A lockout on caring

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, Brian McGrory's column on June 10 used an incorrect name for Our Lady of the Presentation School in Brighton.)

What are Archbishop Sean O'Malley and his band of brethren going to think up next?

Maybe they'll sell off a nursing home and tell the sickly shut-ins to go get themselves a life. Or they'll order Catholic Charities to knock off all that help to the poor. Perhaps they'll toss a group of birthing mothers out of St. Elizabeth's Hospital.

Hey, why not? This I ask after spending part of yesterday afternoon in Oak Square in Brighton listening to a veteran teacher at Our Lady of the Preservation School talk about the fate of her ''honey pots," and another teacher wondering what might become of the class goldfish.

They were unceremoniously locked out of their school yesterday morning on the second-to-last day of class, the teachers and all their grammar school students, locked out by O'Malley and his minions, who believed that the kids had been smuggling food into the building in preparation for an occupation.

You see, the school is slated to be turned into church office space, and the archbishop didn't want any pesky parents and students getting in his way. So he kicked them out without giving them a chance to retrieve their stuff.

But here's a news bulletin for the church: That smuggled food was actually a batch of cupcakes and a sheet cake with the word ''Congratulations" scrawled across the top in frosting, hardly nourishment to sustain a long standoff.

At midday, the school was locked tight. Private security guards stood inside. Across the street, on Oak Square, parents and teachers gathered with their children, all of them wondering what would become of their books, their plants, and their end-of-the-year gifts.

They were also wondering what had become of a church, a faith, that no longer seems to be theirs.

''All 22 kids have come up to me today and asked in their sweet little voices, 'Mrs. Rufo, where are our honey pots?' " said Claudia Rufo, a prekindergarten teacher for the past 22 years. ''They were these little bags for the kids. I put their names on them and little bears on them. They were sitting by the window."

Said Christine Falcone, a first-grade teacher: ''I'm in shock. It's unbelievable. One of my little boys said, 'My crayons are in my desk.' Their little lives are in there."

I want to like O'Malley, I really do. I want to like him because he seems like a thoughtful, serious-minded man who inherited a miserable situation. His initial actions were laudable. He reached settlements with the victims of pedophilic priests. He sold tens of millions of dollars in archdiocesan property, including his own mansion. He moved into relatively austere quarters in the South End.

But time and again, he pulls another lunkhead move like this. First the church hierarchy looked the other way as priests abuse children, and now they lock a group of 3-to-12-year-olds out of their school during the last week of class. Seriously, what's next?

All across town yesterday, civic leaders seethed. ''The church is built on compassion and caring," Mayor Thomas M. Menino barked into the telephone. ''Where is the compassion? Where is the caring?"

Other community leaders with close ties to the church privately expressed sharp irritation with O'Malley, who they said was overly reliant on a group of longtime archdiocesan aides who couldn't be trusted to make thoughtful decisions.

In other words, the flock is losing faith in O'Malley -- fast.

Back in Oak Square, kids spent the afternoon playing on the grass: pig-tailed kids, Irish kids, blonde kids, Asian kids, freckled kids, black kids, kids who were supposed to be in school celebrating the end of the year, but weren't, thanks to the archbishop.

One young mother, Lisa Campbell, carried a copy of a memory book filled with photographs that she had made for fourth- and fifth-graders. Most of the books were locked in the building, gone.

''They have no idea what they've done," said Rufo.

Maybe not, but the other thing is, O'Malley and his brethren don't really seem to care.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.