FOR ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, a Kennedy speechwriter, biographer, and historian, the prospect of a Mormon-Jewish match-up suggests something else. "I think it shows the triumph of secularization," says Schlesinger. It’s true that, even with Grossman and Reich in the race, the road to a largely secular election looked unimpeded only a few months ago. But that was before the question of whether Bernard Cardinal Law should remain the titular leader of Boston’s Catholics mushroomed into a regional and national obsession. Only three weeks ago, at a Democratic gubernatorial debate held at the John F. Kennedy Library, Frank Phillips of the Boston Globe asked a Law-related question. So little preoccupied was the press with yoking the crisis in the Catholic Church to local politics that nobody remarked on the irony of asking these candidates, three Catholics and two Jews, to pass judgment on Pope John Paul II’s emissary in Boston, in the museum named for Kennedy — who was bedeviled by the issue of his loyalty to the pope during the 1960 presidential campaign.
Likewise, at that time none of the candidates was prepared to suggest that Law resign. Warren Tolman — the former Watertown state senator whose district included the Catholic chancery — was the only one prepared to criticize the Church. "I think the Church has made some serious mistakes. Cardinal Law has made mistakes," said Tolman, describing himself as a "church-going Catholic." None of the other candidates permitted him- or herself such liberties. "That is a matter for the Church," said Reich. Senate president Tom Birmingham and Treasurer Shannon O’Brien — both Catholics — declined to comment on Law’s actions, and Grossman spoke of sympathy for the "victims and their families."
Since then, both Tolman and Reich have called on Law to resign. The impetus in both instances seems to have been the tremendous paper trail showing that Law shielded the Reverend Paul Shanley from complaints of sexual abuse by transferring him from parish to parish. For his part, Romney, the Republican, has avoided weighing in on Law, deeming it a matter for the cardinal’s conscience.
Had Law resigned on Friday, as some hoped he would, the gubernatorial candidates — both those who called for his resignation and those who declined to enter the fray — would have been released from the pressure to comment on the crisis. (Birmingham said he was "disappointed" by Law’s decision.) But by releasing a letter announcing his intention to stay on as cardinal — in defiance of the weight of public opinion — Law complicated the situation for the candidates. Those most familiar with the workings of the Church — such as former Boston mayor Ray Flynn, who shared his suppositions in an interview with the New York Times — surmise that Law’s decision could only be the result of opinion emanating from Rome. Pope John Paul II, it is believed, sent the message that Law must stay. The implication of this interpretation is clear: those who call for the cardinal to resign will be seen as doing so in direct conflict with the wishes of the pontiff. (That said, Law’s future is still uncertain. He was one of eight American cardinals Pope John Paul II called to Rome this week to discuss the scandal.)
For the two candidates who called for Law’s resignation, there are political risks — though less so for Tolman. Tolman once represented the district in which Law’s residence is located; his brother, Senator Steve Tolman, represents it now. The son of parents who lived in Brighton’s Fidelis Way projects before moving to Watertown, he has much in common with the scores of aggrieved parishioners now making claims against the Church. In this sense, Tolman’s call is very much from within the family. For Reich, the situation is somewhat different. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and raised in a secular Jewish household in South Salem, New York, he risks making himself vulnerable to backlash.
"What is a non-Catholic going to say about it? It’s totally risky for a non-Catholic to talk about it politically," says Boston College’s Wolfe. "It is their church."
Reich didn’t call for Law’s resignation without reflection. He did so only after the Boston Herald (owned by the Catholic Patrick Purcell), WCVB-TV general manager Paul LaCamera, and New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd weighed in. He also did so as public sentiment was moving that way. Newspaper polls conducted as Reich made his decision – and made public afterwards -- showed that almost two-thirds of Catholics want Law to step down. Even then, it wasn’t easy. "Obviously, there were lots of people who said, ‘Why do you want to get involved with this?’ " says a source close to the Reich campaign. Ultimately, what tipped the balance for Reich was the degree of damage he saw children suffering as a result of "administrative" — not "religious" — failure.
Nobody is saying whether Reich’s decision to call for Law’s resignation will make it easier for a Jew to be elected governor in Massachusetts. The public, the Reich campaign believes, doesn’t particularly identify him with either his religious or ethnic identity. His wife, Clare Dalton, is not Jewish. "I don’t think people see Reich as a Jewish candidate," says the Reich-camp source. "I think people see him as an ‘outsider.’ Reich hasn’t spoken in front of large Jewish groups." Reich, of course, is also a professor at Brandeis, a pointedly secular Jewish university.
Lou DiNatale, a UMass Boston–based political analyst, agrees that Reich’s lack of visible Jewish identity provides him with the space to criticize Law. "Because Reich’s name is not Grossman, he can wail on him," says DiNatale. "Grossman can’t, because then it will be the Jew beating up the Church." The irony is that Grossman played a key role in promoting Catholic-Jewish dialogue under the auspices of Boston’s then–Anti-Defamation League head Leonard Zakim and Cardinal Law.
