Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church Memoirs of a Catholic by Rembert G. Weakland A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop by Rembert G. Weakland. Two questions come to mind on reading “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop,” by the retired archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland: Would he have written this book if his homosexual dalliance 25 years previously had not been brought to light? And would we be reading it if we had not known about his fall from grace? It would be a pity if the answer to either of these questions is a “no.” For this masterful apologia pro vita sua does not need a hint of scandal to justify its writing or reading. Weakland faces up to the affair from the get-go. In a prologue, he recounts in as much detail as is necessary the circumstances that enabled his relationship with another man to get out of hand. He makes no excuses for his conduct: He apologizes for it and for the way he reacted to it, and humbly asks for forgiveness. A reader who is tantalized with the possibility that the book will reveal anything else about the affair will be disappointed. There is nothing more to be said. On the other hand, a reader who is looking for a frank account of the Roman curia’s decades-long hostility to the reforms of the in general and its distain for the U.S. church in particular will be amply rewarded. Weakland was not just a passive observer of recent church history, he was in the thick of it, playing defense and offense, sometimes both positions at the same time. Born in 1927 and christened George Samuel, Weakland was raised in Patton, a small Appalachian town that served as a hub for the offices of the many coal-mining companies in the region. Two years later, as the Great Depression was gearing up, the town’s bank closed down, then the hotel owned by his father and grandfather burned down, and three years later his father died of pneumonia leaving a mother with six young children, from six months to nine years. Both poverty and tragedy singled him out at an early age. Natural musical talent. But Weakland also had talent. There was a piano in the house and some music books, which he devoured. His natural skills developed under the tutelage of one of his Catholic school teachers, a nun, and in sixth grade he was playing Chaminade, Chopin and Rachmaninoff. He was sent, all expenses paid, to a Benedictine high school, St. Vincent’s in Latrobe some 60 miles away, and at the age of 13 he entered the scholasticate, where boys considering the priesthood lived. Although he was tempted by a career as a concert pianist, he joined the as a novice in 1945 and took the name Rembert. He studied in and was ordained in 1951. He continued his studies in Italy, France and Germany, and returned to study music at the Julliard School and in New York. In 1999, on a sabbatical when he was Archbishop of Milwaukee, he completed his studies in music with a doctorate from Columbia. He rose steadily in the ranks of the clergy. He taught music at St. Vincent’s from 1957 to 1963, when he was elected archabbot; four years later he was elected of the entire Benedictine Confederation and moved to Rome but traveled throughout the world encouraging local monasteries. In 1968, he happened to be in the same Thai monastery as the day he was accidentally electrocuted. He was re- elected abbot primate in 1973, Pope Paul VI appointed him archbishop of Milwaukee in 1977 and he retired in 2002. Pope Paul was a friend and Weakland had relatively easy access to him. Even before he was made archbishop, when petty complaints were being lodged against him in Rome, he would be called into the Vatican to be told off by some cardinal or other. But Weakland could go over their heads to the pope directly, and would usually get his way or accept a reasonable compromise. Changing of the guard. All that changed when John Paul II came to power. Paul VI and Weakland shared a vision of the church that was born of the Second Vatican Council: Paul appreciated and respected religious orders and their role in the church, and Weakland was a strong proponent of the collegiality of bishops and the greater role for the laity that the council had clearly intended. John Paul was different. People will say that he and the Vatican bureaucrats under him were chosen to restrain what they saw as “excesses” being perpetrated by local churches in the name of the council. Weakland’s memoirs reveal, however, a series of dust-ups with a Vatican determined to hold on to its power and privilege in the face of national conferences of bishops proposing their own solutions to their own problems in their own way, bishops thinking for themselves, and a well-educated laity eager to have their say. Weakland, who had already demonstrated a genuine pastoral concern for the members of his own order when he was an abbot, showed the same pastoral concern for the people of Milwaukee. He was alarmed at