More on the Catholic Revolt by lay members

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More on the Catholic Revolt by lay members

This Sunday's new york time.

Scandal Is Stirring Lay Catholics to Push Church for More Power
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and SAM DILLON

NDIANAPOLIS — As the nation's Roman Catholic bishops prepare to meet in Washington on Nov. 11 to complete their policy on sexual abuse by priests, they are confronting the most organized and widespread challenge to their power from the laity in the church's modern history.

Organizations like Voice of the Faithful, a national group formed in April in response to the scandal, are badgering bishops to disclose financial and personnel information previously kept locked in chancery offices. Other new lay groups are forming, old ones like Call to Action are finding new momentum, and all are talking about how to make the bishops accountable.

The demands for a role in church governance are being made by laypeople in dioceses far from Boston, the epicenter of the sex abuse crisis.

Here in Indianapolis, the archdiocese has been relatively unscathed by scandal, with only two priests accused in lawsuits of misconduct and another under investigation. Yet when a handful of concerned parishioners called a meeting to start an Indiana chapter of Voice of the Faithful, 125 people showed up.

Now the chapter is calling on Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein of Indianapolis to reveal how many priests have been accused of sexual misconduct, how much the archdiocese has spent as a result of those accusations, and how the archbishop chose the members of his sexual abuse review board.

"All these years I just left these matters to the bishops, but now I've had an awakening and realize that the laity must take responsibility for the church," said Mary Heins, treasurer of the Voice of the Faithful chapter in Indiana. "The bishops are hoping we'll drop the ball and become disinterested, but that's not going to happen. This is the time of the laypeople."

In previous eras, American Catholics in some dioceses sporadically challenged their bishops, and the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's called for more lay involvement in the church. But the widespread restiveness among laypeople now is unheard of, scholars said.

"This lay movement is the largest we have seen in the history of the American church," said the Rev. Gerald Fogarty, a Jesuit historian at the University of Virginia who has studied Catholic lay movements from Colonial times to the present.

The demands for structural change reverberating through the church have aroused fear and backlash from some bishops, but from others, a new receptiveness.

Nine bishops have recently banned Voice of the Faithful from meeting on church premises.

In a tense encounter in the Diocese of Camden, N.J., for example, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio called a Voice of the Faithful organizer "an ignorant Catholic" in a meeting, said the organizer, Kevin Gemmell, a technology consultant.

Mr. Gemmell said he responded, "I may not know all the intricacies, but I can see the hierarchy failed us by allowing all these abusers to stay in ministry."

But elsewhere, laypeople say bishops are demonstrating new responsiveness. In Baltimore, Cardinal William H. Keeler has won acclaim from laypeople for making public the names of every priest there who was ever credibly accused of sexual abuse, and how much the archdiocese had spent to resolve the cases.

In San Diego, Bishop Robert H. Brom invited to his office leaders of the local chapter of Call to Action, a liberal group seeking changes in the church, which is unwelcome in many dioceses. San Diego pastors had shunned the group. "For anyone interested in lay organizing," said Janet Mansfield, the group's San Diego coordinator, "now is a good time, because there's a vulnerability there on the part of the bishops, and they're a little more open."

When the depth of the scandal became apparent this year, even Catholic conservatives criticized the bishops and called for increased lay participation in church decisions. But as the lay groups have grown more assertive, some conservatives have expressed alarm that they are using the crisis for more radical changes.

There are many more pages to this article - go to website nytimes.com for entire article. (Free if accessed within a week or so - later access will cost an access fee)

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