David Ancell / Sunday August 11, 2002
Today’s New York Times headlines digest featured this article claiming that lay people in the Catholic Church are frustrated by “aloofness” of the hierarchy. My reading of the article can be summed up as follows:
Cardinal Law didn’t want to accept money from the “moderate” Voice of the Faithful; therefore, the Cardinal must not care about lay people.
Indeed further in the article, one can find that Voice of the Faithful is pressing “for the laity to have a greater say in church policies” (supposedly without “alienating the Church hierarchy”). This all looks to me like a power struggle. Jesus said that a leader must serve others. If leaving the hierarchy as the governors of the church causes the Church to be governed by corrupt bishops, then having a lay-governed Church will cause the Church to be governed by corrupt lay people.
True, the article does mention that not everyone is unhappy, but it is still largely one-sided in that it doesn’t consider another very important point of view:
Check out the June 14, 2002 blog from Pete Vere and the blog by Mark Shea. I am in complete agreement with the aforementioned men about the abuse scandal. The sexual abuse is a horrible sin, but it is but one symptom of the larger problem of a lack of authentic faith. This problem is not just a problem of our Bishops. We also have a responsibility to learn the faith and proclaim it, but it’s very hard to do without the opportunity to gain an authentic formation. To gain authentic formation, we need a bishop who will work tirelessly to safeguard the teaching of the faith. We need the assurance that every program that is under the auspices of a parish or a diocese is 100% orthodox. We also have the duty to support our bishops when they work to give us that assurance.
There is hope. Yes, lay people will be a part of the reform of the Church. As I have said earlier, since we are just as much the Church as the hierarchy, we need to reform just as much as they do. We must resolve to live holy lives. We must learn our faith, love our faith, live our faith, and proclaim our faith wherever we are.
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