Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston attended a funeral of a bishop in Maine on Wednesday as pressure mounted for him to resign.
Several prominent Boston business leaders who initially rallied behind the cardinal have called for him to submit his resignation to the Vatican. Both of Boston’s major newspapers have said he should give up his post, and a group of reform-minded priests has begun meeting to formulate plans for overhauling the diocese once Law departs.
This week’s release of details about a former Boston priest, Paul Shanley, who was transferred to positions in California and New York despite the Boston archdiocese’s knowledge of his abusive past, was finally too much for some of the most faithful, including Mary Denise Dunn, a 65-year-old retired teacher from Chelmsford, Mass.
“Cardinal Law needs to resign now,” Dunn said Wednesday from her home. “At some point someone has to say these are criminal acts, our cardinal tried to protect these priests, and the only way to re-establish trust and fealty in the church is for Law to go.”
Even if Law does not resign, the loss of credibility and political clout that the church has suffered is historic, according to church-watchers like Rev. Richard McBrien, a theologian from the University of Notre Dame.
“Cardinals don’t necessarily have to be loved by the mass of the laity, and they don’t even have to be particularly good, but they can’t afford to lose the support of wealthy Catholics who support their charitable fundraising,” McBrien said.
“The most plausible scenario now is that Rome will follow the old-fashioned rule of finding Law a face-saving position in the Vatican, and that will be his excuse to depart.”
The church’s relationship to Massachusetts’ politics also has been fundamentally changed, with major candidates no longer feeling obligated to pay deference to the church of more than 50 percent of the state’s voters.
On Monday, two Democratic gubernatorial candidates, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich and former state legislator Warren Tolman, urged Law to resign.
As for Dunn, she said that in January she was glad to be organizing a pro-Law letter-writing campaign and “being counted” as loyal to the cardinal.
“Now, I’m standing up as a Catholic laywoman and saying it’s time to be counted for something else,” Dunn said. “Cardinal Law must resign.”
