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Voice
of the Faithful Focus – A brief update
highlighting both a problem in our church and some
progress being made as we work together to Keep the
Faith, Change the Church.
Progress
Appleby declares VOTF as the “honor roll
of the Catholic Church”
On June 9 on the campus of Fordham University the Francis
and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies sponsored
the conference “Leadership in the U.S. Catholic Church”. The
focus was on the emergence of new patterns of leadership
within the
Church at the parish, diocesan and national levels. Voice
of the Faithful was the only reform group represented
on the dais with two places on the agenda: VOTF President,
Mary Pat Fox participated in a panel on the clergy sex
abuse crisis with the researchers conducting the “Causes
and Context” study and David O’Brien, VOTF
Trustee and Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies
at the College of the Holy Cross, was a panelist on “New
Movements”. Click
here to read Mary Pat’s talk. The
conference was kicked off by Dr. Scott Appleby of the
University of Notre Dame. Appleby
discussed “New
Directions in Leadership within the Church” focusing
on co-responsibility. He posed a question to bishops
asking why the bishops don’t embrace Voice of the
Faithful, gave some of our statistics from the D’Antonio
study and said “if you don’t
consider them to be the core of the church you have to
admit they are the Honor Roll”.
Problem
Whistleblower fired
The Barbara Westrick, the principal who blew the
whistle on Chicago pedophile priest Daniel McCormack
has been fired
in what seems to be an act of retribution by the Archdiocese
of Chicago for her efforts to protect children. Some
of the accusations against McCormack date to
2001, but he
was not charged or removed as pastor of Our Lady of the
Westside church, until after Westrick told police, the
archdiocese and the Illinois Department of Children and
Family Services about allegations one boy made to her
in January 2006. A
subsequent independent audit
roundly criticized
the Archdiocese’s monitoring of McCormack.
Archdiocesan
spokeswoman, Coleen Dolan claimed that the dismissal
was for performance but VOTF
has learned that
there were no written performance evaluations.
Come to our National Convention “Voice of the Faithful – Disciples
in Action” in Providence RI, October 19-20. For
details click here.
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