WE ARE THE CHURCH: BEING CATHOLIC IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Address by
James E. Post, President, Voice of the Faithful
NYC Conference, Oct. 25, 2003

I love the theme of this conference – “Being Catholic in the 21st Century.” What does it mean to be Catholic in the 21st century?

I think that being a Catholic in the 21st century means to be in the company of people who care about their Church, treasure what it stands for, and work to see the "living Church" be the Church that Christ intended it to be.

I think that being an American Catholic in the 21st century means to be with people who care about their Church, treasure shared Gospel values, and want to change the administrative practices that undermine those gospel values.

And, I think that being a American Catholic in the Tri-state region of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York today means being in the company of hundreds of faithful, committed people at Fordham University – i.e., with all of you!

Being a Catholic in this place today means joining together and thanking the hundreds of volunteers who developed the program, sold the tickets, and attended to thousands of details to make today's event such as great success.

Thank you, Tri-state Voice of the Faithful!

Who are we?

Who are we? Why are we here? More than one thousand people here today know the answers to those questions.

We are people of God, faithful Catholics, who know that today's Church cannot become the future Church without our help, our work, and our commitment to putting faith into action.

We are people who believe this work is vital. Otherwise, why would we give up the chance to sleep late, attend a child's soccer game, watch football, or just enjoy a day of rest? There has to be a good reason, and we have a good reason.

We are people who are committed to serving the Church by doing what must be done. We know that serving the Church isn't easy. Some people actually try to make it hard for us to do what must be done. That upsets us; it even infuriates us. But we must remember that Jesus never promised that it would be easy to serve the Church.

So, we do what we must do.

Voice of the Faithful exists today because there is a job to be done. And it is a big job!

We know that the laity must have a meaningful “voice” in the Catholic Church of the 21st century.
We know that our voice must be used to effect change.
We know that our voice must be used to shape the future of our Church.

Some say that the Church does not need to change. After all, it's been here for 2,000 years. I say that is exactly wrong: the Church has always changed, especially when good people took responsibility and worked to make it better.

Today there is a crisis in our Church and we are taking responsibility to meet the crisis, address the issues, and to make our Church better.

There is no question that change is needed to shore up our Church. The facts are clear. There is also no doubt that some people live in fear of change. They resist it, and fight it. There is no question that to keep our faith, evangelize our values to the world, we must work for change. To keep the faith, we must change the Church. We must change the policies that failed children and policies that fail the faithful.

Some policies – and some of the people who pursued those policies – still don't work well. And some Church leaders still don't “get it!”

• After more than 18 months of scandal, we are still dealing with the apologists for predators priests and complicit bishops.
• After more than 18 months of scandal, we still have Catholics who pretend to be in denial.
• After more than 18 months of scandal, we still have people arguing it was all a creation of the media.
• After more than 1,000 priests and 5,000 survivor/victims have been identified, and after 500 million dollars have been expended to settle cases of abuse, we still have people trying to rewrite history to say it never happened!

This is our challenge:

• To keep the faith … and to fight for the truth to be known.
• To keep the faith … and to hold guilty parties accountable.
• To keep the faith … and to work for the laity's voice in the governance and guidance of the Church.
• To keep the faith … and to change the Church!

That is what it means to be a Catholic in the 21st Century. It is to be … An agent of change. An agent for progress. An agent for Christ.

Thank you for being here today. Thank you for being an agent of change – an “angel” of change. And may God bless each and every person in this hall today.