TO: The Most Rev. Richard J. Malone, Bishop of Portland.

FROM: A Former Altar Boy

I know, Your Excellency, that this is not the way we Catholics normally communicate with our bishop.

But I'm at a crossroads here – not with my faith, but with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland. And which way I turn depends a lot on what you decide to do about Marie Tupper.

Tupper, as you know, is the mother from Boothbay Harbor who's spent the past several years requesting a meeting with you to talk about what the Rev. Thomas Lee allegedly did many years ago to her son.

For what it's worth, Bishop Malone, the diocese got no argument from me when Lee, now 81, resigned his priesthood four years ago. When your spokeswoman, Sue Bernard, cited "multiple complaints" against Lee by victims at Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish in Boothbay Harbor and St. Philip Parish in Lyman, I figured better late than never.

And truth be told, I was pretty impressed with your response last month after a three-member church tribunal essentially cleared Lee of any wrongdoing. You announced you were "stunned and disappointed at the outcome of this case" and would appeal the tribunal's finding all the way to the Vatican.

But here's what I don't get, Bishop Malone. I don't get why you keep calling the police.

You called them last month when Tupper and Paul Kendrick, one of her growing number of supporters, confronted you in Portland's Old Port to ask why you wouldn't sit down with her and explain exactly how the church has handled her son's complaint these past five years.

(For starters, she'd like to know how a church tribunal possibly could investigate her son's case without once talking to him or his family.)

And you called the police again on Sunday when 30 people, minus Tupper and Kendrick, showed up at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Scarborough wearing stickers that read, "Bishop Malone: Please Meet with Marie Tupper."

I know, Your Excellency, you were there to install a new pastor. And I know that the Scarborough police officers summoned by one of your staff just stood in the back and made sure everything stayed peaceful – which, thank heavens, it did.

Still, eight years after the church scandal broke here and throughout the country, I find something very wrong with this picture: the spiritual shepherd to Maine's Roman Catholics, whenever he makes a public appearance, calling in the police to shield him from his own flock.

It would be one thing, bishop, if these people planned to raise Cain during Sunday's Mass. But they didn't.

It would be cause for concern if they had a history of using violence or civil disobedience to make their point. But they don't.

It might even make a difference if they weren't themselves Roman Catholics. But they are.

I've spoken about this at length with your beleaguered spokeswoman. Bernard tells me that you won't meet with Tupper as long as she associates with people like Kendrick, whom you've threatened with a church sanction one step short of outright excommunication if he doesn't stop sending you e-mails. (If anything, he's now sending you more.)

Bernard noted that Tupper met five years ago with Bishop Joseph Gerry (it didn't go well). She also said the diocese has offered to have Tupper meet with the Rev. Andrew Dubois, the diocese's vicar general, to discuss her son's case.

What Bernard has yet to say, because she can't, is that Tupper can bring her questions directly to you.

I spoke Monday with Tupper, who had just received an e-mail from a parishoner at St. Maximilian Kolbe calling her "terroristic" and "pathetic" and suggesting that she "just find another church to attend."

Just a few weeks ago, Tupper told me, her application to become a eucharistic minister and bring Holy Communion to the sick was turned down by the committee that...