In a post last week, I mentioned that a progressive Catholic organization, Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), was in danger of closing its national office due to inadequate operating funds.  Apparently, the word got out in a big way, and VOTF has just issued a press release announcing that more than enough has been raised to keep the national office operational.

Boston –One week after announcing an urgent need for financial support, Voice of the Faithful reports that donors have responded with more than $63,000 to date and still coming.

‘We are deeply grateful to our many generous donors and encouraged by their sentiments of support,” said Bill Casey, Chairman of the Board of Trustees. “Their response is a testament to the important work that Voice of the Faithful does. It also reinvigorates the organization as we work toward the release of new initiatives aimed at transforming the Catholic Church.

The release also referenced the annual meeting of the organization scheduled to take place in Long Island on Oct 30-31.

VOTF is one of the Catholic reform groups that is joining others under the umbrella “American Catholic Council.”  Their first gathering is scheduled for Pentecost in two years, June 10-11, 2011 in Detroit.  According to the Council’s website:

American Catholic Council is a coalition of organizations, communities and individuals (many involved in American Catholic Church reform) calling for discussion at every level of the Catholic Church in the United States to consider the state and future of our Church.  We believe our Church is at another turning point in its history. We recall the promise of the Second Vatican Council for a renaissance through a radically inclusive understanding of the role and responsibilities of all the Baptized and an engaged relationship between the Church and the World reflecting the true meaning of the Incarnation for our times. This promise is eroding.  We will reinvigorate the Spirit of Vatican II and bring all the Baptized together to demonstrate our re-commitment. We seek nothing short of a personal conversion of all to create a new Church, fully in tune with the authentic Gospel message, the teachings of our Church, and the American context in which we live.   Our reading of the Signs of the Times, our strategic plan, and our agenda are set out in the Declaration set out on this site.  We will educate; we will listen; we will facilitate discussions and encounters; and, we will build toward an American Catholic Council at Pentecost 2011.

The website also quotes the words of Pope John XXIII:

It is not that the Gospel has changed: it is that we have begun to understand it better. Those who have lived as long as I have were faced with new tasks in the social order at the start of the century; those who, like me, were twenty years in the East and eight in France, were enabled to compare different cultures and traditions, and know that the moment has come to discern the signs of the times, to seize the opportunity and to look far ahead.

According to Catholic Online, which speaks critically of the group, other signatories include:  Call to Action, New Ways Ministry, Catholics for Choice, the Women’s Ordination Conference, Women-Church Convergance, the National Association of American Nuns (Sr. Jeanine Gramnick), the Catholic Diocese of One Spirit, and Dignity.

The Council has been the subject of competing blog posts here in Minnesota.  Ray of Mn in Stella Borealis refers to those who support the council as “the usual suspects.”

These malcontents are generally referred to by people who accept Church teachings as dissidents, or sometimes, apostates.

"Dissidents" are those who "disagree with beliefs. "Apostates" are people who have abandoned their religious faith.

What I don’t understand is why these impostors aren’t called heretics? "Heretics" are people who hold controversial opinions, especially, those who publicly oppose the officially accepted dogma of the Roman Catholic Church.

C’mon Ray.  Say what you really think!

Michael Bayly of The Wild Reed considers himself a target of Ray’s comments, and further wonders about the right-wing Catholics and their efforts to “evict those who disagree with them by treating them like unruly tenants.”

Lastly, another Mn blog, The Progressive Catholic Voice, announces:

Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest and founder of SOA Watch, is a nationally recognized advocate for peace and justice. He will share with us his perspective on the social injustices within Roman Catholicism, and offer a clear and compelling vision of the emerging church.

The Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR) is sponsoring this event as a major fundraiser for its Synod of the Baptized (“Claiming Our Place at the Table”) scheduled for September 18, 2010. Your generous contribution will help keep our costs (including admission) low. Donations are tax deductible.

DATE: Thursday, August 13, 2009
TIME: 7:30 p.m.
LOCATION: Park Pavilion at the Lake Elmo Park Reserve (North Shelter), Washington County Parks.

No doubt, more of the “usual suspects” will show up.

A pair of news items or blog posts crossed my desk in the past few days that ought to be of concern for progressive Catholics.  The first is the Vatican’s investigation into US nuns, and the second is the news that a major Catholic reform group is nearly broke.

A New York Times article reports:

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.

[Many nuns] fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.

A decade and a half ago, I was privileged to study at the St John’s School of Theology in Collegeville, Mn, a progressive Benedictine community.  The students at the SOT typically belonged to one of three categories: a) candidates for the priesthood, b) nuns or other Catholic women, and c) protestants such as myself.  Of these three groups, the male candidates for the priesthood were often the least serious students — a sweeping generalization, to be sure, and there were numerous priest candidates who were the exception to this rule.  On the other hand, the female religious were usually more serious students, but an outsider could also see how they chafed at their secondary status.

The well known and publicized shortage of Catholic priests is a very real problem.  But, the loss of the leadership of outstanding women is also very real.  The Times article suggested that the number of nuns in the US has shrunk to 60,000 compared to 180,000 in 1965.  Me thinks the Vatican’s investigation will hardly be received as a note of encouragement.

