ARTICLES

Voice of the What?

Molestation Victims' Advocacy Raises Questions

By Fred Martinez

On February 3, the San Francisco Chronicle announced that a controversial "Catholic" organization has established a chapter in the Bay Area and included contact information. The group, which the newspaper said was not "fringe," is Voice of the Faithful, a grassroots lay Catholic organization that grew up in Boston in the wake of the clerical sexual abuse controversy.

According to its own statement of beliefs, Voice of the Faithful believes that the "laity has the dignity, the intelligence, and the responsibility (even the obligation) to assist bishops in trying to discern where God is calling us today and to cooperate in the decision-making processes of the Church in a meaningful way." The group also states that it accepts "the teaching authority of the Church, including the role of bishops and the pre-eminent role of the Pope as the primary teachers and the leaders of the Church," and takes no stand on controversial topics, such as "the end of priestly celibacy, the exclusion of homosexuals from the priesthood, [and] the ordination of women."

Voice of the Faithful has not only been allowed into the San Francisco archdiocese, it has received personal attention from the archbishop. According to a May 6 article on the Voice of the Faithful website (www.voiceofthefaithful.org), Archbishop William Levada met with the San Francisco leaders of the Bay Area Voice of the Faithful. According to the article, the group's leader, Ed Gleason, "thanked the Archbishop for allowing VOTF to use parish facilities for VOTF meetings, upon agreement by the pastor. The Archbishop noted that he was open to suggestions and information from VOTF and the VOTF representatives offered to help surface issues and concerns for his attention."

To confirm the Voice of the Faithful's May 6 story, I spoke to Sister Antonio Heaphy, the San Francisco archdiocese's director of pastoral ministry. "Voice of the Faithful is not banned in the San Francisco archdiocese," Heaphy said.

Heaphy, however, was not aware that the group's national website (www.votf-sf.org) had posted the following introduction to a San Francisco Weekly article on its site: "Alternative Newspaper 'Exposes' San Francisco Archdiocese: The SF Weekly posts a critical article detailing how Archbishop Levada has handled the clergy abuse crisis; contrasting the Archbishop's public statements with his actual policies." The May 21-27 article claims that Levada is covering up sex abuse in his diocese and "has managed to avoid the kind of media scrutiny that has dogged other Catholic hierarchs, including his close friend, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony."

Sister Heaphy said of the Weekly, "they are interested in sensationalism. There is some truth and a lot of hearsay and some things that are not true in my opinion." But, she said, "they [Voice of the Faithful] have a right to post it. That is their perspective."

Of the Voice of the Faithful itself, Sister Heaphy said, "my opinion is a lot of people in VOTF are good people, but there are other people in it who have their own issues with the Church."

But some in the Church have "issues" with Voice of the Faithful. One of these is Archbishop John Myers of Newark, N.J., who, in the October 11, 2002 Catholic Advocate, the organ of the diocese of Newark, wrote: "Voice of the Faithful [VOTF] ... has used the current crisis in the Church as a springboard for presenting an agenda that is anti-Church and, ultimately, anti-Catholic." Voice of the Faithful, continued Myers, "has as its purposes: to act as a cover for dissent ... and to openly attack the Church hierarchy." He noted that "altering Church teaching on sexual morality, and defiance of the apostolic authority that has guided the Church since its founding 2,000 years ago by Our Lord Jesus Christ, have all found a place in the ranks of Voice of the Faithful."

Another who has been warning Catholics about Voice of the Faithful is Deal Hudson, publisher and editor of Crisis magazine. Hudson told me that he "absolutely" agrees with Archbishop Myers. Voice of the Faithful's agenda, said Hudson, is "ultimately, anti-Catholic in the sense that they are trying to change fundamental Church teachings which are at the heart of Catholic identity." Orthodox Catholics who join Voice of the Faithful, said Hudson, "are being fooled. They are falling for a bait and switch tactic, which is being used throughout the United States. Voice of the Faithful leadership well know what they are doing, but they are willing to practice a deception for the sake of spreading a dissenting agenda."

I contacted Voice of the Faithful's central office for comment. The receptionist told me that Steve Krueger, the interim executive director, would call me back shortly. After no call was returned, I called the central office again, but the receptionist said Krueger was not available. Krueger never called back.

On October 10, 2002, one day before Archbishop Myers' statement that Voice of the Faithful "has as its purposes: to act as a cover for dissent," Voice of the Faithful president James Post wrote a letter defending the group's fidelity to the Church. In an October 10, 2002 interview with the Boston Globe, Post claimed "we are not a dissident group." The Globe said that Post's letter asserts that ''we accept the teaching authority of the church."

