And in This Corner--

My last post on Sr. Louise Lears mentioned that she was consulting with a local canon lawyer to represent her.  This brought to mind the most famous local excommunicated dissenters-- the St. Stanislaus Board.  The two most recently appointed members, Bernice Krauze and Stan Rozanski, had chosen Rev. Thomas Doyle as their canon lawyer to defend them before the tribunal. However, the Archbishop rejected their choice and supplied another.  Why?  You see, Rev. Doyle is another infamous dissenter.  Just as a civil lawyer can be disbarred, a canon lawyer can be barred from representing a client.  

Ironically, the same research that unearthed the information on Sister Lears also brought my attention to Doyle's piece yesterday at a site called Voice from the Desert:  "Seeking an alternative to the authoritarianism and tribalism of Roman Catholicism."  Really-- I don't make this stuff up.  

Rev. Doyle's article opines about the so-called Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) and "Structural Reform of the Catholic Church."  Here are a few lowlights (recall this person is a priest):

If one looks at what has happened in the institutional Catholic Church since 1965, the year that Vatican II ended, one sees a roller-coaster ride of progressive advances and regressive retreats. Since the reign (and I use that word intentionally, rather than “pontificate”) of John Paul II the institution has been on what some call a restorationist path. This refers to the process of restoring the Catholic Church to the splendor of the pre-Vatican II days when bishops were princes, the pope was the emperor and the lay people kept their mouths shut and their wallets open.

All along there has been a movement among some lay, cleric and hierarchical Catholics to continue with the vision of Vatican II. Today, all of the bishops in that movement in the US are either dead, retired or in exile. The “Vatican II” clergy are growing old, discouraged, tired and are either retired or have left altogether. They have been replaced by a couple generations of younger clergy who often describe themselves as “John Paul II” priests. Others describe them as the ‘Catholic Taliban,” “the Young Nazis” or words to that effect. Lately several scholars have written about them and the assessment is worse than discouraging. It’s frightening.

[...]

What about VOTF? The past five years have been tumultuous. The “growing pains” that some members speak of are far more than that. What we have seen has been a clash between the deeply rooted clerical dependency that has been systematically woven into our very being by the institutional church, and Catholic Adulthood. It’s a long, excruciatingly painful process to grow up in the Catholic Church. Most chronological adults never make it. No matter how liberated and avant-garde they believe themselves to be, there is still a very powerful core, deep down inside, that causes dependency feelings to take over whenever one is faced with the challenge of taking the risk of not only thinking but acting like an adult when in the realm of the Church world. To do so means to challenge the clerical office holders and to express opinions that they do not want to hear. To do so means taking the risk that some of them might try to capitalize on the magical thinking that has supported their power by threatening canonical penalties or equating disobedience to them with disobedience to Christ.

Jesus Christ was all about love. He also was a man of action. Whenever he encountered the religious hypocrites of his day he didn’t sit down to tea with them and exchange sweet nothings so that nobody had any ruffled feathers. If he blew his top when he encountered a bunch of hucksters selling birds at the temple can you imagine what his reaction would have been if he’d dropped down to earth during the early days of the reformation? Martin Luther would have ended up the pope and the Roman church bureaucracy would have been vaporized...

[...]

As far as reform etc. is concerned, I have lost all realistic hope that the institution will change for the better in my lifetime. The present crop of bishops, courtesy of John Paul II, is far less pastoral, less theologically educated and more clericalist and monarchical than any I can remember...

[...]

The hot button issues that the popes have told us we can’t even talk about will remain discussed by lay and clergy alike and closed in the minds of the pope and the bishops. All you have to do is look at the stream of Vatican decrees re-introducing the pre-Vatican II version of the Latin mass to stomping on theologians to get the picture. The young conservatives lap it up and seem to play at church as if it’s some sort of surreal dress-up game. What many fed-up people are doing is simply walking away and finding an alternative faith/worship opportunity that is less toxic and more Christ centered.

I am not much interested in working for internal church reform anymore mainly because my experience within the structure over the past two decades has been so painfully revelatory for me. It is way too toxic. Life is short and being part of the Christian community is supposed to be joyful and not poisonous. I have turned to reading the books of John Shelby Spong and find they give me hope and a voice to my theological ideas and related feelings...

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Well, there is more of this, if you can stand it, at the link above.  At least the embittered Rev. Doyle has learned that his vision of "reform" of the Church structure is not likely to come about.  Praise God!  Now if only all of his friends would agree, and decide to grow up, practice a little humility, and obey the Church Christ founded for their benefit and His glory, everyone wins.  I am not hopeful, though.  I mean, Spong?! And some of the language people of that mindset use just floors me.  It is ok to call orthodox priests Nazis and such tripe, but the moment a person questions their acts of dissent from Church teaching they are quick to apply the label "unchristian".  Please.  This is entirely consistent with the way the St. Cronan's supporters justify their actions.  

I am interested to see just which lawyer is chosen to represent Sr. Lears-- but it is pretty obvious she can do better than Doyle.