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This was posted on a St Louis Catholic List and I was given permission to post it here and on other sites. I have done some minor editing to it, but it is substantially the same. The St. Louis Chapter of Voice of the Faithful had tried a letter writing campaign late last year to have a voice in the selection of our new archbishop to replace Justin Cardinal Rigali. Here is the post:The St. Louis affiliate of VOTF has a link to the following on their website. They have links to other articles and editorials about themselves too, and...

As I pulled into the high school parking lot of the affluent Long Island suburb of Manhasset one July evening, I passed a BMW with a Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) window decal. Clearly, this was the place. I entered the building, passing a number of elderly people standing behind tables covered with pamphlets. A very pleasant grandmother handed me four or five leaflets, including a printout of the Nicene Creed, a flier for the group’s September “Faith Convention” and some other VOTF reading material. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Paul Lakeland-the liberation theologian from Fairfield...

ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome Code: ZE03111926Date: 2003-11-19Critique of "Voice of the Faithful"What Faith Are They Trying to Keep?HYANNIS, Massachusetts, NOV. 19, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Several priests in the Diocese of Fall River recently sent out a pastoral letter to parishioners, to clarify the nature of Voice of the Faithful, a group that gained attention in the wake of the clergy sex-abuse scandals. Here we reprint the letter. * * * A Pastoral Letter From Your Priests Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, In recent days, several parishioners have asked us for clarification about the group called "Voice...

Married priests win new support Catholic clergy groups expected to champion Milwaukee movement By MARY ZAHN and TOM HEINENmzahn@journalsentinel.com Last Updated: Aug. 26, 2003 Representatives of Catholic priest associations in Boston, New York, Chicago, southern Illinois and Pittsburgh said Tuesday they plan on taking action to support more than 160 Milwaukee-area priests who signed a letter urging that the priesthood be open to married men. In addition, three liberal church reform groups that have long advocated optional celibacy used the Internet on Tuesday to launch state, national and international efforts of their own in response to the Milwaukee letter. The...

<p>He took over as head of the nation's seventh-largest Roman Catholic archdiocese while his new territory was still under the pall of the fires smoldering across the Hudson River. He found a flock dazed with grief, searching for answers.</p> <p>Barely had the shock of the worst terrorist attack in the nation's history begun to fade, when the American Catholic Church's worst scandal surfaced: priests accused of sexual abuse.</p>

Bets Are Off in Louisville When a group wants to have a voice, the more its voice is heard the better. One would imagine that better yet is if that same voice is heard… and reheard. However, that was not what happened at the organizing meeting of the Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) at St. Agnes Church in Louisville, Ky. Area Catholics were taken aback by some of the practices of an organization that demands transparency of the nation's bishops. John de Friend attended the founding meeting on May 6. His experiences were quite revealing. He reports that the gathering...

The Quiet Corner by Fr. John A. Kiley Church is a servant of God, not of Modernist ideologues   When I was a curate at SS. John & Paul Parish in Coventry, it was decided to conduct a sex education course for the eighth grade students. A meeting was first scheduled for parents so they could be informed of the course's content. The meeting night arrived and not one parent showed up. Mystified by the lack of parental concern, a teacher later inquired from some parents regarding their absence. Their response was, "If Father Kiley's involved, everything will be OK....

Area clergy continue to plan for future needs By Tricia Hempel DAYTON DEANERY — In their continuing effort to be "agents of change" rather than "victims of change," priests of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati gathered March 27 at Incarnation Parish in Centerville to continue the work of planning for a future with fewer priests. The process began in 2000 with the establishment by Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of the Futures Committee, priests from various age groups and level of responsibility. Along with the entire local presbyterate, the committee worked with CARA (The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) to...

Chicago, Illinois -- On Sunday, January 19, 2003, Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) Chicago West chapter held a public organizational meeting at St. Edmund's Parish, Oak Park, Illinois. The meeting was announced from the pulpits of several Oak Park area Catholic churches and in the St. Edmund's parish bulletin. Thirty-eight people attended the event, including several area pastors. The meeting featured Joyce Gradel and Steve Shimek, a former Dominican priest. Shimek's parish, St. Giles in Oak Park, is an active participant in United Power for Action and Justice, an organization well known for supporting liberal Democratic candidates and taxpayer funded...

Enhancing Democracy: the Key to Religious Reform by James Carroll Plenary address at 2002 CTA national conference in Milwaukee Carroll develops these themes more fully in his 2002 book, "Toward a New Catholic Church: The Promise of Reform." In the last thirteen months, we Americans have discovered with something approaching astonishment the wild diversity of religious and spiritual impulses that has come to mark not only the planet, but our own nation. "Today," as the great Catholic theologian Karl Rahner put it, "everyone is the next-door neighbor and spiritual neighbor of everyone else in the world." And the organizers...