the inevitable prospect of a great shortage of priests in the future and openly questioned the necessity of celibacy for ordination. When he held a dinner for 125 resigned priests and their wives in the diocesan seminary, word got back to Rome, and the displeasure of the Vatican was made known to him. He held another dinner the following year. He got into deeper trouble when he suggested, innocently, that there was no reason why women could not be ordained. What worried him, most of all, was that Rome was taking these and other pastoral decisions without consulting the bishops of the world, as the council had foreseen, and without listening to the theologians, biblical scholars and the laity, especially women, who had other points of view. It was as if the council—still the most authoritative voice in the church—had never spoken. Synods of bishops would be held in Rome, but they were presented with agendas that were loaded, and nobody seemed to be listening to what the participants had to say anyway. It was not that the bishops were straying from the party line: The point was that when bishops took an initiative on their own, Rome saw itself losing control and its power diluted. And Rome had the support of some bishops who, also feeling they were losing their personal power and autonomy, were only too happy to placate the Vatican and undermine the conferences. Powerful groups of lay people with lots of money also found a sympathetic ear in Rome. A clear example of this was the U.S. bishops’ attempt, championed by Weakland, to formulate a pastoral statement on the American economic system. They succeeded despite attempts by conservative lay Catholics such as Michael Novak to undermine it by pre-empting the bishops’ statement, and the likes of William F. Buckley who claimed Weakland wanted “to introduce socialism to the ,” and that “people should hope that before that happens, there will still be enough church-attending Christians to pray efficaciously that he will fail.” Little has changed. The right wing still levels the charge of socialism at those who campaign for a more equitable distribution of wealth, and pray that their efforts to bring about a more just society will fail. A recent issue of America magazine (March 2) remarked: “A small but vocal contingent of Catholic conservatives are calling for a “tea party” revolution within the church in an effort to root out the dissent they see lurking within the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. … Hostility to the C.C.H.D.’s agenda has been longstanding within certain Catholic circles. What is new about these Web-based assaults is the attacks on specific individuals on the U.S.C.C.B. staff and the complete absorption of secular society’s noxious style of political mudslinging as a legitimate form of criticism within the church.” Over time, Weakland saw the conferences losing any standing the council had given them and Rome reserving decision-making to itself and appointing new bishops solely on the basis of their willingness to toe the party line, irrespective of their ability to lead a diocese. The unfortunate results of these policies are evident today, most prominently in the failure of bishops to deal properly with clerical sexual abuse. The irony is that by flexing its muscles, Rome lost much of its authority. Some might be tempted to dismiss Weakland’s memoirs as clerical scuttlebutt, but they are not. They tell the story of how forces in the Vatican regrouped and took back the power that the council had shared with local churches and the laity. People are entitled to know that because it is their lives that are at stake. A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop by Rembert G. Weakland. By Rembert G. Weakland Philadelphia Inquirer July 5, 2009. From the book jacket In a searching memoir sure to revive Catholic disputes, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland recounts the pivotal decision he faced early in life: whether to become a or a musician. He chose the monastery, because, as he explains, "as a concert pianist, I would be an 'also ran' not the best." That didn't stop him from studying piano at prestigious Juilliard or eventually earning a doctorate in music from Columbia University in the course of becoming an illustrious abbot, abbot primate of the entire Benedictine order, and, for 25 years, archbishop of Milwaukee. Playing against type, therefore, he became a virtuoso public reformer as a monk, while his virtuoso musical talents were exercised mostly in monkish solitude. As a gifted church leader, he became a beacon of liberal Catholicism for, among other things, his advocacy of a married priesthood, an enhanced role for women in the church, a greater role for the laity, and a shift of power downward from Vatican exclusivity. After nearly 50 years of testing limits and rethinking theology, his world came crashing down. In 2002, he confessed to having paid hush money to a man with whom he had an