Good and Dead: Former Archbishop of Boston, child torturing Antichrist, and Harvard grad

The obituary page of The Massachusetts Spy

By Luke Reschuss with
Gina Romantica in Rome

We almost buried the news of the too-long-delayed death of the evil Bernard Cardinal Law, dark Prince of the Roman Catholic Church, but as the work of undoing the evil that he perpetrated on innocent children for 25 years remains in progress, we thought we'd give him the sendoff he deserves on his way to someplace even hotter than Rome in August.

Cardinal Law and his flock

Speaking of Hell and Rome, we were as appalled as, though of course less personally injured than, any of Bernie's no longer young victims by the splendid funeral the dead felon got in St. Peter's Basilica, attended by an eminence no less exalted than Pope Francis himself.  We'll let The Boston Globe (which seems to have a little problem of its own these days with a coverup of misconduct somewhat less grave than the Archdiocese's) explain the final insult to the victims of child rape thusly:

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis prayed Thursday for a merciful final judgment for Cardinal Bernard Law, symbol of the Catholic Church’s failure to protect children from pedophile priests and its arrogance in safeguarding its own reputation at all costs.

In a final blessing at Law’s funeral Mass, Francis blessed his coffin with incense and holy water at the foot of the back altar of St. Peter’s Basilica and recited the ritual prayer commending him to God.

‘‘May he be given a merciful judgment so that redeemed from death, freed from punishment, reconciled to the Father, carried in the arms of the Good Shepherd, he may deserve to enter fully into everlasting happiness in the company of the eternal King together with all the saints.’’

The dean of the college of cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, celebrated the funeral Mass, along with some 30 other cardinals, and eulogized Law without making any mention of the scandal. Following the typical protocol, Francis arrived at the end of the service to deliver the final prayer.

US Ambassador-designate Callista Gingrich and her husband, Newt, as well as some other members of the diplomatic corps were on hand in the pews, . . .

Turnout was otherwise limited, with the basilica ushers stacking extra rows of empty seats before the Mass began.

Frankly we're surprised more didn't show up to stick pins in the stiff to make sure he wasn't faking, although the attendance of Callista the Sword-Swallowing Ambassador and her adulterous liege added one more sparkling jewel of hypocrisy to the already glittering tiara.

Speaking of merciful judgment, how much mercy was shown to the scores of children whose lives were destroyed by Cardinal Law's betrayal of every moral basis of every religion ever?  We'll let the Globe's Kevin Cullen sum up the quality of Cardinal Law's mercy:

But, please, in the name of everything we hold sacred, let’s not disabuse ourselves of the abuse he enabled. Bernie Law presided over one of the worst networks of sexual abusers ever assembled. Thousands of children were raped and molested on his watch. Some of them killed themselves. Some were dead, in their souls, from the moment they were inappropriately touched by a priest. He sent the priests who raped and molested on to other parishes to do more of what they did, rather than call scandal to his church. . . .

He forsook his position as a bishop, protecting his flock. Instead, he protected the institution and the men who used Roman collars as bait to abuse young people. He moved them to other parishes and places where they could rape again.

That is his legacy. That is what should be carved on his gravestone. It is the hard and horrible and inescapable truth.

And if the Catholic Church doesn’t have the truth, what does it have?

 
Now maybe it's the doctrine of the Catholic Church to forgive such evil.  In the shul we go to though we're told that for the sins that man commits against man (or child), God doesn't forgive.

And neither do Cardinal Law's legion of victims:

Another survivor, Alexa MacPherson of Holbrook, had a different reaction to Law’s death.

Now he resides in an exclusive
gated community

“I hope the gates of Hell are swinging wide open to welcome him,” said MacPherson, 42, who grew up in Dorchester.

So what is Cardinal Law's infernal legacy?  He escaped Boston one step ahead of the grand jury and retired to a lifetime of ease at a sinecure in Rome.  His church, having grudgingly coughed up a few more raping priests and their enabling bishops, has recently decided that it had suffered enough and let its Commission on Priestly Sex Abuse waft off into limbo, accordingly to the notoriously anti-clerical National Catholic Reporter.

We also remember that for years the Church's clever Boston lawyers frustrated the claims of of priestly molestation victims for compensation as substantial as their injuries by citing the Massachusetts law limiting the civil liabilities of charities, of which the Archdiocese of Boston was unarguably one, to $20,000.

In response, efforts were made to persuade the Great and General Court to amend Massachusetts law to exempt claims for injuries due to sexual abuse from that paltry limit.  You'll never guess what happened:

James F. Driscoll, executive director of the Catholic Conference, said in May 2012 that the measure would “have an immediate and harmful impact on the ability of all nonprofits, not just the Catholic Church, to serve thousands of people who rely on these organizations.’’

So the Archdiocese is good about the forgiving, but as for promising to compensate any future victims fairly, it's more like can't we just all get along?  The good news is that in his new home Cardinal Law should have no trouble getting along with his new colleagues.  After all, they're just like him.  And after all those summers in Rome, he's used to the heat.

As for the rest of us, it's much too soon to forgive an institution that still labors mightily to deny justice to children victimized by sexual predators in clerical collars.

Merry Christmas.