As Pope John Paul II accepts the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, Conor O'Clery, North America Editor, reports from Boston on the clerical revolution which has led to this week's extraordinary events in the Catholic Church
Sharon looks like any typical New England town. It nestles in rolling wooded hills south of Boston. It has a co-operative bank, a coffee shop and a cluster of church spires situated around a crossroads. But in many ways it is untypical. It has seven Christian churches, but it also has seven synagogues - as most of the 16,000 population is Jewish - and a mosque for recent immigrants.
The small Catholic Church, Our Lady of Sorrows, is set in a forest clearing on Cottage Street. It is a white clapboard building with no altar and just two dozen wooden benches. Inside the porch there is a book for parishioners' comments.
Some are routine complaints, such as, "The church is too cold for prayer, I had to leave". But others reflect more troubling questions. For example, a teenager wrote, "Me and my Christian friends take sex harassment extremely seriously. We get really nervous around strange adults". Near it is an entry saying, "Pray for the courage of the Rev Bullock".
Father Robert Bullock is the parish priest of Our Lady of Sorrows. This is something else which makes the little dormitory town unique. The 72-year-old pastor, a tall, white-haired man with a craggy face and a friendly smile, is the leader of a clerical revolution that has shaken the archdiocese of Boston, and Catholic Church, to its foundations.
Anger against the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, for his handling of clerical abuse cases, had been simmering in Boston for years. It exploded into fury in January when people learned - thanks to the Boston Globe newspaper - that bishops in the Boston Archdiocese had not only been aware of widespread sexual abuse of children, but had gone to enormous lengths to cover it up and had secretly settled sexual abuse claims against at least 70 priests.
There was particular horror at the revelations that a serial paedophile priest, John Geoghan, who had raped numerous boys, was shuttled from parish to parish to avoid scandal. In 1984, Cardinal Law had made him parochial vicar in an affluent parish, despite being notified shortly beforehand that Geoghan had allegedly molested seven boys.
Last April, an archive released by the archdiocese under court order showed that Cardinal Law and other bishops knew about allegations of abuse by another pederast, Father Paul Shanley, who openly advocated sex between men and boys.
He had nevertheless been transferred to California with a glowing testimonial from the archdiocese. Father Shanley's abuse went back 30 years but, instead of handing the priest over to police, church officials ignored, protected or promoted him.
In the snow-clad parochial house across the road from his church, Father Bullock described how he got involved in a rebellion by priests against their cardinal in what he considers "the biggest crisis the Catholic Church in America has ever known".
After the Father Shanley file was made public, Father Bullock decided to telephone every priest he knew and to get hundreds to a meeting of the Priests' Forum, a new informal group of priests concerned about finding a way out of the crisis. In a diocese where any sign of dissent could mean dismissal, setting up such an unapproved organisation was tantamount to mutiny. But the decline of deference to the hierarchy had set in at every level in Boston, where more than two million of the 3.8 million population are Catholics, many in high positions in the police, the courts and business.
As the cardinal's moral authority waned, the priests became emboldened.
They had much to gain by distancing themselves from the hierarchy and the abuser priests. Congregations had dwindled by 10 to 20 per cent and collections had dropped off. Parishes were going broke. Most priests had shed their collars in public to escape public insult.
"Priests were suffering skyrocketing stress and plummeting prestige," said Father Bullock, a former Catholic chaplain at Brandeis University and a well-known advocate of racial and religious tolerance. He personally did not fear the wrath of the archbishop's palace. The pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows joked at the time: "At 72, my upward mobility is not in jeopardy".
"Everybody was angry, disgusted, horrified," he told The Irish Times. "We couldn't expect the rebuilding of trust and confidence to come from the top. We had to take the initiative, parishioners and priests, to get a pastoral plan. We had to analyse the crisis, to establish the structural and systemic reasons.
"We had to examine the culture of clericalism, our secrecy, lack of accountability. We needed deeper levels of accountability." Then, as he put it, the "cap blew off" in the last two weeks with new revelations from diocesan files showing that Cardinal Law was more closely involved in dealing with (and sometimes consoling) sexually abusive priests than he had previously asserted. New and more ghastly cases of abuse came to light. One priest had traded cocaine for sex with boys, another had viciously beaten his housekeeper, a third had enticed teenage noviates to play sex games.