affair of "several months" in 1979. He describes it in the book as "romantic infatuation on my part." He promptly resigned as archbishop after the affair became public knowledge. Some conservative Catholics linked his departure to his theological liberalism, which presumably fostered permissiveness. Many liberals, on the other hand, fretted that Weakland's violations might overshadow his long advocacy of a more democratic church. Weakland's affinity for monasticism's collaborative style, which resisted autocratic rule, conditioned him to embrace the Second Vatican Council's redefinition of the church in non-hierarchical terms as the "people of God." The new vision proposed "shared authority" between hierarchy and laity. For decades, as he writes in detail, he carried that banner against the gathering forces of opposition that sought to retain the old top-down chain of command that demanded unquestioned loyalty to Rome. Whereas the centralizing forces, led most forcefully by Pope John Paul II, insisted on what Weakland calls the "military" structure of total conformity, his view of the church, drawn from Vatican II, is mixed rule, as in the sharing of responsibilities between the federal government and the states in America. Though he defends his reform agenda, he can be critical of his own leadership. He concedes, for example, that he made egregious mistakes in his handling of child abuse by priests in his archdiocese before the national scandal erupted. He relied on the mistaken rehab-counsel-and-return advice of an earlier time, he says, which wrongly focused on the abuser rather than the victim. On the world stage, his position as a self-described "free spirit," visible, smart, and outspoken, made him a target of guardians of the status quo. In Rome, he says, he was regularly singled out for reprimand, often on the basis of accusations from U.S. Catholics. Pope Paul VI had been his ally and father figure, Weakland says, citing one meeting in which the pope responded to Weakland's critics by giving him "100 percent support." By comparison, his relationship with Pope John Paul II was strained. The pope was "stubborn," Weakland writes, and insistent on total obedience, qualities that clashed with Weakland's impulse toward dialogue, his disdain of authoritarianism, and his respect for differences. As described by Weakland, the pope's response to Weakland's reports was barely more than a grunt, all the while not looking him in the eye. He takes issue with John Paul for his treatment of those who disagreed with him and for his strong exercise of papal authority, but admires his spiritual qualities. The memoir is never less than a fascinating insider's look at church politics. His observations are close-up. He esteems Paul VI's outlook and demeanor, but thinks the Pope's desire to avoid post-Vatican II schism made him an ineffective leader. Much of Weakland's story deals with the struggle over authority in the church. The curia, the tightly knit bureaucracy (called the world's oldest) that runs the Vatican, fought to regain the control over the church that Vatican II had whittled away. With the support of the succeeding popes, curia cardinals reasserted Vatican control, tightening rules and punishing dissenters. Provinces of the church that were exercising what they believed to be new freedoms were told to desist and obey Rome. Weakland was in the thick of those struggles, none more visible than in his assignment by the U.S. bishops to create a pastoral letter on the U.S. economy. The document decried growing poverty, endorsed unions, denounced worker exploitation, and urged cooperation among private and public sectors to help cure social ills. Days before it was made public, it was attacked by Michael Novak and former Treasury Secretary William Simon as an assault on the sanctity of free enterprise. William F. Buckley Jr. assailed Weakland as a socialist. Weakland dwells less on the content of that or other such pastoral letters than on the right of national conferences of bishops to issue them. He had been a strong defender of that right as a natural responsibility of local bishops and a check on Vatican authority. Rome finally ruled that the conferences had no right to teach on their own. Weakland's stand deepened his reputation as a rogue - a "controversial" figure and "the most liberal" bishop in America, in the eyes of the press. Long before he left Milwaukee in 2002, he recalls, "Rome had written me off." "If I had a weakness," he writes wryly, "it was that I seemed unable to keep from uttering my opinions even when they were not welcome in high places." Weakland's memoir is a vivid, insightful panorama of a life that began as the child of a mother on welfare in western and took him through the most momentous decades of recent church history. Elected head of St. Vincent Archabbey in 1963 at age 36, he was elevated four years later to abbot primate of the Benedictine order around the world. A decade after