Pastor of a 700,000-member ‘parish’ It's gotten to the point I don't even know if I should take that number at face value.

Brian T. Olszewski reports in our Catholic Herald on Archbishop Timothy Dolan's then-upcoming fifth anniversary as Archbishop of Milwaukee.

He is one of only four active archbishops serving in the U.S. to go from being an auxiliary bishop to being an archbishop without having served as a diocesan bishop.

An exception that proves the rule, if "prove" means test.

When it comes to administration and management, Archbishop Dolan admits “that’s been the steepest learning curve, especially in two areas - money and personnel.”

On both, it might have been better had the two men who approved the Weakland settlement had been eased out of the positions they then held. Instead they became part of Archbishop Dolan's smaller inner circle.

“Even though I’ve never been a canonical pastor, every job I’ve had as a priest, I’ve asked, ‘How can I be a pastor, a shepherd to God’s people?’ So I just have to be a pastor, a shepherd,” the archbishop recalled telling himself.

Another indication that he might have been sent here to get experience.

Acknowledging that there “are a lot of bishops, and some pretty darn good ones” who view their jobs as 9 to 5, the archbishop takes a different approach.

The term for any pretty darn good bishop who can actually get the job done 9 to 5 should be papabile.

“I showed up at a fish fry... As I’m leaving, one of the people said, ‘You know, it’s really great that you could leave your work and do this.’ I said. ‘You know, this is my work; this is what I enjoy doing.’"

Long hours. Fish fries. Didn't his father die relatively young of a heart attack?

“When people ask me to pray for an intention, I do it right there: ‘Good, let’s pray for that right now,’” he said. “I try to get the name, and every morning I would lift up those intentions and I would enumerate them by name and cause."

After some earlier planning "listening session" I suppose I could have bent his ear with some issue, but I had a prayer intention for him, instead. So from time to time I pray for his coronary arteries.

The archbishop noted that when he arrived in Milwaukee, he, like most other bishops in the U.S., was consumed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. He would pray that the Lord would make it go away so that he could get back to the work of the church. A column by Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, which appeared in your Catholic Herald, provided a different perspective.

“Fr. Rolheiser wrote that’s a wrong prayer because getting through this happens to be the work of the day. And this is not a distraction from our work; this is our work,” Archbishop Dolan said. “This is the Paschal Mystery in action, dying and rising, so we don’t pray, ‘Lord, please hurry up and make this go away so we can get to your work.’ Our prayer is, ‘Lord, give me the grace, courage and insight to do your work, which happens to be this right now.’”

None of those quite follows the model of the prayer in Mark 14:35-36.

“What frustrates me most is what’s not going on in the church — and should be!” Archbishop Dolan said.

What's going on in the church tends to be committee meetings. I don't see that changing.

He cited the need to do more in prisons and day cares, in support of marriage and families, in immigration reform, promoting a culture of life, and helping stem inner city violence.

Sorry, it's looking like we'll be busy with another round of dialogue and listening sessions on another round of closings, consolidations, and reorganizations. We won't now be closing inner city parishes though; they were largely gone long before he got here.

The archbishop said the church invests 95 percent of its energy, time and resources in maintaining the good it is doing.

I assume that's a rhetorical number.

During the next five years, the archbishop plans to build upon the six pastoral priorities, i.e., growth in holiness, interior conversion and reliance on the sacrament, especially the Sunday Eucharist; strengthen parishes; foster vocations; strengthen Catholic education and formation; emphasize justice and charity; and instill stewardship.

Will there be accountability based on reliable measures of progress?

The other thing he plans to do, and for which he makes no apology, is to ask for money.

He managed to pitch the Catholic Stewardship Appeal at Father Meinholz's funeral, though I suspect he didn't start out intending to. Still...

"Oh my gosh, people think I’m going to New York. I don’t think I am. I’m rather confident that I’m not."

If he does, though, what did he learn from his experience here?

His upbeat approach and demeanor have prompted some people to view Archbishop Dolan as “Pollyannaish” or to dub him “Happy Talkin’ Tim.”

Imagine those folks if instead Bishop Bruskewitz had come here. Plus that would have caused others to overdose on schadenfreude.

In this case, I'll yield the last word.

“You simply believe everything is in God’s hands, and faith and hope become allied. He never calls us to do something without giving us sufficient grace. You believe everything works out for the good of those who believe,” he said. “You believe with all your heart and soul that if you are pliant to God’s grace and God’s call. He’s going to see you through. That’s the major virtue that I relish and that’s what gets me through. The vocabulary is prayer and your major message is that you want to share that with others.”

  ¶ 10/02/2007 06:59:00 AM