A controversial archbishop reviews his life

A PILGRIM IN A PILGRIM CHURCH: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop, by Rembert  G Weakland OSB. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 2009.

Reviewed by Paddy Kearney

Archbishop Rembert Weakland OSB is one of the best-known Catholic leaders in the United States. Elected archabbot of a major Benedictine monastery at the age of 36, abbot primate of the whole Benedictine order at 40 and appointed archbishop of Milwaukee at 50, Weakland had a distinguished but controversial career.

This ended on a sad note when it became public knowledge that he had had an adult homosexual relationship years earlier, which culminated in demands for money, a confidentiality agreement and the use of diocesan funds to prevent a public trial. It was alleged that he had blocked the artistic career of the man with whom he had the relationship.

The prologue to A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church gives a dramatic account of these revelations in 2002 in “a blaze of TV cameras” and a remarkably courageous penitential rite that Weakland himself organised at Milwaukee’s cathedral, during which he begged forgiveness from his flock. The Vatican immediately accepted his resignation which was already in the pipeline because he had reached the age of 75 years when bishops are required to tender their resignation.

Weakland’s memoir begins with an account of his poor childhood in a small town in rural Pennsylvania, one of six children raised by a widowed mother. St Vincent’s archabbey in Latrobe gave him his high school education and from early on his intellectual brilliance and musical talent were clear. He became a Benedictine monk, studied at their college, Sant’Anselmo’s in Rome and was ordained priest in the cave at Subiaco where St Benedict spent two years in solitude. This was followed by advanced musical studies at the Julliard School of Music and Columbia University in New York, while working in a Manhattan parish.

Thereafter Weakland returned to St Vincent’s archabbey and was elected abbot. It was his destiny to preside over this monastery and its 250 monks during Vatican II, an event that profoundly influenced his understanding of the Church and its role in the world. Four years later he was elected abbot primate by all the abbots of Benedictine monasteries. In this capacity he carried out a remarkable series of visits to many of the order’s monasteries in all parts of the world, visits that he used to promote the vision and values of the Council.

He became a close confidant and friend of Pope Paul VI (whom he describes as a “Benedictine at heart”) and, as a result, enjoyed privileged access to the Vatican. Right at the end of Pope Paul’s pontificate, Weakland was chosen to be archbishop of Milwaukee in Wisconsin and became an influential leader in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). These were unusual tasks for a Benedictine abbot and his editor, Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, describes them as “very unmonastic and lonely”.

As a bishop, Weakland brought the Benedictine tradition of consulting the monastic community to his pastoral work in Milwaukee. As chair of the USCCB committee charged with drafting a pastoral letter on the economy, he organised an unprecedented series of hearings and dialogues with a broad cross-section of the US Church and expert economists. In Milwaukee he used a similar consultative style with clergy and laity, especially women who keenly participated in his hearings on the role of women in the Church, and on abortion.

This democratic way of operating did not go unnoticed in the Vatican where Weakland’s relations with Pope John Paul II were distinctly cooler than they had been with Paul VI. He soon found himself embroiled in confrontations with top curial officials and even the pope himself because of his candid and outspoken approach to sensitive topics. He also boldly altered his cathedral church to suit the Vatican II liturgy despite being instructed by the arch-conservative Cardinal Medina Estevez not to proceed with his plans.

Years before Weakland had flown to Rome specifically to convince the pope that he should proceed with the appointment of a new auxiliary bishop whom Weakland favoured but John Paul did not. This was not the sort of conduct likely to endear a bishop to the Vatican.

Whenever Weakland went on ad limina visits to Rome, he would be required to have individual sessions with powerful cardinals such as Bernardin Gantin of the Congregation of Bishops and Joseph Ratzinger, then of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and now Pope Benedict XVI. These discussions were unlike his pleasant tête-à-têtes with Paul VI. The curial officials seemed less able to tackle Weakland’s views head-on in individual encounters but were more sharply critical in subsequent letters, some of them personally delivered to Weakland while still in Rome.

Most painful must have been the papal response to Weakland’s request for a six-month sabbatical: the pope granted the request but instructed Weakland to spend the time on a seemingly penitential reflection on his “relationship as bishop with the archdiocese, with the Church Universal, with the magisterium, and with the successor of Peter”, which Weakland characterises as “a typical Roman way of saying he was displeased with my work as a bishop”. In preparation for his sabbatical, he was even supplied with points “which the Holy Father wished me to reflect on and pray about”.

On reading A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church one cannot help feeling that the Church owes a debt of gratitude to Rembert Weakland for this courageous memoir, beautifully written and full of insight.

As Steinfels writes in her foreword, “it is easy to imagine that without that abrupt end to a distinguished career, Weakland might never have pursued the self-scrutiny and reassessment that have produced this candid and absorbing memoir”which she describes as “unlikely to be duplicated in its breadth, detail or frankness by any Catholic prelate.”

In the last chapter, entitled “Final Reflections”, Weakland does not baulk at humbly admitting his own failings, “Yes, I tended to be too arrogant, too cocky, too dismissive of other points of view.”

His initial response to the public humiliation of the revelations of his human weakness was to avoid people and steer clear of public life. However with the passage of time, and the insights gained through writing his memoirs he has reached “a new freedom, a sense of being liberated for the first time. I could begin to come to terms with my life as a whole in a spirit of truth and sincerity that had eluded me until then”.

For those who would like to understand the shifts that have taken place in the Catholic Church over the 50 years since Pope John XXIII summoned the Council in January 1959, this book is a must. Weakland displays a profound understanding of Vatican II and draws on an almost unparalleled experience of its bold implementation throughout one of the great Orders of the Church, and as a significant national and local episcopal leader in the United States.