"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Monday, June 03, 2002 Middle of the Storm, indeed Father Bob Carr, shown in this Boston Herald photo gallery (right) going toe to toe with protesters at Boston's Holy Cross Cathedral, is a priest of strong opinions.
For example, Fr. Carr's recipe for curing what ails the Church, prescribed in interviews with the Globe and Herald, includes closing parochial schools and ending social services that serve non-Catholics.
In his statement, Carr suggested several concrete steps are needed for the church to regain its focus, including shutting down Catholic elementary and high schools where students and their parents do not attend church.
In those cases, he said, the church is ''providing a service to people who have essentially rejected our faith. Such schools should be closed and the assets sold and given to the poor,'' unless, he said, the money is needed for legal settlements with people who were sexually abused by priests.
While he said he did not have any particular schools in mind, Carr said in the interview that the litmus test for closing or keeping a school open should be how many parents and children are ''active in the faith.''
In his statement, he suggested selling the cardinal's residence in Brighton and giving the money to the poor, again unless the money is needed for settlements. Carr also criticized Boston College, saying the cardinal's home should not be sold to BC because ''it would be silly to offer it to a Catholic institution that itself produces people who, by their inactivity as Catholics, reject our faith.''
Wonder if Mother Teresa had a "Catholics Only" sign on the door of the hospice?
In the view of this space, the Church's charitable works are vital to the poor, and Catholic schools in the inner city offer precious hope for a better life to children who otherwise would have little. Consider the examples of such schools as Nativity Prep and Mother Caroline Academy in Boston. Should these schools be closed because black children who attend them are not Catholic? Should the Church sell off schools and soup kitchens that serve the neediest of the needy in favor of a one-time payment to the poor, and a subsequent reliance solely on prayer?
Fr. Carr also has made something of a cottage industry of criticizing Boston College, which he sees falling short in its Catholic mission. That secularists of the Left prevail in American academia is news to no one; that there are those who would prefer to see BC a thoroughly secular university is not surprising. BC certainly has its faults. But BC has its strengths, too, which are rarely cited by certain critics who fail to see the forest for the trees.
For example, you might not guess from the outcry over the honorary degrees BC granted the head of the MacArthur Foundation and the former governor of Massachusetts that the University also gave commencement honors to not one but two priests, a devoted nun, and a laywoman director of Catholic Charities. You wouldn't see such a tribute to Catholic good works at Harvard or Princeton or Yale. Consider, too, some of the BC faculty on the orthodox side of the ledger: Peter Kreeft. Thomas Hibbs. Jorge Garcia. Fr. Matthew Lamb, a member of the advisory board of the Faith & Reason Institute. Fr. Ron Tacelli, SJ, author with Peter Kreeft of the Handbook of Christian Apologetics. Or Slavic Languages chairman and Armenian Rite deacon Michael Connolly.
The author of this space is loyal to his employer, as Fr. Carr is to his, but would, in any case, compare Boston College favorably to any university in the land, let alone any other Catholic institution of higher learning -- even Fr. Carr's alma mater, the archdiocesan-run school across the street.