By Norman E. Anderson
One theory of moral evil, the one perhaps most associated with the neo-orthodox theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is that it stems from human selfishness. Yet that theory doesn't quite explain the problem of the good man, Cardinal Law, Archbishop of Boston, who resigned just this morning due to his mishandling of multiple cases of priestly sexual abuse of minors within his archdiocese. There's another theory, one that sees moral evil as stemming from idolatry, which, it seems to me, is a better model for an analysis of this particular case.
How so? After all, how ridiculous it sounds to charge a faithful Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church with idolatry. Generally true, but not if the object of his idolatry is the Church itself as an institution; and that is the case here.1
The problem is that Cardinal Law placed the reputation and institutional processes of the Church ahead of its mission, which is to cultivate, in the world, faith expressed in goodness. To his institutionalism, Cardinal Law sacrificed countless minors, who might otherwise have been left unmolested. To his institutionalism, Cardinal Law sacrificed candidness in his dealings with people who wanted to trust him. To his institutionalism, Cardinal Law sacrificed the best instincts of some of the people around him, who would have prevented him from taking every possible wrong turn in the handling of the crisis. To his institutionalism, Cardinal Law eventually sacrificed even his own position as Archbishop of Boston. Few idolaters with graven images ever sacrificed so much to a false god.
Cardinal Law is hardly alone in this failing. It is shared by many, not just Catholics and not just religionists. Religious administrators are particularly prone to it, for they feel a duty to whatever institution they serve and they often see the mission, which they consider vital to the world, as being dependent upon that institution, rather than vice versa. However, it is this very reversal of dependencies that robs a religious institution of its spiritual nature and turns it into a merely material entity. Thus what is advanced is not the love of Christ, but something more akin to Cthulhu, the horrific god imagined by H. P. Lovecraft, the New England author of numerous horror stories.
What happens is this: Faults, major and minor, of all the players in a scenario interact and gel and become an intangible juggernaut with a life of its own that is much bigger than any one of the players. The air becomes a palpably thick, cloyingly oppressive pall. This juggernaut tramples and destroys lives and careers. The good, the innocent, the competent, the thoughtfully minded, and even the doctrinally faithful are all especially susceptible to falling victim to it. When such people or their careers are being wounded and destroyed, especially in a religious context, that is frequently a sign that such a juggernaut is present.
Sometimes I have wondered whether the Boston area has had, over the last few decades, a particular set of cultural dynamics that tends to give rise to such scenarios; for I have witnessed such scenarios here, close up, in some of the institutions and churches of one religious denomination after another. Faults coalesce and, for the sake of the institution, good people are turned into mere detritus. Often they are first made into false images of the faithful entities they are. (Idolatry breeds the misrepresentation of spiritual beings, including human beings.) Time and again Cthulhu, rather than Christ, comes into ascendancy. Often the constituents of these institutions are left unaware; for, after all, "reputation first!" And blowing the whistle is unthinkable, because the truth is too fantastic for anybody on the outside to believe, besides which doing so is greeted by many as a betrayal of the mission or as bad form.
Cardinal Law is a victim of his own faults, of the recent and current faults of the institution he serves, and of a juggernaut with a life of its own. I have never been convinced that he understood what was going on. He never did "get" the original problem. He never "got," at least until shortly before his resignation, that the way he was handling that problem was actually exacerbating it.
Last April, Cardinal Law reportedly tendered his resignation to Pope John Paul II, and his resignation was refused. This time around it was accepted. It looks to me like the motivation for his resignation was totally consistent with his motivation throughout the crisis, namely, to protect the Church as an institution. His continuation as Archbishop had become not only an impediment but an irreversibly destructive factor within his diocese and even outwards within the Church at large. It was destructive both institutionally and spiritually. Therefore the spiritual marriage of bishop and diocese had to be severed.
Cardinal Law's resignation does not end the crisis; and I expect that voices for reform will grow only louder within the Church, here in the Boston area, nationwide, and maybe even worldwide. I am doubtful that a reform movement can generate enough pressure to dig out the roots of the problem. The Church hierarchy is carefully maneuvering to prevent that; there are simply too many places for the disaffected to go; and the Church changes slowly, on a scale of centuries. However, there have been minor adjustments, and there might be more to come.
Last April I wrote that Cardinal Law "should be tarred and feathered and driven out of the archdiocese on an oxcart, symbolically I mean. Then, yes, he should resign, in sackcloth and ashes. His offense was egregious." I felt uncomfortable with such strong language, but I resisted changing it, because I believed it to be on the mark. Today, I do not rejoice that Cardinal Law has resigned. Instead, even as a non-Catholic, I feel deep sadness. This story has been a tragedy from its beginning right up to the present moment. I hate to see a good man go down this way. His tragic flaw was an excessive zeal for the Church as an institution, even at the expense of its mission; and that is a form of idolatry which he shares with many other religionists, including many of his co-religionists still powerfully present in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
Written Friday, December 13, 2002; posted, December 13, 2002; new url, January 29, 2004; last modified, January 29, 2004, by NEA
Copyright ©2002-2004 by Norman Elliott Anderson
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