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Not so, said one of the parents, Anne Spence. The archdiocese “kept vehemently denying that the school was closing. Then, all of a sudden, here’s a letter—the school’s closed, goodbye, don’t bother coming back next year.”35

In the bitter protests that followed, parishioners screamed at the aging pastor, Monsignor McDonnell, for selling them out. Parish leaders plunged into emergency fund-raising; two city council members and a state senator met with a poker-faced Lennon to pitch a turnaround plan. Brian Wallace went separately to the chancery with a colleague to meet Lennon. Wallace knew the church had a money crisis, but Lennon’s closure on an unsuspecting pastor had hung McDonnell out to dry. In the chancery Wallace took his seat opposite the Apostolic Administrator. Lennon glanced at his watch. “You have five minutes.”

“Five minutes?” snapped Wallace. “Here’s five seconds!” And with that the state representative walked out.

Whatever honeymoon Lennon had had with Catholic Boston soured in the media coverage over the St. Augustine closure. Bitterness over Law’s betrayal spilled out in cascades at Lennon.

When Seán O’Malley settled in as archbishop in the summer of 2003, Bishop Lennon retreated from the spotlight. O’Malley, with his white beard, serene demeanor, and soothing tones, had the persona of a peacemaker. He met with abuse survivors to advance the healing. The archdiocese agreed to the $85 million legal settlement for the 542 abuse survivors; the threat of bankruptcy receded as the archdiocese and Boston College moved toward the sale of the cardinal’s estate. But O’Malley minced few words of his own on the depth of the financial crisis. On February 13, 2004, Lennon wrote to Boston priests explaining that Archbishop O’Malley “has deliberately chosen the canonical procedure of suppression, rather than merger.” A suppressed church would close, its assets going to the archdiocese. The assets of a church that merged with another parish would follow parishioners to the new church. Lennon’s letter asserting that the archbishop had “deliberately chosen … suppression” suggested that O’Malley was a joint designer of the Reconfiguration blueprint. The archbishop set a March 8 deadline for leaders from eighty regional clusters to recommend which churches in their groupings should close.

Peter Borré, who had seen his share of layoffs in the corporate world, was struck by the icy logic of Reconfiguration. The order bore the archbishop’s signature, but everyone knew it was Lennon telling parish groups to vote on whose church took the bullet. In corporate downsizing, you never asked people to vote on who kept their job. “Suppression”—a canon law term evocative of the Inquisition—meant you were evicted from your spiritual home, and all the money you and your people had put into that sacred space back through time went down to prop up a debt-ridden chancery. This is going to blow up on them, Borré told himself.

Bowers secured an appointment with Archbishop O’Malley.

The new prelate in his friar’s robe sat at the end of a long table. Seán O’Malley was visibly subdued. He spoke slowly, in a voice so low Bowers sat forward to hear, explaining that the church faced hard decisions about consolidating parishes. Bowers delivered an upbeat account of his parish, the diversity of people, rich allied with poor, a financial curve bending their way. O’Malley as a young deacon had done missionary work with Indians on Easter Island, far off the coast of Chile. The prelate who had read Spanish literature in graduate school would surely warm to the picture of brown folk from Puerto Rico making a spiritual home at St. Catherine of Siena. Or so thought Father Bowers. But as he spoke of his parish’s resilience, O’Malley seemed drained. “We are facing tough decisions,” he reiterated. Bowers wanted O’Malley to see the parish. Would he come to St. Catherine of Siena and say Mass? Yes, replied O’Malley stiffly.

O’Malley seemed sad and listless as Bowers left.

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