November 10, 2002 -- Scandal Is Stirring Lay Catholics to Push Church for More
Power -- By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and SAM DILLON
INDIANAPOLIS — As the nation's Roman Catholic bishops prepare to meet in
Washington on Nov. 11 to complete their policy on sexual abuse by priests, they
are confronting the most organized and widespread challenge to their power from
the laity in the church's modern history. Organizations like Voice of the
Faithful, a national group formed in April in response to the scandal, are
badgering bishops to disclose financial and personnel information previously
kept locked in chancery offices. Other new lay groups are forming, old ones
like Call to Action are finding new momentum, and all are talking about how to
make the bishops accountable. The demands for a role in church governance are
being made by laypeople in dioceses far from Boston, the epicenter of the sex
abuse crisis. Here in Indianapolis, the archdiocese has been relatively
unscathed by scandal, with only two priests accused in lawsuits of misconduct
and another under investigation. Yet when a handful of concerned parishioners
called a meeting to start an Indiana chapter of Voice of the Faithful, 125
people showed up. Now the chapter is calling on Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein
of Indianapolis to reveal how many priests have been accused of sexual
misconduct, how much the archdiocese has spent as a result of those
accusations, and how the archbishop chose the members of his sexual abuse
review board. "All these years I just left these matters to the bishops, but
now I've had an awakening and realize that the laity must take responsibility
for the church," said Mary Heins, treasurer of the Voice of the Faithful
chapter in Indiana. "The bishops are hoping we'll drop the ball and become
disinterested, but that's not going to happen. This is the time of the
laypeople."
In previous eras, American Catholics in some dioceses sporadically challenged
their bishops, and the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's called for more lay
involvement in the church. But the widespread restiveness among laypeople now
is unheard of, scholars said. "This lay movement is the largest we have seen in
the history of the American church," said the Rev. Gerald Fogarty, a Jesuit
historian at the University of Virginia who has studied Catholic lay movements
from Colonial times to the present. The demands for structural change
reverberating through the church have aroused fear and backlash from some
bishops, but from others, a new receptiveness. Nine bishops have recently
banned Voice of the Faithful from meeting on church premises. In a tense
encounter in the Diocese of Camden, N.J., for example, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio
called a Voice of the Faithful organizer "an ignorant Catholic" in a meeting,
said the organizer, Kevin Gemmell, a technology consultant. Mr. Gemmell said he
responded, "I may not know all the intricacies, but I can see the hierarchy
failed us by allowing all these abusers to stay in ministry."
But elsewhere, laypeople say bishops are demonstrating new responsiveness. In
Baltimore, Cardinal William H. Keeler has won acclaim from laypeople for making
public the names of every priest there who was ever credibly accused of sexual
abuse, and how much the archdiocese had spent to resolve the cases. In San
Diego, Bishop Robert H. Brom invited to his office leaders of the local chapter
of Call to Action, a liberal group seeking changes in the church, which is
unwelcome in many dioceses. San Diego pastors had shunned the group. "For
anyone interested in lay organizing," said Janet Mansfield, the group's San
Diego coordinator, "now is a good time, because there's a vulnerability there
on the part of the bishops, and they're a little more open." When the depth of
the scandal became apparent this year, even Catholic conservatives criticized
the bishops and called for increased lay participation in church decisions. But
as the lay groups have grown more assertive, some conservatives have expressed
alarm that they are using the crisis for more radical changes. Deal W. Hudson,
the conservative editor of the Catholic magazine Crisis, accused Voice of the
Faithful in a recent editorial of being "a wolf in sheep's clothing." Mr.
Hudson said in an interview that the group's real goals were the ordination
women, allowing married priests and the lifting of the ban on birth control.
James Post, a professor at Boston University's School of Management who is the
national president of Voice of the Faithful, denied those assertions in an
interview. "On matters where church teaching is settled and clear, we accept
the authority of the church," Mr. Post said. "We are not challenging the
church's teaching on abortion. We are not for election of bishops, or for doing
away with the pope. "We are serious people, trying to bring serious change. We
think the best way to do that is to encourage a dialogue at a four-sided
table," he said, with bishops, priests, abuse victims and laity.
While some of those involved in Voice of the Faithful have been pressing for
liberalizing changes for years, others say they are moderates or conservatives
who only want a say in church governance. Of four Voice of the Faithful leaders
interviewed around a dining room table in Indianapolis, two volunteered that
they would favor the ordination of women, a major liberal demand, while one
called that too radical for her. "I am more conservative," said Lola McIntyre,
a music professor at the University of Indianapolis. "I just can't picture
women priests." Another leader of the group is a retired therapist who left the
priesthood in 1968, disheartened by the encyclical that maintained the ban on
birth control. "It's the first time in 34 years I've thought there was any real
hope for Catholicism to be an expression of the gospel," said Jay E. Carrigan,
the former priest who is now married, "because the scandal may be sufficient to
open things up."
