Cardinal Law, Law And Morality

 

Cardinal Law

I first learned about Cardinal Law some years ago in a news report. A seven year old stood by a busy road or a highway crying. A woman stopped to pick him up. He had jumped at a traffic light or some other type of stop (such as brought by a stop sign) out of the man’s car.

He, then got into her car and went to her home so that she could call his parents and the Catholic church of which both the child and she were members.

Apparently he had been sodomized by a priest, whose car he had left, and perhaps many times. So the woman called to the office of Cardinal Law in Boston, MA and was put on hold. Her action led nowhere.

She tried again and again to call and was either put on hold for an indefinitely long amount of time or the phone just hung up when she called.

The problem of sexual abuse by priests was widely spread across Massachusetts:

Boston Globe / Spotlight / Abuse in the Catholic Church …

archive.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories5/030104_panel.htm

The Boston Archdiocese on Friday reported 162, or 7 percent, of archdiocesan priests have been accused of abusing 815 minors since 1950. An additional … Jim Markee, a 54-yearold fund-raising consultant from the South End, said he was glad to see the march and hoped some bishops would wind up in prison. “It’s time …

Here’s the shocker herein for this situation. Cardinal Law, supposedly the standard for the best that the Catholic church can deliver, knew about the abuse:

Church allowed abuse by priest for years – The Boston Globe

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/special-reports/…abuse-priest…years/…/story.html

Jan 6, 2002 – One was just 4 years old. Then came last July’s disclosure that Cardinal Bernard F. Law knew about Geoghan’s problems in 1984, Law’s first year in Boston, yet approved his transfer to St. Julia’s parish in Weston. Wilson D. Rogers Jr., the cardinal’s attorney, defended the move last summer, saying the …

Yesterday I watched a woman crying on a news program on my television about the way that she was abused by aged four to seven by a priest from Asia. The response from Cardinal Law was to remove him back to Asia from where he originated.

The man was not defrocked and continued in the priesthood to commit similar crimes back in his homeland, presumably. Indeed in the letter sent by Law to his Asian counterpart, he said that he wanted to AVOID a problem so was sending him back home. He made no mention of the abuse.

The crying woman said that she was treated like trash by Law. She received no help, no sympathy, no mention by Law. So now that he just died, she hopes that he rots in hell since she has endured a lifetime of mental health problems from not being sufficiently helped by the church.

She is, therefore, astounded that the Pope in Rome is giving him a memorial mass. (Cardinal Law just died.)

The current Cardinal in Boston discussed the abuse, but went onward to state that Law was wonderful in helping the sick and dying. Law was supposedly available night and day in that sort of service.

This statement sat poorly with one of the abuse victims, who had been abused by a pedophile priest, who was removed from one parish to another by Law after his abuse was discovered in the first parish. (It was in the second one that the victim was sexually assaulted and some victims of such assaults have committed suicide due to trauma.)

This particular victim derisively said on the TV news program  that you would not have a kindly memorial mass for Hitler and mention that he was great at painting pictures. So stop sugar-coating the truth, the speaker implied. Start seeing Law as he was!

I agree with the outlook. … The fact is, in my view, that certain actions are not, definitely not, forgivable. Can we forgive people like Mengele, Hitler, Vlad the Impaler, Charlie Manson and others of their ilk for the severe wrongs that they did and would carry out again if given a chance?

I think that people who act extremely atrociously need to be given a decent burial, but please let us not give them any accolades or praise. What they did is just too awful. … (Vlad even put babies on stakes and, thus, got a very obedient public under his reign.)

I have lived my life in largely being tolerant, accepting and loving. Yet there comes the time when you have had just too much abuse.

I know all about the topic, you see. So I perfectly understand these people brave enough to talk on TV about their travails since I have had my own sorts as is seen at The Bad Brother!, Growing Up With A Monster In Your Life!  and The Gruesome Brother!.

If it is a human failing to not be all loving and all forgiving — fine. I like my place in the mix since it shows moral discernment. And it is certainly not about protecting myself in the process since I am quite willing to give up my life, as is exposed herein at Pacifism (???), if I can in any way prevent monsters from the harms that Law and others have brought into being.

I am absolutely adamant on this issue and my related stance. I will always stand emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, physically and else wise opposed to the depraved. Try as I might, I simply cannot love them, nor see their overall value in life that somehow is supposed to supersede their horrid behaviors.

Sally Dugman is a writer from MA, USA.

 

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