For a few deeply unpleasant days, the Rev. David Cooper found himself in the crosshairs of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. It was 2003, and the priest had opined to a reporter that women should be ordained. Faraway bishops rumbled about censure.
Then he picked up the telephone and heard the baritone of Milwaukee’s archbishop, Timothy Michael Dolan.
Father Cooper immediately offered to resign.
No, no, the archbishop replied, we just need to repair the damage.
“He was very pastoral and caring,” Father Cooper recalled.
And how was it resolved? “Oh, I agreed to recant,” he said.
“He effectively silenced me.”
Archbishop Dolan, who Pope Benedict XVI named on Monday to lead the Archdiocese of New York, is a genial enforcer of Rome’s ever more conservative writ, a Falstaffian fellow who talks of his love of the Brewers baseball team and Miller beer, and who takes obvious joy in donning his bishop’s robes and pounding his bishop’s staff as he tromps into church. When talking with parishioners, he places his hand on their shoulders, sidles in close and, out of the corner of his mouth, cracks a joke.
Asked this month about rumors of his departure for New York, he shrugged. “I don’t think I’m on Pope Benedict’s speed dial,” he said. “I hope to be here for the rest of my life. I’ve even picked out my burial spot in the crypt — want to see it?”
On matters of doctrine, the archbishop 59, adheres to the line laid down by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict, including firm opposition to abortion, birth control, divorce, gay marriage and any crack in the wall of priestly celibacy.
A native of St. Louis, Archbishop Dolan has scaled the Roman Catholic high cliffs, earning a Ph.D. in church history and serving in the stations sought out by the church’s high achievers: secretary to the papal nuncio, the pope’s envoy, in Washington; rector of the Pontifical North American College, a school for American seminarians in Rome; and auxiliary bishop of St. Louis, before being installed as archbishop of Milwaukee in 2002. He speaks fluent Italian.
In Milwaukee, he proved a prodigious fund-raiser, staving off the bankruptcy that seemed to beckon as the priest sexual abuse scandal, and earlier efforts at a cover-up, led to lawsuits. He closed a $3 million budget deficit last year, and started a fund-raising campaign that he says is more than halfway to its goal, with $57.5 million in pledges. He has combined shrinking parishes and reached out to young people over beers, and recruited new seminarians — the Milwaukee archdiocese expects to ordain six men this year, as opposed to a single ordination a few years ago.
He has vigorously courted the booming exurban white Catholic churches and the Hispanic congregations of the city’s south side. Such experiences could serve him well in New York, where the church also has grown more suburban and Latino. (He traveled to a Spanish class in Mexico and tries out a stray “hola!” and “como estas?” on his Hispanic parishioners.)
But the woes afflicting his 10-county archdiocese are many. The sex abuse scandal remains an open sore. The church has paid $26.5 million to settle lawsuits, and officials expect a new raft of suits in the next year. Critics say that Archbishop Dolan has not defrocked at least three priests who were found to have committed sexual abuse, and a state judge held last year that the archdiocese’s insurance company is not responsible for paying claims in cases where diocesan officials committed fraud by transferring abusive priests without notifying their new parishioners.
Attendance at Mass has declined steadily, from 40 percent of parishioners in the early 1990s to 27 percent last autumn. Sixty parishes have closed since the late 1990s and nearly three dozen parishes share priests or have lay leaders, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A few parishes remain split, sharply, over questions of birth control and divorce, and over archdiocesan attempts to promote a more traditional liturgy.The archdiocese remains so strapped for cash that officials have put its headquarters, alongside a cobalt blue stretch of Lake Michigan, up for sale. A billboard along the lakeshore drive promises: “Development Opportunity. Approximately 44 Acres.”
Archbishop Dolan hails from American Catholicism’s now-dominant conservative wing, which has grown stronger and more assertive during the past decade. Under his predecessor, Rembert G. Weakland, the Milwaukee archdiocese had a national reputation as a liberal Catholic outpost, where debate about doctrine was vociferous and to be gloried in. Many Catholics predicted a theological war upon the arrival of the new bishop. This did not materialize.
Obedient soldier of Rome though many say he is, Archbishop Dolan remains more politician than ideologue. He has not joined the American bishops who barred Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights from taking holy communion. And, with a notable exception or two, he has declined to ferret out the liberals in his midst.
There are, the archbishop told his priests by email two years ago, speakers who are “are ‘not my cup of tea’ but who will stay ‘within the boundaries,’ and I trust your judgment. We need dialogue.”
