E-Mail This Article to a Friend Cardinal offense Bernard Law’s re-emergence following the pope’s death shows that the Church has learned nothing. Plus, why DeLay should resign, and Bush’s miserable choice for the UN.

THE PROMINENT role that the Vatican has bestowed upon Bernard Cardinal Law following the death of Pope John Paul II goes far beyond the merely inappropriate. It is repulsive and offensive, and it makes you wonder whether the Catholic Church has learned anything following the pedophile-priest scandals of the past four years.

Law resigned as archbishop of Boston in late 2002, following revelations that he had covered up the crimes of his Roman-collared rapists, and had reassigned many of them to new parishes where, inevitably, they raped again. His departure came nearly two long years after the first of a series of groundbreaking reports in the Boston Phoenix on Law’s culpability in the sexual-abuse crisis. (An archive of the Phoenix’s coverage is online at www.bostonphoenix.com/pages/cardinal.asp.) The Boston Globe won the Pulitzer Prize for public service by exposing the extent of Law’s culpability. Yet there Law was this past Monday, saying a mass of mourning for the pope at St. Peter’s Basilica, a clear signal that he remains a respected member of the Catholic hierarchy.

John Paul’s life has justifiably been celebrated for his many accomplishments: his courageous opposition to communism, his unprecedented outreach to the Jewish community, his opposition to unjust wars (including the war in Iraq), and his advocacy of such social-justice causes as abolition of the death penalty. Within the Church, though, his record was a bitter disappointment to progressives. His persecution of gay and lesbian Catholics, his refusal to ordain women and married men, and his continued opposition to birth control — even to the point of condemning the use of condoms to prevent AIDS — all speak to another, less attractive side of his papacy.

Nowhere, though, was the pope more in the wrong than in his passive approach to sexual abuse. John Paul made an example out of Cardinal Law, but it was precisely the wrong kind of example. Law was rewarded with a cushy sinecure in Rome and placed in a position where he could re-emerge, as he now has. The next pope has to get it right when it comes to pedophile priests. He could start by making a very different kind of example of Law, a preening, arrogant man whose willful negligence destroyed so many lives — and who virtually bankrupted the archdiocese for which he was morally, spiritually, and financially responsible.

NO DOUBT Democratic Party officials regard the implosion of House majority leader Tom DeLay with mixed feelings. It’s clear that the odious Texas Republican should resign from his leadership position. Indeed, some of the allegations of unethical behavior on his part may prove to be serious enough to warrant his resignation from Congress altogether. Yet "The Exterminator" has become a useful foil for Democrats, who really haven’t had anyone quite so inviting to kick around since Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker who first brought DeLay into the inner circle.

This week, Representative Christopher Shays, of Connecticut, became the first Republican member of Congress to call on DeLay to give up his leadership position. "Tom’s conduct is hurting the Republican Party, is hurting this Republican majority, and it is hurting any Republican who is up for re-election," Shays told the Associated Press. Now, granted, Shays is a New England moderate, which places him outside the mainstream of his party. But House Speaker Dennis Hastert has been notably silent about his second-in-command. And still another Republican, Senator John McCain, is investigating lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a close friend and patron of DeLay’s linked to such dubious behavior as collecting tens of millions of dollars in fees from Native American tribes for little or no work — and for referring to tribal leaders as "monkeys."

The ethical charges against DeLay are many and varied, and are currently being considered by the House Ethics Committee. But DeLay’s cavalier attitude toward such matters pales in comparison to his repeated abuses of office, ranging from his ham-handed redistricting of his native Texas to — most recently — his shameless, even dangerous, behavior in the matter of Terri Schiavo. It was DeLay who rammed through a bill ordering the federal courts to keep the severely brain-damaged woman alive, against the wishes she had expressed to her husband. (Never mind that the DeLay family, faced with a similar situation some years ago involving DeLay’s father, opted to do what many families do when confronted with such a tragedy: they ended life support.) And when the courts refused to rubber-stamp DeLay’s blatantly unconstitutional maneuver, he delivered this not-so-veiled threat: "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

DeLay should go, but he’ll be missed — as a symbol, that is, of everything that’s wrong with the modern Republican Party. Sadly, he is unique only in his outspokenness.

OF ALL the terrible appointments George W. Bush has made, a few stand out as being even more terrible than the norm. Naming torture-enabler Alberto Gonzales as attorney general was one example. Another is John Bolton, who’s being considered this week by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the position of US ambassador to the United Nations.

Bolton needn’t love the UN, and in fact there isn’t much to love about this hugely expensive and mostly ineffective body. There’s no question that considerable reforms are needed. Looking back, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s astringent term as ambassador in the 1970s — a time when various Third World dictatorships banded together against Israel by labeling Zionism a form of "genocide" — was positive and useful.

Bolton, though, appears genuinely to loathe the very idea of global cooperation ("It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law") as well as the UN itself ("If the UN Secretariat Building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference"). Moreover, he has developed a reputation for pressuring subordinates to bend intelligence to suit his purposes — as he is accused of doing at the State Department with regard to Cuba’s alleged biological-weapons capabilities. Where have we heard that before? He is also known for such red-faced ranting when he doesn’t get his way that Democratic senator Barbara Boxer, of California, only half-facetiously suggested this week that Bolton enroll in an anger-management course.

The fate of the Bolton nomination is likely to come down to Republican senator Lincoln Chafee, of Rhode Island, a moderate who is the only GOP member on Foreign Relations who’s indicated that he may vote no. At press time, Chafee appears to be leaning toward a "yes" vote, which will likely pave the way for Bolton’s nomination by the full Senate. That’s a vote his father, the late senator John Chafee, would have been unlikely to cast.

Such are the consequences of losing elections. The prospect of John Bolton’s blighting the UN and further diminishing our reputation in the eyes of the world should be reason enough for the Democrats to put all their energy into taking back Congress, the White House — and the country.

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