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Iscool, this is a poorly informed argument, since it presupposes as stipulated that Cardinal Law protected child rapists.

Cardinal Law was fully investigated by the state attorney general of Massachusetts and by the district attorneys in ALL FIVE of the counties of the Archdiocese. He gave evidence before two grand juries. The state attorney general, after several years of horrible press and intense scrutiny, concluded that Law had not tried to evade investigation and had not broken any laws.

Upon turning 80 last November, Law became ineligible to participate in any papal conclave or to hold any Curial memberships, and was replaced as archpriest of Sta Maria Maggiore by Archbishop Santos Abril y Castelló

The fact is that, incredible as it may seem, criminal charges have never been lodged against Law, and nobody has requested his extradition. If you've got actionable facts that the prosecutors don't have, why don't you forward it to the prosecutors and make sure charges are pursued? I, for one, am all for the criminal indictiment of anyone, laity or clergy, againt whom there is credible evidence and probable cause.

Then on the basis of successful criminal prosecution, you can talk about ecclesiastical penalties. The fact that the Vatican removed Bernard Law from leadership of a powerful Archdiocese, and put him in charge of managing Sta Maria Maggiore with no pastoral authority, tells you that they followed with exactitude where the evidence led. They concluded that he made serious errors of pastoral judgment, which is quite different from personal moral corruption or crime.

Because you don’t know what you’re talking about, since Cardinal Law does NOT reside in the Vatican. Cardinal Law was found guilty of nothing other than bad management, and was “fired”. For that bad management he was removed from his post. When he was made Cardinal, he was, as all Cardinals are, assigned to be pastor of a nominal parish in Rome, which, in modern times, has virtually no congregation; it is a historical parish only. Being an archbishop, he was replaced de facto by a “parochial vicar” to look after this Roman parish; such a vicar in this case served as little more than a museum curator. When he was relieved of his duties, he defaulted to his other job, that of pastor of the Roman church. It happens to be a splendid-looking church, but not terribly cushy.

Absent heresy or established crime, they basically “threw him upstairs” where His Inadequacy could do no harm. My personal opinion is that Law is a bad man. He cowed to pressure from the national media when they hailed as a hero a man he should have known to defrocked: the subject, in fact, of the “Me and Julio” verse “When the radical preacher come to get me released/ Well we was all on the cover of Newsweek.” (Yes, Me and Julio is about buggery; Mickey Mantle had no idea.)

But there’s no proof that Cardinal Law did anything illegal, as affirmed by five grand juries. Nor did Cardinal Law profess a heresy, or schism, or apostasy. And priests have rights, even bishops whose defense is stupidity.