However, the Voice of the Faithful site, then and now, states that the group does not ''advocate ... the exclusion of homosexuals from the priesthood" -- an exclusion the Church itself advocates. On December 5, 2002, Catholic World News reported that the Church reaffirmed the 1961 ruling of the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for Religious that "those affected by the perverse inclination to homosexuality or pederasty should be excluded from religious vows and ordination." According to Catholic World News, "in a letter dated May 16, 2002, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez [then prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship] said: 'Ordination to the diaconate or priesthood of persons with homosexual tendencies is absolutely unadvisable and imprudent, and from a pastoral point of view, extremely risky.'"

Does the extreme risk of ordaining homosexuals include pederasty? According syndicated homosexual columnist Hastings Wyman, writing in the May 22, 2002 News Agency's "The World Seen From Rome," "the pattern of sexual abuse among Catholic clergy does suggest a gay problem. 90 percent of the cases of sex with adolescents that have come to light in the Church involved teenage boys, not girls. Do the math." But in response to this, Ed Gleason said, "I don't think we have any answer on that. The evidence isn't out on that."

Deal Hudson opined that Voice of the Faithful's reluctance to admit the homosexual-priest abuser connection arises from their agenda "being supported by priests in the Boston diocese who themselves do not want the homosexual dimension of the scandal addressed. And these are the members of the Boston Priests Forum."

The October 10 Globe article also noted that Voice of the Faithful "has articulated only three goals: to support victims of abuse, to support 'priests of integrity,' and to shape unspecified structural change in the church." An article on the Notre Dame Magazine website called "Keep the Faith, Change the Church," concurs. Voice of the Faithful, says the article, "has a three-part mission, and there is little potential for disagreement in two of them: Support for victims of clerical sexual abuse and encouragement for the vast majority of priests ministering with integrity. It is the third objective -- structural change in the church -- that holds the seeds of divisiveness that some bishops have accused VOTF of fostering. 'It is a struggle to keep traditional Catholics in VOTF,' [Voice of the Faithful founder Jim] Muller concedes, 'but we must keep 'structural change' undefined until its specifics can be determined by a lay voice that includes all spectrums.'"

Yet, though unwilling to define "structural change," Muller does say, "the problem is a concentration of power in the hierarchy. It is as though the executive, legislative and judicial branches were combined. We want to give a significant voice to the laity, and to that extent we want -- I know the word is inflammatory -- more 'democracy' in the church. Muller makes it clear it is not a democracy of theology he envisions -- there will be no votes on the Nicene Creed."

According to the Notre Dame piece, the Voice of the Faithful "website defends lay input in this way, 'We have intellectual, emotional and spiritual contributions to make and knowledge to impart on myriad real-life issues. These include, but are not limited to, human sexuality, women's rights, democratic processes, and the contextual roles of science and history in the healthy life of the church.'"

Deal Hudson said that Voice of the Faithful has "never defined" the structural changes it wants; "so the only conclusion you can come to is that the kind of structural changes they want are those represented by the people they invite to address their meetings," Hudson said. And these are "those who want ordination of women, married priests, to end priestly celibacy and finally to end Vatican authority over the parishes in the United States."

The Voice of the Faithful website (www.votf.org/Structural_Change/structural.html) said that the Structural Change Working Group "has been working to define what VOTF means by its Goal 3." According to the site, the Working Group "has also consulted with Fr. Ladislas Orsy, S.J., in an effort to ensure that its conclusions are sound, and that none of its statements could be misunderstood. Fr. Orsy has been retained as a professional outside consultant in canon law and related matters by VOTF."

If Voice of the Faithful wants to ensure that it's statements "are sound," or if they want to continue claiming "we accept the teaching authority of the church," it appears that Father Orsy might be a questionable choice as a consultant, according to the cardinals Avery Dulles and Joseph Ratzinger. In a November 25, 2000 America article (www.bigbrother.net/~mugwump/Dulles/dulles_online.html), Dulles wrote that "on the papal teaching office, Father Orsy renews his plea (made in several other places) that Catholics should be free to dissent from definitive teaching." Cardinal Ratzinger, in an article published in the May/June 1999 Céide (found at www.womanpriest.org/teaching/ratzing1.htm), wrote: "I do not find it objective that Fr. Orsy constructs an opposition [contradiction] between Ad tuendam fidem and Vatican II. [He writes that] the Council intended no threats and penalties because the Fathers of the Council 'trusted that truth will attract by its own beauty and strength' ... In fact, a large number of the bishops of the world wish today for the 'sharpening' of the penal law; this is a consequence of the cases of priests guilty of paedophilia. The protection of the rights of the accused priests has become so strong that the bishops feel powerless in cases when for the sake of the faithful they should have the power to intervene."

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