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story Church in Crisis 4,000 meet to give laity a voice
By CHUCK COLBERT
Boston
Since its inception last winter here, the largest lay-led,
church-reform advocacy group to emerge in the wake of the Catholic church
sex-abuse crisis has expressed its mission in six words: Keep the Faith,
Change the Church. By design, the group, Voice of the Faithful, is
centrist, with leaders and members reaffirming on many occasions their
intention to build up the church through change from within.
But July 20 at a daylong gathering 4,200 people heard speaker
after speaker hammer away at the hierarchy, its culture of clericalism and the
millennia-old ecclesial power structure of the worldwide church.
The meeting, called Response of the Faithful, garnered
the support of national survivor groups such as Survivors Network for
Those Abused by Priests and Linkup, and major national figures like David
Clohessy, Barbara Blaine and Mark Serrano, who attended the convention and have
long advocated for the rights of abuse victims.
Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle received Voice of the Faithfuls
Priest of Integrity Award. Doyle was a canon lawyer at the Vatican Embassy when
he co-authored a 1985 report on the impending crisis, urging the U.S. bishops
to form a national policy (NCR, May 17).
Accepting the award, Doyle suggested that some of the hierarchy
suffer from unbridled addiction to power. The laity, he proposed,
are called to help free those bishops and priests from the chains
of their addiction, helping them to find the joy and happiness of
sharing.
Sexual abuse has been a symptom of a deeper and much more
persuasive and destructive malady: the fallacy of clericalism, Doyle
said.
The current crisis marks the beginning death throes of the
medieval monarchical model that was based on the belief that a small select
minority of the educated, privileged and power-invested was called forth by God
to manage the temporal and spiritual lives of the faceless masses on the
presumption that their unlettered status equaled ignorance, he said.
But that was 1302, Doyle said. This is 2002, and
that model is based on a myth that certainly is long dead, if it was ever real
in the first place.
Still, he expressed optimism. Out of this disaster has
emerged hope, Doyle said, and the realization that we must have a
deep, probing and painful scrutiny of the governmental system that caused this
to happen and real change.
Primarily laity
Those who converged on the Hynes Convention Center were primarily
members of the laity -- Catholics with deep roots in their local parishes and
associated ministries. Priests and women and men religious also attended.
Overall, the gathering had representatives from 36 states and seven
countries.
Dan Daley, co-director and a founder national Catholic reform
group Call To Action, was in attendance. It is remarkable that this new
group could, using volunteers, draw 4,000. We put on conferences every year and
we know what is involved. It is a wonderful coming of age of a strong lay voice
movement.
Noting that many of those at the gathering were members of Call to
Action Massachusetts, Daley said he had begun conversation with leaders of the
new group about possible collaboration in the future.
The major difference between CTA and Voice of the Faithful
is that Voice is not yet taking positions on issues apart from lay
participation, he said. For instance, they dont yet have
positions on a married priesthood or womens ordination, positions we have
been clearly advocating while they are focused on lay voice. So there is some
difference of agenda at this point.
Major highlights of the convention weekend included:
Announcement of a monitoring process, or report
card, enabling the various parish-based Voice of the Faithful chapters to
evaluate the U.S. bishops based on their compliance with the Charter for the
Protection of Children and Young People, adopted by U.S. bishops at their June
meeting in Dallas (NCR, July 5). Spokesperson Paul Baier said at a
pre-convention news conference July 19 that Voice chapters would soon begin to
evaluate their bishops and that reports would be posted on the Internet by
fall.
Establishment of a Voice of Compassion
Fund, designed to accept charitable contributions from people unwilling
to contribute directly to the cardinals annual appeal in Boston. The
following Monday, Cardinal Bernard Law said the archdiocese would not accept
money from the fund; however, Catholic Charities of Boston said it would not
turn down any donation. (See accompanying story.)
Overwhelming approval of a declaration, or charter,
affirming the role of the laity in constant renewal of the Catholic
church, as proclaimed in Lumen Gentium and other Vatican II
documents. The declaration also petitioned the Holy Father to
support this charter and to hold accountable any bishop who reassigned an
abusive priest or concealed his crimes, and any member of the curia who
participated in these practices.
It was an amazing day to see all our efforts come together
in such a wonderful way for so many people, said Mary Moran, of St.
Gerards Parish in Canton, Mass., who joined Voice of the Faithful in
April.
When the crisis came down, I like many others felt a range
of emotions, torn among anger, hurt and sorrow for the victims, she said.
Voice has been a means of dealing with and working through my
anger.
Added Moran, a retiree who served as a diocesan director of
religious education: Its been my salvation, providing me, a
Catholic woman who dearly loves the church, a way toward a future
church.
Right and responsibility
In his welcoming remarks, Voice president James E. Post outlined
the groups agenda. Today, we assert our right and our
responsibility as baptized Catholics to participate in the decision-making
processes of each parish, each diocese and the whole Catholic church, he
said.
