Betrayal (24 page)

If the cardinal thought this was going to be a pep rally, however, he would soon be disappointed. There were, for sure, a few people who were with him all the way, come what may. Brett would not abandon haw, especially in light of the kindness the cardinal had shown his family, such as when his wife's parents were dying. Shaughnessy was fiercely loyal to the cardinal. Gittens too said she would not abandon him. But among the fourteen people invited that day, Law's unconditional supporters were clearly in the minority.

Connors tried to break the ice, and the tension, by drawing on an old gag from the
I Love Lucy
TV show.

“Well, Your Eminence,” Connors began, “as Ricky used to say to Lucy, you sure got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

Judging by the grins around the table, everyone thought it was funny. Everyone, that is, except the cardinal. He showed a poker face. That face quickly changed, however, as most of those assembled explained to him how grave they believed the situation was.

O'Neill said he noticed the cardinal's body language change as what Law assumed was a friendly group offered a less-than-sympathetic critique of his handling of the crisis. “I think he thought we were going to say, ‘Hey, we're with you all the way, Your Eminence.’ It wasn't that way at all.”

Law spoke first, for about twenty minutes. He was very defensive, O'Neill recalled.

When the cardinal acknowledged that his handling of the crisis had been “flawed,” Bulger uncharacteristically interrupted him, taking exception to what he considered a massive understatement of the problem. To Bulger, an erudite man with a formidable vocabulary who had been the president of the Massachusetts senate for seventeen years before moving into academia,
flawed
was not the word. “It's been disastrous,” said Bulger’, as heads nodded around the table.

Bulger's open contradiction of Law was a rebuke of enormous symbolic significance, suggesting that the deference Boston's archbishops had enjoyed for more than a century was under attack not just from the outside, as the laity rebelled and prosecutors convened grand juries, but from the inside, by the Church insiders convened around a huge table in the cardinal's residence.

Connors voiced the concerns of many when he said the crisis threatened all the Church's good works — the social service agencies funded by Catholic Charities, the hospitals that served the dispossessed, the schools that increasingly took in new immigrants. La Camera gingerly raised the prospect of resignation, saying, “If you're thinking about resigning …”But the cardinal would have none of it. Law said the Pope might not accept his resignation even if it was offered. “We said resignation needed to remain on the table, but he outright dismissed it,” La Camera said.

Hamill said whatever reform was needed, women had to play a bigger role in the solution. The Church, he said, needed to be more inclusive. O'Neill picked up on that theme, telling Law, “You've got to get women to the table.” O'Neill, the PR executive, said the cardinal could not treat the crisis as a PR campaign. It had to be about real reform; there was a dysfunctional priesthood that had to be fixed. He suggested Law could be like “Nixon in China”: if Nixon could put aside his anticommunism and make peace with Chinese Communists, O'Neill reasoned, surely the most conservative American cardinal could get the Pope to buy into comprehensive reform of the Church.

But Gittens chastised O'Neill, saying it was presumptuous of him to speak for women. Dr. Collins said more women had been invited but couldn't make it.

The meeting broke up inconclusively, with the cardinal promising to consider what he had been told. As weeks and then months passed, people such as O'Neill and Connors began to conclude that while the cardinal may seek the counsel of others, the only counsel he kept was his own.

One by one, the influential Catholics who warned the cardinal that he wasn't responding to the crisis with enough fervor walked away from him. It began March 3, when La Camera went on his TV station with an editorial saying Law had lost his moral authority to lobby for good causes and should consider resigning. Two weeks later,
Boston Herald
publisher Patrick J. Purcell, once the cardinal's most influential friend in the Boston media, personally authorized an editorial calling on him to step down.

The
Herald
had been a steadfast supporter of Law since his installation in 1984, but Purcell was stunned by what he saw as Law's betrayal of children, and of Purcell's own family. Their parish was St. Julia's in Weston, where John Geoghan had officiated at the wedding of Purcell's daughter. Purcell's wife, Maureen, taught religious education at the parish, which Geoghan's supervised. When Purcell and his wife lobbied on behalf of Geoghan's bid to become pastor of St. Julia's, the cardinal did not inform his friend that he was going to bat for a pedophile.

