The Battle for Boston?

So Walter Cuenin's farewell liturgy -- and protest march immediately following -- brought out "thousands" yesterday. And the drumbeat continues.... A Globe columnist writes from Rome

Over the last couple of weeks, I have had direct and indirect contact with well-connected Catholics here -- hardly a hotbed of liberalism -- and the coming instruction is regarded as a catastrophe in the making. With boards of Vatican-appointed investigators poised to swoop down on American schools in which new priests are trained, interrogations of candidates and loyalty tests for teachers already betray a nostalgia for the bygone era of thought-control and snitching. A formally licensed obsession with homosexuality will push the investigation into a realm, as one senior priest put it to me, more of Joseph Stalin than Jesus Christ.

Instead of asking hard questions about the root causes of the priestly sex abuse scandal -- facing problems of the clerical culture itself, including celibacy, authoritarianism, discrimination against women, the immaturity of church teachings on sexuality -- Rome is preparing to scapegoat homosexuals. The idea is astoundingly foolish, based on fantasies of sexual deviance. Supposedly aimed at seminarians, the new discipline is an attack on the priesthood itself, especially on those openly gay men who have proven themselves as faithful servants of the church. It is an invitation for such men to return to the closet, a retreat into psychological imprisonment. Such demonizing of homosexuals is profoundly unjust.

But the policy, combined with the investigation's threat against all nonconformity, infantilizes every present or would-be member of the American Catholic clergy. During the abuse crisis, the ineptness of bishops brought stern challenges from the middle ranks of clergy. Are bishops now attempting, with this ruthless discipline, to eliminate the capacity for independent moral thought that made those challenges not only possible but necessary?

From Boston, the epicenter of the crisis, comes the chilling news that one of the brave priests who saved the church's soul by calling for Cardinal Bernard Law's resignation, the Rev. Walter Cuenin, has been unjustly fired from his position as pastor at Our Lady, Help of Christians in Newton. Cuenin is an exemplary priest. That he has been slandered by the archdiocese in the process of his removal is a mortal betrayal. There are reports that many of the other pastors who challenged Law have been shunted aside as well.

Cardinal Law, the icon of failure, is ensconced in a prestigious position here in Rome. He is an icon of denial, too. Instead of a reformation of all that made the sex abuse crisis possible, the hierarchy is circling its wagons. Good people are being sacrificed. Cruelty as a mode of church governance is back. Sexual imperialism is reasserted as a method of control. The culture of dishonesty lives.

On the news side, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly denies what he alleges are archdiocesan claims that his office was behind the audits which brought Cuenin down

'We continue to receive reports that archdiocese representatives have asserted that the recent actions taken against Father Cuenin and other priests are the result of an agreement with this office," Jamie Katz, chief of the public charities division in Reilly's office, wrote in a letter to Wilson D. Rogers Jr., an attorney for the archdiocese. ''These reports suggest that the Archdiocese is scrutinizing the financial affairs of priests and parishes at the direction of this office, and that certain priests have been fired based upon an agreement with this office. These misrepresentations must stop."

Archdiocese spokesman Terrence C. Donilon said church officials had not seen Reilly's letter. ''We have not seen any letter yet," he said. ''The archdiocese has a cordial professional relationship with the attorney general's office. We greatly respect the enormous responsibilties of the office. Legal counsel will certainly respond to the letter once they have had a chance to review it."

Reilly's relationship with the archdiocese is complex. In 2003, the attorney general issued a blistering report on the clergy abuse scandal, decrying what he described as an ''institutionalized culture of acceptance of the sexual abuse of children."

But over the last 18 months, the attorney general's office and the archdiocese have been attempting to work more cooperatively on the complex issue of how to handle millions of dollars in gifts given to Catholic parishes that have been closed by Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley.

Beware of the entanglements of altar and throne.

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