eDivorce

From the Associated Press

Brazil Senate passes speedy Internet divorce bill

BRASILIA, Brazil – The Brazilian Senate has approved a bill that would allow consensual divorces to be filed and resolved on the Internet.

The Senate's official news agency says the bill would speed divorce proceedings, allowing couples to split without lawyers or having to wait in line in court.

Get 'em While They're Young

"'Classroom activities' to coincide with Obama's message" to America's children...Should parents be concerned? What about all Americans? I've heard some pretty wild stories about little kids in school being fed sunny Obama propaganda under the guise of "celebrating the historic nature of his presidency," and all that jazz. Legitimate charges of bias and indoctrination will, of course, be painted as racism, etc. Brace yourself.

A suggested lesson plan that calls on school kids to write letters to themselves about what they can do to help President Obama is troubling some education experts, who say it establishes the president as a "superintendent in chief" and may indoctrinate children to support him politically.

Obama will deliver a national address directly to students on Tuesday, which will be the first day of classes for many children across the country. The address, to be broadcast live on the White House's Web site, was announced in a letter to school principals last week by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Obama intends to "challenge students to work hard, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning," Duncan wrote. Obama will also call for a "shared responsibility" among students, parents and educators to maximize learning potential.

But in advance of the address, the Department of Education has offered educators "classroom activities" to coincide with Obama's message.

Read on

Remember THIS?

Global Warming and the Sun

From Jonah Goldberg, appearing in National Review Online:

But we live in a moment when we are told, nay lectured and harangued, that if we use the wrong toilet paper or eat the wrong cereal, we are frying the planet. But the sun? Well, that’s a distraction. Don’t you dare forget your reusable shopping bags, but pay no attention to that burning ball of gas in the sky — it’s just the only thing that prevents the planet from being a lifeless ball of ice engulfed in darkness. Never mind that sunspot activity doubled during the 20th century, when the bulk of global warming has taken place.

What does it say that the modeling that guaranteed disastrous increases in global temperatures never predicted the halt in planetary warming since the late 1990s? (MIT’s Richard Lindzen says that “there has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995.”) What does it say that the modelers have only just now discovered how sunspots make the Earth warmer?

The Futility of Sanctions

John Bolton offers his characteristically blunt and sobering appraisal of the Iranian conundrum. His familiarity with the maddeningly byzantine inner-workings of the UN is apparent.

Last week, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed elBaradei attempted to whitewash Iran's nuclear weapons program by issuing a report ignoring substantial information about weaponization activities and downplaying continued noncooperation.

Even the Obama administration apparently now understands that resuming the long-stalled "Permanent-Five plus-one" negotiations (the U.N. Security Council's permanent members plus Germany) with Iran is highly unlikely to halt Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Accordingly, President Obama is readying two alternatives. One is to characterize "freezing" Iran's nuclear program at existing levels as a "success." However, this less than complete termination of Iran's nuclear program would run contrary to years of determined clandestine efforts. Such a freeze is utterly unverifiable and amounts to surrender. This will result in a nuclear-armed Iran.

The other Obama administration ploy is "strong sanctions" imposed by the United States and other countries. This will also be a "success" only in the sense that it will allow the administration to claim a win. It won't actually prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

Will Says "Pull Out"

A remarkable piece by conservative columnist George Will: He concludes that the best thing for the US to do is to pull out of Afghanistan and focus more, from offshore, on the use of "drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan."

The U.S. strategy is "clear, hold and build." Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.

Pete Wehner responds.

Here is a disturbing fact to ponder: If George Will were commander in chief, we would, under his leadership, have begun and lost two wars of enormous consequence. The damage to America — militarily, geopolitically, and morally — would be staggering. The boon to militant Islam — militarily, geopolitically, and in terms of morale — would be incalculable. Yet nowhere in his most recent column does Will even begin to grapple with what surrender in Afghanistan would mean — to that country, to Pakistan, to jihadists around the world, to confidence in America’s word and will, and to our national-security interests. And while Afghanistan, like Iraq, is a very difficult undertaking, declaring defeat at this stage is unwarranted and terribly unwise. If General David Petraeus thinks the task is hopeless, then I will take a hard second look at the war. But if George Will declares it hopeless, I will simply take a hard second look at his record.

Mr. Will has earned the reputation as one of the finest columnists alive, and one of the better ones our country has ever produced. I have admired him in the past, and I learn from him still. But on Iraq and Afghanistan, he has been wrong, unreliable, and unsteady.

