BY CONTRAST, Cardinal Law has long extended an indulgent hand to sexually abusive priests in his archdiocese. It’s true that problem priests who are defrocked see their privileges revoked just like any other laicized priest. When Law defrocked the now-infamous convicted child molester John Geoghan, the former priest lost his pension, his housing, and his high-end Boston attorney, Tim O’Neill, whose legal bills the archdiocese had formerly covered. For decades, however, bishops across the nation took care of clergymen who had preyed on children, rather than report such offenders to police. The Church has routinely funded an abusive priest’s therapy, salary, and legal defense — all while keeping him in the active ministry. Sometimes, officials coddled priests whom they knew to be serial predators.

Take, for example, retired clergyman Paul Shanley, who ranks among the Boston archdiocese’s most notorious pedophile priests. Last week, Shanley was indicted on charges of raping four boys during his assignment to a Newton parish in the 1970s and 1980s. This past spring, the court-ordered release of 1700 pages of archdiocesan documents shed light on the extraordinary lengths to which Shanley’s superiors had gone to accommodate him. In 1989, Shanley stepped down as pastor of the now-defunct St. Jean the Evangelist parish. At the time, Church officials had credible evidence that he had not only assaulted male minors, but had also promoted sex between men and boys. Regardless, his superiors approved his transfer, in 1990, to a San Bernardino, California, parish — with a top-level written assurance that he remained "a priest in good standing." The archdiocese covered the cost of Shanley’s airfare and paid him a stipend of as much as $1690 per month. During the three years Shanley functioned as a part-time priest there — living a secret life operating a raucous gay motel in Palm Springs — the archdiocese sent emissaries to meet with him in California and increased his monthly stipend by another $300. This, as it negotiated settlements with several of his rape victims back home. In 1996, when Shanley finally retired as a "senior priest," Cardinal Law made sure to pen a friendly and avuncular-sounding letter praising his 30 years in the priesthood: "This is an impressive record and all of us are truly grateful for your priestly care and ministry." Today, as Shanley sits in a Middlesex County jail cell awaiting trial for child rape, he continues to collect a pension of more than $1000 per month.

Other dioceses have also showered perks upon their abusive priests. Some have offered exorbitant deals to induce these priests to disappear — and thus shield Church officials from any liability. One Dallas, Texas, clergyman named Robert Peebles, who admitted to molesting seven boys throughout the 1980s, re-invented himself with the help of his superiors. In 1987, after forcing him to resign, diocesan officials sent Peebles off to Louisiana. They paid $22,000 to enroll him at Tulane Law School, where he studied to be a lawyer. They gave him another $19,600 over the course of two years for living expenses, set him up in a furnished apartment, and essentially hid him — until the press discovered him in New Orleans in 1994.

Even when convicted and hauled off to prison, predator priests continue to receive assistance. In Massachusetts, John Hanlon is serving three life sentences for molesting children during his stint as a Hingham pastor in the mid 1990s. To this day, though, he’s listed in the Catholic Directory as a "senior priest" who qualifies for retirement benefits. A 1997 Mother Jones article on the issue of priestly celibacy quoted an acknowledgement by Hanlon, written from his Norfolk prison cell, that he has "not been forgotten or neglected" by the Boston archdiocese. Indeed, last February, the Boston Herald reported that Law himself has gone to visit Hanlon in jail at least twice since 1998.

Church officials chalk up such special treatment to canon law. Priests who abuse children and adolescents yet remain in the active ministry must be supported, according to the canon laws on charity. Explains A.W. Richard Sipe, a clergy-abuse expert and former Benedictine monk who left to marry in 1970, "The canons [regarding] charity bind a man to the social system and require the institution to support those priests who have not left" — no matter what abusive acts they commit while in the priesthood.

Ultimately, Church officials’ actions speak volumes about what the Catholic Church views as the worse crime, the larger sin committed by its priests. Assaulting children — and thus breaking vows of celibacy — can be forgiven by the Church, as has been demonstrated time and again in the cases of pedophile priests like Shanley and Geoghan. Abandoning the clerical state, however, would seem to be a transgression of much greater magnitude. "In the Church’s estimation," Sipe says, "the real crime is leaving the priesthood. It’s the worst thing that a priest can do."

OF COURSE, married priests know better. They know that their experiences as husbands and fathers have only made their lives richer — emotionally and spiritually. They know that marriage has added a dimension to their ministries, which many of them continue today. Sutton, McDonough, and Roma are all members of a national group called Celibacy Is the Issue (CITI) Ministries, based in Framingham. They perform home Masses and sacraments, including weddings, funerals, and baptisms (and they are listed, along with 5000 or so married and resigned priests, on the CITI Ministries Web site at www.rentapriest.com). The organization has given them a way to exercise what they consider their God-given right to preach. They point to canon law No. 290, which says: "After it has been validly received, sacred ordination never becomes invalid." And this, they explain, means, "once a priest, always a priest." In any event, none of the 10 married priests interviewed by the Phoenix for this article voiced regrets about leaving the Catholic clergy. Perhaps Jim Magmer, 80, a married priest from Portland, Oregon, sums up the sentiment best: "Had I been a priest allowed to marry and have a family, I’d have been a happy man. Now, I’m just happily married."

But ever since the clergy sexual-abuse scandal blew wide open earlier this year, married priests have found themselves suffering from a kind of post-traumatic-stress stupor. They, like many among the Catholic faithful, feel disbelief, bitterness, and rage toward the Church hierarchy and its blatant cover-up of child molestation by priests. But for them, the scandal has also opened old wounds. Why, they wonder, did officials exhibit such solicitude toward priests who were working against everything for which the Church supposedly stands? Why were clergymen who assaulted minors given second (and third and fourth) chances while others, in the words of one married priest, "had the spiritual boom lowered on them?" Where was the compassion for priests who had committed themselves to the clerical state and who had left with their integrity intact?

"I feel betrayed," says Roma, when asked about the current Church crisis. "I never had sexual relations with my wife until I left the priesthood, yet they look at me like I’m a piece of shit?" He continues, "After all these years, you find out that a priest can molest a child and the Church will protect him. It has you scratching your head."

Sutton, too, feels outraged by the apparent double standard. "If you stepped on a tack," he asks rhetorically, "how would that make you feel?" He then adds, "I am devastated by the double standard because I feel I committed a good service for the Church."

Yet Sutton and his fellow married priests have managed to find a silver lining to the scandal: the calls among the Catholic laity for broad reform. They are encouraged, they say, by such efforts among the laity as the Voice of the Faithful, the Wellesley-based organization that will hold a July 20 reform conference in Boston. Finally, it seems, the faithful have begun to recognize that their power in the Church comes through their control of the purse strings. Sooner or later, the current decline in contributions among parishioners should help move the hierarchy along.

But in the end, when the dust finally settles, Sutton and many of his colleagues don’t hold out hope that the Church hierarchy will embrace radical change. Even basic issues of justice, such as pensions for resigned and married priests, seem remote to them. After all, the institutional Church represents an ancient beast, one that’s accustomed to caring for its own — not for those who renounce the priesthood for a human thing like love. As Sutton himself puts it, "In the standards of the hierarchy, the married priest does not exist. They would prefer for me to disintegrate into thin air or fall off the face of the earth. That’s the way the institution works."

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com