When will beleaguered Catholics in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee finally find relief from the decades long scourge and scorching heat of noxious liberalism emanating from their leadership and so many of their local parishes? This question is linked to a harsh indictment. I offer no pretension to veil the fact. But just anger and prolonged exasperation can only effervesce for so long, until it either dies out from exhaustion or, resolved to act, it overflows. I speak on behalf of thousands of Milwaukee Catholics, those alive and those deceased, who, for far too long, have observed the piecemeal decline and decay of a once vigorous and fecund Church. When clarity is needed, shady nuances are offered, when orthodoxy and unabashed fidelity to the Holy Father are in high demand, the faithful are subject to maddening shilly-shally and endless dithering. In years past, our ancestors crossed the vast ocean to a new life, however uncertain. Mine came predominantly from the old Catholic cultures of Bavaria, a town in the central hills of Puerto Rico and, by extension, Spain. Differences in language and history were eclipsed in Milwaukee by the common thread of a shared faith. Together with other immigrants to Milwaukee, they established in this city the same rugged, unpretentious and committed Catholic culture that was bequeathed to them by their own parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and so on. Magnificent churches were erected which stood as proud testaments to the simple yet unshakable faith of the fearless, and often poor, immigrants who bore so many hardships to find a better life on the shores of Lake Michigan. The soaring, beautiful churches, whose steeples, to this very day, so abundantly pierce the city’s skyline should never be seen detached from the countless sacrifices made by those who came before us. This is what they left us. What then, do we owe to them in return?
Looking back and, as always, looking ahead, the question must be presented for reflection: How are we to honor the legacy of our Catholic parents, grandparents, great-grandparents who came to Milwaukee from distant lands and who planted the seed of the faith, cultivating it with such love and solicitude? How can we ensure that the Catholic faith in Milwaukee, a simple yet bold faith that propelled generations before us to such acts of bravery as to leave their land of birth, will be transmitted to posterity, to the nth generation? What kind of a job have our leaders been doing over the past three decades to preserve the ancient faith, this “faith of our fathers, holy faith?”
An answer and assessment claiming any pretense to honesty and candor must divulge the sad fact that, for far too long, our beloved archdiocese has languished from within under feckless leadership on the one hand, and crafty saboteurs on the other; individuals who, whether wittingly or not, have dismantled and distorted the core tenets of the faith. This toxic combination, rudderless leadership at the helm coupled with busybody ideologues bearing an implacable allegiance to the most radical sort of distortions of our sacred religion, continues to play out on an almost daily basis in our city. The result can be, and has demonstrated to be, nothing other than immeasurable confusion in the minds and hearts of the faithful regarding the teachings of the Church. Some have remained, many, exhausted from theological battle and runaround, have left. There have been notable exceptions to the rule, to be sure; priests and pastors who have fought, and are fighting, the good fight, swimming upstream in the face of enormous opposition. They are to be thanked and encouraged.
Two recent examples, pulled from a packed catalogue of case studies in archdiocesan incompetence, mismanagement and well-documented scandal, shed light on my point. The first, we’ll call it “Exhibit A” (although for Milwaukee, we’d need an alphabet with more than 26 letters) is the sordid apologia/memoir, penned by Milwaukee’s infamous and arch-liberal Archbishop Emeritus Rembert Weakland, entitled Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church. In his book, the former head of the Milwaukee Archdiocese and longtime doyen of “progressive” Catholicism in the United States strings together a strained rhetorical artifice for his widely criticized handling of the clergy abuse scandal that rocked the city and nation. “Exhibit B” is Fr. Brian Massingale, the well-known priest-scribbler who memorably took to the pages of the Milwaukee Catholic Herald to defend same-sex “marriage” when the question was posed to voters back in 2006. Bucking the obvious preference of the Church leadership, Fr. Massingale offered a lukewarm “yea” for traditional marriage and then encouraged voters to say “nay” to a proposed amendment to the state constitution seeking to define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. Fr. Massingale was praised of late in the pages of the barely readable Archdiocesan newspaper for an award he is set to receive at Marquette University, yet another fertile, well-financed bastion of the distorted, feel-good brand of 1960's Catholicism that is, sadly, standard comme il faut in Milwaukee.
