Voice of the Faithful meeting at Most Holy Trinity parish ,Saco, ME.
I
had heard about the group “Voice of the Faithful” since it started
and I became interested in knowing more about the group itself. So I decided to attend a recent meeting
up in Saco, Maine. I would like to
share with you that experience.
First,
before I go into it, I would like to say that this article is meant to be taken
in conjunction with another article that I have sent to the authors of www.faithfulvoice.com. The articles are the result of a few
weeks of research, time, prayer and effort. I hope you find the articles informative.
I recently attended a Voice of the
Faithful meeting up in Saco, ME at Most Holy Trinity parish. I had wanted to see what the big to-do
was with the group as I was attending my University’s semester abroad
program when the group was founded and had heard different things about it for
the past several months.
Initially
I was very glad to see that people were generally very welcoming towards me and
that they began with a reading from Isaiah and two other extra-biblical
readings. However, as the meeting
progressed I began to note different things that, quite frankly, alarmed
me.
The
chairman—Paul Christensen—began reading from a private and
confidential letter from the Bishop (the Bishop of the Diocese of Portland,
ME—Joseph Gerry, OSB) to the pastors of the individual parishes in the
Diocese. This letter was the Bishop
asking the pastors to recommend other priests for the Episcopacy. The fact that this letter was marked
private and confidential didn’t seem to faze the priest at Most Holy
Trinity (who is also known to be a dissenting Catholic) who nonetheless gave the
letter to the VOTF group. Mr.
Christensen stated that he had a problem with the letter being given only to
priests and not the lay-faithful.
I think the reader of this essay can see where any conversation about
the letter would be turning after his opening up the discussion on that kind of
a note.
During the discussion of this letter, the group openly said that they
were going to try to get their own voice in as having a say in who should be
consecrated to the Episcopacy. In an effort
to protect their pastor, they were not going to make reference to the
Bishop’s letter, but keep a distinct tone about their own personal letter
to the Bishop that wouldn’t indicate that they were given access to the
Bishop’s letter. I think
that by the time of this essay’s publication, any and all secretive tones
that VOTF-Saco, ME would have liked to have would be just about gone.
At one point during the discussion of this letter when it
mentioned something specific about requirements of the recommended priest that
are mentioned in Canon Law, one of the men from the group—who
specifically said he was a VOTF member, indirectly attacked the celibacy of the priesthood. Direct quote, “St. Paul said that
a Bishop had to be married once. I
don’t see that nowadays.”
It was quite easy to tell that this man, who is also a member of the
D.P.C. (Diocesan Pastoral Council), was making a rather loose, yet bitter,
statement about priestly celibacy.
Did the chair of VOTF-Saco defend the Ecclesiastical discipline of
celibacy? No, he just smiled,
chuckled a bit and agreed with the other person saying, “[Yup]
That’s not in there”—referring back to St. Paul’s
statement not being in the Bishop’s letter. This gave me the impression that Mr. Christensen had issues
with clerical celibacy as well.
While not turning this into a theological debate on clerical
celibacy, I would like to point out to the reader that Paul said more on
marriage than the reference to 1 Tim. 3:2. Paul was stricter regarding marriage. He states that it is better to not
marry so one does not have a divided heart between serving the Lord and
one’s spouse (1 Corinthians chapter 7). I would challenge the man on the DPC to answer this
Scripture citation.
From here onwards, there was just talk about protecting
the pastor of Most Holy Trinity and how to go about making their voice known in
the choosing of candidates for the Episcopate. The suggestion to write a letter to the pastors was brought
up.
My impressions from this meeting were that there were some
genuinely concerned Catholics that want to help the Church during this time.
More recently, the President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil
Rights (William Donohue) in speaking about a VOTF member who is trying to
abolish the Seal of the Confessional in New Hampshire said, “There are no
doubt many well-meaning Catholics who belong to Voice of the
Faithful….”[1] But I also see that there is another
side to VOTF (and Mr. Donohue hints of this in the rest of his
quote)—what I would like to call a “Magnetism”. What I mean by this is that VOTF is a
magnet for dissenting Catholics.
Mr. Donohue further states, “But it is becoming increasingly clear
that the group also has its share of ideologues, activists who are publicly
boasting of their membership in the organization….”[2] While they seemingly want to do good in
the Church, they also hold personal views that are not in line with Church
teaching and/or practice. If VOTF
does not support certain actions, then they must denounce and renounce these
things but we don’t see this.
