Ethics Newsline®

“He never lost power, even though he stepped down from Boston. In any other corporation if you lost your rank and left, you’d lose your power and you’d be stripped of your title. (But) here he is in Rome, still as powerful as he was before.”

– Bernie McDaid, an alleged victim of sexual abuse by a Catholic church official, criticizing the Vatican’s decision to let former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law play a prominent role in presiding over a funeral mass for Pope John Paul II. Law, the former archbishop in Boston, was forced to resign in disgrace after it was discovered that he had transferred and provided job endorsements for priests accused of sexually abusing children. (“Cardinal Law, Ousted in U.S. Scandal, Is Given a Role in Rites,” New York Times, Apr.

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“It would be a natural selection. The choice was certainly not made for any reason except to honor St. Mary Major…. We look at the light rather than the darkness.”

– Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, defending Law’s role as natural given his awarded position as head of Rome’s St. Mary Major Basilica, one of four basilicas under direct Vatican jurisdiction (“Vatican Gives Cardinal Law Role of Honor,” AP, Apr. 7)