ACT-UP acts out:

...Imagine also what might be the desecrating equivalent to the actions outside Holy Cross Cathedral...

...Why attack the Eucharist to protest some of the cardinal's policies...

...Three days later, Margery Eagen of the Herald headlined her column, "The anger, compassion of a gay Catholic man" and recounted a horrific story of a priest's indefensible response when the man confessed his homosexual leanings...

...Second, the Boston Globe's front-page story began with a description of these activities as "colorful, loud-and peaceful...

...After the procession entered the cathedral, the doors and windows had to be shut to reduce the noise of the protests...

...The police had to intervene to escort them away...

...Guilty...

...It would be a week before the Herald would print another column, this one taking vigorous exception to the protest...

...Imagine that it had been a solemn Jewish ceremony, or a service in honor of an African-American hero...

...When the rector of the cathedral arrived early in the morning of the ordination, he found graffiti attacking Cardinal Bernard Law scrawled on the sidewalks...

...The protest was orchestrated by ACT-UP/Boston, aided by busloads of ACT-UP representatives from New York and with the endorsement of some fourteen other groups, most of them organizations supporting gay and lesbian causes, but including the American Association of University Women...

...Of course, a secular newspaper cannot be expected to use religious language or to refer to the ACT-UP's actions as "blasphemous," much less "satanical," a word I have heard used about the event...

...The demonstration went "fabulously," a member of ACT-UP commented...

...Other protestors parodied the Communion rite, holding up condoms and distributing them with the sign of the cross...

...While the ordination rite proceeded within, outside a man dressed in priest's cassock declaimed a parody of the Sermon on the Mount that made it a paean to sodomy, while others simulated acts of anal and oral sex...

...As the congregation left the cathedral at the end of the service, it was met by shouts of "Shame...

...Would it be considered enough to praise free speech without a word about the degeneration of civil discourse...

...The evening television news showed them walking, with police on either side, as a last protestor threw another condom at them...

...The police stood behind barriers to keep the protestors from entering the church...

...We have a tremendous amount of momentum...

...The account made no mention of the vulgar chants, the parodies, or the tossed condoms...

...No one has pointed out the irony in ACT-UP tactics...

...As the procession began, a small group of protestors outside chanted slogans: "Outlaw Cardinal Law...

...Since then, the Globe has published three letters in response to the column-all critical-including one from ACT-UP which says it's all a matter of "style...

...It would be another week before it published an op-ed column of protest by John Walsh, communication director of the archdiocese...

...In fact, he left by another route...

...ROBERT DAWSON Robert Dawson is a Boston writer...

...But, Eagen assured us, "it is not his style to throw condoms outside cathedrals...

...What editorial protests and columnists' cries of outrage would follow in the days, the weeks after...

...Why blaspheme Christ and his teachings...

...Still the man remained a Catholic: "Being Catholic is my culture, like being Jewish...

...he hoped that "this horrible incident is an aberration, not the beginning of a new trend of civil disorder...

...The Boston Herald's reporter did at least mention that the protestors were "chanting, cursing, and tossing condoms" and referred to the mockery of Communion...

...Shame...

...The only comment from a non-Catholic that has been made public was the strong protest of Leonard Zakim, New England regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, who spoke of the "appalling lack of respect for religious freedom and for the sanctity of the ordination ceremony...

...To judge from the Boston media's handling of the protest outside the cathedral, that threshold has not yet been crossed when it comes to assaults on Catholics...

...But is it too much to expect that reporters and editorialists might, even in their descriptions, have been aware that was going on was an assault upon the deepest beliefs of Catholics...

...If an obscene parody of the Sermon on the Mount and the substitution of the condom for the Eucharist are not an attack upon Catholic Christianity, what is...

...2-4-6-8, how do you know your priest is straight...

...No political official, no candidate for office, is reported to have uttered the slightest public observation, let alone condemnation...

...There's a kind of beauty in the faith," he went on, "that people can continue to find even when they are rejected...

...Some time well after the end of the ceremony, as a young newly ordained priest walked away from the cathedral with his alb hung over one arm and his elderly mother clutching the other, a group of protestors surrounded them pelting them with condoms...

...Protestors surrounded a car they presumed would be used to take Cardinal Law away...

...Several things are disturbing-if that is not too mild a word- about all of this...

...Is there another minority group in the country which, if similarly assaulted, would be treated in this fashion...

...Third, there was no outcry from the wider public...

...John J. O'Connor, the New York Times' TV critic, recently wrote of "a revulsion threshold" crossed by Andrew Dice Clay, a popular comic, who has made his name by reviling women, homosexuals, blacks, Hispanics, and cripples...

...Is there a new form of "homophobia" now abroad, a fear of criticizing homosexual activists, no matter how outrageous their behavior...

...Guilty...

...no columnist thought it worthy of attention...

...All of this took place, of course, on the eve of Gay Pride Week, and its efforts to combat violence, including verbal insult, against homosexuals...

...and pelted with packets of condoms...

...Ten days later the Globe published two brief letters...

...This year was different...

...a Boston writer...

...No editorial commented on the incident...

...Would anyone be content to think it only a matter of "style...

...An editorial the same day criticized the "foul tactics" of ACT-UP with an oblique reference to the demonstration at the cathedral...

...What then would they think did constitute an attack upon Catholicism...

...The sad thing is, he may be right...

...Curb your dogma...

...First, a protest allegedly directed against Cardinal Law's policies took the form of an attack on central Catholic doctrines, devotions, and sensitivities...

...The only other adjectives used, deep within the article, were "boisterous" and "often irreverent...

...We're not attacking Catholics or the church," claimed one member of ACT-UP...

...This is usually a joyful day for the ordinals, their families, and for the life of the local church they will serve...

...What is going on in all this...

...you.'" Some were dressed up in mock episcopal garb and headdress and carried placards: "If I can't have sex, no one else will either...

...You say, 'No F...' We say, 'F...

...But his statement that "all who care about religious freedom and free speech should be outraged" has still found no public echo from others, even from the heads of Boston's Protestant churches...