The Weakland that might have been

James's post On Missed Opportunities (also linked below by Matt) reminded me of a May 24, 2002 post by Pete Vere on hearing the news that Archbishop Weakland's resignation had been accepted.

"...I will just remind everyone of the one or two good things I appreciated as a conservative Catholic during his ecclesiastical career.

"The first, of course, would be initiating the reconciliation of a number of Fr. Feeney's followers back in the mid-seventies, and organizing them into a beautiful monastery (St. Benedict's Abbey) in Still River, MA. I've been to this Abbey, spoken to its members, and while they were never fond of the Archbishop's liberalism (the trouble into which it got him, we are all familiar), they were always grateful that as Abbott Primate of the Benedictines he looked past ideology and took a special interest in seeing them reconciled and organized as a Benedictine Monastery. ..."

So why couldn't he have tried to make a similar impression as Archbishop? After all, unlike with a group of Feeneyite monks, "In Milwaukee, the news of Weakland's appointment [as Archbishop] was extremely well received," according to Paul Wilkes in The Education of an Archbishop: Travels with Rembert Weakland (1992), page 34.