Word: parishes
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...existing organization called the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity suddenly tripled its membership and actually scheduled a lay synod this past weekend. The headlines have energized a graying generation of reformers and raised up new ones. Some dream of a nationwide lay congress and press for election of parish councils, pastors or even bishops. Others demand financial transparency or rollbacks of Vatican limitations on the lay liturgical role. Even the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Novak, a conservative theologian and columnist who would condone little of the above, admits that "both conservatives and liberals are very upset. The bishops...
...beginning of this year the American church had hit a classic impasse. The majority of U.S. Catholics clearly--but quietly--favored some kind of power sharing. When polled in 1999, reports Catholic University's D'Antonio, 65% of the "high-commitment Catholics" supported "more democratic decision making" at the parish level, and 56% wished for more at the diocesan level. But after years of simply ignoring birth control and abortion edicts out of Rome, many simply did not care enough about church governance to join liberal activist groups. Admits D'Antonio, whose leanings are liberal: "Things were going slowly." That...
Less politic is Kennedy School of Government professor Mary Jo Bane. Bane was part of the Boston group that proposed sending representatives from each of the city's existing lay councils to a central, deliberative "All-Parish Council." Cardinal Law, notoriously mum on his role in the abuse scandals, spoke up almost instantly against the idea, letting it be known that Boston's pastors were not to "join, foster or promote" the group, on the ground that it would compete with an existing panel. Bane called Law's response "astonishingly stupid" given that neither the idea--nor the people involved...
...cuts at the heart of the very fabric of the church. That is a fiduciary relationship. When I was ordained a priest in 1973, I was 25 years old. I was assigned to a very affluent and very significant parish in a northwest suburb of Chicago. They didn't know me. I was dealing with people of significant competence--lawyers, judges, doctors. But the one thing that I had was that I was a priest, and therefore I had credibility. They trusted me with some of the great secrets of their lives. They trusted me with their kids. They trusted...
...victims are working hard to crack each diocese's many-layered defenses, in part by showing that church officials responsible for supervising wayward priests also effectively control the corporations and entities that own church property. In a Miami case, the archdiocese claimed that it had no control over a parish school where a teacher molested a student. But attorney Weil showed that the diocese controlled not only curriculum and teacher appointments but also scheduling for the school conference rooms. The church settled before the case went to trial. "This is akin to a private getting caught and the general saying...