Bernard Law and the road to Rome

Catholic New Times, Feb 9, 2003

The decline and fall of Boston's Bernard Cardinal Law must be seen within the context of a papacy which, for all of its impact on the world stage, has been a dramatic failure within the institution. Law's stunning demise and--make no mistake about this--his fall from grace, is almost unprecedented in the North American church. One would have to go back to the tragic and abrupt dismissal of Montreal's Archbishop Joseph Charbonneau in 1949 to find an equivalent case.

Charbonneau, the much-loved shepherd, was canned for his passion for justice, specifically, for his brave stand on behalf of Quebec's asbestos workers. One minute it was the archbishop of Montreal, the next, a humbled exile in a Victoria hospital. The difference in the two cases, however, is stark and dramatic. Charhonneau met his undeserved fate by vigorously defending exploited labour, a victim of the monied interests behind then-premier Maurice Duplessis. He paid the price of a prophet.

Law's forced resignation, on the other hand, came from his own people. Both lay and cleric were stunned by his fanatical loyalty to a clerical caste rather than to the very victims: the lambs that his Master had held up as its fundamental charge. He paid the price of bad judgment and misguided loyalties.

Desmond Rainey's portrait of Law shows us a man of considerable gifts (see page 13), and it would be patently unfair not to acknowledge the good that he achieved as a cardinal. But Law was too ambitious; the type of prelate that Cardinal Ratzinger warned about: one who was excessively ambitious for the red hat and the power and prestige it brought him. Careerism, too, often is, and has been, the aphrodisiac of the celibate, and Law drained this poisoned chalice to the dregs. Imagine a young cleric stating that he had a good shot at being the first American pope. Law's sycophancy to Rome was second to none, though, admittedly, he paled in comparison to the late Cardinal of New York, Francis Spellman, the acknowledged past master of obsequiousness. The move up the clerical ladder was the same: deference, obedience and silence.

For those with a sense or a vision of high moral grandeur, the church is the New Jerusalem and its seminaries are on the streets of protesters for justice and compassion. The clerical collars are placards raised high like a cross on the mount. Far too many of the institutions' arteries are clogged with the cholesterol of power, prestige and honours--the phylacteries of office.

Silence, deference and obedience among the clergy eventually birth denial, repression and the loss of creativity, honesty and, most of all, compassion. They live the first rule of the seminary: you keep the law and the law will keep you. In the end, such an obvious denial of prophetic risk-taking produces institutional men who have lost sight of the life-giving risk of the cross of Jesus Christ. Living in the hothouse and protected world of the institution, granted absolute deference built by both heroic priests of the past and a servile clerical culture, too many--and Law is but one sad example--play it safe and become utterly predictable in their pronouncements: a cardinal as a member of the Republican Party.

Ecclesial advancement, unfortunately, results in a misdirected ambition: the failure to be ambitious for the higher gifts, which Paul speaks of. All of this, in Law's case, fed a "spiritual glaucoma" and a failure to see the New Jerusalem, the new holy moments of grace inbreaking in history: the cry of feminism, the Earth and the globally marginalized. He made it difficult for religious orders in the Boston area to be sensitive to these new currents.

The "new" sin of the postmodern era is institutionalism: the skewing of all values and the moral vision to what feeds the institution. Unfortunately, men like Law and the clones whose careers he advanced became "institutional men" looking over their shoulders instead of beyond the horizon while freezing doctrine, policy and church discipline. The warm breath of the Spirit seemed missing.

In the end, Law became "a prince" rather than a "prophet." In the grasp for authority, he grabbed the 'red hat instead of the beggar's cap. He embraced pomp rather than poverty. He lost his way. He started on the road to the New Jerusalem but ended up on the road to Rome.