But, he warned, there are a few — like Daniel C. Maguire, the Catholic theologian and professor at Marquette University, in Milwaukee — who favor abortion rights and are “so radically outside church teaching that his appearance at any parish would be a grave scandal.”
William J. Thorn, a journalism professor at Marquette, has spoken often with Archbishop Dolan.
“He is what you would expect of an archbishop appointed by John Paul II,” he said. “ He is with Rome on the big issues and on the little ones. But he does not do it in a dictatorial fashion.”
In personal style, it is hard to imagine a sharper contrast between this affable bishop and the distant, often diffident man he will replace in New York, Cardinal Edward M. Egan.
Cardinal Egan declined to reveal much about church finances and clashed with his priests. Archbishop Dolan gets good grades from Catholic reformers for the transparency of his archdiocese’s finances, and takes pleasure in schmoozing with his priests, asking after their elderly parents. At day’s end he might invite a few to share a glass of whiskey at his residence, a converted barn on the grounds of a lakeside seminary.
One recent Sunday, the bishop participated in the Mass at St. Benedict the Moor, a liberal church in Milwaukee. As it ended, a white-haired parishioner, Chuck Boyle, 79, rose in the pews and challenged him to rethink the church’s opposition to ordaining women, a plea which the audience, including nine former priests and their wives, met with sustained applause.
The archbishop kept his poker face and did not respond. Fifteen minutes later, he worked the food line in the church basement before easing into a steel folding chair to chat. A woman inquired if he wanted milk with his coffee.
“I’d prefer a bit of Jameson’s,” he said. “But milk will do.”
Thirty blocks to the south, at St. Adalbert Church, the past and future of the Milwaukee archdiocese are on display. A sign outside the church lists the English-language Mass: 10 a.m. Sunday. On its opposite side is the Spanish-language schedule: 8 a.m., noon and 7 p.m. And on a recent Saturday, 900 or so Mexican worshipers — wives and husbands, babies in serapes, teenagers and small children — crowded the aisles for a 5 p.m. Spanish Mass.
Few churches in the archdiocese are as packed. For this the priest, the charismatic and barrel-chested Rev. Eleazar Perez Rodriguez, credits himself, his Mexican community, and not least his middle-aged, Irish-American bishop.
Unlike most churches, St. Adalbert’s keeps its doors open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., to suit intense devotees and irregular work schedules. The style of music and worship owes more to Oaxaca than Milwaukee. Congregants knock at Father Perez’s door day and night, and visitors often sit four deep in his antechamber.
“The church must understand and harness this community, and that hadn’t happened until Bishop Dolan came on the scene,” he said. “The bishop is kind of interesting; he doesn’t say ‘yea’ or ‘nay’, he just lets me work.”
When Archbishop Dolan arrived in Milwaukee, women and lay people occupied key positions, and he displeased some conservative supporters by leaving most in place. His chancellor, Barbara Anne Cusack, is a nationally respected canon lawyer. One of his auxiliary bishops spoke long ago in favor of ordaining woman.
The archbishop is no crusader. He speaks against abortion and the death penalty. When some parishes affiliated with a national organizing group and began pushing for a health insurance cooperative, he gave his blessing and kept his distance. Like Cardinal Egan, he seems wary that crusading could distract, not least from the fund-raising needed to keep the church afloat.
Nor is Archbishop Dolan known as a particularly sophisticated theologian; his homilies are homespun, often touching on baseball and football before turning to the importance of Christ as savior. At St. Benedict he delivered an affecting homily on the hopelessness and joy that can accompany those who care for the poor. But many priests say he lacks the lyricism and textual insight of a great homilist.
“He is no theologian,” said Professor Maguire, the Marquette theologian banned from speaking on archdiocesan property. “He is in keeping with church policy that theologians are to listen and obey. It turns theology into a form of magic, expertise without study.”
About the theatrics of his business, there is no doubt: the archbishop is a master. As he walks into church, head bowed, he peers here and there, seeking eye contact and flashing smiles. When he sings, his deep voice echoes loudest.
“I was at the vespers when he was installed at bishop,” recalled the Rev. Steven M. Avella, a history professor at Marquette. “And there’s a part where the bishop knocks on the door. Most do it timidly. Tap, tap. Not him — ‘Bang! Bang!’ ”
Father Avella laughed at the memory. “It echoed through the cathedral and let everyone know that Timothy Dolan was there.”
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(Source: NYT)