BOSTON (AP) _ Catholic Charities has apparently angered some archdiocesan officials by accepting a $56,035 donation from Voice of the Faithful, a lay reform group formed in response to the sex abuse crisis. The social service agency, an arm of the Archdiocese of Boston, decided to take the money last Wednesday, two days before Pope John Paul II accepted Cardinal Bernard Law's resignation as Boston archbishop. Voice of the Faithful had a rocky relationship with Law, who had not decided whether to accept its donation. The funds had been collected from Roman Catholics unwilling to give directly to the archdiocese...

The reform group and the archbishop: A rising tide runs into a wall Sunday, November 24, 2002 BY DAVID GIBSON Star-Ledger Staff [Newark, NJ] -- The ban that Newark Archbishop John J. Myers directed last month at the New Jersey chapter of a burgeoning national Catholic reform group was about as cut and dried as an edict can get. To Myers, the group Voice of the Faithful was "anti- Church and, ultimately, anti-Catholic," and in no uncertain terms he said its members could not meet on church property anywhere in the four counties of the Newark archdiocese. But Voice of...

WOODSTOCK IS FINALLY OVERTHE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN' By: John GuthmillerPundits are wallowing in the unexpected largesse of last Tuesday's history-making midterm election. Seldom do the chattering classes get so much meat to chew on. Conservatives - the handful who get air time - are reveling like the Osbournes at a wrap party, while Democrats are alternately wailing like they should have at Paul Wellstone's funeral or putting on a game face and pretending their unprecedented losses don't matter. In the end, Republicans made political gains in the House of Representatives, and retook the Senate. These are stories to...

Taking issue with the Vatican Monday, October 21, 2002 By JOHN CHADWICK Staff Writer As he left church Sunday, parishioner Peter Melchiano said Catholics should consider sending a simple but powerful message to the Vatican about its handling of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. "I think it comes down to either zero tolerance, or zero donations," Melchiano said. A schoolteacher in Paterson, Melchiano said he's outraged over Rome's rejection last week of the American church's tough new rules for priests who abuse children. The rules, which called for removing any priest for a single instance of sexual abuse, are in...

<p>But Myers' preemptive move against the group, Voice of the Faithful, also highlighted a wider uncertainty in Catholicism over how a hierarchical church should deal with populist activism.</p> <p>"It's very hard to organize a grassroots movement in politics in the United States, let alone in the Catholic Church," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit weekly America and a longtime political scientist of the church.</p>

<p>With a sharply worded rebuke, Newark Archbishop John J. Myers has barred from church property the New Jersey chapter of a national lay reform group that started in Boston following the clergy sexual abuse scandals and now includes members across the country.</p>

<p>With a sharply worded rebuke, Newark Archbishop John J. Myers has barred from church property the New Jersey chapter of a national lay reform group that started in Boston following the clergy sexual abuse scandals and now includes members across the country.</p>

When Wolves Dress Like Sheep: A Close Look at Voice of the Faithful CRISIS Magazine - e-Letter August 8, 2002 ********************************************** Dear Friend, Lately, we've been hearing a lot about a group called Voice of the Faithful (VOTF). The media's coverage is invariably positive, playing up the group's proactive stance towards renewing the Church and holding bishops accountable for their actions. Now, I tend to be suspicious of any Catholic group the mainstream media supports. And as I began to take a closer look at VOTF, it became pretty clear that it's not as "faithful" as it claims. What it...

What Is VOTF's Real Agenda? Fred Martinez Monday, Aug. 12, 2002 Recently, Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) became the news media's favorite "Catholic" lay organization to cure the Catholic Church of its sex-abuse scandal. The New York Times and Boston Globe wrote glowing articles about this new "mainstream" Catholic organization. Even in Ireland and on the European landmass, newspapers were covering this "grassroots" group that started from a humble church basement. VOTF claims it wants to democratize and subordinate the bishops to "lay participation." It also claims to be mainstream and conservative. I received this e-mail from one of my...

Grassroots groups square off on scandal by Eric Convey Wednesday, August 21, 2002 A Newton-based group that wants to democratize the Roman Catholic Church worldwide is now facing opposition from a local grassroots organization. About 50 Catholics who want to preserve the historic deference of the laity toward priests and bishops have begun convening to coordinate a response to Voice of the Faithful. ``We're sort of the equal and opposite reaction,'' said Carol McKinley, a Pembroke resident and organizer of the month-old group calling itself Faithful Voice. Both organizations are employing tactics such as using the Internet to sign up...