Joking about Drunk Driving While Being Made Bishop: New Evangelization and the Reality of American Catholicism Today

Headline at USA Today site yesterday: "SF Prelate Jokes about DUI Charge at Installation."

Because what's funnier, after all, than operating a vehicle when you're drunk?  At night.  On busy streets in a major city.  With your elderly mother and a yet to be identified young man in the car.

Rembert Weakland's Memoir A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Wrap-Up Comments

I hadn't planned to do this, but the good responses (and questions) of some readers to my two-part series on Rembert Weakland's A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church have spurred me to add some brief(ish) wrap-up commentary to my previous two postings.  (I will, by the way, be responding to readers' comments directly in a short while: as the week winds down, I find myself a bit tired, specifically because writing the two postings about Weakland's book engaged me at a significant emotional level and sapped my energy.  And because, to be honest, I tend to go through cycles in which it strikes me that not much I say on this blog is really worth reading, in the bigger scheme of things--and that I need to tend to my own spiritual wellsprings as I blog, so that I don't blog about nothing at all).

Rembert Weakland's Memoir A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Reflections (Part 2)

And now the continuation of my posting reflecting on Rembert Weakland's memoir A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: I ended yesterday's preface by noting that my reading of Weakland's book hadn't changed my view of him.  That's not entirely accurate.  I feel the need as I begin these reflections to note that the initial portion of his memoir, in which he talks about growing up in poverty in the small Appalachian town of Patton, Pennsylvania, moved me.  

Rembert Weakland's Memoir A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Reflections

In December 2010, I posted something I had written in June 2002 in a journal I was keeping at that time, about breaking news that the archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, had had an affair with a man to whom he had paid money secretly out of archdiocesan funds when his former lover, Paul Marcoux, threatened to go public with information about their relationship.  My journal entry of 2 June 2002 states that the revelations about Weakland had left me cold.

Media Coverage of Finn Indictment: An Authoritarian Culture in Serious Denial

In a posting yesterday, I linked to A.G. Sulzberger's recent New York Times article about how Catholic pastors in the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph seemed to tiptoe around the topic of their bishop's recent criminal indictment in the homilies they gave this past Sunday.  And now today, I find that theme becoming something of a meme at various blog and news sites.

The News That's Fit to Tell: End-of-Week List

From a week of news-reading in which I haven't felt sufficient energy to comment on these stories as carefully as I might have wished: here's a set of recent stories/commentary (about widely scattered matters) that have caught my attention, and may interest readers:

A Reader Writes: With the Euteneuer Case, Isn't It Important to Avoid Creeping Definition of Abuse?

In the comments section of my postings of the past several days (and here and here) re: the case of Father Thomas Euteneuer, some heated and valuable discussions have developed.  I'd like to lift part of one discussion out of the threads and post it on the blog proper, to make it available to a wider readership.  (I may choose later today to refine or revise what I'm posting raw here, if I think of further qualifications to add to what I have written in haste to reply to a  thoughtful and intelligent reader of this blog, Felapton, this morning).

More Reflections from the Past: My Response to the Resignation of Archbishop Rembert Weakland

Another selection from a journal entry of mine from the past.  This one comments on the resignation of Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee after it became public that Weakland had had a consensual sexual relationship with an adult male, and had used diocesan funds to pay his former lover hush money when the affair soured.  I actually wrote this journal entry in Milwaukee, where, as it happened, Steve had a job interview at the same time that Weakland resigned.

Defenders of Vatican Claim Conspiracy: The Obligation to Remember Where This Papal Regime Went Wrong

As spin about what Benedict knew when gets underway (it’s an international atheist- and Freemason-driven media conspiracy; it all points back to Rembert Weakland and the gays—it’s boys being abused, doncha know), I’m thinking of something a priest-theologian friend of mine, Fr. Bill, first told me in the mid-1980s.  I’m thinking of Bill’s insights as I read today the announcement of Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect emeritus of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints, that the spate of recent revelations stems from a “conspiracy” against Pope Benedict, a “well-organized plan, with a clear aim.”  (See Marina Hyde’s wonderful commentary on Cardinal Martins’ conspiracy theory in the Guardian today.)

The cardinal’s comments bring to mind Fr. Bill’s insight even in the 1980s about one of the possible futures the restorationist regime was building for itself: “The men running the church right now would be wise to consider what will happen if their regime ever cracks.  Hurt a lot of folks for a long time, and you can’t expect sympathy and support when your day dawns.”

What Benedict Knew When: Wisconsin Priest Abuses 200 Deaf Boys; Ratzinger Informed

 

Today’s big news: a blockbuster exposé by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times, showing the direct involvement of the current pope in shielding an American priest, Lawrence C. Murphy, who abused at least 200 deaf boys from the 1950s up to his death in 1998.  Files obtained by the Times show Cardinal Ratzinger receiving correspondence about this priest from Wisconsin bishops, including Rembert Weakland, archbishop of Milwaukee, who wrote Cardinal Ratzinger twice in 1996 to inform him about Fr. Murphy.

Following Weakland’s letters, Ratzinger’s second in command Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican secretary of state, told the bishops of Wisconsin to begin a secret canonical trial to consider Fr. Murphy’s defrocking.  Murphy then wrote to Ratzinger asking that the trial be stopped, and stating that he had repented and the time allotted for a trial in the church’s statute of limitations had run out.