The Education of an Archbishop: Travels with Rembert Weakland

Paul Wilkes often has published lengthy articles in the pages of our intellectual delight The New Yorker (1-year) back when it was still fully itself, including under Mr. Shawn brilliant reign. His professional and literate journalism also received frequent publication in the New York Times - National Edition in the fullness of its flowering, now fast fading under the ownership of Carlos Slim. Wilkes is also the author of These Priests Stay, The American Catholic Clergy in Crisis, and of the much awarded yet little read In Mysterious Ways-the Death & Life of a Parrish Priest, which has been described as the urban Journal d'un Cure de Campagne, recording the death of an ordinary Catholic priest from cancer in Natick, Massachusetts. Here we gratefully read the wonderful writing of Mr. Wilkes as he follows the great Archbishop Rembert Weakland around for some time in the eighties. Kindly be cautioned this writing cannot be put down, it is compelling yet friendly, engaging and informative. This writing places you there, and yet points out the universal implications of the events. Based upon a profile for the New Yorker magazine, this too brief book (under 150 pages - rather like a New Yorker profile!) was been beautifully published by the greatest American Roman Catholic Publishing House Orbis Books, based at Maryknoll, New York. The cover portrait of the great archbishop in itself is delightful piece of art, sketched as it is by Richard de Menocal. The binding is very sturdy and the dust jacket strong; this insightful study is a bargain at the going price now nearly twenty years later. Let us remember this great American Archbishop, once Abbott Primate of the world-wide Benedictine Order, here in his prime, a monk unfortunately at work out in the world, and buffeted for it most often by his own hierarchy, and rewarded richly for it, most often by his own hierarchy. As we await the soon coming publication of the Archbishop's own memoirs as A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop let us grant an afternoon's reading (as directed in St. Benedict's rule for monks) or refectory reading to this compelling article. See also such associated readings as Unfailing Patience and Sound Teaching: Reflections on Episcopal Ministry in Honor of Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B, and the Archbishop's collection of weekly articles edited under the title All God's People: Catholic Identity After the Second Vatican Council. Archbishop Weakland, now quite elderly, had a glorious career in the Roman Catholic Church, including his liturgical participation in the Second Vatican Council. Come to know him here in this book, and to know the inner workings of our church of that day, including official correspondence from the Vatican. Essential to every American catholic library, as is the related materials. A fine, swift, yet profound read. Food for thought. Food for the Catholic soul.