Archbishops with and without conviction

Referring to SNAP, today's paper reports Victims group questions visits by 2 retired archbishops. The visits are to next weeks national Cathedral Ministry Conference in Milwaukee.

First, retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee.

"This individual is responsible for transferring and concealing dozens of priests who molested and raped children," SNAP Midwest Director Peter Isely said of Weakland in a news conference Wednesday with other victims and family members outside the Milwaukee cathedral.

"And he's immortalized himself in bronze ... in the place of Jesus shepherding children," Isely said.

While Archbishop Weakland as a Nantucket lifeguard might have been a more apt symbol for the artists' intent, SNAP might be missing an opportunity to use the lambs to slaughter meaning now actually conveyed.

Second, retired Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati. At the conference, newly-installed Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki,

is scheduled to celebrate Mass alongside Pilarczyk, a former president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who in 2003 entered a plea of no contest on behalf of the Cincinnati archdiocese, which was convicted of failing to report clergy sex abuse to civil authorities during the 1970s and '80s.

Might turn out to be a conflict between meaning intended and meaning conveyed there as well.