“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Cardinal Bernard Law on the Frontier of Civil Rights
Former Boston Archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law was vilified by The Boston Globe and SNAP, but before that he was a champion of justice in the Civil Rights Movement.
Former Boston Archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law was vilified by The Boston Globe and SNAP, but before that he was a champion of justice in the Civil Rights Movement.
June 19, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae
Note from Fr MacRae: I first wrote this post in November 2015. I wrote it in the midst of a viral character assassination of a man who had become a convenient scapegoat for what was then the latest New England witch hunt. That man was Cardinal Bernard Law, Archbishop of Boston. I have to really tug hard to free this good man’s good name from the media-fueled availability bias that so mercilessly tarnished it back then. A good deal more has come to light, and I get to have the last word.
By coincidence, and it was not planned this way, but the date of this revised reposting is June 19, 2024, the day that the United States commemorates the emancipation of African American slaves on June 19, 1865 in Galveston, Texas. As you will read herein, Cardinal Bernard Law was a national champion in the cause for Civil Rights and racial equality.
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Four years after The Boston Globe set out to sensationalize the sins of some few members of the Church and priesthood, another news story — one subtly submerged beneath the fold — drifted quietly through a few New England newspapers. After a very short life, the story faded from view. In 2006, Matt McGonagle resigned from his post as assistant principal of Rundlett Middle School in Concord, New Hampshire. Charged with multiple counts of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old high school student six years before, McGonagle ended his criminal case by striking a plea deal with prosecutors. McGonagle pleaded guilty to the charges on July 28, 2006.
He was sentenced to a term of sixteen months in a local county jail. An additional sentence of two-and-a-half to five years in the New Hampshire State Prison was suspended by the presiding judge in Merrimack County Superior Court — the same court that declined to hear evidence or testimony in my habeas corpus appeal in 2013 after having served 20 years in prison for crimes that never took place.
In a statement, Matt McGonagle described the ordeal of being prosecuted. He said it was “extraordinarily difficult,” and thanked his “many advocates” who spoke on his behalf. In the local press, defense attorney James Rosenberg defended the plea deal for a sixteen month county jail sentence:
“The sentence is fair, and accurately reflects contributions that Matt has made to his community as an educator.”
— Melanie Asmar, “Ex-educator pleads guilty in sex assault,” Concord Monitor, July 29, 2006
Four years earlier, attorney James Rosenberg was a prosecutor in the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office from where he worked to prosecute the Diocese of Manchester for its handling of similar, but far older claims against Catholic priests.
The accommodation called for in the case of teacher/principal Matt McGonagle — an insistence that he is not to be forever defined by the current charges against him — was never even a passing thought in the prosecutions of Catholic priests. Those cases sprang from the pages of The Boston Globe, swept New England, and then went viral across America. The story marked The Boston Globe’s descent into “trophy justice.”
Cardinal Sins
I have always been aware of this inconsistency in the news media and among prosecutors and some judges, but never considered writing specifically about how it applied to Cardinal Bernard Law until I read Sins of the Press, a book by David F. Pierre, Jr. On page after page it cast a floodlight on The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer-endorsed lynching of Cardinal Law, offered up as a scapegoat for The Scandal and driven from Boston by the news media despite having never been accused, tried, or convicted of any real crime.
Does the “lynching of Cardinal Law” seem too strong a term? Historically, the word “lynching” came into the English lexicon from the name of Captain William Lynch of Virginia who acted as prosecutor, judge and executioner. He became notorious for his judgment-sans-trial while leading a band to hunt down Loyalists, Colonists suspected of loyalty to the British Crown in the War for Independence in 1776.
The term applies well to what started in Boston, then swept the country. Most of those suspected or accused in the pages of The Boston Globe, including Cardinal Bernard Law, were never given any trial of facts. As I recently wrote in, “To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants,” many of the priests were deceased when accused, and many others faced accusations decades after any supportive evidence could be found, or even looked for. The Massachusetts Attorney General issued an astonishing statement given short shrift in the pages of The Boston Globe:
“The evidence gathered during the course of the Attorney General’s sixteen-month investigation does not provide a basis for bringing criminal charges against the Archdiocese and its senior managers.”