In 1983 the French journalist and intellectual Jean-Francois Revel wrote How Democracies Perish. It was a withering critique of the West’s loss of nerve and will in the face of the totalitarian threat it faced. In his book, Revel wrote, “Democracy tends to ignore, even deny, threats to its existence because it loathes doing what is needed to counter them.” In a column praising Revel’s book, George Will wrote, “Defense of democracy depends on pessimists who are not defeatists. It depends on spirited realists such as Jean-Francois Revel.”

Now, like then, America needs spirited realists, not defeatists. We need individuals who believe a nation must be willing to fight for what is right even when it is hard. We need people who are going to resist the temptation to eagerly support war at the outset and then prematurely give up on it.

What we need, in other words, is what George Frederick Will once was.

Here's another critique of Will from Frederick Kagan.

Granting Will’s anecdotal observations that the Afghan police are at best ineffective (which is far too sweeping a statement), the Afghan National Army is at least as good as many of the organizations that have functioned as counterinsurgents in Iraq. The ANA numbers about 90,000 right now, and it can be expanded to 134,000 next year, and perhaps 240,000 within a couple of years after that.

Poland Remembers WWII

Poland: At the Westerplatte peninsula, the site of Nazi Germany's opening assault on Poland, Polish political and religious leaders recalled the sacrifices their countrymen made Photo: REUTERS

From the AP:

GDANSK, Poland - Officials from across Europe and the United States gathered in northern Poland on Tuesday to mark the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, in a ceremony bringing together former foes and friends to pay tribute to the tens of millions killed in the conflict.

Ahead of the international commemoration, Polish leaders came together at dawn on Gdansk's Westerplatte peninsula for a ceremony marking the exact time the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein shelled a tiny Polish military outpost where the Polish navy's arsenal was housed in the war's opening salvo..."We meet here to remember this, because we Poles know that, without this memory — honest memory about the truth, about the sources of World War II — Poland, Europe and the world will not be safe." (Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk)

TR

A travel companion once made an anti-Catholic remark to President Theodore Roosevelt, hoping to ingratiate himself with the Protestant President. Refusing to take the bait, Roosevelt turned to him and stated icily:

"Archie, when I discuss the Catholic Church, I am reminded that it is the only church which has ever turned an Eastern race into a Christian people. Is that not so?"

Reflections from a father to his son on plans for an upcoming safari:

"I think I shall get a double-barrelled 450 cordite, but shall expect to use almost all the time my Springfield and my 47-70 Winchester. I shall want you to have a first-class rifle, perhaps one of the powerful new model 40 or 45 caliber Winchesters. Then it may be that it would be a good thing to have a 12-bore shotgun that could be used with solid ball...It is no child's play going after lion, elephants, rhino and buffalo."

And thus has Theodore Roosevelt won me over, despite his importunate progressivist policies. Nobody's perfect, after all.

(Taken from Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris)

From the American Spectator:

In 1939, Pope Pius XII issued the Eucharist to seven-year-old Ted Kennedy, who, biographer Joe McGinniss claims, was "the first American citizen ever to receive his first holy communion from a pope." In the seventy years since, Ted Kennedy's relationship with the Catholic Church has been problematic, to say the least. From receiving communion at Mary Jo Kopechne's funeral, to procuring an annulment for a marriage of 25 years that had produced three grown children, to revelations during the William Kennedy Smith rape trial that the senator had woke his son and nephew on Good Friday to instigate the ill-fated carousing in Palm Beach's bars, Ted Kennedy hasn't exactly acted as a model Catholic.

Highlighting this is the other major story -- the transformation of the Kennedy Compound into a museum -- to emerge from the Kennedy funeral. "Rose [Kennedy] wanted to turn the place over to the Benedictine monks before she died," Benedict Fitzgerald, the late Kennedy matriarch's personal attorney, told author Ed Klein for his book Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died. "I drew up the legal papers for her on my front porch. But when Ted found out about it, he ripped the thing in half. There was no way he was going to have the place turned into a monastery." Instead, as Fox News reported, "The Kennedy compound in Hyannis, Mass. will be converted into an educational center and museum as a tribute to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy."

With Boston archbishop Sean O'Malley offering a blessing at the senator's funeral, and the former archbishop of Washington, D.C. presiding over the burial, many of Kennedy's political antagonists are outraged, not that the Church was silent, but that it so loudly honored a man who fought to undermine church teaching.

