Someone's Irrelevant, Lord... Kumbaya...
Posted by: tony on 10/11/2005 03:24 PM
Updated by: tony on 10/25/2005 01:17 PM
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Expires: 11/11/2005 12:00 AM
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 Now the Voice of the Dissidents Faithful want to pick the next Archbishop of San Francisco. Here are some tidbits from an article on SFGate.com called Catholic group convenes to change the church. Even the name of the article makes me break out into peals of laughter. Here are some tidbits:
With their gray hair and their overwhelming preference for decaffeinated drinks, the nearly 100 members of the lay Catholic group Voice of the Faithful who gathered inside St. Matthew's Catholic Church gym in San Mateo on Sunday didn't look intimidating.
That's because they're not. As Dominico Bettinello Jr. so aptly states:
This San Francisco Chronicle article is either unintentionally ironic or clueless in that it portrays Voice of the Faithful as the aging hippie-infested liberal group that it is.
That just about describes it. The 60's era we-will-overcome protesters have another target. Now it's the Catholic Church. Haven't these throwbacks realized that the Church is not a democracy? Well, I guess not, with statements like this:
"We're here to revive a very ancient tradition where the laity are intimately involved in the designation of the archbishop," said local Voice of the Faithful leader Jim Jenkins.
My guess is that this won't be happening in my lifetime. It so happens that the authority in the Catholic Church centers on... get this... the Pope. You know, the guy with the Keys to the Kingdom. From him, the authority flows down to who he designates from Cardinal to parish priest. Guess who the authority never touches... Yup, you guessed it. The blue-heads who are members of Voice of the "Faithful".
Archdiocese spokesman Maurice Healy hit the nail on the head with this one:
"I'm a faithful Catholic, but they are not my voice," said Healy, calling the group presumptuous. "They are a small number of Catholics who have liberal agendas that are not conducive with my understanding what it means to be Catholic."
I think they have been liberally sniffing The Smoke of Satan The Spirit of Vatican II.
"As soon as we start meeting and talking about it at church, they respond with a sort of 'How dare you?' " said Davey, 65, a parishioner in San Ramon and Oakland. "But this is our church. You the bishops are the messengers. It's become a power issue."
No, Mr. Davey. It's an authority issue and... put your ear up to the monitor... YOU HAVE NONE!!!!!!!!
Participants in the meeting named several church leaders they would like to see as archbishop, including the Rev. John C. Wester of San Francisco, who is acting head of the San Francisco Archdiocese. Also on their short list were Richard Garcia of Sacramento and St. Matthew's pastor Anthony McGuire, who helped the group by allowing it to meet at his church.
I guess this group is doing a decent service. There will be no "stealth" heterodox candidates if these people keep trumpeting their names. An endorsement from VOF should be the kiss of death to any episcopal candidate.
Update: Domenico Bettinelli has discovered the same thing.
The Boston Globe trumpets its favorite Catholic dissenters again, but lets the cat out of the bag. For years, VOTF has claimed 50,000 members, and for years I’ve maintained that the 50,000 includes every single person who’s ever received an email from them. Now the reality is revealed. They now say that they have only 28,000 members and more than half of that is people who sign up on their web site. Only 44 percent belong to a local chapter. In addition only 25 percent have ever given money to the group, which means that only about 7,000 people can be considered to be actual dues-paying members. So much for VOTF representing American Catholics.
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