Bishop Callahan Roundup

Speaking out against the contraceptive mentality

After much prayer and anticipation, Pro-Life Wisconsin joyfully welcomes the Most Reverend William Patrick Callahan OFM as Bishop-designate of the diocese of La Crosse.

“While we are sad to see Bishop Callahan leave Milwaukee, the La Crosse diocese will benefit from his commitment to defending the preborn and speaking out against the contraceptive mentality,” stated Peggy Hamill, state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin.

Pro-Life Wisconsin

...and now, on a Friday -- and Sacred Heart Friday, no less -- B16 sent a bishop up to The Cross.

the first "Black" Franciscan ever made a US bishop made his name as a devoted pastor and solid confessor, and one likewise blessed with a knack for the books.

As a friar, Callahan's spirituality is that of a son of Francis. His episcopacy, however, is that of a son of Timothy -- and the first of the line, at that.

Shortly after Archbishop Tim Dolan's 2002 arrival in Milwaukee, Callahan's skills caught the admiring eye of the new ordinary, who oversaw the friar's transfer from the city's largest church, the mammoth Basilica of St Josaphat (whose intensive restoration the then-rector spearheaded) to Rome's Pontifical North American College as a spiritual director in 2005. Two years later, Dolan secured his confidant's return as the Beer City's first auxiliary in nearly 30 years, delegating his first choice for the post to run the shop as vicar-general and moderator of the curia.

As the ever-critical front of priestly vocations goes, meanwhile, the incoming bishop might have an extensive background as a formator and onetime vocation director, but the diocese is already yielding bumper-crops; over the last year alone, La Crosse has ordained eight new priests -- a figure higher than many places several times its size[originally Arch Burke's crop].

Whispers in the Loggia

On the appointment on Sacred Heart Friday, Archbishop Burke's motto is Secundum Cor Tuum.  Perhaps this comes from:

O Bone Iesu Fac Ut Sacerdos Fiam Secundum Cor Tuum.
O good Jesus, grant that I may become a priest after Thine own Heart. 

As one Marian Catechist told me, this appointment has Archbishop Burke's signature on it.

Get this, from folks here that have talked to him, two of His Excellency's favorite others are none other than GK Chesterton and JRR Tolkien.  Also he had spoke of his disappointment in what happened with the Milwaukee Cathedral wreck-o-vation.

WXOW La Crosse - Bishop Callahan tours Cathedral

A few more
Stevens Point Journal gets priests take on new bishop
WXOW(La Crescent MN) asked SNAP issued questions at press conference