"No rational person can reasonably be expected to take seriously Catholic opposition to abortion when a champion of the Culture of Death, who repeatedly betrayed the Faith of his baptism, is lauded and extolled by priests and prelates in a Marian basilica," C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, explained on Saturday. "This morning's spectacle is evidence of the corruption which pervades the Catholic Church in the United States."

Catholic Identity and the Tee Shirt and Jeans Nun

Pandering to the culture: a "fun nun", no doubt

This link gives readers an introduction to Sister Katy LaFond, a self-described "fun nun," of the School Sisters of Saint Francis in Wisconsin. Now, I don't know Sr. Katy. I'm sure she's very nice. She clearly knows all about coexisting, and that goes a long way, I tell you. But, judging by her striking, teenybopperish presentation (she's 29), one would be justified in proposing that Sister Katy stands out as a conspicuous paragon of the endemic watering down of Catholic culture and identity within certain religious orders across the nation. A traditional religious habit has never historically been seen as a tangential, optional or inconsequential accessory. So why has it been jilted in so many religious orders? And why are these "progressive" orders simultaneously facing sharp declines in vocations? A coincidence? This observation, to be clear, is not tinged with a drop of acrimony toward Sr. Katy. It is merely intended to serve as a "pot-stirring" statement of fact regarding the role of Catholic culture and identity.

That said, here is an encouraging story, from the Diocese of Austin, on the growing popularity of traditional religious orders for women.

While the last 40 years have seen an overall drop in the numbers of women entering religious life, a new book released by the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious says orders that are more visibly countercultural seem to be flourishing.

The council represents the superiors of more than 100 religious communities of sisters whose members wear an identifiable religious habit. A canonically approved organization founded in 1992 to promote religious life in the U.S., the council notes that the average age of its member communities’ sisters is under 35...The Nashville Dominicans are among the orders experiencing the greatest success attracting new vocations, according to news reports. “It’s very much a radical call to live and give yourself completely to Christ,” she [Nashville Dominican Sister Mary Gertrude] said. “There is a real identity to who we are and what we are about. We want to put religious life in front of young women today."

Well said, Sister.

Countercultural Nashville Dominican Sisters, boldly proclaiming their vocation to the world

"Within Striking Distance"

From Politico:

After an August recess marked by raucous town halls, troubling polling data and widespread anecdotal evidence of a volatile electorate, the small universe of political analysts who closely follow House races is predicting moderate to heavy Democratic losses in 2010.

Some of the most prominent and respected handicappers can now envision an election in which Democrats suffer double-digit losses in the House — not enough to provide the 40 seats necessary to return the GOP to power but enough to put them within striking distance.

Top political analyst Charlie Cook, in a special August 20 update to subscribers, wrote that “the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and congressional Democrats.”

"Many veteran congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats,” he wrote.

The Leviathan and the Left

The Almighty Leviathan

Nota bene, American Left:

The Hobbesian notion that individual liberty can be understood as the right of a man to obey his appetites ignores the higher capacities of the human soul because it necessarily gives rise to the "strongest powers" in order to maintain society in being. Jouvenel indicates that contemporary liberals fail to see that government based on free discussion and free opinion presupposes the human capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood and to define general principles of justice that transcend the human desire for power. -Dr. Daniel Mahoney, Bertrand de Jouvenel: The Conservative Liberal and the Illusions of Modernity ISI Books, 2005.

The accumulation and expansion of power is the Left's main preoccupation, nay, obsession. Read the scoop on Obama and The Alinsky Administration, by Jim Geraghty.

Moderates thought they were electing a moderate; liberals thought they were electing a liberal. Both camps were wrong. Ideology does not have the final say in Obama’s decision-making; an Alinskyite’s core principle is to take any action that expands his power and to avoid any action that risks his power.

As conservatives size up their new foe, they ought to remember: It’s not about liberalism. It’s about power. Obama will jettison anything that costs him power, and do anything that enhances it.

Are conservatives totally immune from this contagion? No. But true conservatives are, I think, at least partially immunized from the power-at-all-cost modus operandi that so doggedly ensorcels the Left. Read Montesquieu, Coke, Acton, Burke, Madison, Kirk, Buckley, Reagan, et al. for the conservative perspective.

