For the week of December 18 - 23, 2002

If Kerry gets nod, Ketchum in ’04 spotlight

Commentary by PAT MURPHY

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With Al Gore dropping out, Sen. John Kerry’s chances for the Democratic presidential nomination have vastly improved — and so, too, have odds improved that life in Ketchum might be drastically changed.

If Democrats give him the nod at their 2004 convention in his hometown of Boston, the Adams Gulch home of Kerry and his wife, Teresa, would inevitably be a getaway retreat from campaigning for Kerry.

And that would mean tight Secret Service security (more so since Sept. 11) with special motorcade arrangements between Ketchum and Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey. In addition, there would be an entourage of security and campaign workers whenever Kerry might venture out on the town here, a press contingent with all its communications gear, a farm of satellite dishes, and a demand for hotel rooms and office space.

That’s true even if Kerry spends just a few days in one place. Security concerns and press attention for a presidential nominee is only a tier below attention given to the president himself.

Those are all suppositions, of course. But it’s not such a remote possibility that officials up and down the Wood River Valley can ignore and not begin contemplating.

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If the United States has royalty, it’s not the Kennedys or the Bushes or Clintons.

It’s the prelates and princes of the Catholic Church.

For at least the past 20 years, prominent American bishops and at least one cardinal have callously covered up sexual predators in their priestly ranks.

Now rank and file priests are finally beginning to pay for their ghastly behavior with jail time.

Why not their superiors?

Considering the magnitude of his cover-ups, Boston’s Cardinal John Law has suffered little more than the indignity of being forced to resign. In his wake, he leaves his diocese with imponderable damages in the tens of millions of dollars to pay victims and bequeaths to his successor the trauma of restoring confidence of disillusioned and bitter parishioners.

Meanwhile, in Phoenix, under threats of grand jury action, Bishop Thomas O’Brien is finally revealing cover-ups involving as many as 50 molester priests in his diocese. O’Brien, too, seems untouched by the criminal justice system, merely embarrassed.

Had any Americans in positions of such authority — college presidents, school principals, corporate executives, sports coaches or scout masters — cynically concealed criminal rape and molestation in their ranks, they’d be doing hard jail time right now.

To accord immunity to supposedly godly men who aided criminal behavior, and compounded it by transferring priests to new parishes where they resumed sexual depravity, is to ignore what these prelates are — common criminal accessories to heinous crimes who should be in prison.

 

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