— Commonwealth of Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly, “Executive Summary and Scope of the Investigation,” July 23, 2003
So I decided to explore the story of Cardinal Bernard Law for Beyond These Stone Walls. When I first endeavored to write about him, he had been virtually chased from the United States by some in the news media and so-called victim advocates deep into lawsuits to fleece the Church. Though not intended originally, my post was to be published on November 4, 2015, which also happened to be Cardinal Law’s 84th birthday.
When I wrote of my intention to revisit the story of Cardinal Bernard Law from a less condemning perspective, it sparked very mixed feelings among some readers. A few wrote to me that they looked forward to reading my take on the once good name of this good priest. A few taunted me that this was yet another “David v Goliath” task. Others wrote more ominously, “Don’t do it, Father! Don’t step on that minefield! What if they target you next?” That reaction is a monument to the power of the news media to spin a phenomenon called “availability bias.”
A while back, I was invited by Catholic League President Bill Donohue to contribute some articles for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. My second of two articles appeared in the July/August 2009 issue just as Beyond These Stone Walls began. It was entitled “Due Process for Accused Priests” and it opened with an important paragraph about the hidden power of the press to shape what we think:
“Psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his work on a phenomenon in psychology and marketing called ‘availability bias.’ Kahneman demonstrated the human tendency to give a proposition validity just by how easily it comes to mind. An uncorroborated statement can be widely seen as true merely because the media has repeated it. Also in 2002, the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal swept out of Boston to dominate news headlines across the country….”
This is exactly what happened to Cardinal Law. There was a narrative about him, an impression of his nature and character that unfolded over the course of his life. I spent several months studying that narrative and it is most impressive.
Then that narrative was replaced by something else. With a target on his back, the story of Cardinal Law was entirely and unjustly rewritten by The Boston Globe. Then the rewrite was repeated again and again until it took hold, went viral, and replaced in public view the account of who this man really was.
Even some in the Church settled upon this sacrificial offering of a reputation. Perhaps only someone who has known firsthand such media-fueled bias can instinctively recognize it happening. Suffice it to say that I instinctively recognized it. I offer no other defense of my decision to visit anew the first narrative in the story of who Bernard Law was. If you can set aside for a time the availability bias created around the name of Cardinal Bernard Law, then you may find this account to be fascinating, just as I did.
From Harvard to Mississippi
As this account of a courageous life and heroic priesthood unfolded before me, I was eerily reminded of another story, one I came across many years ago. It was the year I began to seek something more than the Easter and Christmas Catholicism I inherited. It was 1968, and I was fifteen years old in my junior year at Lynn English High School just north of Boston. Two champions of the Civil Rights Movement I had come to admire and respect in my youth — Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy — had just been assassinated. And just as my mind and spirit were being shaped by that awful time, I stumbled upon something that would refine for me that era: the great 1963 film, The Cardinal.
Based on a book of the same name by Henry Morton Robinson (Simon & Schuster 1950), actor Tom Tryon portrayed the title role of Boston priest, Father Stephen Fermoyle who rose to become a member of the College of Cardinals after a heroic life as an exemplary priest. It was the first time I encountered the notion that priesthood might require courage, and I wondered whether I had any. I was fifteen, sitting alone at Mass for the first time in my life when this movie sparked a scary thought.
Father Fermoyle was asked by the Apostolic Nuncio to tour the southern United States “between the Great Smokies and the Mississippi River” — an area known for anti-Catholic prejudice. He was tasked with writing a report on the state of the Catholic Church there during a time of great racial unrest.
In the script (and in the book which I read later) Mississippi Chancery official, Monsignor Whittle (played in the film by actor, Chill Wills) was fearful of the racist, anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan. He tried to dissuade Father Fermoyle from making any waves, but his mere presence there would set off a tidal wave of suspicion. In a horrific scene, Father Fermoyle was kidnapped in the night, blindfolded, and driven to the middle of a remote field — a field where many young black men had disappeared.