As risky as Reich’s decision might be, candidates O’Brien and Birmingham may be in more difficult positions: their bases include a considerable number of faithful Catholics. "This is the worst possible situation for Catholic politicians because they’re trapped between old people who probably are going to get pissed off if you bust a dozen bishops and everyone else who thinks they should go to jail," says DiNatale, acknowledging that polls show most Catholics want Law to go. Still, hard-core supporters are rallying behind him. "O’Brien and Birmingham have to worry about it the most because their bases are urban ethnic," DiNatale notes.
IF EVER THERE were a candidate who hopes that President Kennedy’s words about religion resonate here in Massachusetts, it is Romney. In fact, the Republican candidate may have been helped already by the unfolding problems in the Catholic Church — which serve to defang, in part, potential religion-based attacks against the him. Howie Carr hinted at such a dynamic in a March 17 Boston Herald column. "You’re Mitt Romney, and you know if ever there was a good time to run for political office here as a non-Catholic, this is it," he wrote.
Carr alluded to the 1994 campaign when then-congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II and Senator Ted Kennedy made an issue out of Romney’s Mormon background. No sooner did Romney win the Republican nomination for Ted Kennedy’s US Senate seat than Joe Kennedy began tearing into Romney’s Mormon faith. Kennedy erroneously blasted the Mormon Church for not allowing women and blacks into leadership roles; the Church had in fact ended its ban on elevating blacks to leadership roles in 1978. In an "apology" to Romney, Kennedy restated the charge that the Church refused to accept African- Americans as priests and added a new one: that Romney had advised an unmarried Mormon mother against having an abortion, a story reported in the Phoenix and other newspapers.
"I would encourage her to have the child unless it was a case of rape, incest, danger to the life of the mother, or birth abnormality," Romney told reporters at the time. Ted Kennedy continued the critique. "In 1978 there was a change in terms of the teachings," said Senator Kennedy at the time. "Where is Mr. Romney on those issues, in terms of equality of race prior to 1978 and other kinds of issues in question?" Political analysts do not think the religious issue won the election for Kennedy; in retrospect, however, it swiped vital momentum from Romney's campaign when it was on the way up.
Carr’s observations notwithstanding, Romney may not be insulated from religious scrutiny this time around either. If anything, he is more identifiable as a Mormon in 2002 than he was in 1994, when the bulk of his experience lay in founding and running the Bain & Company consulting firm. Since 1999, Romney has been the de facto "Mr. Mormon" — as John Lakian, Romney’s Republican-primary opponent, called him in 1994 — in the international media, as a result of his running the Salt Lake City Olympics. In connection with this role, Romney gave a long interview for an article on the state of the Mormon Church in the January 21 issue of the New Yorker. The article describes the selection of Romney, who had close ties to Utah’s Mormon ruling elite, to head the scandal-plagued Olympics as being controversial at the time. "Non-Mormons, along with Church members who were worried about the appearance of cronyism, criticized Romney’s appointment as an invitation for the world to view the Winter Games as the Mormon Olympics," reported the magazine’s Lawrence Wright. The piece quoted James Shelledy, editor of the Salt Lake Tribune, commenting acerbically: "The Governor conducted an exhaustive forty-eight-hour search for the best B.Y.U. graduate available." (Interestingly, Wright also got Romney on the record about the Mormon Church’s controversial former practice of polygamy. "Among my great-grandparents, we had at least two who were polygamous," said Romney, whose father had more than 230 first cousins, thanks to the practice.)
Officially, the Romney camp wants to avoid religious issues. "Religious bigotry has no role in a political campaign or anywhere else," says Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney deputy campaign manager and spokesman. "I can’t believe any candidate would be foolish enough to raise it. I really don’t think candidates’ ethnic or religious backgrounds are an issue." Further, Fehrnstrom is eager to point out that Romney "never held the position of ‘bishop,’ " as has been reported by the Washington Post and other papers, but served as "president of the Boston stake" — a lay position, it should be noted, that is higher than that of bishop.
In short, the campaign may want to avoid talking about religion, but it may not be able to. Already, local newspapers have employed something of a double standard when reporting on religious matters in the governor’s race. The Boston Globe, for example, managed to mention Romney’s Mormon faith in a March 25 story about radio ads Birmingham planned to run against him. It also went out of its way to bring up Romney’s faith in a story run last Saturday about the way local politicians reacted to Law’s decision not to resign. But the story danced around Reich’s religious background — simply describing him as "not Catholic"; again, a more accurate description probably would have been to say "secular Jew" or whatever Reich considers himself.
Mormons have had a difficult time in Massachusetts in other ways. The Church battled to construct a temple in Belmont — over the opposition of town residents, who went so far as to file suit in state court protesting the temple’s nearly 140-foot steeple. After years of legal wrangling, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled 6-0, in 2001, that the Mormons could have their temple and their steeple. Perhaps due to the Mormon plans to construct a temple in the town — which may have reflected suburban NIMBYism as much as religious bias — Romney lost even his hometown of Belmont in 1994.
