Abp. Dolan: The Reaction

{see my complete coverage of Abp. Dolan's appointment here.}

Episcopal appointments never occur in a political or ecclesiastical-political vacuum:

Making his highest-profile U.S. appointment since his 2005 election, Pope Benedict XVI chose a conservative who is likely to stress the church's stand on social issues like abortion. - Dan Gilgoff

Dolan, a St. Louis native, is virtually guaranteed to rise to the rank of Cardinal in the next consistory — a formal meeting of the College of Cardinals — at the Vatican. - TIME

The new head of the New York Archdiocese served for seven years as rector of the Pontifical North American College, the U.S. national seminary in Rome, and was a student there himself in the 1970s. In addition, he was assigned for two years to the staff of the apostolic nunciature, or Vatican embassy, in Washington. - CNS

Archbishop Dolan's move to the New York Archdiocese will more than triple the number of Catholics under his pastoral care -- from about 700,000 in Milwaukee to 2.5 million in New York. - CNS

In Milwaukee, he proved a prodigious fund-raiser, staving off the bankruptcy that seemed to beckon as the priest sexual abuse scandal, and earlier efforts at a cover-up, led to lawsuits. He closed a $3 million budget deficit last year, and started a fund-raising campaign that he says is more than halfway to its goal, with $57.5 million in pledges. He has combined shrinking parishes and reached out to young people over beers, and recruited new seminarians — the Milwaukee archdiocese expects to ordain six men this year, as opposed to a single ordination a few years ago. - NYT

The appointment marks the first time in the 200-year history of the archdiocese that power will be transferred from a living prelate to his successor in a post that Pope John Paul II once called “archbishop of the capital of the world.” - Laurie Goodstein

While Pope Benedict XVI’s appointment of Archbishop Timothy Dolan to New York hardly marks a dramatic break with key picks under recent popes, it may confirm an intriguing pattern-within-a-pattern under Benedict when it comes to the most important jobs in the United States.
In a sound-bite, one might call it a choice for “the center-right with a human face.”
In essence, that means leaders who are basically conservative in both their politics and their theology, but also upbeat, pastoral figures given to dialogue. It’s a pattern with across-the-board consequences for both the substance and the style of American Catholicism, and one that could carry particularly interesting implications for relations between church and state in the Age of Obama. - John Allen