Posted on 06/13/2011 11:55:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Members of a liberal group of U.S. Roman Catholics on Sunday called on Church leaders to open talks with their members on controversies ranging from the ordination of women to allowing priests to marry.
Members of the American Catholic Council, meeting in Detroit, said they had grown concerned the church's hierarchy was not listening to its members on issues such as the role of women, married clergy and the treatment of homosexuals.
The meeting comes as the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is struggling with a sexual abuse crisis, loss of membership and a dwindling number of priests.
"When in God's name are the conversations going to begin?" asked Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun who addressed the meeting of about 2,000 people -- part of a liberal wing that represents a minority in the 1.2 billion-member Church.
She likened the structure, with bishops and archbishops answering to the pope in Rome, to "a medieval system that has now been abandoned by humanity everywhere, except by us."
Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron had warned before the meeting that any members of the clergy who attended the group's mass would risk being defrocked.
"All of the invited keynote speakers have manifested dissent from Catholic teachings or support for dissenters," the archdiocese said in a posting on its website.
Robert Wurm, a retired priest from Ferndale, Michigan, who officiated at the closing mass, said he was not worried the archbishop would take action against him.
"He was careful about that. He said they could be defrocked, not that they would," Wurm told reporters.
Under Church law, an archbishop has authority over all masses held in his area.
"It's disheartening that a Detroit priest would preside over a Sunday service with so many serious liturgical abuses," said Ned McGrath, spokesman for the archdiocese.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Sounds more like liberals aren’t listening to the church. Maybe they should just join the unitarian universalists where it doesn’t matter what you believe.
PS - I am not Catholic.
If Catholics want “liberal” go to the Episcopalians. Otherwise known as “Catholic Lite”.
(Not meant to insult other churches). It’s just meant to show that if you want to be a Catholic, perhaps you might want to hold the church views. Not that Notre Dame, Georgetown, and the rest of the (formerly) Catholic universities hold Catholic views, either.
Probably held their meeting in the broom closet.
I am and thank you for your comment. It’s appreciated.
I wish those ultra liberal nuns would go away and join some other church. They won’t leave because they like the three hots and a cot, as well as health care.
Makes me wonder why the likes of Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, etc. ( most of who support abortion and partial birth abortion, and even gay marriage ), still want to remain Roman Catholic...
Precisely.
We have a religious smorgasbord available.
If they don’t like the lutefisk, they can have the pickled herring. Nobody is stopping them.
Fixed.
They want to change dogma, which can’t be changed by anyone on this earth, even the Pope. These soroscatholics know it already. The media are also complicit, because all that these people have to do is snap their fingers, and their gripes will appear all over the staterunmedia. The long-range goal of the UN is a one world religion which might have something to do with it.
This is really getting out of hand.
You have two choices. Follow church doctrine or change religions. Simple really.
“I suspect that if the church were really listening, all of these people would be excommunicated.”
:)
Sounds like ACORN is using Alinsky tactics against the Church.
Liberals are upset the church isn’t CHANGING and giving into their demands. That’s a more accurate headline.
Ordination of women - that is truly a liberal stance.
Married priests, however, is biblical. Look up the qualifications for church leaders and you will see they are not forced to stay single by taking a celibacy vow. If they wanted to be married, they could marry and still be church leaders as long as they met the other criteria, being married was not a disqualifying factor.
The Church is not required to listen to people who hate their faith.
An international gathering of Dominicans investigated the status of women in the Church. The study came back to say that womens’ ordination was only an issue in the US and only mattered to nuns and ex nuns, mostly over 50.
The world does not actually revolve around you ladies.
I understand what you’re trying to say, but Episcopalian has long since ceased being Catholic-anything. If you want to stay current, you might substitute Anglican. Your problem would be that some Anglicans are extremely low church and hardly have Communion while others look, sound and smell exactly like High Catholic services of 500 years ago. I guess the average probably falls about Catholic-normative.
Just so you know, I’m an Anglican priest of the High Church variety. We have more in common with Orthodoxy than Rome, so calling us Catholic-lite simply won’t fit. Our key argument with Rome is the primacy of the Pope. We hold that all bishops are co-equal vicars of Christ and need no further intermediary sacramentally. We do have Archbishops, but they are Presidents of Councils, not Chairmen of Curia.
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