In March, a month after the big meeting at the chancery, Jack Connors told the
Globe
he was no longer advising the cardinal. For his candor, Connors was summoned to the chancery and given a dressing-down by Law. It was like a naughty altar boy being reprimanded by the pastor for laughing during Mass. As Connors later told O'Neill, only half jokingly, “I think I was just excommunicated.”

Some of the richest, most influential Catholics did not abandon Law. But most did, Catholic Charities, the biggest private social services provider in Massachusetts, raised more than $1.4 million at its annual Garden Party at the cardinal's residence in 2001. But for the first time since it was established twenty-six years earlier, the Garden Party was canceled because wealthy donors said they would not give money if the cardinal was involved. Many of those who had been with Law in Rome the day he got the red hat and had waited hours to shake his hand were no longer willing to go through the routine of standing in line for a photo with him before dropping off a check.

Catholic colleges that a year before would have coveted Law as a commencement speaker let it be known his presence would detract from the joyous event. At Boston College, where Law had given the opening benediction at graduation almost every year, he was no longer welcome.

Law's days were long, his nights often lonely. The boredom was broken when his old friend Leonard Florence dropped by for their regular Saturday-night Ping-Pong game. Florence, seventy, the son of Russian Jews, made millions in the silverware business. He admired the cardinal's embrace of Jews and gave money to Catholic causes. The Saturday night before the Shanley papers were released, Florence showed up for their weekly game and noticed the cardinal was especially anxious.

‘’We had a good match that night,” said Florence. “He beat me, and I think it helped.”

On April 8, the day the Shanley documents hit the papers, Law drove north, to Maine, to preside over the funeral of a bishop. Copies of the
Globe
and
Herald
were on the car seat next to him, but he didn't read them. Returning to Boston the next night, Law learned about the outrage the Shanley documents had caused. According to one of his principal advisers, Law initially wanted to release a statement criticizing the press coverage of the Shanley story. But after a conference call with advisers outside the Church, Law decided to say nothing. Before hanging up, the cardinal asked them to report back to him the next day with their recommendations on whether he should resign.

The next day, the advisers told Law that he needed to step down, that he had lost his ability to lead the archdiocese. One tried to let him down gently, saying it was unfortunate and perhaps even unfair, but that his resignation was now the best way to begin restoring confidence in the Church.

But Law wanted a second opinion. He said he would decide on his future the next day, after conferring with his “college of consultors,” composed of his six bishops and a handful of trusted priests. The members of the college serve at the pleasure of the cardinal, and they were, in effect, being asked to decide not just his fate, but most likely their own. Not surprisingly, they told him to stay on and tough it out. Law called his secular advisers and told them he was going to consult with the papal nuncio, the Pope's ambassador in Washington. The
Globe
reported that Law informed the papal nuncio that he thought he should resign, but that the cardinal was asked not to submit his resignation until the Pope and his top aides could deliberate on how to proceed.

The next day, April 12, Cardinal Law left Boston for Rome. That was not unusual. The cardinal sat on any number of important Vatican committees and traveled to Rome almost monthly. But Law's route was unusual. Instead of going to Logan Airport, just ten miles and a half hour from the chancery, Law drove more than two hundred miles and five hours to Newark International Airport. He did not want to be seen. There had been an outcry after the Shanley documents were unsealed. Public anger was growing. The cardinal's movements were becoming increasingly furtive. He was avoiding the press, he was avoiding the demonstrators who now dogged him regularly, he was avoiding just about everyone.

In a statement, the cardinal later acknowledged that he had gone to see the Pope and other Vatican officials, adding, “The focus of my meetings was the impact of the Shanley and other sexual abuse cases upon public opinion in general, and specifically upon the members of the archdiocese. The fact that my resignation has been proposed as necessary was part of my presentation.”

Law was vague on whether he had offered to resign, or whether the Pope refused to accept his resignation. Vatican scholars believe the Pope was wary of letting Law step down, fearing it would establish a precedent that would apply to other cardinals and bishops who were complicit in keeping predatory priests within reach of their victims. The fear of a domino effect, some argued, was keeping Law from falling.

But there were indications that Law's peers, the other twelve American cardinals, were getting antsy. Publicly, some offered words of support. Privately, however, some seemed to think that Law's resignation might reduce the heat the entire Church was feeling. On April 15, with Law still secretly ensconced in the Vatican, the Pope called the American cardinals to Rome for a two-day meeting about the sexual abuse of minors by priests.