Joseph Ellis notes that, from the point of view of the founders, "The worst thing about a consolidated government...was that, once in place, its relentless expansion of arbitrary power was unstoppable, its tendency toward corruption was inevitable, and its appetite for despotism was unquenchable."

As an aperçu to mercifully close out this somewhat disjointed post, I remember coming across an observation made by Speaker Nancy Pelosi explaining how, when she was a little girl, she wanted to be a priest because it was the priests who "have the power."

The Whole Lot of 'Em!

Common sense gains ground in America. From Rasmussen:

If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again.

The Letter

Back in the Day: The Kennedy Clan at the Vatican, 1939

From CNN: Excerpts from Senator Kennedy's July letter to the Holy Father:

"Most Holy Father, I asked President Obama to personally hand-deliver this letter to you. As a man of deep faith himself, he understands how important my Catholic faith is to me, and I am so deeply grateful to him. Most Holy Father, I hope this letter finds you in good health, I pray that you have all of God’s blessings as you lead our church and inspire our world during these challenging times. I am writing with deep humility to ask that you pray for me as my own health declines. I was diagnosed with brain cancer more than a year ago, and, although I continue treatment, the disease is taking its toll on me. I am 77 years old and preparing for the next passage of life. I have been blessed to be part of a wonderful family. Both of my parents, particularly my mother, kept our Catholic faith at the center of our lives. That gift of faith has sustained and nurtured, and provided solace to me in the darkest hours. I know that I have been an imperfect human being but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my path."

“I want you to know, Your Holiness, that in my nearly 50 years of elective office, I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economic opportunity. I’ve worked to welcome the immigrant, fight discrimination and expand access to healthcare and education. I have opposed the death penalty and fought to end war. I also want you to know that even though I am ill, I am committed to do everything I can to achieve access to health care for everyone in my country. This has been the political cause of my life. I believe in a conscience protection for Catholics in the health care field and will continue to advocate for it as my colleagues in the Senate and I work to develop an overall national health policy that guarantees health care for everyone... Those are the issues that have motivated me and have been the focus of my work as a Unites States Senator. I’ve always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness, and though I have fallen short through human failings, I have never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teaching of my faith. I continue to pray for God’s blessing, on you, and on our church, and would be most thankful for your prayers for me.”

The Vatican conveyed the following thoughts:

"The Holy Father has read the letter which you entrusted to President Obama, who kindly presented it to him during their recent meeting. He was saddened to know of your illness, and asked me to assure you of his concern and his spiritual closeness. He is particularly grateful for your promise of prayers for him, for the needs of our universal church. His Holiness prays that in the days ahead, you may be sustained in faith and hope, and granted the precious grace of joyful surrender to the will of God, our merciful Father. He invokes upon you the consolation and peace promised by the Risen Savior to all who share in His sufferings, and trust in His promise of eternal life. Commending you and the members of your family to the loving intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Father cordially imparts his apostolic blessing as a pledge of wisdom, comfort, and strength in the Lord.”

Cash for Clunkers Silliness

Professor William Luckey explains here the sheer nonsense behind the Obama Administration's ill-conceived and now defunct "Cash for Clunkers" program. Will they ever learn?

Now, let me get this straight, and maybe put it in more truthful terms. If you were driving a real clunker, could it be that you could not afford a new car to begin with? Now you are to bring the ol’ jalopy in, and for $4500 in cash, go into debt for a new car costing, say, $25,000? While it is true that a clunker would not bring in much exchange value, so that this program would up the return, would you bring in your old car in for $4500 if you were not already going to sell it and buy a new one anyway? Just take my own experience. I drive a 2000 Buick. I bought it used, and it is a great car. I have no intention to sell it, but even IF I wanted to trade it in for a new one, and IF I could have gotten $4500 dollars for it, I still could not afford a new car. Would the promise of $4500 make me go into debt to buy a car I could not afford to make the payments on? Absolutely not. Forget the fact that I am a trained economist. My dog would not do that either.

Take another aspect. In my experience, real clunkers are driven by poorer people anyway. They can’t afford a new car either—hence they drive the clunker until it can drive no more. What do they do then? Buy another clunker from the used car market.

On Coffee

Some sharp witticisms on, well, coffee, in honor of those friends whose shared company and conversation make drinking it so enjoyable.

