BishopAccountability.org
	Archbishop Dolan: Upbeat or "Arrogant'? USA Today February 23, 2009 http://content.usatoday.com/communities/religion/post/2009/02/63223847/1 Gregarious. Where have we heard that before? It would appear from most early coverage that nobody doesn't love Milwaukee-soon-to-be-New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, named to the post today. Whispers in the Loggia's Rocco Palmo calls it a "marriage made in heaven" for the Catholic hierarchy. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinal's story on losing Dolan to the Big Apple and the biggest job in the U.S. church starts with his "gregarious pastoral style" which "endeared him to a Catholic community in need of a morale boost. Then the story goes on to call him "an openly devout bishop with a sharp intellect. A church historian who speaks three languages and reads three more" yet has a plain-speaking style. He's praised for support of Catholic schools, priests and seminarians and for handling, in a collaborative style, closing more than 20 parishes in the 10-county area (an archdiocese about a quarter the size of New York) and cutting the archdiocese staff by 40%. Through all this, he managed to set the highest fund-raising goal Milwaukee has ever known, $105 million, and raise half the money in less than half the time allotted. And ... He travels the world as chairman of Catholic Relief Services, the church's international aid agency; he's involved in the national Catholic-Jewish dialog; and has forged strong relationships within Milwaukee's Interfaith Alliance. But critics don't think Dolan is all that. Nancy Moews, coordinator of the local chapter of the Catholic activist group Voice of the Faithful, told the Journal: Archbishop Dolan, like most bishops, has a my-way-or-the-highway mentality. His reign has produced assaults on freedom of thought, speech and the primacy of personal conscience." Also according to The Journal, Dan Maguire, a Marquette University professor of moral theology and former priest was rebuked by Dolan for suggesting that Catholics ... may rightfully dissent on issues of abortion and same-sex unions, and that bishops don't have the last word on moral debate. Maguire called Dolan "a back-slapping autocrat ... Under that affable exterior is an arrogant and steely conservative." A smiling -- and unbending -- archbishop could be exactly what Pope Benedict XVI needs in the most powerful pulpit in America to voice a Catholic position during the leadership of the popular new Obama administration. (Keep in mind, the Church doesn't see its stance as uniquely Catholic but rather as a Catholic way of presenting "natural law" -- absolute moral truth that all can recognize.) A statement released by Peter Isely, Midwest director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) says victims had high hopes when Dolan arrived in Milwaukee in 2002, to replace an archbishop who resigned in a date rape scandal and "after years of stagnancy and pastoral malaise under Cardinal (Edward) Egan, Dolan is likely to make a very good first impression" in Manhattan. Then Isely savages Dolan's record in Milwaukee on ousting abusive priests and says his promotion to New York is the Vaticanaˆ™s standard "business as usual" fare. How else could Pope Benedict, as we recently learned, spend years in high level negotiations and talks only to end up reinstating a bishop who publically denies the Holocaust?
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