Boston Cardinal Won't Quit
Amid growing demands that he step down because of the sex scandal engulfing the church, Cardinal Bernard Law said Friday that he will continue serving the Boston Archdiocese "as long as God gives me the opportunity."
"I know there are people who believe my resignation is part of the solution," Law wrote to priests in a two-page letter released by the archdiocese. "This distresses me greatly to have become a lightning rod of division when mine should be a ministry of unity."
"My desire is to serve this archdiocese and the church with every fiber of my being," he wrote. "This I will continue to do as long as God gives me the opportunity."
At a news conference, archdiocese spokeswoman Donna Morrissey declined to elaborate and said the letter speaks for itself. She also said Law would not preside at Mass this Sunday.
"He's committed to making sure that we don't find ourselves in the same situation again," she said. "This is a difficult and painful time."
Law and the Boston Archdiocese are at the center of a controversy that has mushroomed into the worst ever to befall the U.S. Catholic Church as dozens of priests around the country have been suspended or sued over allegations they molested children. The scandal started with the trial of one former Boston area priest.
The defrocked cleric, John Geoghan, is serving a prison sentence for molesting a child. He is accused by more 130 people of molesting them during his 30 years as a priest in the Boston area.
Documents released in connection with Geoghan's trial showed Law and five other bishops knew about Geoghan's sexual problems but continued to shuttle him from parish to parish without alerting parishioners.
Law has acknowledged that he transferred to another parish despite knowing of sexual misconduct allegations against the now-defrocked priest.
He has apologized to Geoghan's victims and reversed a long-standing confidentiality policy and gave authorities the names of more than 80 priests accused of abuse.
At that time, Law said he would not resign. "When there are problems in the family, you don't walk away," he said.
But polls show he has lost support in Boston's Catholic community, and publications including Boston's two major newspapers have called for him to step down. The archdiocese is the nation's fourth-largest, with more than 2 million Catholics.
Law's letter, addressed to "My dear brother priests," expresses regrets about how the crisis has been handled by the church.
"In a desire to encourage victims who might not desire to enter a criminal process to come forward to us, we did not communicate cases to public authorities," Law wrote. "While our reason for not doing so seemed reasonable, I am convinced it was not adequate."
Law also discusses steps the church has taken to address the problem.
"Obviously, the best of policies cannot provide an infallible assurance," he wrote. "We can, however, learn from our experience, the experience of others and from our mistakes in formulating the best of policies."
Law wrote: "We have now, I believe, in proper balance the three dimensions: the moral, the pathological and the criminal."
The archdiocese - and Law - took another blow this week when attorneys released personnel documents that detail how the church handled the Rev. Paul Shanley, who has been sued for alleged child molestation.
Shanley was described in archdiocese documents as a "very sick person" and known as a proponent of sex between men and boys. Yet Law moved Shanley around the archdiocese and wrote him a positive retirement letter. The archdiocese also recommended Shanley for a post at a California church without telling officials there about the abuse allegations.
In his letter, Law says the Shanley case "is particularly troubling for us. For me personally, it has brought home with painful clarity how inadequate our record keeping has been."
Since Geoghan's trial, priests in Maine, New York, California, Pennsylvania and Florida have been removed. The bishop of Palm Beach resigned after admitting he had "inappropriately" touched a seminarian more than 25 years ago.
In other developments related to the scandal:
The Connecticut Post said the girl was 14 when the relationship with Joseph Michael DeShan began in 1988; The Hartford Courant said she was 15. In Connecticut, the legal age for consensual sex is 16. The papers said DeShan told the diocese about the relationship in 1989 and requested leave.
Church officials said Friday that DeShan did not tell them how old the girl was. The diocese also said officials did not know he had fathered a child until 1994, when he petitioned for removal from the priesthood.
The mother of his child, now 28, lives in Bridgeport and is raising their daughter. DeShan declined to tell the Courant whether Egan knew the girl's age.