Midwestern Catholics Take Charge

With the appointment of Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane to be Archbishop of Chicago, products of Omaha, Nebraska are now leaders of two of the most important institutions of American Catholicism: the Archdiocese of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame (Father John Jenkins, CSC). Also, former Bishops of Rapid City, South Dakota will now be Archbishops of two of the six largest dioceses in the United States (in addition to Archbishop-elect Cupich in Chicago, my own Archbishop, Charles Chaput, OFM Cap. of Philadelphia, was formerly Bishop of Rapid City).

The prominence of Omaha and Rapid City may be a geographic coincidence, but there might also be a larger point here about the rise of Midwestern Catholicism in the American Church.

Consider that almost all of the ordinaries of the redoubts of the East Coast Catholic Church are Midwesterners: Boston (Cardinal O’Malley is from Lakewood, Ohio and Pittsburgh), New York (Cardinal Dolan is from St. Louis), Philadelphia (Archbishop Chaput is from Concordia, Kansas), and Washington (Cardinal Wuerl is from Pittsburgh). (Pittsburgh is a close call, but I say the Midwest begins when you pass the Alleghany Mountain Tunnel on the Pennsylvania Turnpike—and surely Pittsburgh historically has been more like Cleveland or Detroit than it’s been like New York or Philadelphia.) Only Archbishop Lori of Baltimore—a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington originally from Kentucky—is from an East Coast diocese. None of the American cardinals serving now as archbishop of a diocese is native to the East Coast: besides O’Malley, Dolan, and Wuerl, Cardinal DiNardo of Galveston-Houston is from Pittsburgh (via Bishop of Sioux City, Iowa). And Catholic university presidents at Notre Dame (Nebraska, as mentioned), Boston College (Father William Leahy, SJ is from Iowa), and Villanova (Father Peter Donohue, OSA is from Michigan) are from the Midwest.

The larger story, if there is one, may be that those formed by Midwestern Catholicism—less clerical, less dependent on the large institutions that have marked East Coast Catholicism—are suited to address the challenges of the 21st century American Church. Regardless, congratulations to Bishop Cupich and best wishes in retirement to Cardinal Francis George, OMI (originally from...Chicago).