Why? I will address this in
my second article.
Voice of the Faithful is aimed at creating a conference
of lay-people that would parallel the Bishops’ Conference (as I shall demonstrate in my second
article). So by starting out small
and appearing to have the guise of orthodoxy, VOTF has only just begun what
will be a tragedy later on if given ecclesiastical sanction as an official
Catholic Association.
I would like to challenge the reader to go to a local VOTF meeting and
weigh the evidence. I would also like to point out that
while local VOTF meetings are helpful to gain insight to the organization, one
must not also look to them as the final authority. If
you want to know more about VOTF’s underpinnings, you must look to
VOTF-Corporate, that is to say the heads of the group itself.
God bless
all of you!
mailto:KevinS@FaithfulVoice.com
JESUIT PRIEST BARRED FROM JESUIT PROPERTY
DUE TO VOICE OF THE FAITHFUL SPONSORSHIP
Maine-Based
Lay Catholic Group Continues
Speaking
Series Despite Obstructions
Portland,
Maine - January 16, 2003 - Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), a group of over 25,000
lay Catholics formed in response to the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic
Church, continues its speaking series in Maine with an informative dialogue
regarding the rights and responsibilities of the laity and clergy by Jesuit
Priest, Rev. William Clark, S.J., who holds a doctorate in theology from the
Weston Jesuit School of Theology. This latest lecture was originally targeted
for Cheverus High School, a Jesuit facility located in Portland, Maine.
However, Cheverus refused to host Rev. Clark's talk because the event is
sponsored by VOTF. VOTF's Maine affiliates will now host this free public event
in the parish hall at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 271 Maine Street,
Saco, Maine, at 7:00 p.m., Wednesday, January 22, 2003.
"In
the midst of the worst crisis facing the Catholic Church in its entire 500 year
history in North America, it is astonishing that some bishops and Catholic
educators think the best solution is to ban Catholics from gathering on church
property to talk about the Church's problems," said Jim Post, president,
Voice of the Faithful. "Catholic leaders need to stop preventing open and
honest dialogue. They should join with Voice of the Faithful and thousands of
Catholic laity across the country, to promote and foster effective healing via
community discussions."
Paul
Kendrick, a founding member of VOTF's Maine affiliate and Jesuit educated at
Cheverus and Fairfield University, finds Bishop Joseph Gerry's (bishop of the
Maine Diocese) continued edict to ban VOTF from church property and in
particular the banning of a Catholic theologian and VOTF speaker from a Jesuit
school very disturbing.
"The
banning of a Jesuit Priest from Jesuit property is quite troubling. VOTF's
Maine affiliates have been diligently working to bring educated, well-informed
Catholic speakers to Maine, only to be ostracized by local Catholic leaders and
now, Jesuit educators. The continued banning of VOTF group meetings and the
barring of open and honest dialogue via notable Catholics is an affront to all
laity."
Rev.
Clark's Topic: Role of the Laity in the Roman Catholic Church in the 21st
Century Rev. Clark will detail: the authority of the laity to speak within the
Catholic Church; the canonical, moral, and theological obligation of clergy and
laity to listen to the voice of the Spirit in the numerous places it can be
heard, as well as the potential role of Voice of the Faithful and other active
lay groups as bridges between the growing polar extremes in the Catholic Church
today.
"I
am increasingly concerned that on all sides, dialogue in the Catholic Church is
so often precluded before it has begun; we pay much more attention to labels
and affiliations while dangerously postponing the healing the church so
desperately needs," said Rev. William Clark.
About
Rev. William J. Clark
Rev.
William Clark, S.J., joined the faculty of the College of the Holy Cross in the
fall of 2001, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies. He
has written extensively on the continuing significance of the declarations that
came out of Vatican II with particular emphasis on the rightful function of the
parish-level faithful in their ministry as a People of God. Rev. Clark is a
1980 graduate of Williams College (magna cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa), where he
majored in history, and also holds an M.A. in political philosophy from Loyola
University of Chicago. He studied theology at the Weston Jesuit School of
Theology (M.Div., 1992; S.T.L., 1995; S.T.D., 2001), specializing in systematic
theology with a particular emphasis on ecclesiology.