The curtain has come down upon your reign, Cardinal Bernard Law. The house lights are up. The audience rises in the stunned silence of a people who have witnessed their spiritual Armageddon, but have not yet discovered rays of hope among the rubble.

Please, exit quickly from the stage upon which you strode with such command over your minions, clerical and lay. It is the compassionate thing to do, for there are children present, and their parents would spare them further memories of the one who betrayed their trust, leaving untold numbers exposed to clerical debauchery, from which they will never recover.

In your dressing room, Cardinal, lay aside for the final time the crimson robes of royalty, symbols of power to which you have clung so tenaciously, like a drowning man lashing himself to a passing board in choppy seas. The power is gone. All gone, frittered away on fool’s gold.

By leaving quietly from the back stage door, you will avoid embarrassment for yourself and your people. Please, no more empty blessings in God’s name. No more appearance for its own sake. No more kissing of the ring, that sign of blind obedience to a feudal lord by the unquestioning faithful, who, some knowingly, some not, with their silence allowed the abuse of children to go unchallenged.

After all, someone had to know the reasons for transferring priests from here to there, had to sign the checks (bribes for silence), had to call upon the finer points of law to explain away questions of impropriety, or much worse. Colluding with those who would use children as adult debased amusement calls for its own guilt and punishment.

Certainly, it is understandable that you will want to clean out your desks in the mansion and chancery offices, but I hope you will find the computers and ledgers have been turned over to a lay board of auditors, relieving you of any obligation to stay around and explain the unexplainable.

Please, go, your Eminence; we care not where, though we could wish for a monastery where you might meet your God in peace and honesty, thereby setting an example that would go a long way toward healing your people’s wounds.

We hope you do not choose to retrieve your royal robes and shepherd’s staff on the way to Rome, where you can improve your golf score on well-manicured greens, toast with expensive wines in elegant restaurants, and, in the midst of pomp and circumstance, trick yourself into believing all is well, that you’ve won not only the battle, but the war.

Swinging incense will not cover the stench of child abuse, and Gregorian chant will not smother the sobs of parents grieving for their children.

It is time to go, your Eminence. Please, go. Please, go. Please, go. Now.

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