Zealots mask real struggles

[Ian David]

EILEEN MCNAMARA
Zealots mask real struggles

By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist | 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.

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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.

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