On This Day In 1986...

So.

Since we're already on the subject of religion from Monday's post, I'd like to share this archived New York Times article I found.

The gist of the article is that the Vatican, in an attempt to preserve religious orthodoxy, randomly punished a bunch of local church leaders who didn't conform perfectly to established Catholic doctrine. For instance, the article mentions one Archbishop Hunthausen who was stripped of most of his authority after the Vatican started suspecting him of "tolerating liberal practices in marriage annulment, liturgy and other spheres."

Not believing in or practicing, you'll notice. Just tolerating. Stay classy, 80's Vatican.

Fortunately, someone was willing to speak out against this madness. Rembert G. Weakland, Archbishop of Milwaukee and owner of one of the most incredibly Dickensian names I've ever encountered, wrote some columns criticizing the Vatican's methods. This was the first time someone so relatively high in the Church hierarchy had ever openly spoken out against the Vatican's methods, so this was a fairly big deal.

He was pretty sassy, too. He accused the Church of "fanaticism and small-mindedness" and claimed that their practice of "theological suppression" had caused "a total lack of theological creativity in the U.S.A. for half a century." BURN.

Then the story took a dark turn.

I looked up this Archbishop Weakland on Wikipedia to learn more about him.

Turns out he's a bit of a shithead. Of the protecting pedophile priests and intimidating child victims of sexual abuse into not coming forward kind. The kind who told children reporting sexual abuse that they were "squealing."

Damn. Now I'm not rooting for anyone in this story except good ol' liberal-theology-tolerating Archbishop Hunthausen. But I'm not looking him up on Wikipedia. With my luck, I'll probably find out that he habitually drop-kicked baby bunnies or fed orphans to tigers or something, and I don't want to know.