As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move...similes arise, the paper is covered Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle. - Honoré de Balzac

Nescafé no es café. (Instant coffee is not coffee.) -- Mexican saying

The morning cup of coffee has an exhiliration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Ah! How sweet coffee tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! -"Coffee Cantata", J.S. Bach

Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me. Coffee gives me warmth, waking, an unusual force and a pain that is not without very great pleasure. - Napoleon Bonaparte

If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee; it is the intelligent beverage. - Sydney Smith

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. - T. S. Elliot

Clare Boothe Luce

"Just bring me someone who has seen the rise and fall of empires."

The reply given by Clare Boothe Luce when asked who she would like to hear her first confession, after having been received into the Catholic Church.

Obama rightly called Ted Kennedy "the soul of the Democratic Party" in his eulogy for the senator.

Now, which of the two major political parties has defended, to the hilt, the "right" to abortion? Whose voice within that party has been the loudest in defense of that "right?" And yet, the very man who was "the soul" of such an immoral party received a very public Catholic funeral Mass and send off. Does anyone else see a conflict of interests here?

A Thousand Words

Now, I've seen everything. The president has achieved ubiquity. He has free reign everywhere he goes. Even princes stand aside.

A Funeral and a Scandal

A stinging piece from John-Henry Westen, writing for Life Site News:

August 26, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Saturday's grandiose Catholic funeral for Senator Ted Kennedy has the potential to be a scandal that will make Notre Dame's Obama Day a walk in the park. With all four living former Presidents in attendance and an address from President Barack Obama, the funeral is set to be a royal crowning, right inside a Catholic Church, of a man who betrayed the most fundamental moral teachings of the faith.

What example will this give to Catholics and the rest of the world looking in? It will surely belie the Catholic teachings on the sanctity of life and sexuality. "Surely," they will say, "if one of the most vociferous proponents of abortion and homosexuality in politics is so feted in the Church, the Church cannot possibly regard abortion as murder." Would anyone so honor one who so advocated what the church officially considers an "unspeakable crime"?

Rev. Patrick Tarrant, pastor of the Church where Kennedy is to be buried has informed the media that he was present at Kennedy's death and thus hopefully the senator made a last confession and was reconciled with the Church.

However, only a public repudiation of his militantly anti-life and anti-family actions would serve to lessen the scandal of the upcoming funeral extravaganza.

I don't discount that that might be coming. After all, Kennedy did have President Obama deliver a letter to the Pope when Obama made his visit to the Vatican in July. Although unlikely, given the Senator's recent, intense support for Obama's health care reforms, perhaps there was a public confession in the letter waiting to be released. We can hope and pray.

If we assume a private confession was made there could be a private funeral Mass for the family, without politicians and media. And of course there would still be a secular memorial event, with all the pomp and ceremony for this star of the secular world.

Who can disagree with Westen's assertions? I applaud him for having the temerity to write so forcefully on this matter. No one is judging Sen. Kennedy. As Westen says, we all hope that the senator died in God's grace. That is something solely between God and Kennedy. The more pressing matter here is the public nature of Kennedy's Catholicism and his regrettable support for unacceptable positions so contrary to the moral law.

At least with Notre Dame scandal, the main culprit was a rogue, freewheeling priest/president of the university; the bishops, for their part, made their disapproval known quite clearly. The high-profile Kennedy funeral,on the other hand, will unfold inside a Catholic basilica of the Boston Archdiocese. And to make matters worse, there has been a deafening silence from the leadership to boot. "The Death of Outrage" rings true once more. Where is Cardinal O'Malley's voice in all of this? Are faithful and exasperated Catholics simply expected to sit idly by, once more, and watch helplessly as the integrity of the Church's teaching is fogged-up as a result of a glaring lack of moral clarity and leadership? The whole thing is just totally surreal. How can confused Catholics be expected to take the moral teaching of the Church seriously (especially on abortion) when these kinds of mixed signals are proffered by the church leadership in America?

Well, we can hope, as Westen writes, for an upcoming public recant of previously held views. That would go a long way.

Catholic Milwaukee: The Last Eight Years or So

To give outsiders an idea, the initial sensation Milwaukee Catholics experienced with the arrival of Archbishop Timothy Dolan to their battle-weary, gloomy archdiocese back in 2002 can best be compared to the feeling of cracking open the windows in a stiflingly hot attic in the middle of a blistering summer heat wave. With attic-level temperatures, it’s not just the heat but the near inability to even breath on account of the heavy air that makes it so unbearable. The Milwaukee Archdiocese was, in 2002, that unbearable, unlivable attic. Archbishop Dolan was, by analogy and by all appearances, that cool, crisp gust of air that blasted away the accretions of stagnant air and musty effluvia from the previous twenty-four years of scandal and mismanagement under Archbishop Rembert Weakland. Finally, it seemed, the dark night was over and a new dawn was upon us.

