Above the Law

I was raised in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, and still consider myself 'culturally Catholic' to a large degree... though that has as much of a (multi)ethnic rationale as a religious-tradition based one. I was never molested by a clergy member, and do not personally know anyone who was, though when I was in high school, a priest who turned out to have fondled a couple of teen boys landed in our local parish (and was hustled out when a congregant who worked for the archdiocese asked questions about why he had been in so many parishes in such a short time).

After that preamble, I now note that Cardinal Bernard Law, the archbishop of the Boston archdiocese who presided over the worst of the sexual abuse coverup in the US, has died at the age of eighty-six. He died in a hospital in Rome, having avoided any penalties for his malfeasance. I have to say that my drift away from Mother Church was largely a result of this horrendous scandal, and the fact that I had seen the families of LGBTQ friends torn apart by doctrine-based bigotry.

Sexual abuse of minors is, of course, not limited to the Roman Catholic Church- all religions have had their sex scandals, typically among the fundamentalist sects- the Protestant Bible-beaters, the ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Wahabist Muslims. In the secular world, we've just witnessed a scandal which tore apart US gymnastics. In the case of Cardinal Law, the sin was compounded by protecting the abusers, allowing them to continue their depredations. It was an utter failure to protect the most vulnerable of his flock.

It's fitting that Law, who evaded the law, died in the midst of a societal shift on sexual misconduct. Gone are the days when powerful men could victimize women, children, and yes, even other men, while able to rely on a conspiracy of silence. Law is gone, let's hope that the toxic culture that he fostered will follow him into oblivion.