His blindfold removed, he found himself surrounded by men in sheets and white hoods, illuminated by the light of a burning cross. Father Fermoyle was given a crucifix and ordered to spit on it or face the scourging of Christ. Henry Morton Robinson’s book conveys the scene:
“He held the crucifix between thumb and forefinger, lofting it like a lantern in darkness…. Ancient strength of martyrs flowed into Stephen’s limbs. Eyes on the gilt cross, he neither flinched nor spoke. [The music played] ‘In Dixieland I’ll take my stand.’ Stephen prayed silently that no drop of spittle, no whimpering plea for mercy, would fall from his lips before the end… The sheeted men climbed into their cars. Not until the last taillight had disappeared had Stephen lowered the crucifix.”
— The Cardinal, pp 412-413
This could easily have been a scene from the life of Father Bernard Law. Born on 4 November 1931 in Torreon, Mexico, Bernard Francis Law spent his bilingual childhood between the United States, Latin America, and the Virgin Islands. His father was a U.S. Army Captain in World War II and Bernard was an only child. Very early in life, he learned that acceptance does not depend on race, or color, or creed, and once admonished his classmates in the Virgin Islands that “Never must we let bigotry creep into our beings.”
At age 15, Bernard read Mystici Corporis, a 1943 Encyclical of Pope Pius XII that Bernard later described as “the dominant teaching of my life.” He was especially touched by the language of inclusion of a heroic Pope in a time of great oppression. The encyclical was banned in German-occupied Belgium for “subversive” lines connecting the Mystical Body of Christ with the unity of all Christians, transcending barriers such as race or politics.
As a weird aside, I was in shock and awe as I sat typing this post when I asked out loud, “How could I find a copy of Mystici Corporis while stuck in a New Hampshire prison cell?” Then our convert friend, Pornchai Moontri jumped from his bunk, pulled out his footlocker containing the sum total of his life, and handed me a heavily highlighted copy of the 1943 Encyclical. I haven’t yet wrapped my brain around that, but it’s another post for another time.
While attending Harvard University, Bernard Law found a vocation to the priesthood during his visits to Saint Paul’s Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After graduating from Harvard in 1953, the year I was born, a local bishop advised him that Boston had lots of priests and he should give his talents to a part of the Church in need. At age 29, Father Bernard Law was ordained for what was the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson, Mississippi.
Standing before the Mask of Tyranny
The year was 1961. The Second Vatican Council would soon open in Rome, and the Civil Rights Movement was gathering steam (and I do mean steam!) in the United States, Father Law immersed himself in both. A Vicksburg lawyer once remarked that Father Law “went into homes as priests [there] had never done before.” With a growing reputation for erudition and bridge building on issues many others simply avoided, Bernard was summoned by his bishop to the State Capital to become editor of the diocesan weekly newspaper, then called The Mississippi Register.
It was there that the courage to proclaim the Gospel took shape in him, and became, along with his brilliant mind, his most visible gift of the Holy Spirit. Another young priest of that diocese noted that Father Law’s racial attitudes — shaped by his childhood in the Virgin Islands — were different from those of most white Mississipians. “He felt passionately about racial justice from the first moment I knew him,” the priest wrote. “It wasn’t a mere following of teaching, it came from his heart.”
I know many Mississippi Catholics today — including many who read Beyond These Stone Walls — but in the tumultuous 1960s, Catholics were a small minority in Mississippi. They were also a target for persecution by the Ku Klux Klan which was growing in both power and terror as the nation struggled with a burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.
An 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision in “Plessy v. Ferguson” had defined the doctrine of “separate but equal” as a Constitutional nod to racial segregation, but in 1954 in “Brown v. Board of Education,” the Supreme Court based a landmark desegregation ruling on solid evidence that “separate” was seldom “equal.” Opposition to the ruling grew throughout the South, and so did terrorist Klan activities. In 1955, the murder of a black Mississippi boy, 14-year-old Emmett Till, rocked the state and the nation, as did the acquittal of his accused white killers.
This was the world of Father Bernard Law’s priesthood. Up to that time, the diocesan newspaper, The Mississippi Register, had been visibly timid on racial issues, but this changed with this priest at the helm. In June of 1963 he wrote a lead story on the evils of racial segregation citing the U.S. Bishops’ 1958 “Statement on Racial Discrimination and the Christian Conscience.”