that, Paul VI named him archbishop of Milwaukee. Though rightist Catholics in his diocese regularly complained to the Vatican, Weakland sought to make the archdiocese into the more open, interactive model he cherished. The scandal that brought him low was a moral lapse and a bungled response to it. Weakland's lover was then in his 30s. In the biggest mistake he says he ever made, Weakland succumbed to the man's demand for money to keep the affair quiet. With the assistance of a key archdiocesan finance office, he gave the man $450,000 from church building funds to settle out of court. Weakland asserts that the money was paid back by friends. The book is Weakland's brief to prevent his enemies from exploiting the scandal to discredit his entire ministry. Denouncing ploys "to make someone's weaknesses, especially sexual, into a demeaning form of public entertainment," he adds, "I do not want my life to be used in such a way." He believes he has already lost his "good name." His memoir captures a Catholic High Noon. It is not a defense of his sexual affair (which has nothing to do with priest child abuse), but a defense of the theology to which his life has been committed and to the cause of reform. For starters, he writes, the church could make progress by ridding itself of arrogance, perfection, and omniscience. Otherwise, he says, "I am at peace with my God, with my church, and with myself." A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop by Rembert G. Weakland. Posted on 07/14/2010 7:38:13 PM PDT by mlizzy. ". All readers will be moved by this honest, riveting, and exceedingly well-written story of frustration and hope, sin and redemption. " --Notre Dame's Father Richard P. McBrien, from the book's jacket cover. "As I was leaving [Pope John Paul II] suddenly asked me out of thin air: ‘How old are you now?’ When I replied ‘Seventy-one,’ he did not look me in the eye but, with bowed head and expressionless face gave a low, indistinct grumble. I interpreted it. as a way of saying, ‘I guess I still have to tolerate you for four more years’ --Archbishop Weakland, after his last ad limina visit to the Pope (Pilgrim, pg 389). [A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop, Rembert G. Weakland, OSB William B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, 2009.] Although my book reviews are far from infallible, one does not have to be a member of the Magisterium (or even a Notre Dame alumnus) to realize that when the first person to praise your memoirs is the lyin' liberal press' favorite sound-bite machine, Fr. McBrien, that this is not going to be the spiritually enriching autobiography of a future saint. Furthermore, when the author himself, a self-described dissident homosexual archbishop, tells you that a pope who is up for sainthood could barely stand the sight of him, the orthodox Catholic reader has pretty much dismissed A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church as his book of the month club selection. But while Pilgrim may be a popular choice for the "The Church needs married and woman (and gay) priests!" crowd, there is compelling reason for the faithful to read it too; for as a major player in the often faulty implementation of Vatican II, Weakland gives us a bird’s-eye view of what went wrong--and exactly how "the smoke of Satan" entered the Church. In his review for his Providence, Rhode Island, newspaper, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, describes Pilgrim as “an intriguing combination of theology and gossip, Aquinas and Oprah," and it doesn't take long to see what he means. After opening his autobiography with a self-righteous public confession of his sinful homosexual fling with Paul Marcoux (and the huge "hush money" scandal that surrounded it), Rembert returns to the beginning, his birth and childhood in Patton, Pennsylvania. It starts out as your typical large-Catholic-family tragedy inspirational depression era saga, although dissidence is never far from the surface. After losing his fortune in the financial crisis, George's father (George was Weakland's baptismal name; Rembert the name given him when he became an abbot) Basil "spent much time with his friends in the. unheated rooms. drinking and lamenting. he died [of] pneumonia the day before his thirty-fifth birthday and the day after my fifth, leaving a wife and six children, the oldest nine, the youngest six months" (pg 24). But George's mother, Mary, vowed to keep her kids together, and despite few funds, scant food and little heat, the faith in this close-knit family helped them not only to survive, but thrive. Whether Weakland learned his same-sex attraction during childhood is debatable, there's little doubt his penchant for disagreeing with Church teaching was. Weakland's lament, "that much of my life was spent seeking the father figure that had been there so briefly" (pg 26), may be a factor in some of his illicit adult relationships, to his depiction of his mother as "a woman