The Church's Tug of War (Page 4)

After toiling in near-obscurity, progressive Church reform groups have been hurled by the current crisis into the spotlight. They report increased hits on their websites, more calls and letters, jumps in membership, more donations. Though their membership rosters remain very low, considering that the country has 63 million Catholics, there is a lot of talk about the demand for Church reform finally having reached critical mass.

Intent on keeping the heat on, VOTF organized its first national conference, which drew more than 4,000 people to Boston on July 20. Call to Action is planning its annual national conference for November in Milwaukee. The Women's Ordination Conference has endorsed the ordination of the new women priests in Germany and is considering a similar event in the United States. On the narrower issue of clergy sex abuse, the groups will be monitoring to see that priests are removed and lobbying for penalties for complicit bishops. Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma, head of the national lay committee established by the bishops' conference, has pledged that he will appeal to the Pope for sanctions against offending bishops, but is already tempering his tough talk.

Even if the reformers do nothing more, many believe the Church hierarchy has already forfeited its moral authority--potentially a loss to advocates for the poor, but a boon for reproductive rights. Certainly the Church has lost its protected status with the media and, now, with law enforcement. A grand jury convened by Westchester, New York, District Attorney Jeanine Pirro just recommended criminal penalties for those who recklessly allow an employee with a record of child sexual abuse access to minors--which could provide a way to prosecute offending bishops.

For its part, the Church is not taking these incursions into its power lying down. During the American cardinals' visit to Rome earlier this year, Cardinal Law had his top aide, Bishop Walter Edyvean, send a letter to parish priests in the Boston Archdiocese instructing them "not to join, foster or promote" the efforts of a lay group to combine existing diocesan-run lay councils into an association. In a meeting with VOTF representatives, Edyvean invited them several times, according to VOTF spokesman Paul Baier, "to shut your group down." VOTF reports pressure on parish priests to prohibit VOTF chapters from meeting on church property--a prohibition long imposed on Call to Action chapters. Such obstacles, VOTF's Muller told the New York Times, could lead the group to "become more radical."

And, in a dramatic contrast to its coddling of priest child sex abusers, the Vatican threatened to excommunicate the women ordained on the Danube if they didn't renounce their ordinations by July 22. The women refused, and have since sent a letter challenging their excommunication to the Vatican. Ironically, July 22 was also the Feast Day of St. Mary of Magdala (a k a Mary Magdalene), on which several thousand people attended more than 200 woman-led celebrations. Those celebrations were developed by reform groups to mend the reputation of the most famous prostitute in Church history, who was actually not a prostitute at all but the first of Jesus' disciples to witness his resurrection.

The power of the institutional Church to intimidate stands. Some reformers remain protective of the identities of priests who allow women to preach at mass and of independent eucharistic communities. Vladimiroff never got official word that the Pope was finished with the Erie Benedictines, and she's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Organizers of the ordinations on the Danube restricted press access to protect guests from Church reprisals.

The progress to be made, in the end, depends on the will of the laity. "Catholics need to get much more vocal with the diocesan leadership about what kinds of things they're going to tolerate and what kinds of things they're not," says FutureChurch executive director Sister Chris Schenk. "And they're going to have to link it to the pocketbook." That's a special challenge for devout Catholics used to obeying, and for so-called cafeteria Catholics, who may feel little responsibility for the institutional Church.

As to how quickly change will come, Chittister offers a perspective. "I'm talking about the movement of tectonic plates," she says, reflecting on the magnitude of the challenges ahead. "I am not talking about tiny, little organizational cosmetics, a new set of rules for how we report on something. I'm talking about a whole institutional Church, about the conversion of this clerical institution into a real Church society."

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