One week later, the respected NAACP leader Medgar Evers was gunned down outside his Jackson, Mississippi home. Both Father Law and (then) Natchez-Jackson Bishop Richard Gerow boldly attended the wake for Medgar Evers under the watchful eyes of the Klan. Father Law’s next issue of The Mississippi Register bore the headline, “Everyone is Guilty,” citing a statement by his Bishop that many believe was written by Bernard Law:
“We need frankly to admit that the guilt for the murder of Mr. Evers and the other instances of violence in our community tragically must be shared by all of us… Rights which have been given to all men by the Creator cannot be the subject of conferral or refusal by men.”
Father Law and Bishop Gerow were thus invited to the White House along with other religious leaders to discuss the growing crisis in Mississippi with President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Later that summer, Father Law challenged local politicians in The Mississipi Register for their lack of moral leadership on racial desegregation, stating “Freedom in Mississippi is now at an alarmingly low ebb.” Massachusetts District Judge Gordon Martin, who was a Justice Department attorney in Mississippi at that time, once wrote for The Boston Globe that Father Law…
“…did not pull his punches, and the Register’s editorials and columns were in sharp contrast with the racist diatribes of virtually all of the state’s daily and weekly press.”
Later that year, Father Law won the Catholic Press Association Award for his editorials. In “Freedom Summer” 1964, when three civil rights workers were missing and suspected to have been murdered, Father Bernard Law openly accepted an invitation to join other religious leaders to advise President Lyndon Johnson on the racial issues in Mississippi. When the bodies of the three slain young men were found buried at a remote farm, the priest boldly issued a challenge to stand up to the crisis:
“In Mississippi, the next move is up to the white moderate. If he is in the house, let him now come forward.”
Later that year Father Law founded and became Chairman of the Mississippi Council on Human Relations. Then the home of a member, a rabbi, was bombed. Then another member, a Unitarian minister, was shot and severely wounded. The FBI asked Father Law to keep them apprised of his whereabouts, and Bishop Gerow, fearing for his priest’s safety, ordered him from the outskirts of Jackson to the Cathedral rectory, but Bernard Law feared not.
Cardinal Law’s life and mine crossed paths a few times over the course of my life as a priest. I mentioned above that while attending Harvard University, Bernard Law found his vocation to the priesthood during visits to Saint Paul’s Church in Cambridge. Many years later, in 1985, my uncle, Father George W. MacRae, SJ, the first Roman Catholic Dean of Harvard Divinity School and a renowned scholar of Sacred Scripture, passed away suddenly at the age of 57. I was a concelebrant at his Mass of Christian Burial at Saint Paul’s Church in Cambridge. Concelebrating with me was Cardinal Bernard Law where his life as a priest first took shape.
In 2013, The New York Times sold The Boston Globe for pennies on the dollar.
On December 20, 2017, Cardinal Bernard Law passed from this life in Rome.
Oh, that such priestly courage as his were contagious, for many in our Church could use some now. Thank you, Your Eminence, for the gift of a courageous priesthood. Let us not go gentle into The Boston Globe’s good night.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I am indebted for this post to the book, Boston’s Cardinal : Bernard Law, the Man and His Witness, edited by Romanus Cessario, O.P. with a Foreword by Mary Ann Glendon (Lexington Books, 2002).
You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Saint John Paul the Great: A Light in a World in Crisis
Pell Contra Mundum: Cardinal Truths about the Synod
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
A Sex Abuse Cover-up in Boston Haunts the White House
With The Boston Globe Spotlight focused only on Catholic priests, sex abuse by a top Boston police union official was covered up all the way to the 2021 White House.
When The Boston Globe Spotlight focused only on Catholic priests, sex abuse by a top Boston police union official was covered up all the way to the 2021 White House.
Our Canadian guest writer, Father Stuart MacDonald, posted a thoughtful comment on my recent post, “Cardinal Sins in the Summer of Media Madness.” He pointed out a sobering fact. Former police officer Derek Chauvin, who now stands convicted in the murder of George Floyd, was sentenced to exactly one-third of the sentence I am serving for crimes that never took place. Father Stuart’s insightful comment was followed by one from another frequent guest writer, Ryan A. MacDonald, no relation to Father Stuart.
Their comments are very much worth a return visit to that post. The tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of Derek Chauvin in sight of three other officers launched a movement across America to defunct police. It also led to all of the events described in the post cited above.