of deep faith," but with "an independent mind with regard to some positions the Church took" (pg 32), certainly shows the roots of his own dissidence. Later, when George became attracted to the priesthood, he was sent away after the eighth grade to St. Vincent Prep School (Latrobe, PA) to continue his studies. However, when he returned that summer and told his mother the disturbing story of a priest who had been dismissed from St. Vincent after sexually molesting several students, "she surprised me with one remark; 'Well, I hope your own first sexual experiences will be beautiful and the outcome of deep love.' On reflection, I think she was saying something that I had not fully grasped; [but] I did not have the vocabulary or the courage then to talk to her about homosexuality" (pgs 46-47). If the almost complete absence of teaching about human sexuality (either normal or disordered) at the seminary must sadly be excused as part of the culture of the day, the dissident teaching that went on in St. Vincent certainly cannot. Unsure of himself, and still frightened of the sexual abuse that happened to his classmates, Weakland vowed to avoid "the sewing circle" crowd and submerged "any homosexual desires as deeply as I could" (pg 46). Weakland, always a top-notch student, did well in the studies of Latin, Greek, Science, and English Literature, but proved even more gifted at music, and was eventually sent to Julliard to complete advanced studies in piano. Still, as well rounded as this education was, sound theology apparently was not always a part of it. “During Lent,” recalls Weakland, “the ordained all spent long hours in the confessional. Questions about contraception [were] raised. most of us were reluctant to recommend the rhythm method since we had seen many instances when it did not work . and it seemed dishonest since the intention of preventing pregnancy was the same as if artificial means were used. We advised penitents to look carefully at the Church’s teaching, then decide in their own consciences what…was right. We had been instructed that the [layperson's] individual conscience should be respected" (pg 92). Having mastered this democratic, conscience-is-king tabloid version of Catholicism, Weakland quickly rose through the Monastic ranks, first becoming archabbot of St. Vincent's in 1963, consulter to the Consilium on liturgical music changes due to Vatican II in 1964, and lastly, the abbot primate of the entire Benedictine Order in 1967. It was as abbot primate that Weakland became a frequent and influential visitor of Pope Paul VI. Recounting these meetings, Weakland confirms what conservatives long feared; that Paul, in an attempt to befriend everyone (the pope often prepared several "Benedictine trivia" questions for Weakland before they got down to business!) allowed his young liberal advisors far too much leeway in setting the post Vatican II agenda before he attempted to curb Pandora's box of relativism he had created. "Instead of giving into one side or the other, Paul tried to keep peace by creating parallel bodies [of] conservative and forward-looking cardinals. to avoid schism in the Church. His fear, coupled with an innate wish not to offend anyone. alienated his most loyal supporters and collaborators" (pg 220). In the end, Weakland's analysis that Paul's personal views shifted is incorrect; his issuing of Humanae Vitae was a courageous stand against the Modernist mob, not a "cave in" to conservatives as Weakland suggests. Still, if Paul realized (too late) that "The smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God” (from the pope’s famous 1972 homily), Paul did not grasp the perhaps even greater firestorm he created by appointing Weakland (and several of his less-than-orthodox contemporaries) bishop shortly before his death. Unlike a monk, Weakland realized a bishop is called upon to make statements on doctrine, and the new archbishop of Milwaukee wasted no time in issuing outrageous statements on everything from women's ordination to the practicing homosexual’s right to worship. Quick to grasp the situation, John Paul's visits with Weakland were anything but trivial. "On every ad limina visit without exception,” says Weakland, “I would be singled out to meet with Cardinal Baggio (later Cardinal Bernadin Gantin and toward the end of his tenure Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) where I would be presented with a list of complaints" (pg 264). The meetings with John Paul himself (as depicted in the opening quote) were rather quick and to the point, as John Paul did not waste much time on fools, or at least bishops who were fooling themselves. It is interesting to note their different take on these meetings; Weakland depicting “a professor… snidely correcting a less than gifted student” (pg 307), while John Paul recalling (in his book Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way) [here] there can be no turning one’s back upon the truth…no room for