Law slipped back into Boston unnoticed to prepare for the meeting. When he returned to Rome several days later to join the other cardinals, his peers traveled in first class, but Cardinal Law settled for coach. While the other cardinals traveled with entourages, he traveled with only an aide, Monsignor Paul McIne$y, the director of Boston Catholic Television. As he wheeled his bag through the airport in Rome, Bernard Law looked more like a confounded tourist than a prince of the Church. He couldn't find an exit. It was a task made all the more difficult by the media horde that surrounded him. Law seemed startled by the number of reporters and by the fact that they were waiting for him at seven o'clock in the morning. At one point, the cardinal stumbled as the reporters closed in on him. He seemed rattled and exhausted. “My God,” he said. “My God, you are all up awfully early.” Law could not find his way out of the terminal, backtracking, looking for an exit, shadowed by the pack. A reporter helped direct Law to the exit, and once the exit was in sight, Law seemed to relax a bit.

“How'd the Red Sox do last night?” the cardinal asked. It was a moment that hearkened back to the old days, when Law would banter genially with the press. Someone told him the score. But there was no warmth in the exchange, and there was no hiding the tension.

The relationship between Cardinal Law and the other American cardinals had also changed. On the eve of the Rome meeting, the Los
Angeles Times
reported that one of the American cardinals had told the newspaper that some cardinals planned to ask Vatican officials to urge the Pope to ask for Law's resignation. The newspaper said a bishop had confirmed the account and added that a majority of U.S. bishops thought Law should resign quickly. Many suspected Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles was the source of the report. Weeks before, Mahony had spurned an opportunity to express support for Law, and he implicitly criticized Law, saying he would find it difficult to walk down the aisle of his church if he had been guilty of negligence. After the
Times
story appeared, the newspaper later quoted three other cardinals by name as saying Law should not resign, but Mahony was not quoted in his hometown paper about what he thought.

In Rome, Mahony was sensitive about suggestions he had stabbed a fellow cardinal in the back. When
Globe
reporter Charles Sennott jumped into an elevator with Mahony in Rome, Mahony denied he was the source of the damning report.

When asked if he thought Law should step down, Cardinal Mahony offered less than a ringing endorsement. “That,” Mahony said, “is up to Cardinal Law and the Holy Father.”

Most of the American cardinals stayed in the North American College compound and were pestered constantly by reporters. Law stayed in a place that was off limits to the press: the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a comfortable hotel for visiting clergy in Vatican City, behind gates patrolled by the Swiss Guards. Ever defiant, Cardinal Egan, second only to Law in being embattled, stayed in a five-star hotel near the Pantheon. While the other cardinals were driven together in a minibus to the Apostolic Palace for the meetings, Law was shuttled to the sessions by himself.

Inside the Apostolic Palace, surrounded by the Pope and his peers, Law was humble and contrite. He also seemed very much alone. “In a sense, if I had not made the terrible mistakes that I made, we would not be here. I apologize for that,” Law said, according to several who were in attendance.

When the two-day meeting broke up, the waiting reporters were told that all of the cardinals would appear before them to take questions. But only Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington and Cardinal Francis George of Chicago showed up. The reporters wanted to question Law, but he had slipped away again.

The thought of his peers possibly abandoning him must have been crushing to Law, according to O'Connor, the Boston College historian. “The one thing that all the priests I interviewed agreed on was that Law was very compassionate and very sensitive when it came to visiting the sick and dying clergy in the hospital. And that compassion extended to their families. At a banquet once, somebody mentioned that a priest's mother had had a stroke, and Law turned to Monsignor Mclnerny and told him to drive him to the hospital. It was a genuine warmth and concern. He was the priest's priest. It is so ironic that Cardinal Law was unable or unwilling to express that same sense of compassion to the victims of sexual abuse, and that that failure was the reason that so many priests turned on him, that that blind spot was his downfall. I find his lack of compassion for the victims inexplicable because I don't see him as a man lacking compassion. It's just a blind spot of his. I don't know. He leaves me confused because he's capable of so much. How can a man with so much talent, so sophisticated in so many other areas, be so blind?”