Weakland: Still Relevant (in Milwaukee) After All These Years

Who is in charge in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee?

This is a question that exasperated Catholics have asked for quite some time. Besieged by scandal and a sense of liturgical listless for years now, we wonder "When will our time come?" By "our time" I make reference to a long-hoped for return to simple fidelity and faithfulness. For well over two decades, the Milwaukee archdiocese has stood unrivaled in the nation as a hotbed of unadulterated, high liberalism, scandal and dissent. Anyone who claims any scintilla of fidelity to real Church tradition, anyone who has grown up in Milwaukee, attended the typical, freewheeling Catholic schools, attended the run of the mill local parishes, etc., knows this. It's beyond doubt.

Next year's Cathedral Ministry Conference will host Rembert Weakland as its keynote speaker. The former head of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee will be discussing his role in the controversial 2001 "renovation" of the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist in downtown Milwaukee, a process which witnessed so many sins against good taste and tradition, even according to non-Catholics: the baldacchino was removed, its pillars smashed, the tabernacle was relocated to a less conspicuous location only to be replaced by an organ of all things, the altar was pulled out of the sanctuary and into the main body of the cathedral for greater "accessibility." And the list goes on. This is only a smattering of what unfolded at St. John's. Visitors can view the rest of the offenses to art for themselves. Interestingly, the Vatican lobbed a futile plea across the Atlantic, calling into question the wisdom of some of the more jaw dropping renovation plans, but the plea failed to find a home in Weakland, who resolutely dug in his heels and forged on with the wreckovation. Said Weakland, "We are not a corporation with head offices in Rome and branch offices around the world; we are not a military body; we are not a monarchy.” Weakland was operating within the legitimate perimeters of his great powers as an archbishop and so the cathedral gutting went on. The finished product, lauded by Catholic progressives but mourned by aficionados of fine art, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, became a monument to the man and the perfect outward manifestation of Weakland's singular vision of the church and of liturgy, which was nothing less than a "Power to the people!" revolutionary democratization of the Church from the top down.

Without dipping into the particulars of Weakland's long reign, which are well known and meticulously documented, one might hope that, after so many years in the limelight, he would opt gracefully and quietly to disappear into the thickness of the still-unsettled smoke resulting from his decades-long battles against Catholic traditionalists. Opponents of Weakland's soi-disant liberal dispositions took no delight in (or should not have taken delight in) the embarrassing revelations he very publicly aired as he closed out his time as head of the Milwaukee Archdiocese in 2002. Taking delight in another's agony or embarrassment is wrong. But it is not unseemly to expect certain things to follow as just consequences of bad decisions, whether committed in the personal or public realm. The bottom line is that Weakland attempted to experiment with many things, but that experiment, we can now safely say, has failed miserably. So why is he, time and again, the recipient of high-profile platforms in Milwaukee to peddle and defend his depressing, life-draining legacy in the archdiocese?

It is truly extraordinary that, after all that has transpired and been revealed in Milwaukee over the past ten years or so, there is not discernible a more vigorous desire on the part of the powers that be, to turn the page. Weakland still, and incredibly, appears to hold a rarefied seat of honor in Milwaukee. Have we already forgotten the not so distant past? Some say that, for better or worse, Americans are blessed/cursed with a short-term memory, but this short and over such serious things? I refuse to believe it. Perhaps some are hoping that we may have forgotten but that hope is chimerical, even delusional. We will not forget. We cannot forget.