You might think that in my current location, a movement like #DefundPolice would find lots of sympathy and even some vocal support. The truth is just the opposite. No one understands the need for police in our society more than a prisoner. As one friend here, an African American, put it: “Knowing the truth about some of the guys around me, the last thing I want to see is them and my family living in the same place without police.”
I reflected that same sentiment, and others like it, in my own response to the #DefundPolice movement that was spawned by the death of George Floyd. It was a post written in the heat of that awful riotous summer of 2020. It was “Don’t Defund Police! Defund Unions that Cover Up Corruption.”
As that post revealed, former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin had multiple excessive force complaints in his personnel file. Thanks to the so-called “Blue Wall” and the misguided advocacy of the local public sector police union, none of the prior complaints ever became public. Had they been known, George Floyd may be alive today and Derek Chauvin may not be facing prison.
Others among my friends have advised me not to overlook the fact that Mr. Floyd was alleged to have committed a crime that day — an attempt to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. Even if true, this is not relevant. Americans do not face death over a fake $20 bill. The George Floyd story unmasked racial prejudice in the way policing is sometimes done on the streets of America. We will be a stronger and better people for the hard soul-searching and policy building needed to address this.
I write all of the above to stress that I am not in any way against police. Like my friend mentioned above, knowing some of the men with whom I now live deepens my appreciation for the many dedicated police officers who serve and protect our communities.
The account I am about to present should not be understood as just another “dirty cop” story. It is better seen as a cautionary tale of public corruption that extends beyond police to infiltrate and compromise many of the once-respected institutions on which our culture is built. The corruption you will read about here is as much that of partisan politics and the news media as it is about police. It is a Boston story. It took place in my own home town.
While the Spotlight Was on Catholic Scandal
This account is unrelated to the sordid stories of Catholic scandal in which we have been immersed for two decades, but it must begin there with a July, 2010 post, “The Exile of Fr. Dominic Menna and Transparency at The Boston Globe.”
I highly recommend that post for the back story of what was happening to many Catholic priests as the age of cancel culture was just taking shape. The story might infuriate you. It should. In 2010, Father Dominic Menna was a much beloved 80-year-old Boston priest who was suddenly accused of molesting a minor 51 years earlier when he was 29 years old in 1959. Like every accused priest since The Scandal first gripped Boston and spread from there across the land, the elderly Father Menna was put out into the street.
You could not tell from reading The Boston Globe accounts of the case that none of this story took place in the present. The Globe had a subtle way of presenting every decades-old claim as though it happened in the here and now. Father Menna just disappeared into the night with no recourse to protect himself or his priesthood. There were no groups forming such as “Stand with Father James Parker” or “Stand with Canceled Priests” when the stench of injustice was in any way related to suspicions of sexual abuse.
Even some Catholic entities have thanked The Boston Globe and its pernicious Spotlight Team for doggedly pursuing the files of priests accused and for publishing every lurid detail, true or not. The Globe helped create a mantra that impacted the civil rights of all priests who, since the Bishops’ Dallas Charter of 2002, have been considered “guilty for being accused.” The trajectory lent itself in 2010 to “The Exile of Fr. Dominic Menna” with few questions asked. The details in that post are staggering for any Catholic who still cares about justice. One of the truths exposed in that post is about all that is left in darkness when a spotlight is used on a topic that requires a floodlight. It is about something that was happening off-the-radar in Boston while The Boston Globe and its Spotlight Team celebrated an Academy Award for Best Picture in the category of Public Service.
If not for the Globe’s hammering away at priests, the people of Boston might have been shocked in the summer of 2020 when Patrick Rose, a Boston police officer and former president of the Boston police union, was charged with 33 counts of molesting children. Bostonians might have been further shocked to learn that the behaviors which led to his arrest extended all the way back to 1995 and were known by officials in the Boston police, their public sector union, and others who helped to keep it all secret.
In 1995, just months after I was on trial in nearby New Hampshire, Patrick Rose was arrested and charged with child sexual abuse. He was placed on administrative leave by the Boston Police Department. The Boston Globe today reports that the charges were dropped in 1996 when the accuser recanted her account under pressure from Rose. Later in 1996, however, a Boston Police Internal Affairs investigation reported that the charge “was sustained” and relayed to supervisors.
