Clerics live it up in Vatican for Law’s 80th

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VATICAN CITY — Cardinal Bernard Law was treated to a lavish birthday spread, the company of a conclave of clerics and even the music of a mariachi band in a four-star Italian hotel, where guests rolled up in Vatican Mercedes sedans and left singing the praises of the fallen prelate promoted to his Holy City post after decades of covering up clergy sex abuse in Boston.

The resplendent reception that marked Law’s 80th birthday sent shock waves an ocean away in Boston, where the mere mention of his name still sparks seething anger in clergy abuse victims whose attackers he protected during his years as archbishop.

“He’s closing in on his remaining years, and as a man of faith I know he believes in a final judgment. I’m curious if he’s getting nervous,” said Phil Saviano, who was abused by a Worcester priest almost five decades ago.
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The Herald revealed yesterday that Boston Archbishop Cardinal Sean O’Malley, in Rome on church business, had snubbed Law’s Vatican birthday shindig.
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Ahimsa said:
The Boston Herald is pretty valid.
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You have developed an annoying habit of imbedding your links in words that do not clearly refer to a source and are inside the quote you are supposed to be sourcing.

How is anyone supposed to guess that the phrase “Cardinal Bernard Law” is really code for a link to the Boston Herald? :mad:
 
where is the link? you only quoted the story, guess you were spending so much time trolling the news for anti-Catholic stories you forgot to provide it

what would your opinion be of a Catholic who visited a Buddhist site for the sole purpose of posting items that attacked that belief system and those who hold it?
 
puzzleannie said:
where is the link?
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Check the first three words of the story, in high-lighted form.
what would your opinion be of a Catholic who visited a Buddhist site for the sole purpose of posting items that attacked that belief system and those who hold it?
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I note that the current archbishop of Boston refused to attend Cardinal Law’s party. Are you implying that the current archbishop is somehow attacking the Church?
 
Maybe they are really excited that he can no longer vote in an enclave if there is one within his lifetime. 🤷😉
 
Ahimsa said:
Check the first three words of the story, in high-lighted form.
I note that the current archbishop of Boston refused to attend Cardinal Law’s party. Are you implying that the current archbishop is somehow attacking the Church?
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the current archbishop did not take the trouble to post this article on a Catholic site. Has he made a statement that implies criticism of the Church? if so I have not seen it.

maybe he wasn’t invited.

how much rowdy partying can an 80 year old do anyhow?
 
Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY Cardinal Law!

He is certainly an imperfect man (as are we all) who will unfortunately be remembered more for his flaws than for his contributions. Since leaving his position in Boston, he spent time in penitential seclusion and then several years in quiet service to the Church.

As he reaches his twilight years, those who work most closely with him chose to celebrate his birthday. Good for them.

As for Archbishop O’Malley, it was poor journalism to call his nonattendance a “snub”. It could have been anything from a scheduling conflict to concern for political fallout (which the BH would surely have savored).
 
puzzleannie said:
the current archbishop did not take the trouble to post this article on a Catholic site. Has he made a statement that implies criticism of the Church? if so I have not seen it.

maybe he wasn’t invited.

how much rowdy partying can an 80 year old do anyhow?
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I, too, would like to see a reputable souce saying O’Malley “refused” to go.

Law was once our bishop here. He was thought very well of by everyone, and had no scandals of any kind under his leadership. He goes to Boston, takes a very prolife stance contrary to the reigning magnates such as the Kennedys, and then up jumps the consequences of decades of “pop-psych” treatment of abusers after decades of the invasion of secular psychological approaches (which proved wrong) into church bureaucracies. Personally, I think Law was sabotaged by those in the bureacracy who just couldn’t stand to hear a bishop take clear stands on personal morality. And so, they got rid of him.

Law’s only fault was in not rooting out all of the “oh, send offenders to counseling” people, who enabled the offenders for decades, along with the supposedly “cured” offenders themselves. But Law was certainly not the first bishop who went along with the psych errors of the time.

It may be noted that two popes have treated him honorably and respectfully. Neither has condemned him in any way. Does anybody really think this “party” could have happened against Pope Benedict’s disapproval?

And, years later, people can’t stand to see him celebrate his 80th birthday. Small.
 