I was one of the many early enthusiasts of Milwaukee’s jolly new leader, a man who came across to Milwaukeeans as the long overdue total package: the gregarious uncle, your best buddy at the ball game, and that favorite professor from your college days. In terms of personality, the contrast from the previous metropolitan could not have been more apparent: Dolan was the extrovert, larger than life, an overwhelming force who engulfed you with charm, smiles and hearty slaps on the back. Weakland was elusive, bookish, the quiet introvert, lean in stature and perennially aloof. Dolan burst onto the scene with a refreshing indefatigableness, an empathy and charisma, veering sharply from the soporific auto-pilot mode of the Weakland era that had lulled so many bleary-eyed Catholics into apathy’s deep slumber. Dolan was a beaming ray of light to Weakland’s long, dark shadow. I had the pleasure of meeting Dolan on several occasions in small company (once at his residence in Milwaukee) and found his initial “getting to know you” shtick very disarming. He rested his arm on my shoulder as we chatted amiably in our little group about this and that. Offering a wide smile, a cigar and a drink, it was impossible not to be ensorcelled by his optimism, his courtesies and booming laugh. I, like so many others, believed things were going to be different henceforth. Considering the unparalleled mess that Archbishop Dolan was expected to clean up, one couldn’t help but feel badly for him and wish him the best as he set about disentangling us from the Weakland web.

Thus coming into his new position, Dolan could claim a large mandate and a significant amount of capital to do what he saw fit in order to set the battered ship of a wounded archdiocese aright. Translation: We trusted him to clean house.

Early in Dolan’s tenure as Milwaukee’s Archbishop, I had a long conversation over dinner with a well-connected priest friend of the archdiocese regarding the particulars of the Dolan Doctrine. Some, he noted, had hoped and expected there to be a swift, across the board purgation of the local leadership, that heads would and should roll in the aftermath of the outrageous scandal and mismanagement of the previous quarter century. Dies Irae was in order for the entire Weakland apparatchik. This was one take, an understandable one, I thought to myself, but I was told flat out that this was not going to be Archbishop Dolan’s approach. The alternative strategy, the one apparently taken up by Dolan, was dilatory. It consisted in an attempt to slowly win people over to his camp through sheer force of charm, a genuine display of good will, and an expressed desire to bury the hatchet. This Catholic charm offensive would allow Dolan to gradually earn the trust of the faithful as he ever so discretely set about implementing piecemeal changes within the archdiocesan structure. In other words, better to have the vox populi on your side before making sweeping tectonic changes. Well, okay, I thought. While disagreeing with the approach and the tactics (as I preferred a more aggressive, immediate extirpation of the ancien régime regardless of popularity forecasts), I agreed with the desideratum, i.e., that real change was in order and long overdue, even if it required some time and patience to take effect. But as the years rolled on, punch-drunk Catholics quickly lost their patience, as anticipated, substantive, yet always chimerical changes eluded them again and again and the status quo ante eerily prevailed in the archdiocese. Where was the liturgical renewal? Where was the reform of Catholic schools? Where was the outspoken critique and substantive disciplining of vocal Catholic dissident groups who,to this day, find a certain cozy sanctum in Milwaukee?

Perhaps as an outsider to the archdiocese, Dolan never really grasped how strongly local Catholics wanted to be rid of Weakland and every vestige of his reign. Over the course of the last eight years or so, Weakland’s repeated special appearances across the archdiocese in the Dolan era truly stupefied a large number of Catholics who had hoped for a new chapter, a page definitively turned. Why was Weakland allowed to maintain a high profile in the archdiocese after his downfall, appearing at ordinations, archdiocesan events, confirmations, etc.? To many Catholic families, the relentless and ubiquitous Weakland Come-Back Tour was nothing short of scandalous, surreal even. It was as though Catholics were being told to forget what transpired there. The fresh breeze everyone initially thought had swept into Milwaukee turned out to be merely recycled air, not unlike that dry, fusty stuff that blasts out of the overhead vents on a plane.

Milwaukee-area Catholics await the announcement of their next leader. Prayers are already being offered for the selection process and for man who will have such monumental challenges waiting for him.