Archbishop Rembert Weakland, former head of the Milwaukee archdiocese, said in an interview Monday that he wrote about his sexual orientation because he wanted to be candid about “how this came to life in my own self, how I suppressed it, how it resurrected again.”

Called “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop,” the book is set to be released in June.

“I was very careful and concerned that the book not become a Jerry Springer, to satisfy people’s prurient curiosity or anything of this sort,” Weakland told The Associated Press. “At the same time, I tried to be as honest as I can.”

Weakland stepped down soon after Paul Marcoux, a former Marquette University theology student, revealed in May 2002 that he was paid $450,000 to settle a sexual assault claim he made against the archbishop more than two decades earlier. The money came from the archdiocese.

Marcoux went public at the height of anger over the clergy sex abuse crisis, when Catholics and others were demanding that dioceses reveal the extent of molestation by clergy and how much had been confidentially spent to settle claims.

Weakland denied ever assaulting anyone. He apologized for concealing the payment. The Vatican says that men with “deep-seated” attraction to other men should not be ordained.

In an August 1980 letter that was obtained by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Weakland said he was in emotional turmoil over Marcoux and that he had “come back to the importance of celibacy in my life.” He signed the letter, “I love you.”

The revelations rocked the Milwaukee archdiocese, which Weakland had led since 1977. He was a hero for liberal Catholics nationwide because of his work on social justice and other issues.

The archbishop, now 82, said he seriously considered the potential pain for the archdiocese of renewing attention to the scandal and thought about waiting “until I was dead” to have it published. But he decided to move ahead with the project.

“What I felt was that people who loved me as bishop here, when they read the book will continue to love me. The people who found it difficult, I hope will be helped a little bit by the book,” he said.

In a sign of the deep emotions still surrounding Weakland and his departure, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has released a public statement alerting local Catholics to the upcoming book.

“Some people will be angry about the book, others will support it,” the archdiocese said.

Weakland also writes about his failures to stop sexually abusive priests. In a videotaped deposition released last November, Weakland admitted returning guilty priests to active ministry without alerting parishioners or police.

“Any deposition is just a part of a whole picture and that picture has not been painted yet. And anybody can take out of that any sentence they want,” Weakland said in the interview.

“I try to deal with this, I hope in an honest way, admitting my weaknesses in not being able to see this earlier, but at the same time doing what I could confront it.”

Advocates for abuse victims said that Weakland’s cover-up of his own sexual activity was part of a pattern of secrecy that included concealing the criminal behavior of child molesters.

Weakland, a Benedictine monk, served in Rome as leader of the International Benedictine Confederation and also worked on a liturgy commission for the Second Vatican Council, which made reforms in the 1960s meant to modernize the church.

Weakland said he wrote in the memoir that he was unprepared for “how lonely it is” to be a bishop and how difficult it can be to get the “feedback and support you need.”

U.S. Catholics have long debated whether the priesthood had become a predominantly gay vocation. Estimates vary from 25 percent to 50 percent, according to a review of research on the issue by the Rev. Donald Cozzens, author of “The Changing Face of the Priesthood.”

Weakland said Christians needed to speak more openly about gays in the priesthood without the “hysteria” that often characterizes the debate.

The archbishop has been living in a retirement community near the Milwaukee archdiocese and plans to move to St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, N.J., this summer. He said he was not bitter about how the scandal had eclipsed his decades of work in the church.

“I refused to let myself become a victim and refused to let myself become angry,” he said. “I want to take responsibility but I want to move on.”

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Dolan said he wants to restore pride in being Catholic, especially given the damage the church endured in the clergy sex abuse scandal, which he called a continuing source of shame.

“One would hope that through education and through the joy that we give by our lives that people will begin to see that these fears and this skepticism we have about the church are unwarranted,” Dolan said.

He said Catholics also must defend themselves against bias, which he said was still deeply ingrained in American culture.

“Periodically, we Catholics have to stand up and say, `Enough,’” he said. “The church as a whole still calls out to what is noble in us.”

Dolan, 59, will be installed as leader of the Archdiocese of New York before thousands of well-wishers in services Tuesday night and Wednesday in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The former archbishop of Milwaukee, Dolan succeeds New York Cardinal Edward Egan, who is retiring at age 77.

In his sermons this week, Dolan says he will ask Catholics not to be so consumed by their problems in these difficult times that they turn inward and away from the community.

