Reform? - Not Likely

(Note: remember this blog is moving to a new home at: Against the Madness.)

If one wants to know if the Catholic Church is likely to go through any big changes with the change in leadership, I noticed a clue this weekend.
Former Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law appeared on ABCs "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. He has also been heard, in the last few days, doing sound bites for various news broadcasts.

Cardinal Law, resigned from the Boston post in December 2003, after 58 of the priests in the diocese expressed a lack of faith in his leadership. This extraordinary event came as the culmination of Law's mis-handling of the sexual abuse scandals in the Boston Diocese.

In an article entitled Why isn't Bernard Law in Jail (Part 2), Dahlia Lithwick of Slate magazine described some of the evidence against Law:

"Last spring, Law admitted in a deposition that he was aware that John Geoghan had reportedly raped at least seven young boys in 1984 yet nevertheless approved the transfer of Geoghan to another parish, working with other boys. Other documents revealed that Law similarly knew of and ignored decades of reported child abuse by Paul Shanley, placing Shanley in ministries with access to other children."

"Throughout his tenure, Law seemed to reserve his warmest sympathy for the abusers, not the victims. He lied to a West Coast bishop about Shanley's history. He signed a document attesting that another known child-molesting priest, Redmond Raux, had "nothing in his background" to make him "unsuitable to work with children." Last week, more court documents revealed that the archdiocese gave new jobs to two priests, one of whom was known to have molested boys while the other had supplied cocaine to a teenage lover. Law's responses to these and earlier disclosures? The molesters had been cleared by physicians; the church kept bad records; his subordinates vetted the transfers; he forgot; he never knew; he's sorry."

In May of 2004, in what some saw as a move to dodge the U.S. legal system, Cardinal Law was appointed to a post in Rome.

Apparently none of the current Catholic leadership has a problem with Law's checkered past. The fact that Law is not only still unpunished for his actions but is apparently free to publicly represent the church should tell you all you need to know about any serious reform in the near future.