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Waking the Sleeping Giant

Voices of the Faithful
Lay Movement

THE QUESTION: Would the hideous scandal of clergy sex -abuse rouse the nation's 60 million Catholics to action? Or, would the church respond with limp-wristeded ambiguity, sweep and fumigate its cloisters, and sink deeper into tight-fisted, white-knuckled control as it has since the earliest popes?

THE ANSWER: Voice of the Faithful, a grass-roots lay movement which began just six months ago as a group of 30 or so anguished parishioners in a church basement. By July, it had become a national organization with nearly 20,000 members . They gathered July 22, filling Boston's Hynes Convention Center with 4200 Catholics, listening to Father Thomas Doyle(author of the 1985 Doyle Report which called for an immediate Archbishop's Plan to deal with the sexual abuse crisis) as he declared, to thunderous applause, that :

"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 were called forth by God to manage the temporal and spiritual lives of the faceless masses on the presumption that their unlettered status equaled ignorance."
Voice of the Faithfuls' long-term message is this: the sex-abuse scandal was not a horrible accident, but rather, an integral outgrowth of a closed, power structure with no accountability to anyone, anywhere. In other words, the abuses, cover-ups and repeat abuses were not mere flukes or the rare unfortunate chance but a nearly inevitable moral cancer which human weakness produces when chemically combined with the explosives of unlimited power and secrecy. In short, the only way to root out and permanently protect the church from other future abuses is to share governing power with the laity: the people must have a place at the table.

In implementing this mission based on the above central belief, VOTF's immediate mission has three main themes: support the victims, police the reforms initiated, and recognize the great majority of good priests.

Read "15 Things Any Catholic Can Do" about the abuse scandal.(VOTF website)

CHURCH BASEMENTS: CRADLE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

The basement of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, Wellesly, Massachusetts, February , 2002: a handful of parishioners gather. Stunned, bewildered and deeply saddened by one revelation after another in Boston, they simply leaned on one another for support, simply saying: tell me how you feel? And they felt horrible, sickened at heart, stricken of soul. They began, with the blessing and permission of the parish priest, a series of "listening sessions".

And listen they did- they listened to each other, they listened to victims and their families. They resolved not to look away, not to just go on with life as usual.

As the listening sessions went on, a sense of outrage began to form: these were 6 and 7-year-old boys, sons of families that could have been next-door neighbors. And it was one string of victims after another.. Father Geoghan, .. Father Shanley, re-assigned and more victims. The sense of rage and betrayal built on facing, truly facing- the facts.

Louise Dittrich, a founding member, describes it: "This was about our children. We saw it for what it was - a willingness to put our children in harm's way to protect the brotherhood of priests. We looked at these men and realized: you destroyed lives, and lied, and covered it up. You were protecting the wrong people."

“We did not start out intending to build any movement”, Louise explained. “All we did was, in our pain, reach out to other Catholics, in neighboring parishes, to see how they felt." And the little basement group began to grow - to 90, to 200, to 300. And they continued to learn- about Father Doyle's cries in the wilderness in 1985, about more warning calls in 1993, all falling on deaf ears. About the culture of deference which almost makes it a sin to question the hierarchy. About how the abuse went on and on; Cardinal Law's cover-ups were first, and probably worst, but sadly, not unique.

OUT OF THE BASEMENT AND ONTO THE FRONT PAGE

With numbers came the press, first print… then television coverage. Soon there were over 600 gathering and they moved to a nearby school basement. Basements in neighboring parishes were filling up. They began to realize all this energy and outrage needed to be harnessed. In April they took shape as an organization, adopting their name and core agenda: support victims, recognize good priests and compel structural change in church governance. Soon their motto emerged:
"KEEP THE FAITH - CHANGE THE CHURCH"

"We realized the core problem was no accountability - to whom do they ever have to answer? The hush money was slipped into discretionary archbishop accounts. What major charity this size has no accountability, somewhere, to someone? " asks Louise Dittrich. They took what she calls "baby steps toward accountability". Noting that the annual archbishop’s charity appeal was falling flat on its besmirched face, VOTF launched its own charity appeal called the "Voice of Compassion Fund". It was hard to fault Catholics for keeping their checkbooks closed, but the real needs of the poor went on, scandal or not. The funds were to be managed by VOTF and would go directly to the charities and programs assisted by the church, NOT through the archdiocese for distribution.

Cardinal Law promptly announced that the ministries of the archdiocese would refuse to accept such funds as VOTF "does not recognize the role of the Archbishop" in determining the ministries of the church. Various Catholic charities, of course, were quick to indicate their own willingness to overlook that procedural defect in otherwise useful cash.

