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  Keep Pols out of Church's Crisis

By David A. Mittell Jr.
Providence Journal [Boston MA]
August 18, 2005

STATE SEN. Marian Walsh (D.-Dedham) has filed legislation requiring churches in Massachusetts to submit annual reports to the state detailing their collections, expenditures, funds on hand, investments, real-estate holdings, etc.

The proposed law would apply to all religions, and their churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, tents or storefronts. But the clear impetus for the bill was two cataclysmic events in the Roman Catholic Church: the long-running sexual-abuse scandal and the closure of many venerable parishes in the Boston Archdiocese.

Senator Walsh is herself a devout pro-life Catholic (although she favors same-sex marriage). As one of the faithful, she has been outraged by the betrayal of trust by the leadership of the church under Boston's former archbishop Bernard Cardinal Law. While expressing pious shock at learning about the sexual abuse of children by priests, the cardinal spent nearly 20 years dealing with such priests by shuffling them from parish to parish.

Senator Walsh may also be indignant that a parish in her district -- St. Susanna's, in Dedham -- was among those designated to close. St. Susanna's is of relatively recent vintage, having opened in 1961. It sits on prime real estate, near the Great Plain Avenue exit of Route 128. It is well subscribed and its finances are said to be sound. The archdiocese denies it, but the suspicion among parishioners is that the real reason the parish was to be erased is the value of its land. (Belatedly, the Church gave St. Susanna's a three-year rerprieve before deciding its final fate.)

With these cataclysms, Catholics, as well as the public at large, want to know what really goes on behind closed doors in the church's councils. Cardinal Law, who is undoubtedly going to go to his grave as the most hated man in Boston, could not be trusted to do the right thing about sexual abuse. With many Catholics' trust broken down over that, and with hearts heavy among those who are losing their parishes, there is general skepticism about what the new archbishop, John O'Malley, has had to say to justify the closings. Hence the call, led by Senator Walsh, that "there oughta be a law."

This is an understandable reaction by a capable legislator of demonstrable integrity, but opening the finances of religious organizations to governmental oversight is a poor idea.

Political history is replete with examples of legislative "cures," hastily passed in the aftermath of scandal, that turned out to be worse than the "diseases." As recently as 2002, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, in the wake of sensational accounting fraud by a handful of major public corporations (the Texas energy conglomerate Enron being the most notorious). According to the president of the American Stock Exchange, in the three years the law has been in effect, Sarbanes-Oxley's reporting mandates have wiped out the profitability, and the new hiring, of many small publicly traded companies.

There are many other examples. "Reform" of the CIA and the FBI in the 1970s, after shocking discoveries about their activities in the 1950s and '60s, may have led directly to their failure to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The troubles of the Boston Archdiocese are, of course, unrelated to these examples, except in one regard: The scandal in the church was real and the outrage is justified, and therefore there is a danger of acting intemperately and unwisely.

There was a time in Massachusetts when no politician would dare to challenge the Catholic Church -- when (in 1937) a word to the Catholic Alumni Ass. from William Cardinal O'Connell could bring the legendary Boston Mayor James Michael Curley one of his defeats, or when, in 1948, a mere rumor that Gov. Robert Bradford intended to approve the sale of birth-control products led to his defeat for a second term, despite his vigorous protests that it wasn't so. Today, the church is at a low point in its 175-year history in Boston, and is an easy target for the false bravery of its critics -- many of whom were mute when the sexual-abuse scandal first broke.

A church is not a public charity of the kind that the Commonwealth justifiably regulates as a tax-exempt entity. A church is also tax-exempt, and is of course subject to state law, but according to the constitutional doctrine of the separation of church and state, churches cannot and must not be regulated by the state. Senator Walsh's bill may only mandate public disclosure of churches' finances, but even that implies that the state is getting into the business of reforming the Catholic Church -- as well, hereafter, as every synagogue, storefront church, and tent revival.

It seems obvious to me that change in the Boston Archdiocese, as in any religious institution, must come only from within itself. It can never come from politicians or bureaucrats, who, as they have so often demonstrated, are subject to every sin of excess themselves.

David A. Mittell Jr. is a member of The Journal's editorial board.