UNITED STATES
Religion News Service
David Gibson | Jul 2, 2013
(RNS) Before convening its second annual meeting last month, a fledgling organization of U.S. priests that wants to reform the Catholic Church was tweaked by critics as the last gasp of a dying liberal Catholicism.
But when the members the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests gathered in Seattle on June 24, they wound up adopting fewer than half of the proposals on their agenda and voted down the most controversial item: a call for the church to examine opening the priesthood to women and married men.
The Rev. Dave Cooper, a priest from Milwaukee who heads the 1,000-member AUSCP, said Tuesday (July 2) that the middle course charted by the 140 delegates reflected a goal of promoting dialogue, not laying down markers for a confrontation with the hierarchy.
“We realized that if we hope to dialogue with bishops we have to find bridges to do that,” Cooper said. If the group had adopted the resolution on ordaining women priests – a ban that the Vatican has said is not open for discussion – “it would have become an obstacle, a barrier, rather than a bridge.”
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