Rite and ReasonThe dilemma faced by so many Catholics in recent years was experienced last month by one of Irish America's most prominent writers, writes Sheila Sullivan
It was June 15th last and the gravelly voice on my answering machine said "Hello, Sheila. Breslin. My daughter Rosemary died at 11 o'clock yesterday morning. This is the first chance I got to make a call to you. I'm sorry for everything and I'd appreciate a prayer. There'll be a service Thursday here in New York but we won't even look for you. All right. Thank you very much. I wanted to tell you. Thanks."
It was a sad phone call from an old friend and journalistic hero of mine: the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin.
We worked together at the New York Daily News before I moved to Ireland in the 1980s.
Breslin, who will be 75 in October, still writes a column for Newsday three times a week. He has written a new book, The Church That Forgot Christ, a powerful and at times harrowing memoir which expresses his anger at the clerical sex abuse scandals in Ireland and the US, and his feelings of betrayal at the obscene cover-ups, by cardinals and bishops with Irish last names, of rampant child sexual abuse.
A lifelong Roman Catholic, Breslin has been forced to separate a faith he loves from what he calls "the failed Church in Rome", "a fraud inhabiting great buildings".
At times of bereavement he relies on his faith, "which always gave me feelings of indescribable beauty", and not on the damaged institution of the Catholic Church, "an all-male club that is many centuries old and believes prayers to God must be heard over the sound of women scrubbing the floor".
Breslin's daughter, Rosemary, who had died aged 47, was the third of six children born to Jimmy and his first wife, also named Rosemary, who died 23 years ago of cancer. Their daughter suffered from a blood disease so rare that it has no name.
Jimmy called it "a chronic blood problem, which for 10 years now has eluded research and which reacts to no treatment so far other than blood transfusions every 14 days". Rosemary wrote a book about her illness, Not Exactly What I Had In Mind, typing with tubes in her arms.
At her mother's funeral in the summer of 1981 so many mourners filled Our Lady of Mercy church in Queens that they poured out on to the sidewalk. Jimmy gave the eulogy.
Now there was to be another funeral, this time in Manhattan, where Jimmy had moved after marrying former New York City councilwoman Ronnie Eldridge.
The service was held in the church of St Francis of Assisi on West 41st Street. It was the church of Father Mychal Judge, the New York City Fire Department chaplain and the first official victim of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001.
On the way to church I thought about the fact that Rosemary's husband, Tony Dunne, had married her knowing that she couldn't have children. I thought about the blood transfusions. And I thought about Breslin losing a wife and child.
The day was so hot and humid that, while standing on West 31st Street, I swore I would never complain about Irish weather again. Then mercifully it began to rain. "It reminds me of Ireland," I said to Daily News columnist Michael Daly, whose father is buried in Cork. "You're like an Eskimo in snow," he replied kindly.
The church, as big as a cathedral, was packed with mourners and the biggest floral arrangements I had ever seen. Friends and neighbours from Queens and Manhattan mingled with journalists and writers, watched by Franciscan friars in brown robes. Tony Dunne's aunt, the writer Joan Didion, spoke.
Nurse Ann Culkin, who cared for Rosemary in the hospital, also spoke. She said she did not know exactly when she had crossed the line from carer to friend, but that she had. She praised all the people who had donated blood for Rosemary's transfusions.
When it became apparent that there was no hope left, Rosemary planned her own memorial service. She asked her four brothers and one sister to be funny and brief when they spoke, and they were.
Then it was the father's turn. Breslin is a writer who writes no matter what, and this tragedy was no exception.
He walked slowly to the altar and read A Daughter's Last Breaths, in which he paid tribute to his dark-haired, smiling daughter's courage in bearing her illness and finishing her book.
In his grief and shock Breslin embodied the dilemma of many Catholics who want to practise their religion despite the horrific abuse scandals. As he writes in The Church That Forgot Christ, "I know I must attack this Church that has let paedophiles flourish, the victims to suffer for decades. But my upbringing in this Church that started at age four is not shucked off so simply, no matter what great hill of dark facts you gather. Your past prolongs indecision."
Sheila Sullivan is a journalist at The Irish Times.