Proceeds from Weakland memoir to benefit charity

What charity will benefit from the proceeds of Archbishop Weakland's memoirs? Some contenders came to mind.

Back in November 1997 the Archdiocese of Milwaukee Supporting Fund Inc. announced it would use $2 million to endow chairs in Archbishop Weakland's name at the Gregorian University and at the Benedictine College, Sant’Anselmo. Maybe those chairs need reupholstering by now.

In 1995 our Archdiocese of Milwaukee commissioned a life-size bronze bust of Archbishop Weakland. Surely it costs money to keep it dust-free.

He chose the Catholic Community Foundation of Milwaukee. Here's some information about it.

Annysa Johnson's report in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel went over some familiar territory.

Weakland resigned abruptly in 2002 after it was revealed that he had paid $450,000 in archdiocesan funds to a former Marquette University theology student who accused him of date rape in 1979. In 1998, the man, Paul Marcoux, attempted to extort $1 million from Weakland in exchange for a love note the archbishop had written years earlier, according to court records.

The paper's recent characterization of the payment as extortion has not drawn a denial from our Archdiocese, even though paying extortion from Archdiocesan funds would be improper.

A spokesman for the archdiocese said Monday that it is unlikely to seek restitution of the funds paid out by Weakland from the book's profits because they were repaid previously by the retired archbishop and a group of supporters.

Then wouldn't restitution have been owed not only by Archbishop Weakland but also from Bishop Sklba and then-Finance Director Wayne Schneider, who also had to approve the payment? Looks like the tough talk about restitution is spin, and our Archdiocese would pay again if a similar situation arose.

As for the restitution paid by Archbishop Weakland, that was money he had previously donated to our Archdiocese. If you can say with a straight face it both was and wasn't extortion, and the restitution used money that both was and wasn't his, you might want to consider a career in diocesan public relations.


P.S. The headline of the print version of this story had a different emphasis, "Weakland details homosexuality". Archbishop Weakland won't talk with the Journal Sentinel.

But he told The Associated Press that [in his memoirs] he wrote about his sexual orientation because he wanted to be candid about "how this came to life in my own self, how I suppressed it, how it resurrected again."

From the word choice alone, it appears the man is terribly confused, as Father Neuhaus observed in 2002.


See Archbishop Weakland Memoirs to be Released