The hierarchy that failed to protect our children cannot be
trusted to exercise sole control over the property, money and fate of our
church, he said.
We want our bishops to talk with us, he said.
But let me be clear about the terms of this dialogue: We will not
negotiate our right to exist. We will not negotiate our right to be heard. We
will not negotiate our right to free speech as American Catholics.
Founding president James E. Muller, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning
cardiologist, in addressing the crowd, offered a hopeful sign for continuing
dialogue. Bishop Walter Edyvean, vicar general of the Boston archdiocese,
has told me that Cardinal Law and the bishops are unanimous in their
support of the ongoing conversations between Bishop Edyvean and the leadership
of Voice of the Faithful, Muller said.
Muller detailed the groups great progress to
date, including 19,000 members in 22 nations and 75 chapters, called
parish voices, nationwide.
Nineteen hundred years ago, the divine message of Jesus
Christ was fresh, clear, ethical and uncorrupted --when the laity had a voice
in selection of bishops, Muller said. We must build a church that
Jesus would survey with a smile.
During plenary sessions and smaller workshops, convention
attendees heard from theologians. Moral theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill of Boston
College pointed out that while reforms of Vatican II came from the top down,
current calls for change push up from the bottom. She also called on the Voice
movement to include all the diversity of the church, noting how well off, white
and senior many of the participants were.
Francine Cardman, an associate professor of historical theology
and church history at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass.,
referred to Lukes Gospel and the parable of the sower and the seed, after
which Jesus admonishes his followers to pay attention to how you
listen, since, she said, parables both reveal and conceal
Gods kingdom to those who hear them.
Stressing the urgency of paying attention to how we
listen, she said, The bishops have journeyed to Rome, they have met
in Dallas, they have agreed on a policy. They want the story to be over, its
meaning sealed, the questioning stilled.
But in Boston, she said, a state superior court
judge, educated at Sacred Heart College, tells Cardinal Law that he cant
hide behind his diocesan finance committee in order to renege on the financial
settlement he agreed to for 86 victims, Cardman said.
Here and elsewhere grand juries are being convened to
consider the legal culpability of bishops for shuffling around and protecting
sexually abusive priests. The press has put aside the deference it once showed
the church, a deference that enabled abuse and endorsed unaccountability. And
everywhere revelations of abuse will continue to come to light as more
victims/survivors, including the still-invisible little girls, speak their
truths, she said.
Survivors spoke at the convention, giving compelling witness to
the anger and pain, isolation and needs of sex-abuse victims.
Susan Renehan told participants, When I was 11, I was
sexually molested by a priest; and for three years I was repeatedly stalked and
sexually abused. I left the church as soon as I got my drivers license at
17. ...
We do not want your voice. We want your shoulders next to
ours outside your churches in solidarity against crimes committed against your
children and vulnerable adults and demanding of your church leaders truth and
justice for survivors and survivors families.
We dont want your priests of integrity. We want their
voices telling what they know.
You need our voice to teach you that you need to heal before
you can forgive, and you need the truth before you can heal.
We do not need your voice. We want your hearts. We want your
compassion. We want your humility.
Splendid but too late
A small group of survivors stood outside holding placards -- as
they have done outside the cathedral on Sunday mornings for many months --
bearing witness to the scandal.
Art Austin, another survivor, told the gathering during the
closing plenary session that for the protesters, quite legitimately, your
splendid conference is too little too late, and too much about you, when it
should always and urgently and long since, have been about them. For them, this
event is a shadow play, a thing without substance. And before you begin to grow
indignant with me for saying this, let me ask you. How many of you took the
time to even find out the name of one of those angry survivors?
Quo vadis? Where are you going? Austin asked
the Voice gathering, referring to the risen Christ who posed that same question
to Peter, who was fleeing from his life in Rome. The time has come when
Voice of the Faithful must make a similar choice between its desire for mere
public and churchly respectability before all else, or the extremely
unmanageable, unpredictable, and often alarming, radical grace of God in the
world, he said.
The time has come to walk with us, after the liturgy, from
this convention hall, with me, to the cathedral to stand in solidarity with
each survivor victim who trusts you enough to let you walk with them.
You can walk away from this. We cannot. Ever.
After the celebration of the Mass, between 700 and 800 people --
more than double the other two previous public street demonstrations of
solidarity with victims -- assembled on the steps of the Cathedral of the Holy
Cross.
The next day, Austin, along with two other members of the
Coalition of Catholics and Survivors, stepped inside the cathedral long enough
to receive Communion from Law.
Law said to them, Pray for me, the Boston
Herald reported.
Austin told the Herald, It was a very healing moment
because it was not the archbishop or the cardinal who spoke to me. It was my
brother, Bernie, who responded to me. I touched him literally and I touched him
figuratively. And he was able to receive that. Thats the radical grace of
God in the world.
Freelance journalist Chuck Colbert writes from Cambridge,
Mass.
National Catholic Reporter, August 2,
2002
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