Catholic Reform Group Calls on Boston Cardinal to Step Down

The leadership council of Voice of the Faithful, a Roman Catholic reform group formed in response to the clerical sexual abuse scandal, voted late Wednesday to demand the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law.

The decision at a parish in suburban Newton came a few hours after Father Paul Shanley, a pivotal figure in the scandal, walked out of jail in Cambridge when friends and family posted $300,000 bond.

Voice of the Faithful joined a growing wave seeking the ouster of the beleaguered cardinal, who has led the nation’s fourth-largest archdiocese for almost 20 years. The vote carried handily, with 71 council members supporting a motion calling for Law’s resignation. Two members opposed the vote and two abstained.

“There is a state of spiritual and moral crisis in the archdiocese of Boston,” Voice of the Faithful President Jim Post said. “In my judgment, the archdiocese of Boston has effectively been without a bishop.”

Post, a professor at Boston University, termed Law’s leadership a “moral cancer.”

Law was in Rome on Wednesday, holding emergency meetings at the Vatican to deal with the crisis that began in Boston nearly a year ago, with the trial and conviction of pedophile priest John Geoghan.

Documents released in the Geoghan case showed that top church leaders knew about sexual abuse complaints against Geoghan, and yet repeatedly moved him to parishes where he was put in contact with children. That pattern of protecting priests at the expense of young parishioners was revealed again and again in more than 10,000 pages of once-confidential church records made public this year.

Voice of the Faithful, which advocates increased participation by laypeople in church decision-making, began in a church basement here in January, weeks after the abuse scandal began. The group’s vote Wednesday came two days after 58 Boston priests signed a letter to Law calling on him to step down.

The group numbers about 25,000 members nationwide.

Shanley, a 71-year-old retired priest, spent seven months behind bars on 10 counts of child rape and six counts of indecent assault and battery. He is accused of molesting boys as young as 5 at a church in Newton over a 10-year period ending in 1989.

As a dozen or so spectators chanted “Pervert!” at him, Shanley left the high-rise court building that houses the county jail without commenting. His lawyer, Frank Mondano, whisked his client into a waiting vehicle that sped away.

Mondano said a “substantial number” of family, friends and supporters raised the money to free Shanley. Because bond money is posted in cash, the source is not public record.

The Boston archdiocese said it did not contribute to Shanley’s bail, originally set at $750,000 but reduced to $300,000 by Judge Charles Grabau.

For years, Shanley was a dashing and prominent figure in Boston who ministered to marginalized segments of the city’s youth and street populations. He wore jeans, rode a motorcycle and kept his dark hair long and fashionably styled.

His work garnered favor from church superiors, including Law, who embraced him at a party to celebrate Shanley’s 20th anniversary as a priest.

But church documents released in the spring showed that archdiocese leaders knew of sexual abuse complaints against Shanley dating from at least 1967. Yet for 30 years, church officials transferred him from parish to parish where he consistently had access to children.

As early as 1979, Vatican officials were told about statements Shanley made endorsing sexual relations between men and boys. Shanley was present at a 1979 conference in Boston that led to the formation of NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Assn.

In a sworn deposition this year, Bishop Thomas Daily of Brooklyn, N.Y. -- formerly a high official in the Boston archdiocese -- said church leaders knew Shanley advocated sex between men and boys when they promoted him to lead a parish in 1983.

When Shanley was transferred in 1990 to St. Ann’s parish in San Bernardino, Law sent a letter to the Southern California church describing Shanley as “a priest in good standing.”

By 1995, Shanley was working at a Catholic residential facility in New York City. A nun there who worried about his contact with minors called him “a time bomb.”

The documents were released this year in a series of civil lawsuits against Law and the archdiocese. On Wednesday, lawyers here produced formerly confidential files on 11 priests not previously mentioned in the sex abuse crisis that has raged in Boston and across the country since January.

Shanley looked pale and wore a hearing aid in one ear as he left the courthouse. “Keep him in jail!” yelled Ruth Moore, a member of Speak Truth to Power -- or STTOP -- a support group for victims of sexually abusive priests.

The father of one alleged victim said Shanley’s release troubled his 23-year-old son, who said he was raped by Shanley in a church rectory over a six-year period beginning when he was 5.

“He has a look on his face I haven’t seen in years,” Rodney Ford said of his son Greg. “It’s back, and it’s scary.”

Under terms of his release, Shanley is barred from unsupervised contact with anyone under age 16.

He must remain in Massachusetts and was required to surrender his passport.

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Associated Press contributed to this report.