Despite this, Patrick Rose remained on the police force. In 1997, an attorney for the police union wrote a letter to the police commissioner complaining that Rose had been kept on administrative duty for two years and demanding his full reinstatement. Rose was then reinstated. Prosecutors today allege that he went on to molest five additional child victims, including some after Rose himself became union president from 2014 to 2017.
White House Labor Secretary Marty Walsh
In the May 14, 2021 print edition of The Wall Street Journal, the Editorial Board published “A Police Union Coverup in Boston.” The WSJ reported that The Boston Globe filed requests for the Internal Affairs file on Patrick Rose. The administration of then Boston Mayor Marty Walsh denied the request citing that the record could not be released in a way that would satisfy privacy concerns.
Imagine the outcry if the late Cardinal Bernard Law said this when The Boston Globe demanded a file on any foreknowledge of sexual abuse by Father Dominic Menna. It turned out in that case that there was no such file because the 80-year-old priest had never previously been accused. The Boston Globe repeatedly dragged the Archdiocese of Boston into court in 2002 to demand public release of scores of files on Catholic priests and never rested until every detail — corroborated or not — ended up in newsprint.
It is hard to imagine today that The Globe would simply settle for the excuse Mayor Marty Walsh provided. It is hard to imagine that the “Blue Wall of Silence” was any real obstacle for The Boston Globe which, perhaps to cover for its own inaction, reported that it was “astonishing [the] lengths to which the [Boston Police] Department and the now departed Walsh administration went to keep those files under wraps.”
The file remained “under wraps” until after Senate confirmation hearings that vetted Mayor Walsh and confirmed him (68 to 29) for a Biden Administration cabinet position as Secretary of Labor in 2021. Walsh signed a contract with the Boston Police Union in 2017 while Patrick Rose was still union president. It remains unclear what Marty Walsh knew and when he knew it.
A Massachusetts state supervisor of public records refuted the Mayor’s reasoning for keeping the file secret. He called upon (then) Mayor Walsh to provide a better reason for denying the Internal Affairs file on Patrick Rose. Walsh ignored this for two months until his mayoral successor, Kim Janey, released a redacted version of the file after the Senate confirmation hearing approved Mr. Walsh as Secretary of Labor. The Wall Street Journal reported:
“Mr. Biden picked Mr. Walsh because he is a union man. He was president of a Laborers’ Union local, as well as head of the Boston Building Trades, until he ran for mayor in 2013. As mayor, he showered unions with taxpayer money, including a contract with Mr. Rose’s police union in 2017 that resulted in a pay increase of 16-percent over four years. City employees in unions donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign. The Rose Coverup is relevant to Mr. Walsh’s duties at the Labor department.”
An Epilogue
Just as I was preparing to print and mail this post, someone sent me the July 2021 copy of Newsmax magazine containing an article by journalist Merisa Herman on this same story entitled, "Police Union Cover-Up Haunts Top Biden Official." [I chose my title long before seeing this]. Ms. Herman concluded:
“Rose had been given a pass from the media for what could be construed as a cover-up ... Someone in Congress might ask Mr. Walsh why Americans should believe he’ll fight union corruption when his city may have helped protect a union chief with a history of alleged predation against children.”
It is difficult to measure this story against what happened in 2010 to 80-year-old Father Dominic Menna whose life and priesthood were utterly obliterated by The Boston Globe spotlight for a half century-old claim that could never be corroborated.
It is difficult to measure this story against what happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis when a history of previous excessive force complaints in a police file were kept under wraps until someone paid with his life.
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Notes from Father Gordon MacRae:
Many thousands of readers have been circulating last week’s post, “Biden and the Bishops: Communion and the Care of a Soul.” Thousands in Washington, Chicago, New York and Boston have read that post. If you wish to send a printed copy to your bishop or anyone else, we have created a five-page pdf version that is printable.
We have also created a pdf with the name and address of every U.S. Catholic Bishop.
