c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Why did the pope name Archbishops Sean O’Malley of Boston and William Levada _ formerly of San Francisco and now the top-ranking American at the Vatican _ cardinals on Feb. 22?
Many pundits, including Notre Dame’s R. Scott Appleby, who should know better, opine that O’Malley’s and Levada’s experience with the sex abuse crisis signals Vatican determination to find an ending, or at least an intermission, for a scandal that is as tragic and unending as an old-fashioned opera.
But the real story hidden in plain sight in the headlines is less about these men than about their mentor, Cardinal Bernard Law.
Law was forced off the podium as archbishop of Boston in 2002 by the boos of the people and the press for not knowing the score on handling priest pedophiles. Yet he still picks the music, runs the auditions, and casts the leading roles in the American ecclesiastical production.
He is, in short, the operator behind the opera.
Both cardinals-designate would not have found favor in Rome if they had not first found it with Law, who became the eminence grise of the U.S. Catholic Church through his close relationship with the late Pope John Paul II. After his 1984 appointment to Boston, Law became that pope’s go-to man about who-went-where in the ranks of American bishops.
Law increased his influence by giving his total support to John Paul’s restoration of top-heavy church hierarchy _ a view that betrays both the collegial practice of the early church and the spirit of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.
The meaning of these appointments has nothing to do with O’Malley’s or Levada’s tested insights on how to resolve the sex abuse scandal _ because there is no evidence that they possess any. The appointments are not about their future pull, but rather about Law’s present clout.
What they do signify is that Law is not killing time like Napoleon in exile, but rather that he remains an undiminished leader spending time as a potent presence at the center of the church.
When he left Boston at the end of 2002, Law remained a member of several Vatican departments, including the one that helps appoint bishops. Two years ago, John Paul made Law the archpriest at Rome’s St. Mary Major Basilica. He thereby symbolically affirmed Law as the victim of sensational press coverage of clergy sex abuse, while just as symbolically ignoring the hundreds of real victims of that scandal.
Both O’Malley and Levada are good and gentle men. Still, following the old Chicago political saying that “You’ve got to dance with the guy who brung you,” they will not now challenge or bring innovations to the vague and defensive church sex abuse policies that are heavy on outrage and low on insight.
The coming colorful ceremonies of investing the new cardinals in their red vestments will be televised as the Vatican counterpart to the Olympics. Prelates from all over the world will receive the equivalent of gold medals for ecclesiastical excellence.
But, as Cardinal Law’s continuing domination of American Catholicism attests, the heads on which the red hats will be placed will contain no temptations to criticize hierarchy, and no new thoughts about resolving the sex abuse crisis.
(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)
KRE/PH END KENNEDY
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