Since I've become a bishop, so many people have asked "my feelings" about my new position. Since I am more of a "thinker" than a "feeler," I have had to sit back and reconnoiter the situation for a while. As I have pondered, my mind has rolled back over the happy years of my priesthood. I have spent the best years of my life as a priest.

Most of my priesthood has been in parish ministry, which is the heart of the priesthood. It is there that we priests encounter you, the faithful, in your most varied and wonderful, difficult and stubborn, grace-filled and holy ways.

From my earliest days as a boy, I wanted nothing more than to be a parish priest! In April, God-willing, I will celebrate 31 years of priestly life.

In my reflection, several disturbing things also surfaced. One was recalling my 25th anniversary of priesthood, normally a very happy memory. However, this "milestone" came in April 2002, during the beginning of the dreadful sexual abuse scandal. I remember standing in front of hundreds of family members and friends with tears in my eyes, speaking of the joys of the Roman Catholic priesthood and of my love and respect for it with all my heart.

Many of the people who were present were people with whom and to whom I had ministered as a priest. I was grateful for them and for their presence and support. They seemed to understand what was so terrible and difficult for all of us at that time, for victims/survivors, for priests, and for the entire people of God.

Church responds

In the following three years, before I headed to Rome in 2005 to become spiritual director at the Pontifical North American College (our American Seminary in Rome), I witnessed the church respond to the sexual abuse crisis with much promise and hope. Healing services and dialogues were held across the archdiocese. Initiatives to protect children and young people were begun.

A new way of reaching resolution - through an independent system designed by people outside the church structure - was put into place. It was sensitive to people who had been abused by clergy and focused on a holistic resolution that included pastoral, spiritual and therapeutic outreach in addition to financial considerations. I was proud to be part of a church that was responding to this terrible evil with a tremendous outpouring of goodness - as a suffering human institution and as a glorious image of the Eternal Kingdom of God.

Archdiocese corrects errors

In the midst of so much personal turmoil in the lives of so many human beings, much of it caused, God forbid, by her priests, the church responded humbly and apologetically, yet directly and strongly to do what was right and just for those most vulnerable and victimized.

I was happy that the archdiocese had reaffirmed its policies and established protocols that effectively removed any clergy member with a substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor from ever serving in ministry again. It corrected errors that led to the scandal; communicated openly and candidly about what occurred; empowered victim advocates and outside experts to recommend effective responses; and recommitted itself to proactively caring for those who had been victims/survivors.

New concerns

Now I have returned to Milwaukee - as a bishop. The joy and the honor of the priesthood still fill me with love for Jesus and his church. But now, I have some new concerns about new matters. Things affect me differently now because my "parish" has grown some in the past few months.

I now look at the archdiocese with the pastoral eyes that I once looked at the Basilica of St. Josaphat or Holy Family Parish in Peoria, Ill. Archbishop Dolan is the pastor and Bishop Sklba and I are his "back-ups," as one of the children at St. Eugene School recently called "auxiliary" bishops.

This is a great archdiocese. We have wonderful and dedicated priests and prayerful and generous people. Our parishes are thriving. Sure, we are experiencing a little "belt-tightening" these days and some reconfiguration of our central offices. All of this you've heard about or read about. I have hope that these things will be resolved with some promising ideas and some wonderfully inventive thinking.

I am saddened still about the sexual abuse scandal and its continued stranglehold on the community. Certainly it affects the church, and it does so because the church, founded by Christ himself, is held to high accountability - both in this world and in the next. We do take that "in the next" part very seriously. My hope is that people of good will remember that it is the church who works on behalf of victims. Consider:

Who, besides the church, has gone through such elaborate measures to protect children - not just minors, but the unborn? Who else but the church preaches, teaches, and promotes on all levels, a consistent life ethic? Who looks after the elderly - the most systematically abused group of people in our society - more consistently than the Roman Catholic Church?

Who has hospitals that struggle to keep their doors open in some of the poorest areas of society? Whose schools consistently break records for achievement and set standards of excellence for the most students with the least amount of money?

The vilification of "the church" is something foreign to me. "'The church' did not abuse kids." Individuals - yes, sadly, priests - abused minors. "The church" has done what is right to protect the youngest and the most vulnerable in our society. Even experts like Dr. Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins University tells us that, today no one does more to prevent sexual abuse of minors than the Catholic Church.

Church cares for victims

We have paid a price to bring some sense of healing and we strive to recover that which cannot be recovered - innocence and youth. Much has been rightly and justly paid to victims. Still, we face a barrage of legal maneuvers that target the church; fail to acknowledge what has been accomplished; seem to serve some trial attorneys more than victims; and whose motives seem to be to undo the good work of the church in our community.

Allow me just one example: several months ago the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a three-part series of articles from the Associated Press on sexual abuse in public schools, quoting an expert who described this as 100 times worse than abuse by clergy, and happening NOW, not decades ago. Yet, not one editorial, column, cartoon or letter to the editor called for the opening of personnel files, the release of records, a public listing of offenders, legislation to allow for lawsuits, or even something as simple as mandatory background checks and safe environment training - all things the Catholic Church has done since my 25th anniversary of ordination in 2002 and, in some cases, long before.

Hope for church

Nonetheless, we must remain focused. The church has been humbled. We do now only what we should be doing and should have done a long time ago. We don't ask for sympathy ; in this horrible mess, we don't deserve any.

In all things, however, as a new bishop, I ask for your prayers. I am hopeful for the church. I share the enthusiasm I've gained from working with young people and for the good things that will be accomplished in the future. I am basically an optimistic man with strong faith and reliance on the promise and hope of Jesus Christ to be with his church. The Gospel doesn't change. Hope does not disappoint. The church endures.

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