The church hierarchy had previously maintained a chilly but quiet indifference to VOTF, but this intrusion into territory deemed exclusive to the authority - namely, Catholic checkbooks - triggered an instant reaction. The church now referred to the group as "voice of the unfaithful" and urged parishes to shun the organization. "Dollars brought them out" Dittrich explains, "that hit too close to nerve centers." But the opposition only fueled the fires: where gatherings were banned by a church, they met in local libraries, and new parish groups of VOTF were forming every day.

MARCHING IN THE CATHOLIC MIDDLE

VOTF is determinedly centrist, they very deliberately have avoided "hot-button" issues like celibacy, married priests, women in the priesthood. They were formed from and continue to grow, among mainstream white, suburban middle class Catholics, and want always to carry issues supported by the great middle group of American Catholics. "We get criticism from both the liberals and the more conservative elements" said Dittrich, and this was echoed by Paul Baier, a key administrator in the movement. "Liberals think we're not going far enough, the conservatives ask things like don't you believe in the pope, what do you believe, why don't you just pray instead".

As the group’s power grows (they have raised $275,000) however, they may have more trouble staying in the middle. "Quo vadis" asked Art Austin, a survivor addressing the Boston convention - "Where are you going? The time is coming when your desire for ‘respectability’ in the church may have to give way to the ‘unmanageable, and often alarming’ radical grace of God in the world.” Many Catholics already active in the Call to Action(Call to Action group website) group, were present at the Boston conference. (National Catholic Reporter 2/2/02)

Leaders of VOTF hope to rough out a draft constitution for the laity in the near future, for the biggest unanswered question is what form church governance would take, if it involved significant power sharing with the laity. Certainly, the conference overwhelmingly approved a declaration or charter, affirming the role of the laity in renewal of the church.. VOTF anchors its program in the grants of power to laity in Vatican II: " ... the laity can also be called in various ways to a more direct form of cooperation in the apostolate of the hierarchy ... consequently, let every opportunity be given to them so that, according to their abilities and the needs of the times, they may zealously participate in the saving work of the church." LG 33 from Lumen Gentium(Dogmatic Constitution of the Church) Vatican Council II

VOTF leadership includes Paul Baier(blue shirt), Dr. James Muller(brown tie), and Thea Fraser(far right).
Certainly VOTF is in it for the long haul. They are acquiring fulltime staff, office space and major money. Their fund-raising is headed by Steven Krueger, former investment banker and turnaround artist, along with Tom White, a well-known political fundraiser. The founding father of the movement, Dr. James Muller of Boston, is a Nobel-prize winning cardiologist. Executive director James Post is a senior professor of management at Boston University. The starting lineup is good and the bench is just as good.

WHAT THEN MUST WE DO?

VOTF urges all parishes to form a listening group of their own, corresponding with the national organization. Reponses to the current crisis certainly requires attention and decision by every Catholic and every parish. Several Minnesotans attended the conference, including Trish Vanni, director of the Leaven Center and other members of Pax Christi. The Leaven Center, however, preferred not to discuss these matters publicly until further internal deliberations had concluded. Pax Christi’s parish council will be considering August 8th whether to authorize an affiliate group to VOTF , according to Steve Shewe a Pax Christi council member who has been monitoring the VOTF program. These good people have asked us to wait until after their deliberations have concluded before discussing the matters, which of course we respect. The St Joan website will be following developments both nationally and locally on this critical subject.

It may be no coincidence that the story begins in Boston, home of other reform movements. Jim Muller recognized that, saying "Two hundred years ago, we had some trouble with autocratic authority". But, says Muller, "we are not seeking revolution" - we are "asking all concerned Catholics to begin the dialogue to resolve the problems of autocratic authority". (Star-Trib, 7/21/02)

Apparently we need not worry about vestments being thrown into Boston harbor or slogans like "no collection platter if the people don't matter". Yet freedom and liberation do not know bounds. Fr. Doyle told the conference some of the hierarchy "suffer from unbridled addiction to power. The laity 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."
Chuck Collins is a 14 year parishioner, a lawyer who has worked with organized labor for 28 years. Chuck claims he is not violent about anything except when he can't find even one pair of matching socks in the morning.
The radical grace of God may take unexpected turns: Art Austin, with two other survivors, took communion from Law at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. "Pray for me" Law said to them. "It was a very healing moment," Austin told the Boston Herald.

In the age of the American Revolution, Britian had given birth to democracy but wanted to keep that unruly child inside of the bounds from which it had outgrown. The Catholic Church has kept alive a marvelous message for centuries, but it too may have outgrown its monarchy. It is a pivotal point in church history calling forth the best in all of us.

Visit the Voices of the Faithful Website


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