Catholic Review of: Faithful Departed

While offending priests committed the original sexual abuse crimes, their wrongdoing mushroomed into a scandal because bishops failed to curtail their activity and rein in the culture that fomented it. That’s Phil Lawler’s basic thesis, and, regrettably, he has ample evidence to substantiate it. His focus is on the Archdiocese of Boston, the epicenter of the abuse crisis that exploded in 2002, but his analysis sadly has application for many bishops and dioceses nationwide.

As a native of the Boston area and a veteran Catholic journalist who once edited the archdiocesan paper, The Boston Pilot, under Cardinal Bernard Law, Lawler is well-qualified to address this subject matter. While the inclusion of footnotes would have benefited the book and its readers, no one can argue credibly that Lawler doesn’t cover his journalistic bases.

The author makes his case that, even amidst rather challenging and changing times in U.S. culture, too many bishops failed badly in areas where they had direct control: overseeing their seminaries, ensuring faithful teaching in diocesan institutions, and disciplining priests and prominent laymen who gave public scandal.

Lawler documents well that Boston’s problems didn’t begin with Cardinal Bernard Law’s tenure in the 1980s. Decades before, Cardinal William O’Connell tolerated his priest-nephew’s double life for at least a couple of years. Fr. James O’Connell was the archdiocesan chancellor, but he also civilly married in New York in 1913 under a phony name. While this was an isolated scandal for O’Connell, it established a bad precedent in Boston: placing human and worldly concerns over fidelity to God and His divine directives.

O’Connell’s successors, Cardinals Richard Cushing and Humberto Medeiros, had more problems as societal decline accelerated from the 1950s to the 1980s.Cushing placed perceived civic concerns above advancing the Church’s mission on key issues. For example, in 1961, instead of unequivocally supporting Catholic parents in getting legitimate taxpayer relief for sending their children to Catholic schools, Cushing refused to criticize the policies of Boston native President John F. Kennedy. He instead argued against "forcing such legislation through at the expense of national unity."

Meanwhile, Cardinal Medeiros’s tenure had some serious shortcomings, including shuffling abusive priests such as the notorious Frs. John Geoghan and Paul Shanley. Shanley was an outspoken proponent of "man-boy sex," and both men continued to serve as priests in good standing under Cardinal Law, Medeiros’s successor. Average Catholic parents saw that such priests should be punished for their crimes, not reassigned to parishes of unsuspecting parishioners, yet they could not persuade either cardinal, who sought to avoid public scandal and seek rehabilitation for the priests. These decisions would ultimately lead to Law’s downfall.

Law flinched on other fronts as well. When Lawler wrote an editorial in The Pilot in 1988 defending the Church’s teaching on contraception, a priest teaching at the archdiocesan seminary opposed him in a letter to the editor, and dozens of other priests openly expressed criticism otherwise. Lawler eventually had to resign, while the priest continued to teach moral theology at the seminary. An earlier editorial that helped derail "gay rights" legislation in Massachusetts likely didn’t help Lawler’s cause, either.

Today, Cardinal Sean O’Malley has the formidable task of reviving Boston’s Catholic culture. He has helped strengthen men’s ministry in the Archdiocese, for example, but many wayward Catholic politicians-who have opposed efforts to restrict abortion and stifle "same-sex marriage" at the state and national levels-continue to receive Communion. Similarly, notorious clerics like Fr. Walter Cuenin continue to enjoy "priest in good standing" status despite publicly defending "same-sex marriage" and other grave wrongdoing. Substantive and pervasive reform will not take place in dioceses as long as such lay and clerical leaders go unpunished. After all, as Lawler would maintain, how can rank-and-file Catholics be expected to follow a shepherd’s lead when he simultaneously allows lay and clerical leaders to go astray with impunity?

Lawler is a bit unfair with O’Malley, such as regarding parish closings. Given urban to-suburban population shifts in Boston over the last several decades, such closings were inevitable in neighborhoods that once boasted multiple parishes serving various ethnic groups. In addition, while I know Lawler opposes Fr. Leonard Feeney’s strict position on salvation, he could have been more constructively critical of the Boston Jesuit and his followers, including making clear that their reconciliation involved their recognition that their doctrinal interpretation was not the only possibility.

Still, overall, Lawler demonstrates in a clear, insightful, evenhanded, and engaging fashion how the clerical sex abuse crisis is a symptomatic of a larger crisis in Episcopal leadership, and how that larger crisis must be faced squarely if we are to truly enjoy the springtime that recent popes have so earnestly sought.

- Thomas J. Nash