[Catholic Caucus] Archbishop Weakland Stole More Than Money, He Stole the Faith

Crisis Magazine ^ | August 25, 2022 | Anthony Esolen

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[Catholic Caucus] Archbishop Weakland Stole More Than Money, He Stole the Faith

Speak only good things of the dead, the saying goes. The yoga division of The New York Times assumed a veritable Möbius strip of a position to attempt to write a laudable obituary for Rembert Weakland, the disgraced former archbishop of Milwaukee, who died the other day at the age of 95.

It wasn’t entirely successful. The eulogist, one Robert D. McFadden, did have to mention that Weakland “paid” $450,000 as hush money to ward off a lawsuit by his former male lover, who accused him of sexual assault. I have little doubt that Weakland was innocent of that charge. The grown man in question was big enough to take care of himself, and his affair with Weakland was of long duration. 

It was clear, though, that McFadden believed that Weakland’s homosexuality and the breaking of his vows—and doing what Scripture calls an abomination—was a mark in his favor, as was his sly way of undermining everything the Church has to teach about sex, the begetting of children, and family life.

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“If we say our God is an all-loving god, how do you explain that at any given time probably 400 million living on the planet at one time would be gay?” he (Weakland) asked. “Are the religions of the world, as does Catholicism, saying to those hundreds of millions of people, ‘You have to pass your whole life without any physical, genital expression of that love’?”

I don’t pretend to read the man’s soul, but those do not sound like the words of a repentant sinner.

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Ping

[EC Washington]

Weakland destroyed the church in Milwaukee.