Working Group Reports

SURVIVOR COMMUNITY NEWS

From Ruth Moore STTOP (Speak Truth To Power) coordinator: At our monthly sidewalk meeting we decided to show our support for Fr. Tom Doyle. We ordered buttons with his picture on it stating, WE SUPPORT FR.TOM DOYLE. The picture was taken at the Paulist Center, Boston, MA when Tom received the Isaac Hecker award for Achievements in Social Justice, 2003. [STTOP is a non-denominational group organized in the early months of 2002 in response to the crimes committed by clergy against children. We still gather Sundays at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where we have our monthly sidewalk meetings and continue to call for justice and accountability for survivors.] Buttons can be ordered through Rebecca Easterly at www.1800mybuttons.com.

Commentary from Fr. Tom Doyle: "Pentecost Sunday: Where is the Spirit?"

May 30, 2004

Tom Doyle, photo credit Ken Scott

It has been over a month since my abrupt dismissal from the Air Force chaplaincy was made known through the secular media. Since that time I have received hundreds of messages of support by mail, email and phone from people throughout the US and in other countries as well. It has been impossible for me to respond to each message with a personal expression of my gratitude. I deeply regret this and hope to be able to accomplish this task some day in the near future. In the meantime I want everyone to know how deeply grateful I am for this incredible support. More than any other experience I can remember, it has fortified my faith in the goodness and integrity of the true foundation of Christianity.

More important than support for me however, is the clear recognition and support of the message I have tried to proclaim and the thousands of people I have tried to call attention to: first and foremost, the many men and women who have been sexually abused and spiritually devastated by the Catholic clergy and the institutional church. Second, and no less important, are the thousands of Catholics who have experienced the callous injustice and lack of genuine pastoral concern by the same institution and its clergy. In the course of the past few months I have had the good fortune to be at a number of VOTF, Call to Action and survivors' meetings. These experiences have done more to invigorate my faith than anything else could possibly have achieved. Like so many of you, I have regularly wondered if the Holy Spirit really is present, or on a long, long vacation in some other galaxy. Hearing the outrage, the concern and the hopes of so many has convinced me that this Spirit is with God's people. The problem is that the men, and some women, who claim to be professionally attuned to this Spirit, are either deaf or ignoring the message.

Many people have expressed concern, anger and disbelief at what has happened to me. I can assure you that my experiences are very minor compared to the deep spiritual harm that has been inflicted on the clergy abuse victims and so many others, by members of the Church's official leadership. I know that in past decades people suffered such injustices and abuse silently, with little or no support. It is far different today and for this we are blessed with the fact that people are emerging from ecclesiastical control in ever increasing numbers and loudly expressing their outrage over the horrendous sexual abuse that has ruined the lives of thousands, the dishonesty that fostered this abuse and the myopic narcissism that continues to fuel defensiveness and denial on the part of Church leadership.

The events of the past few weeks have been incredible. The hierarchy, from the Vatican on down to local bishops, seems intent on bringing more ridicule on itself and more alienation from faithful Catholics. The British author Hilaire Belloc once said "If any man should deny the divine origin of the Roman Church, let it be known that no mere human institution, conducted with such knavish imbecility, would have lasted a fortnight."

Belloc's conviction eloquently expressed what so many of us feel, especially after these past few months. If many questioned the sincerity of the hierarchy's expressions of concern for the clergy sex abuse victims, recent events should have erased any doubt that the governmental levels of the Catholic church care little if anything for the feelings of victims and laity alike. The move by a group of American Bishops to sabotage the work of the National Review Board was devoid of any shred of integrity of concern for the millions harmed directly or indirectly through this twenty year debacle. To add narcissistic insult to the injury, several bishops had the audacity to complain that they were being "beaten up on" over the sex abuse scandal. In all of the letters sent by the bishops to Justice Anne Burke, not one mentioned the victims. What greater proof of the assertion voiced by Dr. Gene Kennedy in a recent column that its "all about them."

