Grow in Faith. Love The Church. The defiant response of
Faithful Voice.
I
do not speak for him. He is a young, conservative priest, abruptly transferred
to an unfamiliar parish to replace a pastor accused of sexual assault. He
thinks I exploit scandal in the church to advance a hidden agenda.
I
do not speak for her, a widow, accosted on her Sunday visits to Holy Cross
Cathedral by angry demonstrators. She thinks I incite them to fuel
anti-Catholic bigotry.
I
do not speak for them, parents whose son returned to church because of the
dynamic youth program run by a priest removed after revelations that he had
fathered children and failed to summon help when his mistress was suffering an
overdose. They think I blind myself to the good that even flawed men do.
In
a year of unprecedented pain in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, not
all the suffering is borne by those who were raped as children by their parish
priests. Not all the anguish is felt by the faithful who would change their
church. In a year when so many dark secrets have been exposed to daylight, the
orthodox Catholic seethes in the shadows.
"Keep the faith;
change the church," is the rallying cry of Voice of the Faithful, the grass-roots
reform group that grew out of the sexual abuse scandal. "Grow in
Faith; Love The Church," is the defiant response of some traditionalists
who call themselves the Faithful Voice.
Of all the wounds opened this year, this might prove the hardest to heal. Victims will sue or settle and, in their pursuit of justice, they will find the support and comfort denied to them when the details of the crimes against them were locked in chancery files. Bishops will resign or resist calls for their resignation and, in hundreds of lawsuits, they will be called to account for their role in exposing children to harm and shielding predatory priests from prosecution. But what means will emerge in the midst of so much anger and hurt to reconcile the people in the pews with one another?
The
tension is not new. Doctrinaire Catholics have long denounced more liberal
practitioners of the faith as "cafeteria Catholics," who pick and
choose what to believe. Liberal Catholics have long disparaged those who accept
without question that the church's man-made rules are divinely ordained.
Until this wrenching year, though, confrontation has played out only at the activist extremes. It was possible to recite the same prayers in unison during Mass and hold disparate views in private.
Now,
it seems, nothing about Catholicism is private. It is as though Harry Potter's
sorting hat has swept through the sanctuary, separating the faithful according
to their views on celibacy, homosexuality, and the ordination of women -- what conservative
Catholics suspect is the real hidden agenda of Voice of the Faithful. But the Catholic
Church is not Hogwarts, and one would have hoped that the divisions between
believers would be trumped by mutual abhorrence of these crimes.
Certainly,
Catholics
of all stripes have been horrified by the revelations of the last year, but their
divergent prescriptions for curing the ills of the church -- a stricter
obedience to a more devout hierarchy versus a greater role for a more diverse
laity -- have made adversaries of men and women who should be allies.
By
voice mail and e-mail and snail mail, the anger grows louder at those who would
presume to change a church that withstood the revolt of Martin Luther. "Let Voice of the
Faithful form its own church," reads one. "Join the Unitarians if you want
secular humanism," advises another.
"You are not a voice of grace and forgiveness," reads an e-mail received yesterday.
"You do not speak for us ordinary Catholics."
It's
worse than he knows. I don't even know what an ordinary Catholic is. I do know
that if attention is not paid to the suspicion and mistrust between Catholics
of good will, the victims of sexual abuse will heal long before the church
does.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist.
This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 12/22/2002.
Date: Mon Dec 30 20:20:56 2002
To: RosaryCampaign@Faithfulvoice.com
Subject: No
Subject
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Hi,
saw your name in Eileen McNamara's Boston Globe column recently.
Usually
find this particular writer very biased but was
glad
their was another group beside Voice of the Faithful.
Will
follow your site carefully and pray for you. We need all the help we can get.
God
Bless You All.
Doreen
, Arlington , Massachusetts ......
It's been a tough year.