The Indiana group recently wrote to Archbishop Buechlein asking him to include
a victim of sexual abuse on his lay review board. His reply, declining their
request, concluded, "I have heard your voice; however, there are other voices
of the faithful that, as archbishop, I also listen to, and those voices are at
odds in many instances with yours." The archbishop was not available for an
interview, but his chancellor, Suzanne L. Magnant, a laywoman who has served in
the position for 11 years, said that she saw no need for Voice of the Faithful.
"I'm puzzled why people think there aren't laypeople involved in the church,
because there are, and there have been for 40 years," Ms. Magnant said.
But Voice of the Faithful organizers say they want not only participation but a
share of power. "I've been a lector, a soccer coach, a greeter and a member of
the parish council," said Ken Sauer, who is chief academic officer of the
Indiana Commission for Higher Education. "We've been active, but not on
questions of how is the church to be run. Now we're asking, how do we change
the structure of the church so that laypeople can be heard?"
Through most of American history, the laity has been excluded from church
governance, with some exceptions. Early in the 19th century, lay trustees in
some cities sought to recruit priests and bishops of their choice, arguing that
privileges once granted to European monarchs should also be enjoyed by
laypeople in a democracy, Mr. Fogarty said. About 1820, Bishop John England in
Charleston, S.C., accommodated some of the lay trustees' demands, establishing
a House of Clergy and a House of Laity to govern the diocese. His successor
undid those changes, and other bishops worked to suppress lay participation in
governance. The laity remained quiescent for more than a century, until
Cardinal John Dearden of Detroit led a Call to Action conference in 1976, with
debates on social justice by 1,350 lay delegates. Many spoke of what they
called injustices in the church, and the bishops later distanced themselves
from the conference. But the Call to Action delegates from Chicago continued to
meet, and in 1990 they attracted a new national following by publishing an
advertisement in The New York Times, calling for the ordination of women and
other changes in church law.
Father Fogarty, the Jesuit historian, said demographic changes help explain the
assertiveness of lay Catholics. The pews were once filled with immigrants who
knelt in reverence before men of the collar; today prosperous Catholics with
advanced degrees who resent clerical imperiousness fill many churches. Now that
the abuse crisis has exposed the limitations of episcopal rule, the laity feels
it has the skills and stature to confront its bishops, he said. Voice of the
Faithful was founded in Wellesley, Mass., in April with the goal of bringing
together parishioners upset by the sex abuse scandal. It has since grown into a
nationwide network of lay Catholics that claims 25,000 members. Two days after
a July 20 convention attracted 4,000 Catholics from across the nation to
Wellesley, Cardinal Bernard F. Law barred the group from meeting in churches of
the Boston Archdiocese. Since then, bishops have issued similar bans in
Portland, Me., Bridgeport, Conn., Rockville Centre, N.Y., Brooklyn, Newark,
Camden, Lafayette, Ind., and Baker, Ore. Archbishop John J. Myers did not even
wait for Voice of the Faithful to arrive in the Newark Archdiocese before his
ban, accusing the group on Oct. 9 of being "anti-church and, ultimately,
anti-Catholic." In Rockville Centre, Bishop William F. Murphy's August ban
helped Voice of the Faithful grow, said Sheila Peiffer, the group's area
coordinator. The Voice's founding meetings on Long Island in the summer
attracted fewer than 100 people, but its first after Bishop Murphy's ban, on
Sept. 11, attracted about 700 people, Mr. Peiffer said. "Murphy gave us a lot
of free publicity," she said. In Bend, Ore., Richard R. Hickman, a 74-year-old
retired machinist and lifelong Catholic, sought to organize a Voice affiliate.
After Bishop Robert F. Vasa refused Mr. Hickman's request to meet in Bend's St.
Francis of Assisi parish, and other church officials warned him against
meddling in church affairs, Mr. Hickman and his wife, Joyce, invited interested
Catholics to a July 2 meeting in their backyard. "I left my fear in Korea," Mr.
Hickman said. Forty-two people attended, and several expressed frustration with
the secrecy surrounding how church money was being spent in a parish building
project. At 7:15, Bishop Vasa arrived, and after listening for half an hour,
stood up.
"The church is not a democracy," Bishop Vasa declared, Mr. Hickman said, at
which point four people, one of them a victim of sex abuse by a clergyman,
stalked out. In an interview, Bishop Vasa recalled the meeting: "I said, `Be
careful, because your local interests can be valid and worked with the pastor,
but if you take on with this national organization you'll be linked with a
group that doesn't enjoy a good reputation." Bishop Vasa went on to say, "I
won't tolerate a group claiming to operate under the Catholic Church while at
odds with their pastor and bishop." Mr. Hickman said he and his wife had left
the church because of the bishop's attitude. "When it gets to be such a
kinglike thing, with the bishop saying, `I'm the ruler,' that doesn't go over
anymore," Mr. Hickman said.