April 2002 Call to Action News

Getting Around

Scandal also hurts social justice

Is it illogical to have priest pedophilia in the page 1 headline of this peace and justice issue of CTA News? Not really. "If the church does not respond vigorously to this scandal, then the authority the hierarchy has to teach morally will vanish. There will be no moral credibility for the bishops to speak about justice, truth, racial equality, war or immigration if they don't get their own house in order."(Scott Appleby, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at Notre Dame. In N.Y.Times, 3/17.)

End of a way of life

Eugene Kennedy, married-priest psychologist and author of "The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality," sees the current crisis as the death knell of the clerical system: "The epidemic of sexual abuse by priests and other religious personnel reveals the long-denied structural faults in that environment. That leaves bishops resembling Confederate generals who seem not to understand that the war is over, that the way of life they have been defending has come to an end." (NCR, 3/8)

Protest on CTA-Hope

The CTA Next Generation e-mail discussion list, CTA-Hope, is the site of another petition protesting the cover-up and urging structural reform. The petition is entitled, "Reform Catholic Priesthood and Leadership." Author is Paula Kampf of Cleveland, Ohio. You can read it and sign on at www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/ 978211882

CTA can hold escrow funds

Some Catholics, in Boston and beyond, speak of diverting their donations from the church hierarchy to an escrow account until needed reforms remedy the pedophilia scandal. If a non-profit organization is needed to hold the escrow funds, national CTA can play that role. It did so for a New York City parish protesting an autocratic pastor in 1998, and has guidelines for doing so again. Contact Don Wedd: 773-404- 0004, ext. 270.

World Day of Prayer for women's ordination

CTA News went to press on March 25, the annual date of the World Day of Prayer. Women's Ordination Conference (WOC) national coordinator, Genevieve Chavez, was featured speaker at a prayer event organized by CTA New Mexico in Albuquerque. Dozens of other observances were going on throughout the world. We will do a round-up of World Day news in ChurchWatch next month.

Celebrate Herstory

Catholics Speak Out and WOC are collaborating on a signature ad in the NCR, an open letter to Ludmila Javorova, the Czech woman priest ordained by the underground Church under Communism. Her story was told by Miriam Therese Winter in her recent book, "Out of the Depths." The letter affirms and celebrates Ludmila's priesthood, which the hierarchy has now disavowed. Sign the ad ($25 or more) via credit card on the Web at www.quixote.org/cso Deadline: Apr. 26. 301 699-0042