Obituaries are an interesting and unique form of journalism.
On one level, these news features — especially long takes on the lives of the famous — are tributes to people who shaped our culture. There are cases, of course, in which people become famous for negative, as well as positive, reasons. It would be strange to see an obit of former President Bill Clinton that avoided the flaws, and possible crimes, that led to his impeachment.
There are also people whose lives become intertwined with controversial people. It’s hard to imagine, at some point in the future, an obituary for Bob Weinstein that didn’t mention the #MeToo excesses of his brother Harvey Weinstein during their years working side by side. Consider this passage from a New York Times story last fall:
Time’s Up, a Hollywood-based advocacy group begun in the wake of the Weinstein revelations and the #MeToo effort, quickly issued a statement after learning of Bob Weinstein’s new production company.
“There could have been no Harvey Weinstein without the complicity of Bob Weinstein, who for years put profits ahead of people’s lives as Harvey terrorized women throughout the industry,” the statement read.
This brings me to the recent Times feature obit that ran with this dramatic double-decker headline:
James Parks Morton, Dean Who Brought a Cathedral to Life, Dies at 89
Leading the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for 25 years, he sought to make it central to urban life.
Morton was a liberal Protestant hero who led an Episcopal sanctuary that served as a Maypole around which activists of many kinds danced. However, his career was closely connected with an even more famous liberal Christian hero — Bishop Paul Moore — who was hiding secrets. Hold that thought.
Let’s start with the glowing Times overture.
The Very Rev. James Parks Morton, who in 25 years as dean of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Upper Manhattan transformed it from a religious backwater into a vibrant center for the arts, the homeless, circus performers, household pets, endangered animals and interfaith engagement, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89. …
St. John the Divine, the seat of the Episcopal diocese of New York, sits on a 13-acre campus in Morningside Heights. It is said to be the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and one of the biggest church buildings anywhere.
Mr. Morton was appointed dean in 1972 by the new bishop of the diocese, the Rev. Paul Moore Jr. Together they re-envisioned the church as “a medieval cathedral for New York City” that would engage the city in all its promise and problems.
(By the way, I think the proper style there would be the Rt. Rev. Paul Moore, Jr., or simply New York Bishop Paul Moore, Jr.)
There’s no question that Moore was a towering figure in New York and American life in that era, the kind of larger-then-life progressive who ends up on the cover of Newsweek.
Morton was the dean of Moore’s cathedral during the years that mattered most, in terms of St. John the Divine building its reputation as the center for many liberal causes. The Times story has room to list all the highlights, ranging from social activism to worship that blended various forms of religious faith into one jazzy whole.
There was the homeless shelter on the cathedral grounds and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board. The world-music pioneer Paul Winter and his ensemble led Gaia Masses and winter Solstice Celebrations. Morton began a program to train unemployed urban young people in the stone-working skills needed to attempt to complete his cathedral (a project that soon ran out of funds). The cathedral frequently hosted concerts by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. The Big Apple Circus called the cathedral home, when off the road.
The Times noted, in a passage that is long, but essential:
Dean Morton gave over the cathedral’s great stone pulpit to a variety of speakers, among them the homeless, women and gay people (even before they were officially accepted as clergy in the Episcopal Church). He invited in Roman Catholic priests, rabbis, imams and leaders of other faiths. Among the guest preachers were the Nobel laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel and the Dalai Lama. …
For some he sometimes pushed the envelope too far. In one incident, in 1984, his installation of a bronze figure of a crucified woman with bare breasts in the cathedral led to accusations of sacrilege from some quarters of the church.
But Bishop Moore backed up his dean, if cautiously. “I won’t say I agree with everything he has done, but I support him,” he said in a 1987 interview. …
And while many in the church embraced Dean Morton’s introduction of the Blessing of the Animals, some rolled their eyes when he followed that up with a blessing for algae in 1988. A flask, labeled “anabaena flosaqua,” holding some 10 billion algae was carried into the cathedral along with a 14-foot-tall ginkgo tree, its roots wrapped in burlap.
Bishop Moore blessed them both.
If you followed the religious left in that era, you kept running into Moore and Morton, over and over. For many on the left, all roads led to St. John the Divine — especially on LGBTQ and environmental issues.
There were rumors about Moore, but that was just conservatives attacking a hero. Right?
Then came a feature by Honor Moore in The New Yorker — of all places — under a headline proclaiming, “The Bishop’s Daughter: A father, a faith, and a secret.” (Click here for GetReligion commentary on that.)
What was the dark secret? To be blunt, the bishop was hiding a double life. There was more to this than his sexual relationships with many women and men. It took several years for Episcopal leaders to clearly state that Bishop Moore was a bisexual predator. Here is a large chunk of the official #MeToo era statement from his diocese.
Among those stories came the painful and unvarnished remembrance of the long-time patterns of abuse committed by my predecessor Bishop Paul Moore against priests, seminarians and laypersons in our diocese. …
[When] the abuse of people comes from their pastors or spiritual leaders it necessarily creates enormous confusions for the abused. This was the experience of many at the Priests Conference, where it was shattering, or difficult to comprehend, that Paul Moore, a figure of extraordinary inspiration for so many of us, also bears the epithet “Serial Predator.” Paul Moore died fifteen years ago, but for those who continue to live with the pain of his long-ago abuse, the invitation is here extended to come forward, anonymously or not, quietly or not, to give your account.
Let’s be clear. We are talking about the sins and some would say crimes of Bishop Moore, not Dean Morton. These two progressive heroes served side by side and there is no way to separate their careers — as this Times obit makes clear, in a way.
There is no way to know what Morton knew or did not know about the secret life and deeds of his bishop. The bishop was able to hide his secrets from his family (although daughter Honor Moore’s New Yorker piece contains early warning signs before the veil fell). What did Morton know or suspect?
My question is simple: Did the hagiography of the Times obit for Morton need to include any material about the darker side of Moore’s trailblazing life and work in the Moore-Morton era? Maybe a sentence or two? Perhaps one sample of interview material from critics of the bishop and the dean?
Just asking.
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