The most recent example of this sorry and seemingly interminable saga came when the freewheeling and always saccharine archdiocesan website sang the virtues of a well-known left-of-center local priest, Fr. Massingale. Now as already stated, Fr. Massingale, who is currently the president of the Catholic Theological Society, created some local waves back in 2006 when he advocated the unacceptable and, quite frankly, dumb position that local Catholics should in fact vote “no” on the electoral question of whether or not to support an amendment to the state constitution that sought to enshrine marriage as, well, what it is: a union between a man and a woman. (It should be noted that Bishop Morlino of the Diocese of Madison wisely recorded a pro-marriage admonition in his homily that he instructed the priests of his diocese to play during mass. In no uncertain terms, Morlino directed the faithful to support the very amendment that Massingale was working so feverishly to scuttle. How’s that for a study in contrasts?) Explaining his position however, Massingale elaborated in his essay, "The amendment upholds certain beliefs about the uniqueness of marriage…But it does so at a cost, namely, potentially damaging impacts upon the welfare of individuals and their children." This segued into a brief discussion on homosexuals where, once again, Massingale pulled out the hackneyed line favored by the left implying that principled opposition to homosexual activity must go cheek by jowl with bigotry and hate. "Too often, discussions of this issue treat 'those' people - specifically, gays and lesbians - as if they were an alien species. They are not. They are our sons and daughters; our sisters and brothers; our aunts, uncles, and cousins; our friends, neighbors, students and co-workers; our priests, ministers and parishioners. 'They' are us!" Backing up a bit though, by Massingale’s snide allusion to “certain beliefs about the uniqueness of marriage,” I gather he was alluding to the cross-cultural, universally accepted, millennia-old view that sees marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Oh, right, that “certain belief,” the one also endorsed tirelessly by the very Church in which Massingale is a priest and to which he professes fidelity. To be sure, Massingale also stated later to the press that he agreed with the bishops and the Church regarding the basic teaching on marriage but, and here’s the clincher, proceeded to rationalize his personal view, with the usual misty-eyed sophistry and sanctimony of the left, that caring Catholics should have opposed the amendment in the name of fairness, etc. In doing so, Massingale employed a rhetorical sleight of hand used ad nauseam by apologists of the left: disingenuously state that you agree on the fundamentals of a given position (in this case, the Church’s teaching) and then proceed on a line of argument that in the particulars ends up squarely on the opposite side of that position. Later, expounding on his stated position he said, "I do not see myself as a person in opposition to the bishops. I think we are in agreement about the importance of marriage. But how do you uphold that value without compromising the human dignity of any of God's people? I think that is the discussion that is currently under way in the church right now." And again: "My essay was not challenging the authority of the bishops in any way. It was looking at our Catholic tradition and trying to deal with a dilemma that many people with good conscience feel when faced with this amendment." (Doesn’t one, when faced with a “dilemma,” still seek to do what is objectively right? Dilemmas do not exculpate one from the demands of the moral law.) While coy, safe, and alarmingly effective, at its core, this “we agree but, wink-wink, really disagree” modus operandi is strikingly unprincipled (Obama, it is to be noted, uses it all the time) since it allows one to stake out a claim on multiple positions, appearance-wise, while, in substance come down decidedly on one side alone. To augment the unfortunate display, it was reported that Massingale’s tedious commentary was reprinted in many bulletins across the archdiocese, further mystifying the faithful as to the Church’s uncompromising position on the issue. And what of the archdiocesan leadership’s reaction to the snafu? Reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time: “Milwaukee Archdiocese spokeswoman Kathleen Hohl said Massingale is free to speak out on the issues and to share his views at local parishes.” Great. Thanks. And, three years down the road, we learn from the archdiocesan website, still infatuated with Fr. Massingale, that Marquette University has decided to stamp its seal of approval on Fr. Massingale, representing one more feather in the cap of Milwaukee’s ne plus ultra brand of “progressive” Catholicism. Something tells me we needn’t survey Fr. Massingale as to what he thought about the University of Notre Dame’s Kabuki dance in honor of President Obama.
We proceed now to Archbishop Emeritus Rembert Weakland, to the chaos he left behind and his attempt to explain it all away in a new memoir. Our illustrious Founding Father, James Madison once astutely noted, “simplicity and candor are the only dress that prudence would put on innocence.” The former head of the Milwaukee archdiocese clearly did not imbibe Madison’s adage. One would have to be living in a cave to have missed the story of Archbishop Rembert Weakland. It is not the purpose of this post to limn all the details and controversies of his decades long reign as head of the Milwaukee archdiocese, which ended conspicuously with his resignation in May of 2002. In the immediate aftermath of Weaklands memoir, George Neumayr fired a devastating salvo at Weakland’s well-fortified defensive walls in the pages of The Catholic World Report.
The chutzpah of Weakland is breathtaking. But then, this is a Benedictine monk…who could with a straight face spearhead a pastoral letter accusing Ronald Reagan of greed and fiscal irresponsibility while dipping himself into the faithful’s pockets for a $450,000 “loan” to pay off his disgruntled paramour, Paul Marcoux….Weakland’s dishonesty is sickening. Here is a bishop who violated his vows grossly, then plundered the hard-earned dollars of Catholic families to conceal his fraud, all so that he could avoid resignation and preserve his power, which he used to liberalize and corrupt the Church in America for over a generation.
Neumayr’s blistering critique of Weakland’s latest apologia is worth reading in its entirety. In it, he addresses and refutes seriatim Weakland’s preferred straw-man arguments defending his time as Milwaukee’s archbishop. There is no need here to go into detail regarding Weakland’s rank flaunting of the Vatican’s calls (let alone those of countless local Catholics) to preserve the interior beauty of the mother church of the archdiocese, St. John the Evangelist. Ignoring them, he proceeded to oversee the church’s gutting, its interior realignment or removal of things sacred and its newfangled array of garish modern art. This was his parting “gift” to the Catholics of Milwaukee. In light of what I have written here, I need not explain why, for so many years, dissident groups of Catholics across the nation found and continue to find Milwaukee a welcome and safe haven for the “discussion” and promotion of their erroneous views. There is no need to list off the number of ways in which countless Catholic schools lost a good chunk of their unique Catholic identity to watered-down theology and an aggressive sex-ed curriculum. The number of practicing Catholics has plummeted in Milwaukee, as have the numbers of priests and vocations, although in the last year or two, a mild uptick of sorts has been discernable.
So a balanced and realistic appraisal of Archbishop Weakland’s “legacy” in Milwaukee must survey the battlefield’s carnage resulting from twenty-five years of ubiquitous scandal and incompetence. Fr. Massingale, unfortunately, through his scandalous screeds and divided loyalties must be seen as a standout example of the persons and things wrought by Weakland. Another post will review the Dolan years. A preview though, for those interested: the opportunity for real change (dare I say, "change we could believe in") was there and in high demand back in 2003 but alas, in too many ways, the leadership can was kicked down the road for the next archbishop to pick up.
Morning in Milwaukee can’t come soon enough.
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