The Church that Forgot Christ

Catholic New Times, Nov 21, 2004 by Ted Schmidt

The Church that Forgot Christ by Jimmy Breslin, New York, Free Press, 2004,239 pp

You can tell Jimmy Breslin is angry with the leadership of the Catholic Church. His book begins with the simple admonition in Latin, "Noli venire inter Dominum et me (Don't come between the Lord and me)." For Breslin, a lifelong Catholic that's exactly what the hierarchy has done. His anger runs through all 239 pages.

Not that Breslin needed much prompting, but he gets his assignment from two remarkable women. One is a former neighbour from Queens, Arlene D'Arienzo. "You have to write about these people. They are bad and must be exposed. You are the one who must do it. You're Irish." Breslin, a lifelong Catholic, who can only do one thing on Sunday morning and that's go to Mass, demurs. He is afraid of spreading scandal. Arlene will have none of it. "You? Spreading scandal? What about these priests and these liars, these bishops? What are we to do, keep our mouths shut?"

Breslin must then check with his bedrock anchor, his Aunt Harriet, his octogenarian lodestar whose "neighbourhood Catholicism grew stronger wherever she went." Breslin trusts her absolutely. "Anything I have to do with religion is going to follow whatever this graduate of Barnard College does.

Needless to say, Breslin can not write about something that has deeply wounded him and shaken many Catholics.

"I know I must attack this church that has let pedophiles flourish, the victims to suffer for decades and all times to lie."

What a magnificent rant this is. The Pulitzer prize winner (1986) in his inimitable Irish Catholic fashion takes us through his New York neighbourhoods. We follow him to Mike Dowd's law office where he gets the scoop on several pedophilia cases, to a modern saint, Fr. John Powis who has spent his life ministering to poor urban blacks, to his own parish church where he takes up the collection.

All through his picaresque journey, Breslin's fury builds. "You can blame the church's condition on the Irish, who gave us total religious insanity. They are a race that sat in the rain for a couple of thousand years and promoted the most crazed beliefs in personal living outside of the hillbillies. The symbol is Edward Egan, cardinal archbishop, who lives amidst the best Irish lace curtains on Madison Avenue in New York."

Breslin has a field day at their expense partly because he is Irish too. "Thomas Daily, who as Bishop of Brooklyn lived big in Fort Greene in Brooklyn, was saved by the calendar and resigned at 75 ... He should have been indicted in two places--Boston and Brooklyn--for hiding and moving dangerous pedophiles."

Daily had worked in personnel under Cardinal Law in Boston. Breslin ridicules Cardinal Egan, then the bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. It was the latter that actually said under oath that there was no diocesan responsibility over the predators. "A priest is actually a contractor for the diocese." The author saves his most Swiftian invective for the pathetic Bishop William Murphy who assisted Daily in Boston. "Murphy was awarded the rich Long Island diocese of Rockville Centre, where his efforts were devoted to his own comfort."

Breslin, in a series of columns, made Murphy the laughing stock of New York by dubbing him "Mansion" Murphy for booting some elderly nuns out of a building "which he then turned into a grand residence." Breslin skewers the pompous Murphy for his "marble bathroom, $120,000 sub-zero freezer and temperature controlled wine cellar, and lets the hapless bishop hang himself with his own words: "It is fitting that the bishop of the sixth largest diocese in the nation should live like a bishop."

The book is full of vivid portraits of victims, their families, the "enablers," an autistic hierarchy which chose structure over people and a few heroic religious It has the great aroma, with the sights and the sounds of the city the author knows so well. In many ways, it is quite moving as Breslin's anguished faith breaks through. In one touching scene, Breslin facing brain surgery for an aneurism, describes his great calm, his deep belief that his being is in a state of grace "came from a lot of years about writing about the poor."

This is a book Jimmy Breslin had to write, an anguished urban cri de coeur about a church which has so often chosen institution over community.