Spirit Daily [United States]
April 20, 2006
http://www.spiritdaily.com/layuproar1.htm
As yet, it's no large movement. In no region of North America has it come to dominate. It remains off the table at national bishops' conferences -- at least in open session.
But in various parts of the U.S. laymen as well as a number of priests have risen vocally against local ordinaries in a way that if unaddressed could turn ominous.
The tone has been startlingly direct in a Church known for a strict pecking order and used to unequivocal obedience.
The new approach to expressing concern seems to have arisen from the sexual-abuse crisis and charges that many bishops mishandled it, a perception that has roused a growing undercurrent of dissension, along with other issues.
Much of it hovers around the issue of homosexuality, with some feeling that it remains a mainstay in seminaries and that a high percentage of the clergy, including those who screen applicants, or set diocesan policy, are of that orientation. Public charges have been made that heterosexual seminarians have been expelled for not towing the gay line, or were rejected to start with.
One hotspot: the archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Another: the archdiocese of Miami.
In Chicago, small groups of both liberals and conservatives have called for something that in previous decades laymen would hardly even have muttered among themselves -- the ouster of a bishop.
"Robert Costello recalls how his mother used to draw the window shades in the afternoon hours of Good Friday so the family could contemplate Jesus Christ's suffering during the hours Christ hung on the cross," reported one newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, during Holy Week. "This year Costello is coming to Chicago from his home in Norwood, Mass., to hold a vigil Friday outside Holy Name Cathedral and ponder the pain of children allegedly abused by Rev. Daniel McCormack, a Chicago priest.
"Costello and other Catholics from Massachusetts, Indiana, Kentucky and New York also will petition peacefully for Cardinal Francis George to resign as head of the Archdiocese of Chicago."
The protests hit an extreme last Thursday, when a man was arrested for criminal trespass after reportedly shouting at Cardinal Francis George during a Mass at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, according to police. Colleen Dolan, communications director for the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, said the cardinal told her that the man carried a knife and a sign demanding the cardinal step down, but police said they found no knife or sign.
Still, it had to be unnerving.
Thus far, only a relative handful have joined such protests -- in an archdiocese of 2.4 million. But the bitterness hurled in the direction of bishops -- who before the abuse crisis commanded all but total respect from the laity -- is disturbing and also shows itself in e-mails sent to this website.
As never before, laymen want bishops to forsake what they see as a bureaucratic style for one of more openness, greater devotion, and strict obedience to Rome -- which is seen as strongly opposing homosexuals in the priesthood.
Before now, such discord was limited to highly unusual cases as in Boston, where the scandal was first brought to light in a major way. But it has now spread to virtually every region of the country.
Most of the complaints: that despite the scandal, bishops are allowing the homosexual element to remain entrenched in seminaries, rectories, or chanceries, and are even "persecuting" orthodox priests who speak against it.
Just last week, a priest in Pennsylvania, Father John Nesbella of Prince of Peace parish in Northern Cambria, announced that he was resigning the Roman Catholic priesthood. "This is the end of a sad tale of how wicked so-called Catholic priests and bishops drove me and a few other priests out because we dared to speak up about the corrupt brotherhood of homosexuals in the priesthood," the priest told a newspaper in Johnstown -- in language that would have been unheard of a few short years ago.
We are not endorsing such language. We are reporting on the situation.
Similar controversies have fulminated in such states as Virginia and Minnesota -- where an uprising has occurred over what one group, founded solely to fight the situation, describes as a "pernicious gay subculture in the archdiocese."
Members of the group have directly confronted priests who they believe have been involved in homosexual conduct but have not been "outed."
Meanwhile, an attorney in Florida has released a statement claiming an especially strong presence in the Archdiocese of Miami of a homosexual element. For the first time, a flurry of a protests have erupted claiming in divergent parts of the nation that the problem of homosexuality is not confined to seminarians and priests, but also among bishops themselves.
That dismay has not spread to the Vatican, which has long looked upon the Western Church as a special problem when it comes to sexual proclivity. A year ago Good Friday, the soon-to-be-Pope himself, speaking in the place of John Paul, bemoaned the "filth" in the Church and compared it to "a boat about to sink, taking on water on every side."
Remarkably, however, the truth of the faith seems to be keeping Catholicism alive and even well -- at least in some ways, and in some parts of the continent. The number who call themselves Catholics continues to rise as mainstream Protestant denominations dwindle.
But the simmering unhappiness over the lack of contact with local bishops and what is seen as unresponsiveness -- not just as regards the abuse crisis, but also in matters as diverse as the liturgy and mystical phenomena -- could one day come to a boil.
In some cases, the disputes are over parishes that have been closed in cost-cutting moves -- often to offset the cost of the sex scandals. In others, it has been over the liturgy, with conservatives taking a role of protest that during the 1970s and 1980s belonged to the liberals.
"The Pope has come out and said that homosexual men are not to go to seminaries, but a whole bunch of American priests don't care what the Pope says and keep ordaining them," said the priest who resigned in Pennsylvania. "The underlying problem is that bishops disobeyed the Church, and seminaries became filled with homosexual men. Now these men are in their sixties and are Church leaders. They have brought ruin and chaos."
In fact, significant progress has been made in many dioceses -- perhaps even most -- and the number of abuse claims has dropped precipitously. But the power of clerics with a homosexual orientation continues to deeply trouble large segments of the flock -- at times causing strange alliances between conservatives and liberals and driving orthodox factions into camps that believe in protest while others argue for obedience in the way the Padre Pio famously obeyed a homosexual bishop.
It is not an issue that will soon disappear and must be recognized as a growing one. More interaction with parishioners and less emphasis on bureaucracy -- a more spiritual approach to shepherding -- would go a long way at calming the volatility.
In Orange County, California, protesters have brazenly distributed flyers openly criticizing both local priests and the bishop -- arguing that they do not owe obedience to clerics who are not in union with Rome. In the diocese of Albany, New York, a lawyer representing alleged abuse victims has been so persistent and vocal in his protests that the diocese successfully sought a restraining order against him.
We urge calm and prayer at the same time that we urge bishops to recognize the growing dissent with a sense of urgency.
In Minnesota, the protest organization, called the Dan O'Connell Society, formed over the murder a Wisconsin man by that name who was allegedly murdered by a priest he had confronted over abuse (the priest later committed suicide). The group argues that dioceses have "allowed a network of homosexual priests to flourish." Others counter that the archbishop is anything but pro-gay and that the diocese is creating conservative vocations.
In Cleveland, a bishop's recent decision to leave -- he has reached the age of retirement -- nonetheless has been tied by some to allegations by yet another local attorney of financial mishandlings. Others have reacted with outrage upon learning that molestation priests are still being hidden in their very midst -- and in the proximity of children. Such is the case currently in Missouri.
Meanwhile, until the American bishops speak out against homosexuality as strongly as has the Pope, there is the chance that allegations against prelates themselves will increase, and public protests with it. The public criticism of Church hierarchy has been considered a slippery slope for all involved.
"We are at war!" wrote one viewer. "I write to you with a broken heart about the current state of our beautiful Church. Regarding the priest scandals, I have heard experts say after reviewing the statistics that the larger problem is not a pedophilia problem, but a homosexual problem. I am now in Los Angeles. So far I have heard three pro-homosexual homilies. Don't get me wrong, I believe the Church should reach out to homosexuals and try to make them feel loved, and at home in the church as much as it is possible, but what I have a problem with is when they are not being told that homosexuality is wrong."
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