Cardinal Meets a Lay Group, But Keeps Ban

By Pam Belluck
New York Times
November 27, 2002

Boston, Nov. 26 -- Boston's archbishop, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, met today for the first time with Voice of the Faithful, a fast-growing group of lay Roman Catholics that the cardinal has largely shunned for months.

But Cardinal Law declined, at least for the time being, to lift a ban on the group's meeting in most churches and to accept donations from the group, Voice of the Faithful leaders said. And the cardinal, who would not discuss the meeting today, repeatedly asked whether Voice of the Faithful saw itself as outside the authority of the church, saying that was his major concern.

The cardinal did agree to allow the group to meet with other archdiocesan officials to discuss those issues. And he did not rule out agreeing to some of the organization's requests in the future.

Leaders of Voice of the Faithful, which formed in response to the sexual abuse scandal in the clergy, expressed a restrained optimism.

"I don't know how you score it," said James E. Post, president of the lay group, which wants the laity to have a greater role in the governing of the church. "I think in negotiations you either go in looking for specific outcomes, or you go in looking to build a relationship. I think we made progress on the relationship side, since we had none and anything was a step forward."

Dr. Post added: "I think there were the hopeful signs of progress on the specific outcomes. I had the sense of being with people who wanted to figure out how to work together because they didn't want to ignore the reality of Voice of the Faithful, but there was going to have to be some kind of moving around, a kind of dance."

The meeting reflected the embattled cardinal's new approach to the scandal that has devastated his archdiocese, part of several steps he has taken in response to pressure from priests and lay people to be more open, acknowledge his mistakes and show greater humility.

But the meeting also came as the archdiocese faced renewed criticism for trying to conceal information about its handling of abusive priests. On Monday, the judge responsible for hearing sexual abuse lawsuits excoriated the archdiocese, accusing it of trying to keep thousands of pages of documents from the public.

At today's meeting, both the receptive and the self-protective sides of the cardinal were on display, said Voice of the Faithful leaders who attended.

"There were some moments of tension," said Bill Cadigan, the group's vice president and one of four leaders who attended the meeting at the chancery. "They arose concerning issues regarding our view versus the cardinal's view of the legitimacy of the existence of our organization, the discussions regarding the bannings of our group from church property, and the desire to see a more open process of governing within the church."

At the same time, said Mary Scanlon Calcaterra, another leader at the meeting, "there was some disarmament."

The archdiocese issued a noncommittal statement, saying the meeting was intended "to obtain greater clarity on how Voice of the Faithful, as an organization, sees itself in relationship to the church and how it would hope to be seen and recognized by the church." The statement, by a spokeswoman, Donna M. Morrissey, added: "While the emergence of new groups is a constant in the history of the church, a proper discernment must always take place to ensure their compatibility with the faith, discipline and mission of the church. Today's meeting was a step in that discernment concerning the Voice of the Faithful on the part of the archbishop."

Dr. Post said the cardinal was quite formal in the beginning, opening by saying, " 'I know we're scheduled for two hours, but we probably don't need all that time for this meeting.' Then he kind of crisply moved through what he had to say. That was not a hopeful sign."

The organization, which started in February with 40 people meeting and now claims 25,000 members in 40 states, had given the archdiocese a proposed agenda for the meeting. "But they never accepted the agenda," Dr. Post, a professor at Boston University, said. "They kind of danced around it."

The meeting lasted a little over two hours. Cardinal Law twice said he would have preferred if the group had sought permission from the archdiocese before forming, Mr. Cadigan said.

Dr. Post said, "His primary concern was, are we who we say we are and what will we continue to be in the life of the church." Dr. Post added, "He needed to be sure that the kind of changes we envisioned were not to create some sort of structure outside the church that would challenge the church in a negative way."

"The great unspoken question was, is Voice of the Faithful involved in a kind of splitting of the church," Dr. Post said. "Nobody said 'schism,' but that was the unspoken word."

Voice of the Faithful leaders told the cardinal that their goal of greater involvement by the laity did not mean changing the dogma of the church, only the "human mechanism" governing it, Dr. Post said.

"We told him we are people very involved in our parishes," he said. "We have all of these different roles as teachers and eucharistic ministers and lectors and people who go to church regularly. We're kind of the bedrock Catholics of the church."

The leaders asked Cardinal Law to speak about the group's commitment to the faith to the handful of other bishops around the country, including those in Brooklyn and on Long Island, who have barred the group from meeting in churches.

Dr. Post said he told the cardinal he was most pained that Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre had decreed one of the bans, because Bishop Murphy used to be in Boston and celebrated Mass at the church where Dr. Post was a eucharistic minister.

"I've been on the altar with him, and one time I whispered there was a disabled person in the front row so he could go down and give him the host," Dr. Post said. "Murphy said to me afterwards, 'Thanks for making me look good.' My point is that Murphy knows us, and how could he say those things about us?"

The cardinal did not say he would speak with the other bishops, and Mr. Cadigan said he told the group that there were already structures for lay people in the church, namely the pastoral council. But the group questioned how independent that body could be, since its members are appointed by Cardinal Law.

"The ability of some lay councils to speak their minds is somewhat limited due to deferential issues, such as that they wish to be appointed again," Mr. Cadigan said. "The cardinal is not always hearing what the laity has to say. He's hearing what a select group of people he has chosen has to say."

The group asked the cardinal to lift an order that allowed the 40 existing Voice of the Faithful chapters to continue meeting in churches, but barred new chapters in any of the other 320 parishes from doing so. Dr. Post said that the cardinal did acknowledge that "the current situation is ambiguous because it's O.K. to operate in some parishes and not in others," but that "he didn't promise anything" with respect to lifting the order.

The group also asked the cardinal to accept $56,000 raised by Voice of Compassion, an alternative charitable fund started by Voice of the Faithful as a way to let parishioners give to Catholic causes without having the money managed by the archdiocese. The group tried to dispel the cardinal's concerns that the fund was trying to undermine the Cardinal's Appeal, the church's annual fund-raiser, and Dr. Post pointed out that one member who participated in early discussions about setting up the fund was recently ordained a deacon by Cardinal Law himself.

"He did not indicate that he would accept the money from the Voice of Compassion fund," Dr. Post said, "but he did note that donations are down, that there is a need for money for charitable programs."