Learn more about The Boston Globe’ s Spotlight coverage of the Catholic Church and the Best Picture Academy Award for the film, Spotlight. You may never watch the Oscars again after reading “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film” by a courageous journalist, Joann Wypijewski, former Editor of The Nation. (It also sheds some much needed media light on my own travesty of justice.)
The Exile of Father Dominic Menna and Transparency at The Boston Globe
As Father Dominic Menna, a senior priest at Saint Mary’s in Quincy, MA, was sent into exile, The Boston Globe’s role in the story of Catholic Scandal grew more transparent.
“I’m a true Catholic, and I think what these priests are doing is disgusting!” One day a few weeks ago, that piece of wisdom repeated every thirty minutes or so on New England Cable News, an around-the-clock news channel broadcast from Boston. I wonder how many people the reporter approached in front of Saint Mary’s Church in Quincy, Massachusetts before someone provided just the right sound bite to lead the rabid spectacle that keeps 24-hour news channels afloat.
The priest this hapless “true Catholic” deemed so disgusting is Father F. Dominic Menna, an exemplary priest who has been devoting his senior years in service to the people of God at Saint Mary’s. At the age of 80, Father Menna has been accused of sexual abuse of a minor.
There is indeed something disgusting in this account, but it likely is not Father Menna himself. He has never been accused before. Some of the news stories have not even bothered to mention that the claim just surfacing now for the first time is alleged to have occurred in 1959. No, I did not transpose any numbers. The sole accusation that just destroyed this 80-year-old priest’s good name is that he abused someone fifty-one years ago when he was 29 years old.
Kelly Lynch, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Boston, announced that Father Menna was placed on administrative leave, barred from offering the Sacraments, and ordered to pack up and leave the rectory where he had been spending his senior years in the company of other priests. These steps, we are told, are designed to protect children lest this 80-year-old priest — if indeed guilty — suddenly decides to repeat his misconduct every half century or so.
Ms. Lynch declined to reveal any further details citing, “the privacy of those involved.” That assurance of privacy is for everyone except Father Menna, of course, whose now tainted name was blasted throughout the New England news media last month. Among the details Kelly Lynch declines to reveal is the amount of any settlement demand for the claim.
Some of the fair-minded people who see through stories like this one often compare them with the 1692 Salem witch trials which took place just across Massachusetts Bay from Father Menna’s Quincy parish. The comparison falls short, however. No one in 1692 Salem ever had to defend against a claim of having bewitched a child fifty-one years earlier.
Archdiocesan spokesperson Kelly Lynch cited “the integrity of the investigation” as a reason not to comment further to The Boston Globe. Does some magical means exist in Boston to fairly and definitively investigate a fifty-one year old claim of child abuse? Is there truly some means by which the Archdiocese could deem such a claim credible or not?
Ms. Lynch should have chosen a word other than “integrity” to describe the “investigation” of Father Menna. Integrity is the one thing no one will find anywhere in this account — except perhaps in Father Menna himself if, by some special grace, he has not utterly lost all trust in the people of God he has served for over fifty years.
Transparency at The Boston Globe
The June 3rd edition of The Boston Globe buried a story on page A12 about the results of an eight-year investigation into the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Eight years ago, it was front page news all over the U.S. that the Los Angeles Archdiocese was being investigated for a conspiracy to cover-up sexual abuse claims against priests.
After eight years of investigation at taxpayer expense, California prosecutors reluctantly announced last month that they have found insufficient evidence to support the charges. That news story was so obviously buried in the back pages of The Boston Globe that the agenda could not be more transparent. The story of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is front page news only when it accommodates the newspaper’s editorial bias. That much, at least, is clear.
But all transparency ends right there. The Globe article attributed the lack of evidence of a conspiracy by Catholic bishops to the investigation being “stymied by reluctant victims.” Now, that’s an interesting piece of news!
The obvious question it raises is whether these claimants were reluctant to speak BEFORE obtaining financial settlements in their claims against the Archdiocese. If they are reluctant witnesses now, then, at best, it may be because the true goal of some has long since been realized and there is nothing in it for them to keep talking. At worst, the silence of claimants in the conspiracy investigation could be interpreted as an effort to fend off pointed questions about their claims. Perhaps prosecutors were investigating the wrong people.
