Bishops and Bosses: Changing Trends in Church-State Relations in Boston
Tom O'Connor
Boston College, University Historian
顿补迟别:听September 9, 2003
Event Recap
Two dozen faculty and community members from across Boston crowded into the Boisi Center鈥檚 conference room on September 9th to hear the 鈥淒ean of Boston historians鈥� Tom O鈥機onnor share his thoughts in a presentation titled 鈥淏ishops and Bosses: Changing Trends in Church- State Relations in Boston.鈥� O鈥機onnor began by emphasizing the significance of the recent events that resulted in the highly publicized and scandal- ridden resignations of two Irish Catholic power brokers---Cardinal Bernard Law and William Bulger. O鈥機onnor characterized the era in which these two men presided over political life in Boston as being marked by 鈥渟eparation, secrecy and silence.鈥� Problems were handled behind closed doors, family loyalty was paramount, and there were high barriers of separation between the hierarchy and the clergy; the clergy and the laity; politicians and the electorate; and civilians and criminals.
Although O鈥機onnor鈥檚 view is that the resignation of these men marks the end of an era, audience members raised theories of their own during the discussion period suggesting that the erosion of Irish Catholic power had begun even earlier. One audience member, a former editor at the聽Boston Globe, observed that significant changes were wrought in the power structure when the聽Boston Globe聽was purchased by the聽New York Times. This shift in ownership resulted in out of town editors being brought in who were more resistant to the 鈥渓ate night calls from the chancery鈥� that he witnessed in an earlier era. Christopher Winship, from the Harvard sociology department, commented that the power balance also began shifting in the 1990鈥檚 when dot com money began to flow into Boston giving rise to a new kind of community leadership. There was also discussion about the role of non-Irish Catholic minority groups in Boston politics, the ethnic tribalism that seems to be a part of Boston鈥檚 character, and whether race and ethnicity still play as powerful a role in politics as they once did. True to historical form, O鈥機onnor deferred a conclusive response to such predictions as a history yet to be written.