BOSTON, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- The scandal of pedophilic priests has taken its toll on Boston's Cardinal Bernard F. Law, marring his once powerful image of moral authority in the church and making his voice unwelcome among the leadership of the Conference of Catholic Bishops.
When Law spoke to assembled reporters last Tuesday at the national gathering in Washington about America's possible war with Iraq, the national press wondered whether it marked a return to the national stage. However, according to over a dozen archdiocesan and Vatican insiders, this conference reflected a decrease in Law's power.
"During this conference, seven committees elected either chairmen or chairmen-elect. Cardinal Law refused to stand for election to any of them -- something which could only be explained by the fact that other bishops had lost confidence in him," said a priest observer to the conference who declined to be identified for fear of retribution from superiors.
During the conference, Law -- as chair of the international committee -- would have been expected to speak on the topic of a war with Iraq. However, out of deference to the cardinal's problems at home, and in a sign that they were ready to distance themselves from a pastor thought by many to be "arrogant," the other bishops were ready to leave the conference without discussing the most pressing issue of the day.
"Law had hoped not to have to speak on the war with Iraq," according to one priest close to the cardinal, "until Bishop Michael D. Pfeifer of San Angelo, Texas, moved the issue to the floor, when the president was then forced to ask Law, as the chairman of the international committee, to formulate a white paper."
A monsignor in the Boston archdiocese said: "A committee chair can't just bring something to the floor on his own -- the president had to do it, and the fact he hadn't until Pfeifer asked for it indicates something."
One priest gave the archbishop high marks for trying. though.
"I was almost trampled by the cameras and the press who ran to him. He didn't have to answer questions unrelated to the document -- since it wasn't finished he could easily have fled back into the chamber. He didn't."
And, in what is widely viewed as a proxy on Law's stature among the bishops, Bishop William Murphy of Rockville, N.Y., formerly Law's chancellor in Boston, lost a vote for the chair of the Latin American committee by a vote of 173-93.
According to one priest who has observed Law for more than a decade: "He has never had a great record of getting elected by his fellow bishops, but that never stopped him from trying before. Someone really must have given him the third-degree."
But Law's foreign policy prowess comes with a cost.
A longtime follower of the cardinal's career said: "Frankly, if he spent as much time on the personnel issues as he had spent on Vietnam and Cuba he would never have had these problems. I can believe that he'd only read the first two lines of a complaint and hand it to an assistant."
As a result, the Boston archdiocese isn't pulling in the money that it once used to and things are slowing down. One Jesuit priest said: "I have a couple of annulments waiting in the archdiocese and they're taking twice as long because they've let people go."
"They had this big capital campaign that's coming in and it's not even coming close to their much lowered projections," another Jesuit said.
A third high-ranking Jesuit in the New England province said, "Rome understands (money) if they understand nothing else. We expect him to be shipped to Rome before the archdiocese goes bankrupt."
One of the biggest donors, Tom Flately, has expressed to people inside the archdiocese that he thinks Cardinal Law should step down -- though Flately has long been a prominent supporter of the Catholic Church and Law in particular.
One priest summed it up: "He's an ass and he deserves all the calumny the other bishops give him."
Of more than 20 priests interviewed for this article, not one was willing to speak on the record, mindful of the truth of the centuries-old Vatican saying about cardinals: "Weak friends, terrible enemies."
Pressure on priests not to talk is so intense, one even went so far as to refer to the problems of the two most famous Catholic theologians of the 20th century.
"Do you know what they did to (Karl) Rahner and (Edward) Schillebeeckx? They would have no problem silencing me and sending me to a chapel somewhere in northern Canada."
