Catholics saddened as a popular Cardinal falls from grace

These are sad days for Catholics in Edinburgh. I’m sure readers are sick and tired of scandals involving Catholic priests and bishops. Hannah Arendt was definitely on to something when she described the “banality of evil.” But, as I’ve discovered, there’s nothing banal about a clerical scandal when it involves your own archbishop.

Until he resigned last week, Keith Patrick Cardinal O’Brien had been the archbishop of Edinburgh since 1985. At 74, he is a tall, still-handsome man with traces of a lingering Northern Irish accent. He has a terrific camera presence, one reason why the British media love to get him on television. He has a spoken his mind in a forthright, often controversial, manner.

In a country where only 16 per cent of the native population is Roman Catholic, O’Brien was loud in his support for the unborn, for potential victims of euthanasia, for persecuted Christians in Asia and for traditional marriage. At a Scotland for Marriage rally, I worried about professional reprisals for people photographed opposing “gay marriage.” I needn’t have. The cardinal arrived to address us, and therefore it was his photo that appeared in the papers.

The cardinal was controversial among Catholics, too. He was once considered very liberal. It was no secret that he thought celibacy should be optional for priests, and he was said to be tolerant of homosexuality. When his priests left the priesthood to marry, he attended their weddings. When another bishop wanted to bar gay teachers from Catholic schools, O’Brien supported the teachers, saying “If there happens to be a gay teacher and he does happen to be living with a partner, that’s their personal, private life. I don’t see it as a problem.”

Some Scottish Catholics disagreed with the archbishop’s views, and it came as a surprise to many when he was made a cardinal by John Paul II in 2005. A story went about that his name had been chosen over Glasgow’s archbishop Mario Conti by mistake. Whatever the reality, he was asked to take a special oath of fidelity to Church teachings, particularly on the subjects of priestly celibacy, the immorality of “the homosexual act” and contraception. And until an interview after the abdication of Benedict XVI, in which O’Brien hoped that priestly celibacy might become optional, the archbishop was thought to have become a pillar of orthodoxy.

The interview caused a scandal. But then a bigger scandal hit: the Observer published a story alleging that the cardinal archbishop had been accused of “inappropriate behaviour” by four priests (one laicized, three active). The allegations stretched back to 1980, when one was a 20- year-old seminarian. The others were already priests, over 25, when whatever alleged may have occurred.

The allegations were vague and the accusers anonymous. The British media went crazy with speculation, and I read the headlines, gossip and garbage until I fell ill. The story had broken late on a Saturday night; my own priest heard about it only just before he celebrated Sunday Mass.

I can’t speak for all Edinburgh, but last week I was angry—not at the cardinal, innocent until proven guilty, but at his clerical accusers. I wondered at their timing. If, in the 1980s, Fr. O’Brien, or Archbishop O’Brien, had made advances to four adult men, why had they reported them only now that, thanks to the conclave, the media has particular reason to be interested in cardinals? And why had they, after going through the official channels, given the story to the Observer? If, as was claimed, it was to stop Cardinal O’Brien from voting in the conclave, why had they not made their allegations before he went to the last conclave?

The cardinal, who has been in ill health, was going to retire on March 17. Instead he resigned on February 25, and I felt terribly sad for him.

In Edinburgh, he has hitherto been thought of as a kindly, friendly, tolerant, witty man who stands up for Catholic teaching and who once sang “The Hippotamus Song” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Liberal in the old-fashioned sense of the word, he made no difficulties for those who prefer the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

On the following Sunday morning, my priest read a letter from Glasgow’s Archbishop Philip Tartaglia, now the apostolic administrator for our diocese. He commiserated with us in our sorrow, acknowledged that we may have been suffering from our neighbours’ jibes, and asked us to pray. It was a good letter; I felt comforted by it.

And then, late Sunday night, another story broke. The cardinal had made a public confession: “I admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.”

And so Week Two of the scandal began.
 

(Cummings McLean is a Canadian writer living abroad and the author of Seraphic Singles.)