compromise to human diplomacy.” I suppose it is the difference of one who began his bishopric with a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, and ended with the people proclaiming him "The Great” saint, and another who began his tenure with a gay affair and ended his ministry by resigning in disgrace because of it. While I agree with Bishop Tobin's review that we should not overlook Weakland's many redeeming qualities (for example, his fight to bring the vernacular of the Divine Office to some Benedictine sisters who didn't understand Latin over the protest of the abbess who declared, "They don't need to understand the prayers since God does!" seems commendable), Tobin's observation that the book is filled with "self-serving inconsistencies and contradictions" cannot be ignored either. To name just a few, Weakland is quick to point out in the quoted passage that the rhythm method taught in the fifties wasn't so reliable, but fails to mention that the Billings Method taught today is, or that Church teaching (from his favorite, Humanae Vitae) shows that natural family planning maintains the bond between the unitive and the procreative, whereas contraception does not. Later, he depicts John Paul as "beyond doubt, a holy man, worthy of being officially recognized by the Church," but then flippantly refers to JP's reign as "that overly long. burdensome pontificate" (pg 402), despite having just finished writing that his bout with prostate cancer gave "me a growing empathy for the sick" (pg 380). And finally, Weakland claims to have decided to pay the $450,000 "hush money" to quiet his gay affair because the Vatican advised him that would keep the Church from scandal, but in doctrinal matters, Weakland rarely listened to Rome, and seemed to revel in the scandal that his heretical statements caused. Thus if Weakland's story does to a large extent truthfully (if unwittingly) depict the faulty seminary training of the 40s and 50s, the improper implementation of Vatican II in the 60s and 70s, and slow and often misguided response to the priest sex scandal of the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, Weakland seems incapable of grasping eternal truths concerning his own soul. Since the book's release, Weakland has admitted to several other homosexual affairs, bragging to Laurie Goldstein of The New York Post that he was the first bishop to come out of the closet," adding, "How can [the Church] tell 400 million gays that you have to pass your whole life without any physical genital expressions of love!" If Pilgrim has proved the need for the Church’s further definitions on married sexuality and the priestly celibacy, Weakland’s retirement rants have shown the need for further definition of the nature of homosexuality beyond the Catechism's, "Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained" (CCC 2357). For if it is largely learned, it can then be unlearned, but if it is mostly innate (as Weakland believes and the Catechism's, "They do not choose their homosexual condition. ” does not condemn), then a different strategy to keep gays from giving in to these "intrinsically disordered acts" (CCC 2357) must be developed, because to witness this retired bishop reduced to a dirty old man, preaching "grave depravity" as true love is beyond sad. Let us pray that if Rembert does not repent, he at least resigns his title of bishop, so that no further faithful are lost due to his reprehensible rhetoric. A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop by Rembert G. Weakland. By Brian T. Olszewski Catholic Herald May 14, 2009. ST. FRANCIS - Whether the distance between knowing about someone and knowing someone is a chasm or a few, short steps, the autobiography can serve as the bridge from knowing about to knowing. That might be what Catholics in southeastern Wisconsin find should they read "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop" by Archbishop Emeritus Rembert G. Weakland. Your Catholic Herald obtained a draft copy of the book. In person and in writing, your Herald has extended two invitations to Archbishop Weakland: One is to be interviewed about the book and about his move from Milwaukee to St. Mary's Abbey in Morristown, N.J. next month; the other is for him to write a first-person piece. As of May 12, he had not responded to either invitation. Why he wrote it. In 1981, Archbishop John R. Roach asked Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland to chair the U.S. bishops� committee charged with drafting the pastoral letter on the economy. Archbishop Weakland is pictured with the second draft of the letter in 1985. The third draft, titled �Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy,� was overwhelmingly approved by the bishops in November 1986. Photo by CNS In the 384-page book, set to be released by Eerdmans Publishing May 29, Archbishop Weakland, 82, details aspects of his life from birth to retirement. In the prologue he explains why he wrote