I doubt that the anticipated event had anything to do with retirement of a bishop, judging by the way it was played up so dramatically.
Egan was kind of middle of the road in terms of tradition and orthodoxy, right?
Absolutely. He was no Cardinal O'Connor or Spellman. For the most part, NYS has some 'way out there, ultra liberal' bishops who need a good smackdown. I don't imagine the new Archbishop would react so quickly but we can be certain that he will hold them in check until they retire.
Egan was a lot more conservative than people give him credit for. But he came in amidst scandals in New York and his own former diocese, so had little credibility, with the left or the right. He busted some heads for orthodoxy’s sake, fueling the left’s scandal-mongering, but the right was too suspicious to champion him.
If you can picture John McCain winning the last election, and now the current economic crisis, you can maybe get a sense of the boat Egan was in. But whereas we’d all expect McCain to run to the left, Egan did not.
If there was one thing he lacked, it was the charm to get out in front of the cameras and be loved, like John Paul or Cardinal O’Connor; to play enforcer when people don’t find it otherwise easy to warm up to you is so much more difficult, and it’s easy to stir accusations that you don’t just don’t have a loving heart. But it makes the persistence all the more an act of charity.