On top of that, the cardinal gave approval to the idea of filing for bankruptcy to cope with 450 compensation claims against the archdiocese.
"The prospect of bankruptcy is horrendous to us," said Father Bullock. "There may be valid legal and financial reasons, but it is unbearable. The church can't be likened to a corporate entity. It will be like a virus that spreads, a stigma, a sign of shame, a cause of ridicule."
The beginning of the end for the cardinal's authority over his priests came when Father Walter Cuenin, pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians Church in the Boston suburb of Newton, and a severe critic of Cardinal Law, organised a meeting of priests at his church to discuss the effects of the scandal on a diocesan fund-raising campaign. The archdiocese immediately sent an e-mail banning the meeting. It was ignored. The meeting went ahead. The 850-strong congregation applauded Father Cuenin when he appeared at Mass on Sunday, and parishioners embraced him when he appeared on the church steps in his purple vestments of Advent.
The 42 parish priests at the meeting entered uncharted waters when they finished their business and began to talk about the cardinal and his possible resignation, said Father Bullock. "The momentum built to the point where a call for the cardinal to resign was written." It was circulated by e-mail. By Monday it had 58 signatures and was handed in to the cardinal's residence.
The priests' statement said, "the events of recent months and, in particular, of these last few days, make it clear to us that your position as our bishop is so compromised that it is no longer possible for you to exercise the spiritual leadership required for the church of Boston". The revelations of the last few days "challenge the credibility of your public statements. The people of this archdiocese are angry, hurt and in need of authentic spiritual leadership. We believe that despite your good work in the past you are no longer able to provide that leadership".
Father Bullock missed the meeting, but signed the statement. "It was done with great deliberation and reluctance," he said "I don't know any bishop who is harder working, more skilled, more charismatic than Cardinal Law. Most priests have a story about him. If they were sick or hospitalised, or if there was a death in the family, he would visit them. He once came to see me in hospital at 10 in the evening at the end of a long day. He has got to be treated with enormous compassion. He is a tragic figure."
The effect of the letter was electrifying. Stephen Pope, chair of the Theology Department at Boston College, called it unprecedented. "The bishops are highly monarchical," he said in his office at the college, the biggest Catholic university in New England. "The only alternatives are obedience or revolt." For every priest who signed, he reckons three or four more agreed.
They are in crisis themselves. "Already there is a severe shortage of priests. There is deep demoralisation in the seminaries. Priests were very respected, now they are mistrusted in the abstract. Parents are not eager to have children in church grounds. The teaching of religion by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine is down by a third. Older people are the angriest. They had the highest view of priests and they feel the most upset and betrayed," said Pope.
Not everyone among the 600 active priests in the Boston archdiocese is in sympathy with the Priests' Forum. Some think the real agenda of the cardinal's critics is to humiliate the Catholic Church.
In the sparsely-furnished vestry behind the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, the parochial vicar, Father Robert Carr, spoke of being under siege by negative forces. Since January, there have been pickets every Sunday outside the cathedral
"We call it the gauntlet," he said, before robing for morning Mass. "They are just attacking, they are not offering a solution. What bothers me is that parishioners have to walk through the pickets." He claimed demonstrators had shouted at Mass-goers, "Don't go in there, it's dangerous for kids" and that elderly parishioners had suffered anxiety attacks.
Father Carr was becoming increasingly isolated in his support of Cardinal Law. He is not saying Cardinal Law is "right or wrong" he said, but he thinks that, following the resignation of the cardinal, lay groups such as the Voice of the Faithful will "make a power play to take over our church".
Voice of the Faithful is a Boston-based group seeking change in the church in the light of the sexual abuse scandal. Father Carr, who refers to its members scathingly as "all upper middle class white people", said they really want political changes, such as the ordination of women and women in the priesthood.
"They are trying to change the faith," he said. "I see a whole element trying to shut down the church. Is this an attempt to silence the Catholic Church in the United States? If so, this is not good for America." Father Carr, who accuses Voice of the Faithful of exploiting victims of abuse to change the Catholic faith, and lawyers of turning their plight "into a multi-million dollar industry at their expense", is also scornful of other denominations that offered premises to Voice of the Faithful and rebellious Catholic priests when they had been banned from using Catholic Church property. A United Church of Christ minister in Newton had offered Father Cuenin his hall last week after hearing a radio report of the cardinal's ban.