it: "I write because I am internally propelled to share with those I love and served for so many years a fuller story than I was able to tell in May 2002 when I apologized publicly to them. Most of all, this need is rooted in a religious motivation. It is embedded in my concept of the Church's nature and as a communion of believers on a faith journey, a communion of saints (few in number) and of sinners (most of us). My story affects everyone else's story and thus, at least in part, belongs to them." In the epilogue, he returns to why he has written his memoirs, adding that he "often had a front seat" in the church and world history that parallels his life. Noting concern about "revisionism" he detected particularly when people were writing about the years of Pope Paul VI's pontificate, the archbishop wrote, "I have thought it important to say how I, as one individual, saw what was happening then. True, it is only one believer's experience, but, I hope, one worth sharing and saving for posterity." Roots of a vocation. The story wends from his childhood and Benedictine vocation in western Pennsylvania to his rise to the leadership of the Benedictines. At age 36, he was elected archabbot for life of St. Vincent Abbey. While he was ascending in the community, the Second Vatican Council was underway. He recalls his enthusiasm for Pope John XXIII's opening talk and writes, "Can anyone fault those of us who expected the council to usher in a new era for the Church as it looked at its heritage, tried to renew and update itself, and then contribute to a better world?" Archbishop Weakland adds that during the council he changed his "image of God from that of enforcing policeman to one of a loving and caring parent." The latter part of the fifth chapter and most of the sixth are devoted to the council, and to the hopes he had for its work, and what he would experience in later years. More leadership responsibilities. In 1967, the Benedictines, while meeting in Rome, elected him the fifth abbot primate - head of the Benedictine Order. Chapters seven and eight contain detailed accounts of his visiting Benedictine communities throughout the world. During this time, he would regularly meet with Pope Paul VI, whom he describes as having "a monastic soul and sensitivity." In chapter nine, while he writes about his role as abbot primate, Archbishop Weakland writes about his sexual awakening and orientation, at age 45, and about the ramifications of a celibate life. "I never doubted my vocation or the significance of the vows I took; but now I had to see them in a new light, namely, not as the avoidance of sin and evil, but as a new way of living the gospel of love that Jesus Christ preached. I wanted to be a person who lived by love not fear," he writes. In much of Chapter 10 the archbishop writes about the final years of Paul VI's pontificate and the challenges the pontiff faced inside and outside the Vatican. He also recounts his decision to accept the pope's personal request in September 1977 that he become archbishop of Milwaukee, noting how he struggled with not accepting the appointment ("I never wanted to be a bishop, otherwise I would never have become a Benedictine") and accepting it (" . how could I refuse the personal wish of the pope and still be at peace with myself?"). Vatican, Milwaukee links. According to Archbishop Weakland, during his final meeting with Pope Paul VI, the pope told him that the best preparation for being a bishop was to have been an abbot. From 1977 to 2002, the years covered in the final five chapters of the book, he details local, national and international aspects of his being a bishop. Often, they were interwoven, e.g., a dinner for married priests and their wives in 1979 and listening sessions on abortion in 1988, and the renovation of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in 2001-2002, were local matters that became Vatican concerns. "On every ad limina trip without exception, I noticed that I would be singled out (the other bishops were never aware of this) and told to meet with Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio in the Congregation for Bishops (or later with his successor Cardinal Bernardin Gantin in that same congregation) and then with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," Archbishop Weakland writes. "Upon arrival in their offices, I would be presented with a list of complaints. These were actions or decisions of mine that seemed to irritate the pope and members of the curia." Of the future Pope Benedict XVI, the archbishop writes, he "always treated me professionally and respectfully." Four years into his episcopacy, Archbishop Weakland was asked to chair the U.S. bishops' committee responsible for drafting the pastoral letter "Economic Justice for All." He terms the experience "one of the most important and formative periods of my life." During the bishops' spring meeting at Collegeville, Minn. in 1988, Archbishop Weakland learned