Details from Whispers: Depending on how one looks at things, this Friday morning brings either the most courageously bold — or stunningly brazen — American appointment in the seven-year reign of Pope Benedict XVI.For the better part of the last four months, the machinery of the archdiocese that — at least, under normal circumstances — many US bishops consider the nation’s most daunting assignment has quietly prepared its 450,000 members for a transition at the top. Yet while the pontiff’s selection of the ninth archbishop of San Francisco had almost universally been expected by late June, an apparent delay was...