Haddad may have been complicated by the fact that, in an era when almost every institution O'Malley oversees -- schools, parishes, social services -- is in some kind of crisis, the financial situation of Caritas Christi had improved signficiantly under Haddad. There were also apparently forces at work behind the scenes that may have complicated the case for the cardinal: Haddad had, according to multiple aides and advisers to the cardinal, alienated some longtime chancery officials by suggesting that hospitals reduce the lucrative hospital role played by the archdiocese's general counsel, Wilson D. Rogers Jr.
"Part of the challenge to the last two [Caritas] CEOs has been that they inherited a lot of the archdiocesan network," said Jack Connors Jr., a local businessman and self-described "big fan" of O'Malley. "The successor ought to have the right to bring in his or her own team, including his own legal counsel."
O'Malley's critics and his fans agree on a variety of things: O'Malley is a slow, deliberate decision maker who consults widely and can be reluctant to acknowledge that someone working for him has become a liability.
"I find him to be deliberate and thorough, and sometimes this works to his disadvantage, because we live in a society today where people want rapid responses," said Krysten Winter-Green , who served as O'Malley's chancellor when he was bishop of the Virgin Islands, and who also worked for him in Fall River and Boston.
Winter-Green, often cited by O'Malley as an example of his willingness to employ women at high levels, says she has no question that the cardinal takes sexual harassment seriously.
"I know because I've been involved in several situations where the cardinal-archbishop has been confronted with issues of sexual harassment of women in the workplace," she said.
Gender has become one theme of several of O'Malley's most scarring controversies. In 2004 he included feminism among a list of societal ills during a Holy Week homily, and then he declined to wash the feet of women on Holy Thursday, reversing a practice of his predecessor, Cardinal Bernard F. Law . He wound up apologizing for the feminism comment and, after seeking advice from the Vatican, abandoning his practice of including only men in Holy Thursday foot washing.
More recently, some critics have questioned the paucity of women in key positions.
Several O'Malley advisors said the Haddad situation should be kept in perspective, because within days after the controversy erupted, and just a month after the allegations first reached the chancery, Haddad was out.
The Rev. J. Bryan Hehir , president of Catholic Charities and another close O'Malley aide, said: "I think it took two cuts at the apple to get all the data out in front of him. But he is finding his own people and willing to take advice from a wider circle, which bodes well for the future, recognizing that there have been all kinds of mistakes all of us have made."
Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.