Bishop O'Malley, Catholicism, and Social Change

Bishop Sean O'Malley has been installed as the archbishop of the Boston archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church, replacing Bishop Law. The name has changed, but has anything really changed when it comes to policy? Not likely - O'Malley is just as traditional and conservative as any Catholic clergyman.

Eileen McNamara writes for The Boston Globe:

[T]hen-Fall River Bishop Sean O'Malley ...rescinded an invitation to the chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court [Suzanne V. DelVecchio] because she had the temerity to applaud a Vermont law recognizing same-sex civil unions. ...The bishop, she was told, would not feel comfortable sitting at the same table with her. He did not, however, respect the chief justice's request to tell diners why she was not in attendance. Instead, organizers announced that ''circumstances beyond her control'' kept DelVecchio from the event.

Thus, he's not simply conservative - he's also not entirely honest. I can't say whether he personally lied in this matter, but it's clear that he allowed something to be spread as truth which definitely wasn't. People were misled about the real reason why Chief Justice DelVecchio didn't show up. Why? Because it would have been bad publicity for people to know that O'Malley didn't want to sit at the same table with someone how approves of same-sex unions? Truth being sacrificed for the sake of publicity... that sounds familiar for the Boston archdiocese.

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