"Vultures," Father Carr called them. Their actions, he said, amounted to subtle proselytisation. He said the Unitarian Church and the United Church of Christ in particular had an agenda not unconnected with the "very intense history of deep anti-Catholicism" in America.
Members of the Voice of the Faithful have few qualms about where they meet. Its headquarters is at the top of a narrow flight of stairs in a small office block at the end of an elegant suburban avenue in Newton. The group was formed in January when hundreds of mainstream Catholics sought a forum for their anger. It aimed to support those who had been abused, and priests of integrity, and to shape structural change within the church. Under the motto, "Keep the faith, change the church," it attracted hundreds of active parishioners, the type who read the lesson, taught religion classes and sang in the choir. It now claims 25,000 practising Catholics as members across the US and abroad.
"They are not a schismatic movement, they want to help the church, but the bishops feel threatened when lay people try to use their intelligence," said Pope.
Father Bullock's parishioners formed an affiliate of Voice of the Faithful. That they would want to discuss married priests and ordination of women bothers him not at all, he said. Most priests would be in favour of optional celibacy and discussion inside the church about ordination of women. "This is not a crisis of theology. I don't find parishioners to be political or radical at all. There is no confusion about their Catholicity."
"The days of 'Pray, pay and obey are over'," said Voice of the Faithful interim executive director Steve Krueger, over coffee in his Newton office. "The hierarchy will have to deal with us. It is not their church. It is our church. We will continue to shine a light on the bishops' secrecy and hypocrisy in a very public manner. People in the organisation are accountable to God, and our conscience has taken precedence over our accountability to bishops who fail to acknowledge the cause of the problem.
"We need Catholics to confront their own baptismal responsibilities. We feel as if we have been called as modern-day disciples. Our archbishop has lost his moral voice." The organisation has been banned from using church property in eight US diocese and 40 to 50 parishes, he revealed. "This is a subtle form of excommunication. We feel angry and confused. We are angry because we are asked to come to church on Sunday and support it, but when we come back on Monday we are told to go away."
He did not feel anti-Catholicism played a role in the offer of other churches' property. He considers rather that Protestant ministers who opened their doors were saying "now is the time that Catholics need somewhere to heal".
The council of the Voice of the Faithful held an emergency meeting in the basement of Father Cuenin's church on Wednesday to discuss calling for Cardinal Law to step down. Their leaders had avoided such a step before. They had met the cardinal on November 26th, hoping to start a dialogue. It hadn't gone well. They now felt the new revelations showed he had misled them. He could no longer be trusted.
"Two weeks ago it was impossible to envisage the meltdown in moral authority of the Catholic Church," the movement's chairman James Post said.
The latest documents revealed "that a culture of deep clerical secrecy has protected moral depravity, and that the scandal is much deeper than was previously known."
As the members took their seats in a semicircle of metal chairs - one woman settled down with her knitting - I asked James Post if they had an agenda for more fundamental reform, touching on sensitive topics such as celibacy or women priests. "We have no positions on these issues," he said. "Our focus is on sexual abuse crimes. Maybe sometime in the future they will be discussed." He was sure individual members wanted such reforms, but pointed out, "we also have some who would like to go back to the Latin Mass".
There were a lot of angry people at the meeting, watched over by a leather-jacketed Irish-Italian police officer sent in case there was any "off-the-wall" interloper. He confided that he would happily arrest any bishops responsible for criminal cover-up of abuses.
The new batch of documents had been the last straw. The mood of Boston's moderate Catholics was summed up by Ann Urban of Wellesley. "Something has pushed me over the top. It's time to rid the cancer," she said.
The nature of authority in the Catholic Church lay at the heart of the debate. "When you get rid of a dictator and leave the dictatorship you haven't solved the problem," warned a delegate. Another called for democracy in the church at all levels.
The motion for discussion contained the sentence, "We call on Cardinal Bernard F. Law to step aside as archbishop of Boston." This was not direct enough for the rank and file. "Step aside" was changed to "immediately resign". When the chairwoman asked for those in favour to voice their approval, all but four of the 76 council members entitled to vote stood up with a scraping of metal chairs and gave a loud chorus of "Yes!".
The crisis has left the future of Catholicism in Boston uncertain. "A huge crack now exists in the foundation of the Catholic Church," said James Post. "Not one Catholic bishop in the United States can be confident tonight that what happened in Boston will not happen to them."