If the never-ending saga of the episcopal bungling of the sex abuse nightmare weren't bad enough, we have the spectacle of a few bishops using the Eucharist as a political weapon, reverting back to a dead age when the bishops presumed the people were too stupid to know how to vote. The surface excuse is defense of the Church's teaching on the sanctity of life but one wonders if the real agenda isn't regaining the illusory control they thought they once had over the minds and hearts of believers. Were they consistent, they'd be denying each other the Eucharist. If life is sacred in all its forms, what about those lives that have been physically and spiritually maimed by the clergy's own breed of sexual abusers who were consistently enabled by shepherds more concerned about their image and power than about human moral and spiritual life?

On May 28 the pope told a group of American bishops that the Catholic Church (translation, The Bishops), is called upon to respond to the religious needs of a country "increasingly in danger of forgetting its spiritual roots and yielding to a purely materialistic and soulless vision of the world." I for one felt a sense of outrage when I read that statement. If truth were to be told, the pope should have scolded the bishops for their incisive role in promoting a vision of the Church, not our society, as materialistic and soulless. He would have won back immense credibility for this wobbly institutional Church by demanding that the bishops stop worshiping their own pomposity and start spending the bulk of their time sitting in the homes of the thousands of victims of clergy sexual and spiritual abuse, listening to their pain, absorbing their anger and trying to make a small step forward in the healing process.

While thousands continue to hope, pray and work at pumping life into the contemporary tragedy of organized Catholicism, the minuscule minority, mostly from the clerical elite, who dream of a Catholic Restoration to the Golden Age, seem much more like crazed crew members of the sinking Titanic, boring holes in the hull to let the water out.

From Marge Bean: To Honor Victims and Survivors of Abuse: A flowering tree was planted by the Concerned Catholics of Bridgewater, a VOTF affiliate, at St. Basil's Catholic Center, Bridgewater State College, Bridgewater MA as a symbol of hope for victims and survivors of abuse. The dedication was May 23, 2004 with a promise to remember the suffering and courage of victims and survivors, and a pledge to work to abolish abuse from our society. A plaque will be installed soon.

PRIESTS' SUPPORT WORKING GROUP

There is a newly formed Boston VOTF priests' support group. Jack Whelan is the liaison between the new group and the National Priests' Support Working Group. The leaders for the national efforts are Clare Keane, Pat McNulty and Jim Morrissey. Clare Keane is the contact person for the website and emails, at KeaneWIN@aol.com. This team will be responsible for communicating relevant information about Goal #2, in addition to keeping members connected in order to share ideas and encourage one another in the ongoing work of supporting our priests, building bridges, and breaking down barriers between clergy and laity.

VOICE OF RENEWAL

From Donna Doucette: The national Voice of Renewal/Lay Education Working Group is beginning a "virtual study group." This is an online discussion group that tries to mimic the interaction you would achieve with a face-to-face group. We see it as a possibility for connecting Catholics who are interested in reading and learning more about the Church and their faith regardless of geographical separation (or limits to schedules). The group will begin in a couple of weeks, and is starting with the Peter Steinfels book A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America.

To join the discussion, you must sign up for the VOR listserv. To do so, just send an email subscription request to VOR_VOTF-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the email, let me know who you are and that you want to join.

Donna has also made available the following details, which might be helpful to others establishing their own listservs.

Just a reminder that we are hoping to open up the Virtual Study Group effort in about a week. I hope that those of you interested in joining the discussion have obtained a copy of Peter Steinfels' book A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America. We will OPEN THE DISCUSSION on the Introduction and the first 2 chapters on June 16; there will be a reminder when we start. As you read, think about how Steinfels summary of American Catholicism in the late 20th and early 21st century matches your own experiences and perceptions during that period. This might be a good starting place for our discussion. Before we reach that point, also let me outline a few POSTING COURTESIES that we ask you to observe during the discussion.

1. When you send a comment, PLEASE USE THIS SUBJECT for the email: VS Steinfels Part 1.

Of course, as we continue, there will be a Part 2, Part 3, etc. Using the same subject for each posting allows those of you who are participating to quickly find the current comments, or catch up on old comments. Also, in the archives, using the same subject will put all the related comments into one "thread." At the same time, those who are NOT interested in the discussion can easily find and delete the emails.

2. Please limit each set of your comments to the one part or section we are currently discussing as much as possible and without feeling "censored" in any way, of course.

Why? We are trying to model a study group that keeps everyone on the same page and discussing the same concepts, much as would happen in a face-to-face study group that met weekly. This is a bit more focused than a book discussion group, where the entire book would be treated as a whole.

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