Peg o' His Heart

Margaret O'Brien Steinfels not only wrote the Foreward to Archbishop Weakland's memoirs, in that Foreward she discloses she edited the book. Or she attempted editing it. As she says, "I am not a book editor; five thousand words is generally my outer editing limit." (p. xi) To save time, she omitted fact-checking. For example, the real-world Archbishop Weakland who threatened a libel suit against three teachers who wrote to him about Father Dennis Pecore, and the Weakland who had archdiocesan lawyers take a judgment for costs against an abuse victim whose case was dismissed, becomes

Archbishop Weakland ... conveying in some detail his own long-standing effort to resolve cases of sexual abuse of minors in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. (p. ix)

The real world Archbishop Weakland who reassigned Father William Effinger, a known offender, to a parish, becomes Weakland the helpless victim of Vatican bureaucracy.

what could ordinary bishops do with priests who had abused children and yet could not be dismissed from the clergy? (p. x)

The real world Archbishop Weakland who wrote a thirteen year old boy to ask him to forgive Father Richard Nichols while the archdiocesan communication director asked the parents not to call the police becomes Weakland contending with

local police and prosecutors [who] were often reluctant ... to bring child abuse cases to the courtroom. (p. x)

She has him giving his farewell apology "at Milwaukee's St. John's Cathedral" (p. x) rather than at the Cousins Center in St. Francis. Apparently Weakland didn't read the Foreward, either.