I have seen this sort of thing play out before. Last year, a New Hampshire contingency lawyer brought forward his fifth round of mediated settlement demands against the Diocese of Manchester. During that lawyer’s first round of mediated settlements in 2002 — in which 28 priests of the Diocese of Manchester were accused in claims dating from the 1950s to the 1980s — the news media announced a $5.5 million settlement. The claimants’ lawyer was astonished that $5.5 million was handed over with no real effort at proof or corroboration sought by Diocesan representatives before they paid up and deemed the claims “credible.” The lawyer was quoted in the news media:
“During settlement negotiations, diocesan officials did not press for details such as dates and allegations for every claim. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“He and his clients did not encounter resistance from the Diocese of Manchester in their six months of negotiations. Some victims made claims in the last month, and because of the timing of negotiations, gained closure in just a matter of days.”
That lawyer’s contingency fee for the first of many rounds of mediated settlements was estimated to be in excess of $1.8 million. When the mediation concluded, the news media reported that at the attorney’s and his clients’ request, the diocese agreed not to disclose the claimants’ names or any details of their claims or the amounts they received in settlement. “No confidentiality was sought by the Diocese,” the lawyer declared.
In contrast, the names of the accused priests — many of whom were deceased and none of whom faced criminal charges — were repeatedly released and publicized throughout the news media. This process served one purpose: to invite new claimants against those same priests with assurances that their names would remain private and no real corroborating details would ever be elicited. It was clear that non-disclosure clauses were demanded by the contingency lawyer and his clients, though the diocese and its lawyers were eager to oblige as part of the settlement.
It is fascinating that the news media now blames “reluctant victims” for stifling an investigation into cover-ups in the Catholic Church. That is a scandal worthy of the front page, but we won’t ever see it there. If the news media now has concerns about the very people whose cause it championed in 2002, we won’t be reading about it in the news media. Transparency in the news media, after all, is a murky affair.
Transparency and the U.S. Bishops
Writer Ryan A. MacDonald has a number of contributions published on These Stone Walls. His most recent is, “Should the Case Against Father Gordon MacRae Be Reviewed?” I am told that Mr. MacDonald has an essay published in the June/July, 2010 issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review entitled, ”Anti-Catholicism and Sex Abuse.” In the essay, the writer also recommends These Stone Walls to H&PR readers. Though I subscribe to the well respected H&PR, I have not at this writing seen the current issue.
Ryan MacDonald also has a letter published in a recent issue of Our Sunday Visitor (“Raising the Alarm,” June 13, 2010). Ryan makes a point very similar to one I made last month in “As the Year of the Priest Ends, Are Civil Liberties for Priests Intact?” Here is an excerpt from Ryan’s OSV letter:
“A number of courageous bishops have argued in opposition to retroactive application of revised civil statutes of limitations. Such revised statutes typically expose the Catholic Church to special liability while exempting public institutions.
“But I must raise the alarm here. As a body, American bishops lobbied the Holy See for retroactive extension of the time limits of prescription, the period of time in which a delict (a crime) exists and can be prosecuted under Church law …
“… Many accused priests now face the possibility of forced laicization with no opportunity for defense or appeal because our bishops have embraced routine dispensation from the Church’s own statute of limitations. The bishops cannot argue this point from two directions. Some have defended this duplicity citing that the delicts involve criminal and not civil matters. This is so, but these men are also American citizens, and the U.S. Constitution prohibits retroactive application of criminal laws as unconstitutional.
“Statutes of limitations exist in legal systems to promote justice, not hinder it. Our bishops cannot have it both ways on this issue.”
Ryan MacDonald made this point far better than I ever could. The issue for me is not just the obvious double standard applied when the spirit of Church law is set aside. The issue is one of fundamental justice and fairness, and what Cardinal Dulles called “The great scandal of the Church’s failure to support Her priests in their time of need.” Pope John Paul II said that the Church must be a mirror of justice. Let’s hope our bishops can respond to the public scandal of sexual abuse without perpetrating a private scandal of their own.
There are people in groups like S.N.A.P. and Voice of the Faithful who clamor for the Church to ignore the rights of priests in favor of an open embrace of “survivors.” It is always easy to deny someone else’s rights and restrict someone else’s civil liberties, and that, historically, is how witch hunts begin.
