Kelly's time

THERE is a season for everything, and the Rev. Thomas C. Kelly must know this is the time for rectification.

The word means ''to put or set right.'' It's what he can help accomplish by stepping aside as archbishop.

If he doesn't, his own role in the unfolding scandal of sexual abuse by priests can only become a more and more divisive issue. Already, he is the object of an organizing effort in this regard.

Yesterday, the newspaper published memos Rev. Kelly wrote in 1983 about a 15-yearold boy's complaint that he was abused by the Rev. Thomas Creagh at St. Albert the Great.

The memos reveal an attitude that was protective of the priest, parish and church at the expense of one of its most vulnerable members, and that was hostile toward the boys' parents, who were disparaged as extortionary and vindictive.

The predicament of the boy was harrowing.

For telling the truth about a crime committed against him, he faced a combination of church and school authority figures who minimized his report as a manipulative attempt to win permission to leave Trinity High School.

Further, the memos reveal that Rev. Kelly did not follow the advice he sought from another archdiocese, which was to deal with an overtly sexual incident by sending the guilty priest to an assignment ''out of the diocese'' by way of a counseling/therapeutic program. (Three years later, Rev. Creagh was cleared for the ministry after a psychological evaluation.)

What the memos clearly suggest is an approach that, in seeking to avoid public scandal and prevent the emergence of more complaints, would end up promoting ''a pattern of permissive sexual abuse of minors.''

That's the result that victims have alleged in the suit filed last May concerning sexual abuse by other local priests.

Rev. Kelly concluded his second memo on the Creagh case with a seemingly relieved summary of events, noting, ''Father Creagh never had to be absent from the parish, nor has there been any s(c)andal so far.''

Such priorities are difficult to reconcile with the concerns that should be most important to the shepherd of a flock.

Of course, notes and summaries are only limited evidence on which to base a full understanding of events such as these, which are full of human and institutional subtleties. But at a minimum, they will provide the basis for endless, rancorous debate and dispute.

For the victims, all of them, and for the church itself, Rev. Kelly must want to avoid that.