Opinion: Losing meaning

This is the wrong time for the word of an American Roman Catholic cardinal to lose all its meaning. Yet Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law's credibility has reached the breaking point.

First, claiming his archdiocese didn't have the money, Law backed out of a settlement with 86 people who allege they were sexually abused by a priest. This was an extraordinary legal ploy from a man whose mistakes helped to create the current crisis. Then, in a deposition for a lawsuit brought by the 86 victims, he testified under oath last week that he could not recall conversations and his own notes about the sexual abuse history of one of his priests. His bunker mentality has become symbolic of the worst impulses of the church.

Nothing at this moment is more critical for the church than to be seen as taking every reasonable step to accept responsibility for what happened. The settlement would have shown that the church was determined to act in good faith. Paying the victims a significant sum would be a way to symbolize the severity of the damage. Yet Law said the $15-million to $30-million in settlement costs would have left the church with little or nothing for new claims. He put the onus on the archdiocese's financial council, saying it would not authorize the payment. He fell back on a similar tactic in his deposition, blaming underlings for his transfers of pedophile priests to unsuspecting parishes.

Law said he "prayed" that the victims would be willing to split a pooled compensation fund. Pitting victims against each other may be an effective way to turn attention to money instead of the church hierarchy's own culpability. Law misses the point: The church's history of manipulating power in the relationship between priests and parishioners has prompted this call by Catholics for change. It also explains why so many Boston-area Catholics want the cardinal removed.

America's Catholic bishops, who meet in Dallas next month, need to devise a way to draw the spotlight away from Law, and to put forward a new perspective that better serves the public and the church. Even if Pope John Paul II removes Law, many older and more conservative clerics in the hierarchy share the cardinal's views. U.S. bishops need to move forward with a single voice, one free of equivocation over the church's handling of illegal behavior within its ranks.

Catholics also need a better idea of how much the abuse cases are likely to cost and how the church plans to pay for damages. The U.S. cardinals, meeting in Rome last month, were divided on this point, but the bishops should have seen from the fallout in recent weeks the need to open the decisionmaking process. This is not, as Law would have the public believe, an issue first and foremost about authority or money. Americans want church leaders to atone for their mistakes, and that can't begin if the people at the top are so out of touch.

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