Secondly, Michael Paulson reports in the Articles of Faith blog out of Boston that Voice of the Faithful, a reform group formed in response to the sexual abuse crisis of the American priesthood, is out of funds.

The organization has had three goals — supporting abuse victims, supporting "priests of integrity,” and ‘to shape structural change within the Catholic Church.” That third goal has made it the subject of criticism from some conservatives, and its affiliates have been barred from meeting on church property in some dioceses.

Paulson reports that the VOTF has issued an urgent fund raising appeal.  You may donate through the VOTF website.

But, a comment on the post probably reflects the attitude of many:

This is the most phoney [sic] of all of these groups… They ought to go and start their own church, the the [sic] 25,000 others who have dissented from Church teaching and authority. It is about control and trying to conform the faith to its own dissenting standards… the tragedy of the abuse crisis (and it was a crisis and wrong) gave it temporary cover. It is just a matter of time where VOTF will be another footnote in Church history, and thank God for that.

The President has appointed Dr. Miguel Diaz to be ambassador to the Vatican. 

Blogger Andrew Sullivan comments on his Hispanic background (Diaz is Cuban-American) and notes that he is an academic with outstanding scholarly credentials. 

James Martin, S.J. of America, the National Catholic Weekly applauds the choice. 

[T]he nomination is clearly going to a talented and faithful Catholic (like Mary Ann Glendon), rather than a straight political appointee, and it is also going to someone who clearly understands not only the Vatican but also Catholic theology at the highest levels. 

Diaz is a theology professor at St. John’s/St. Ben’s in central Minnesota.  St. John’s School of Theology is where I pursued post-graduate studies in theology and Christian history although I was there before Diaz.  But, I can attest to the progressive spirit of ecumenism as well as a committment to the highest standards of critical scholarship amongst the Benedictines of these fine institutions.

Recent St Ben’s graduate Beth Dahlman of Faith in Public Life concurs. 

St. Ben’s and St. John’s (the two schools have a close partnership and share an academic program) are special places to me; they embody a commitment to a lived faith that is theologically and spiritually serious while still engaged with the needs of the wider world.

Dahlman was a theology major at St Ben’s where she served as TA for Diaz’ systematic theology class, and Diaz served on the advisory committee for her honors thesis.  She suggests that Diaz is an outstanding choice for ambassador based on “the passion with which he taught theology and his inclusion of theologians from diverse backgrounds, in the way he hosted classes at his home for end-of-semester celebrations, and in his obvious love for his family–that will serve him well in his new position.”

The major Catholic Church reform organisations in the United States are in the process of organising a large scale, joint meeting in 2011 tentatively titled an “American Catholic Council”. Catholica is aware discussions have been underway between leaders of the largest reform organisations such as Call to Action (CtA), Voice of the Faithful (VoTF), and the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC) and leaders of a number of other major lay organisations have also been involved in the discussions and are at various stages of consulting their wider memberships. Combined these organisations have tens of thousands of members. The scale of this initiative is of particular interest as it could well be the largest lay-generated reform initiative that has ever occurred anywhere in the world. The development might suggest that the continued attrition in Church membership is now cutting into sectors of the population who are no longer prepare to leave the Church without voicing their criticisms of where the ecclesial leaders have been taking Catholicism.

The idea has been promoted for a number of years by the President of ARCC, Professor Leonard Swidler, but recent developments including Pope Benedict’s visit to America earlier this year and the clearly decisive divisions that have emerged between the outlooks of the lay faithful in America and their bishops in the recent Presidential election appear to have added impetus to the initiative.

In a newsletter sent to ARCC members on Friday Professor Swidler writes:

The Reform Movement of the Catholic Church in America — in the spirit of Vatican II — is on the cusp of a “Great Leap Forward”, to borrow a phrase from Mao. ARCC has for several years been promoting the idea of all the major Catholic Reform groups in the U.S. joining together in an American Catholic Council to move our common agenda forward. That Great Leap Forward is now being launched! The largest of the American Catholic Reform organizations– Call to Action and Voice of the Faithful–are on board, along with, of course, ARCC, and others.

Professor Swidler goes on to outline four major points that have been agreed upon in the discussions that have taken place at the leadership levels of the reform organisations. They are:

The basic Resources of the American Catholic Council are the documents of Vatican II and the processes and documents of the 1976 Call To Action led by the National Council of Bishops and involving massive numbers of laity, religious, and priests. The major focus will be on church governance. None of the diverse concerns of the various U.S. Catholic reform organizations will be attainable unless there are structural means to work toward their implementation. That means, minimally, striving for Catholic Church decision-making structures that are built on the democratic principles of accountability, transparency, representativeness, and due process of law.

There will be the widest possible solicitation of input from all levels of Catholics around the country. Techniques that have already been discussed include national public hearings (as was done in 1976), approaches to parish organizations as well as organizations of laity, religious, and clergy, internet and other electronic means. Concrete suggestions in this area are especially solicited from you!

The initial aim will be the coming together of thousands of chosen delegates and interested Catholics from around the country in an American Catholic Council in the year 2011.

This interesting news item was found in an Australian Catholic website, www.catholica.com.au