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  Zealots Mask Real Struggles

By Eileen McNamara
Boston Globe [Boston MA]
December 11, 2005

The demonstrators outside a Catholic Charities fund-raiser honoring Mayor Thomas M. Menino the other night are not leaders of some right-wing ascendancy among the laity in the Boston Archdiocese.

They are a tiny band of antiabortion zealots, being exploited by the hierarchy in hopes of promoting a backlash against reformers outraged by the criminal conduct of predatory priests and the bishops who protected them.

These folks do not just miss the Latin Mass; they miss Cardinal Bernard Law.

Who exactly organized that hardy handful of protesters out there in the snow holding signs denouncing abortion and gay rights? They claim to be apolitical, mainstream, traditional Catholics. Judge for yourself.

There's Bill Cotter, pining for the good old days when Law would allow Operation Rescue to use Catholic churches as staging areas for illegal blockades of abortion clinics. Cotter was sentenced to two years in the Worcester House of Correction in 1991 for violating a court order prohibiting those blockades. He would have gotten a lighter sentence, but he refused to promise the judge that he would not ignore the same injunction when he got out.

There's C.J. Doyle, the excitable executive director of Catholic Action League, who has been churning out dyspeptic press releases for more than a decade accusing anyone who questions the church of being an anti-Catholic bigot.

There's Carol McKinley of Pembroke, who says she is an "authentic" Catholic who just "speaks as a mom defending the faith." This is what Mom has to say on her website, Magisterial Fidelity, about Governor Mitt Romney's view that all hospitals are required to obey a new state law mandating that emergency contraception be offered to rape victims: "Romney Now Says Catholic Hospitals Must Be Forced To Kill Children."

This is what she has to say about the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, the president of Catholic Charities who refused to capitulate to demands from McKinley and her pals that Menino's honor be rescinded because the mayor supports a woman's constitutional right to abortion and a gay couple's civil right to marry: "That man is pure unadulterated evil. He literally sends shivers up my spine. . . If he and his cronies think we're going to tolerate he and the Archbishop's material cooperation in abortions -- we'll chase them out of town faster than you can say Voice of the Faithful."

Ah, Voice of the Faithful, those godless lay Catholics who organized in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal to support good priests, to reach out to victims, and to challenge an authoritarian clerical culture that for decades tolerated the rape of children; that crowd really sends a shiver up McKinley's spine, with what she and her band of religious purists suspect is a clandestine agenda to foist a married priesthood, female ordination, and a host of other liberal causes on "authentic" Catholics.

McKinley, by contrast, is motivated not by political power but by religious purity. This is what the humble penitent has to say about Hehir and the sellout crowd at the Catholic Charities dinner that raised $200,000 for the poor: "The Archbishop wants a red hat and it's clearer than ever that we have pull in Rome. We can make them or we can break them."

Carol McKinley could teach Karl Rove a thing or two.

This is an important moment in the Catholic Church in Boston. But the struggle for the soul of the church is not being waged at the fringes. Sincere people in the pews are struggling with how best to rebuild the trust that was shattered by revelations of official complicity in the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

A few fanatics railing against "proaborts" and gay adoptions are not going to heal that rift. Sadly, Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley and Bishop Richard G. Lennon are willing to exploit them as long as their antics distract attention from the real challenges confronting the church.