His daily life has been a whirlwind since the Vatican announced his appointment seven weeks ago. He celebrated Mass on Easter Sunday in Milwaukee then flew with relatives to New York.

On Monday, speaking in the archbishop’s residence, which is attached to St. Patrick’s through a dining room door, he said he was still unpacking.

The job of New York archbishop is the most visible in the church in the United States, and has been filled by men who became giants not only in the American church, but also in broader society. Among them are Cardinals Francis Spellman and John O’Connor.

Dolan will have a daily reminder of his predecessors’ achievements every moment he’s in the residence. Imposing portraits of the clergymen line the entrance hall and stairways.

On Feb. 23, the day the Vatican announced his appointment, Dolan asked Egan to take him to the crypt in St. Patrick’s, where the previous archbishops are buried.

Dolan said he wanted to pray for them and ask for their prayers, and to see where he will be buried, so he can remember his goal: to live a holy life and “be with God forever in Heaven.”

Dolan is known for defending church orthodoxy with a friendly face. At one service in Milwaukee, he donned a cheesehead hat in honor of the Green Bay Packers. Dolan often jokes about his girth; he had said that one of his previous church jobs was so demanding that he forgot to eat and lost one of his chins.

Still, Dolan said he struggles with how best to convey Catholic teaching. Among his heroes is New York Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who was a 20th century pioneer in TV and radio evangelism.

Dolan was given a rosary used by Sheen and said he prays with it every day. He plans to talk about the church “as our spiritual family,” which people need despite its flaws.

“We need you. We love you. The church is your family,” he plans to tell alienated Catholics. “Please come back. We miss you. We’re sorry if we hurt you. We’ll listen to you. It’s not the same without you.”

The archbishop is taking the New York job at a time when same-sex couples need only drive over the state border to be married – in Connecticut, Massachusetts and later this year, Vermont. New York Gov. David Paterson ordered state agencies last May to respect out-of-state gay marriages.

Dolan said he would challenge any efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, but insisted that his position was not anti-gay.

“We love them,” he said of gays and lesbians. “We would defend their rights.”

However, marriage must remain as it always has been, between one man and one woman, he said.

“If we let that definition of marriage go and begin to include other relationships, it will be to a detriment to the civilization,” he said.

Regarding the fight against abortion, Dolan said that the University of Notre Dame had made a mistake by inviting President Barack Obama to give this year’s commencement address, in light of Obama’s support for abortion rights.

Dolan said that the invitation and the honorary degree the president will receive sent the wrong signal to students that “we hold him up as a model to you.”

But the archbishop said it would also be wrong to freeze out abortion rights supporters and that Catholics should instead engage them. He said Obama could have been invited to Notre Dame to speak without honoring him.

“The word we have to keep using is engagement,” said Dolan. He does not deny Holy Communion to Catholic politicians who break with church teaching. Obama called Dolan on the day of his appointment and the archbishop says he prays for the president daily.

Dolan joked that he had crows instead of butterflies in his stomach at the prospect of taking over the New York archdiocese, which serves 2.5 million parishioners and is the nation’s second-largest diocese after Los Angeles.

But he said, “I hope at my core, I hear Jesus say, `Timothy be not afraid,’” he said.

“Then I take a deep breath and say, `Let’s go,’” he said, “and I’m going to enjoy it and I’m going to give it my best.”

The city temporarily shut down performances of “Naked Boys Singing!” in August 2005 while it considered the Milwaukee Gay Arts Center’s application for a theater permit. The group later received a permit and reopened the show.

Larry Dupuis, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, which is handling the case, said the city’s enforcement seemed unusually zealous, even given the musical’s content.

“I think the title made it kind of controversial,” Dupuis said. “But of course, `The Full Monty’ has nudity in it, and that doesn’t get it threats to shut it down.”

The lawsuit, filed Monday, says the city ordinance is unconstitutional because it gives officials “unbridled discretion” over when permits must be obtained and how applications will be handled. It also says the law could be used to restrict certain viewpoints.

Eileen Force, a spokeswoman for Mayor Tom Barrett, declined to comment on the lawsuit, and a call to the office of City Attorney Grant Langley rang unanswered Monday afternoon.

Dupuis said few, if any, other nonprofit theater groups have been required to get permits from the city.

He also expressed concern that the city’s law does not require officials to approve or deny theater permit applications in a timely fashion. If they don’t like a show’s content, they can simply not act, he said.

“It could be used to discriminate,” Dupuis said, “and we suspect that there was some sort of discriminatory thinking that went into the decision-making somewhere along the line.”