I agree that no grounds were presented in the article which would justify calling Cardinal O’Malley’s decision not to attend the birthday “a snub.” I think it could be more rightly seen as a prudent decision by Cardinal O’Malley, who surely has an eye on the situation back home and how his attendance would be seen.

BTW, and I think this is important, the article mentions that Cardinal Law threw the party for himself. So it can’t be seen as another honor being given to him by the Church.

Edit:

This is from an earlier article, citing Cardinal O’Malley’s decision not to attend
Archdiocese spokesman Terrence Donilon confirmed yesterday that O’Malley is in the Eternal City, but he’s there to tell the pope how the archdiocese is doing — not to light the candles on Law’s cake.
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“We have people over there, but the reason they’re there is to attend the ad lumina” — the archbishop’s regular reports to the pope — Donilon said. Of Law’s party, Donilon added, “He (O’Malley) is not attending it.”
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Asked why O’Malley wouldn’t go, he said the archbishop will be too tied up with church business before he attends an event at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See tonight.
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bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_1104omalley_washes_hands_of_law_fete_victims_irate_over_bernies_80th_birthday_party/

Cardinal O’Malley is accompanied by a secretary and an unknown number of bishops. Presumably they did not attend either.
 
O’Malley’s action and innaction devestated the Archdoicese.

Certainly, he should be remembered for his eggregious faults which greatly outweighed any contributions he made. It is because of his lack of leadership that young children were raped and placed in the cross-hairs of predators.

I do LOVE O’Malley though!
 
ringil said:
O’Malley’s action and innaction devestated the Archdoicese.

Certainly, he should be remembered for his eggregious faults which greatly outweighed any contributions he made. It is because of his lack of leadership that young children were raped and placed in the cross-hairs of predators.

I do LOVE O’Malley though!
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Are you talking about Cardinal O’Malley or Cardinal Law?

Cadinal O’Malley wasn’t involved n the sex abuse cases made in the Boston Archdiocese.
That was Cardinal Law.

Cardinal O’Malley has done much to bring healing to the dioceses.

Jim
 
I have never been able to determine if Law’s cluelessness is just arrogance, or true evil.
 
agnes_therese said:
I have never been able to determine if Law’s cluelessness is just arrogance, or true evil.
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Cardinal Law’s management style was to pass on issues to his staff and never follow up to see if they got the job done.

So, when he heard of abuse cases, he merely passed the buck to his associates. Passing the buck got him in trouble when he wrote a glowing letter to the Bishop of San Bernardino, recommending the pedophile priest, Fr Shanley. Getting rid of the problem by sending it away was his style, rather than fixing it.

The other issue is Cardinal Law lived like a king. He took for his private summer residence, a mansion on Cape Cod which was donated years before by a wealthy family and was used for youth retreats. He also had a plush inner city mansion for his residency.

When Cardinal Sean O’Malley took over, the first thing he did is sell off the mansions, and moved his residency to a rented apartment in South Boston. He also, began the job by riding the “T”(public transportation) to work. However, is popularity ended up becoming a problem for the commuters, so he began driving himself in a modest Ford.

Jim
 
ringil said:
O’Malley’s action and innaction devestated the Archdoicese.

Certainly, he should be remembered for his eggregious faults which greatly outweighed any contributions he made. It is because of his lack of leadership that young children were raped and placed in the cross-hairs of predators.

I do LOVE O’Malley though!
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You do mean Law, I guess.

Well, I guess some think that way. But I have seen enough of how diocesan bureaucracies can harbor dissidents who will hide things from bishops and stab them in the back. Because they are who they are, they always find ready cooperatives in the largely anti-Catholic media.

But the reality is that you have no more idea of what Law did or didn’t do than I know what communications go between the White House and the dissident “Catholic” organizations that support him.

The one thing that seems evident, though, is that he did not immediately challenge the then-current psych notion that pedophiles can be 'cured". The psych world has changed its mind since then about that. In my mind, churchmen should never have bought into what the psych world was telling them about anything. Not then, not now, not tomorrow. But they sure did, and it became “institutionalized” in Boston as elsewhere.

I can’t blame them for wanting to “salvage” priests. But the psych world was telling them they could do the job, which was false.
 
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