A Firebrand's Valedictory

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

The Vatican tradition called the ad limina requires a Pope to meet privately and individually every five years with the presiding bishop of each of the world's 1,949 dioceses. It is a managerial tour de force, and it works especially well for Milwaukee, Wis., Archbishop Rembert Weakland, since it obliges the Pontiff to sit even with people whose opinions he abhors. "In the early visits," says Weakland cheerily, "one had the feeling if you were saying things he didn't like, he would just go silent on you. The last time I found it easier to engage him in conversation."

For Weakland, 71 and one of the U.S. episcopate's last unregenerate liberals, his fourth tete-a-tete with John Paul next week may well be his last. Bishops usually retire at 75, and the Pope is unlikely to grant an extension. Made Archbishop by Pope Paul VI at the church's liberal apogee in 1977, Weakland by 1984 induced the Conference of Catholic Bishops to write a pastoral letter calling American poverty a "moral scandal." From then on, almost every year saw a bombshell lobbed at conservatism in general or--so it sometimes seemed--John Paul II in particular. Vatican ideological crackdowns had produced "much cruelty," Weakland wrote; many competent women "feel they are second-class citizens in a Church they love"; the Pope's decree that an all-male priesthood is divinely directed and unquestionable was "theologically suspect." And after six "listening sessions" with Catholic women who had resorted to abortion, Weakland urged open discussion and more compassion on the issue. For that, the Vatican vetoed an honorary degree he was to receive in Switzerland. Papal supporters picketed a 1995 Weakland event with a sign reading ROME NOT REMBERT.

Recently Weakland has taken time away from work: in 1996 the Juilliard piano graduate toiled on a doctoral dissertation on liturgical chant at Columbia University (leading Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, whose workfare program Weakland had faulted, to snap that the Archbishop should "read his Bible instead of playing piano in New York"). Last year Weakland underwent treatment for prostate cancer. But he is back in combative form, penning a preview of his ad limina thoughts for the Jesuit magazine America. He feels that U.S. Catholicism, 60 million members strong, is in danger of a split. At one extreme, he discerns "restless innovators" whose liberal "sloganeering" he finds ineffective; at the other "Papal maximalists" who have prospered under the current papacy but "sensing victory, [have become] even more judgmental and vicious." The vast, threatened "middle ground" is proud of the Pope but ignorant of his writings, defiant of his sexuality rulings and worried that the priest shortage threatens their beloved parish life.

Before leaving for Rome, Weakland told TIME he admires John Paul's character, but suggested a theologian could "find ways of relooking" at the Pope's ban on female priests. He plans to state his fear of a schism "in the context of not wanting the Catholic Church to undergo what has happened to the Jewish community or the Lutherans, where groups seldom talk to each other." Framed that way, the plaint almost obligates John Paul to talk back.

--By David Van Biema. Reported by Richard N. Ostling/New York

With reporting by RICHARD N. OSTLING/NEW YORK