The Milwaukee Gay Arts Center had already started performances of “Naked Boys Singing!” when police received a complaint about what the caller described as “illegal nude theater,” Dupuis said.

The lawsuit claims the center had applied for a permit but not yet received it. Also, the city council was not expected to act on its application until its meeting in September 2005.

The show’s director canceled an Aug. 18 performance, as well as others planned for that month after a detective told him participants could be arrested for performing without a permit, the lawsuit says.

When MGAC opened the show months later, it drew smaller audiences and incurred additional advertising and other costs, Dupuis said. He would not say how much money the center lost on the show, and the lawsuit does not seek a specific amount of damages.

“Naked Boys Singing!” has run into trouble with authorities before in such cities as Provincetown, Mass.; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Atlanta. Eventually, all three cities held performances of the show.

Milwaukee’s Alliance High School, now in its fourth year of operation, is a small, public high school dedicated to serving students who have been bullied or harassed in other school settings. The school doesn’t keep track of students’ sexual orientation, but the staff estimates that LGBT kids make up at least 70 percent of the student body. 

When Alliance was proposed, skeptics brought up the same concerns being aired on 365gay: You’re creating a gay ghetto. You’re insulating children from the real world. You’re not solving the bigger problem of bullying and harassment. 

I was a member of the Milwaukee school board at the time the school was proposed (and still am), so I’ve heard all of these concerns and more. In my opinion, the immediate need to create a safe place for these students was so urgent that I had to support the Alliance proposal. Now, it’s going so well that we’re now looking to start an Alliance middle school.

In full disclosure, I have to admit that after working closely with Tina Owen, the founder of Alliance, I decided to marry her. But rather than unduly bias my opinion of how well the school is meeting its mission, the closeness gives me an opportunity to observe the school, its staff, and its students, in a way that might be helpful to the Chicago debate. 

Like any organization, Alliance has developed its own culture and its own lingo. There’s one term that has evolved there that I think neatly encapsulates both the questions posed by the school’s existence and the answers to those questions: Alliance School Syndrome (or, as the teachers fondly abbreviate it, A.S.S.). 

Alliance School Syndrome is a process that nearly every student new to the school goes through and generally takes one of two forms: Kid in a Candy Store or Bull in a China Shop.

Either the new student reacts by attempting to date everything that moves because for the first time in their lives they have choices, or they attempt to test boundaries and destroy everything because for the first time in their lives they are not being judged for who they are or what they look like, and they want to see if it’s true that they’ll be judged instead on their behavior. 

In probably 9 5percent of the cases, A.S.S. runs its course after about two weeks. Its final symptom is a teary-eyed conference in the office in which the new student realizes the error of their ways and the reality of the new situation they’re in. They’re safe. They can be themselves. They don’t have to test the affection of everyone they meet. They don’t have to show how “bad” they are. They don’t have to prove or disprove their sexual orientation or gender.

They can just be and just learn. 

A.S.S. and its nearly universal prevalence among new Alliance students tells the observer several truths:

These kids are running from something real. Homophobia, sexism, and transphobia weigh very heavily on their young shoulders. It’s only when they are relieved from it that they can really examine the ways discrimination and hate have warped their lives that they can start addressing that discrimination effectively.

A safe school isn’t a ghetto or a cloister. These kids bring the “real world” into school with them every day.

They have family problems. They have money worries. They have dreams and goals that they’re not sure how to reach. Those concerns don’t magically fade away when they walk in the door.

In an interview at the end of the school’s first year, one of Alliance’s first graduates eloquently makes the case that Alliance is part of the “real world” – in fact, the part of the real world where they feel the most real.

These kids are one answer to bullying and harassment. By spending time in a place where their orientation, gender, or appearance are no longer “issues,” the students learn how to become leaders against discrimination based on those very issues. Part of the school’s mission is to educate others about bullying and harassment. The Alliance students speak at middle schools, parent events, education conferences and more.

Their presentations are most compelling because they speak from real experience; they’ve seen that a safe environment gives them room to learn. 

I think Chicago’s Social Justice High School – Pride Campus should be approved. One caution for the organizers, though: Alliance hasn’t just named itself a bully-free zone and merely enforced some basic “live and let live” principles. The staff has implemented many sound practices that reflect a deep understanding of the educational, psychological, and social needs of teenagers. 

Setting up a successful school for LGBT students is no simple matter, but it can be done. Come to Milwaukee and see how.