c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) It’s tacky enough for Catholic colleges to have commencement speakers who don’t represent Catholic values; it’s beyond tacky to honor bishops who enabled priest sex abusers.

Every spring, the arch-conservative Cardinal Newman Society scrutinizes commencement speakers at the nation’s 225 Catholic schools. This year, its list notes only seven problematic speakers, down from 24 in 2006 and 13 in 2007.

The group rightly complains about speakers who support abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research. Sometimes, under pressure, colleges change speakers; in South Dakota, Presentation College cancelled pro-abortion state Sen. Nancy Tubek Berry’s planned commencement address and Bishop Paul Swain of Sioux Falls spoke instead.

Fair enough. Bishop Swain is a relatively new bishop, without scandal in his episcopal closet. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case at the University of Notre Dame at this year’s commencement on Sunday (May 18).

Notre Dame’s featured speaker was retired Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, who knowingly harbored an abusive priest for years while he was a bishop in New Jersey, apparently at the request of Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law. (McCarrick also spoke at Gannon College in Pennsylvania.)

The invite for Sunday’s ceremony came from Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, who seems to want Catholics who ascribe to church teaching, or at least represent Christian values. “I think it would be inappropriate to interrogate someone for an honorary degree, but it’s appropriate to look at their public record, to see how does that life size up,” he recently told The Boston Globe.

Excuse me, Father Jenkins. Could we take a closer look at McCarrick’s public record on the protection of children? The folks at the Cardinal Newman Society may also want to pay attention.

According to various media reports (all documented at the site http://www.bishopaccountability.org), in 1985, McCarrick accepted an admitted abusive priest, the Rev. Eugene O’Sullivan, from Boston, even though he knew O’Sullivan pleaded guilty to raping an altar boy a year before. O’Sullivan was out on five years’ probation, ordered to stay away from youngsters. McCarrick, who was then the bishop of Metuchen, N.J., sent him to a parish with an elementary school.

O’Sullivan returned to Boston in 1992. Not long after, McCarrick realized that accepting O’Sullivan was a mistake. In 1993, McCarrick _ then the archbishop of Newark _ said current church policies would make such a transfer “impossible.” He said he had relied on O’Sullivan’s therapists and had simply given “a second chance to a priest who had paid the penalty of his crime and had been adjudged as rehabilitated by a nationally respected therapeutic facility.”

It would be another 10 years before American Catholics would learn the true depths of the pedofile priest scandal lurking in the shadows of their church. Yet it was already clear then _ as now _ that transferring or accepting problem priests was a dangerous thing indeed.

Because of stories like O’Sullivan’s, in which it was obvious that Law had taken numerous steps to hide or shuffle problem priests, Law was bounced from Boston at the end of 2002. He now holds a cushy Rome appointment heading up a major basilica and holds eight prominent appointments _ including the Congregations for Bishops and Clergy. And, for another three years, he’ll be eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope.

It is ridiculous to honor enabling bishops, whether in front of new college graduates (McCarrick) or by giving them a prominent posting in Rome (Law). As the Cardinal Newman Society tracks Catholic college speakers, it might take a closer look at the bishops on its list as well.

(Catholic speakers for 2007 include two others on the bishopaccountability.org database of enabling bishops: Buffalo Bishop Edward Kmiec (Canisius College) and retired Oakland Bishop John Cummins (St. Mary’s College of California), each of whom kept an abusive priest on the job well after the danger was made clear to him.)

Someone has to connect the dots. Catholic graduates deserve commencement speakers whom they can emulate. Those honored by Catholic colleges should respect church teachings. A bishop could be an interesting choice, but who listens to what the bishops say when their own house is in such disorder?

The correction must come now _ not by attrition but through action. Until the worldwide college of bishops is comprised of people who ascribe to all Catholic values, Catholicism will continue to fade.

(Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.)

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