that the Congregation for Bishops had asked another U.S. archbishop to investigate him. He writes that no one from the Holy See spoke to him about the outcome of that investigation when he was at the Vatican for his ad limina visit in December 1988. "Through it all, I retained a deep respect for the Holy Father as pope, but found little to love and admire in his style of treating people who disagreed with him," Archbishop Weakland writes. "I was convinced that he was indeed a very holy man, but not one without flaws." Start and finish. Archbishop Weakland's prologue focuses on his apologizing to the Catholic community of southeastern Wisconsin on May 31, 2002 "for the scandal that has occurred because of my sinfulness" and with an explanation of his relationship with Paul Marcoux in 1979, the $450,000 financial settlement paid to him in 1997 with archdiocesan funds and the relationship and settlement being made public by Marcoux in 2002. The final paragraph of the book reads: "If I have any sadness, it is that we have made too little progress in understanding and helping victims regain a full life. Too many seem to be left in anger. I also regret that, although we have made headway in delineating the profile of the perpetrators, we have made little progress in detecting this addiction early on and then seeking some sort of cure or humane control. We all are, in that sense, victims of the times we live in and have to accept those limitations, hoping and praying that the next generation will do better than we did. For these reasons, I am at peace with my God, with my Church, and with myself." With money he earned from speaking and writing, and through funds raised by several of his friends, Archbishop Weakland repaid the $450,000 to the archdiocese. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, the archbishop said proceeds from the sale of his memoirs will be donated to the Milwaukee-based Catholic Community Foundation. ISBN 13: 9780802863829. A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop. Weakland O.S.B., Rembert G. This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. For many people, the name of Archbishop Rembert Weakland brings to mind only connotations of scandal ― the titillating tale of a prominent priest disgraced. But that whiff of dishonor barely begins to tell the whole story. / In these pages Archbishop Weakland recounts his life from his childhood in rural Pennsylvania to his retirement from the archbishopric in 2002 at the age of 75, all in the context of the Church that he long served. Weakland takes readers with him to Rome, where he discovered the splendor of a whole new intellectual world, and then to New York for his extensive musical study at Julliard and Columbia University. From his early days in the priesthood to his struggles with pontiffs, Weakland details how he learned to become a leader and minister to his people and how his famously liberal beliefs affected his ministry. While he presents an honest account of the scandal he is so often recognized for, the complete picture beyond rumor and accusation may come as a surprise to many readers. / Throughout his memoir Weakland describes with poignant honesty his psychological, spiritual, and sexual growth. Candid and engaging, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church offers a fascinating inside look at both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II even as it tells the story of a life fully lived. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B., was elected Archabbot of St. Vincent Monastery, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1963, and Abbot Primate of the International Benedictine Confederation in 1967, and he served as Archbishop of Milwaukee from 1977 to 2002. He is the au. From Publishers Weekly : When Weakland resigned as Milwaukee archbishop in 2002 after revelations of a past homosexual relationship and a confidential payout, it was seen as another stunning episode in the unfolding clergy abuse scandal. It was especially painful to liberal Catholics who viewed Weakland as their champion. Weakland was publicly penitent, but other events that year—chief among them the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston— made Weakland's drama a footnote. With this frank and well-told memoir, that's no longer the case. A Benedictine monk, Weakland is up front about his homosexuality in a church that preferred to ignore gays, and about his failures in overseeing pedophile priests. But this is really the poignant journey of a soul, not a mea culpa about sex, with chapters on his hardscrabble boyhood and fascinating, and sometimes sobering, insights into the life of a bishop and the tensions between the American and the Vatican. At points the narrative has more than enough detail on the life of a globe-trotting abbot. But overall this is an invaluable historical record and a moving personal confession. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.