Just four days before the CTA convention, 261 delegates selected by the 16 bishops of Austria met Oct. 23-26 in Salzburg and voted in overwhelming numbers for fundamental changes in the Church. The highly official "Dialogue for Austria" was created by the bishops, but was triggered by the grassroots We Are Church (WAC) petition drive in 1995. WAC leaders were among the delegates, as were representatives of the conservative Neo-Catechumenate.

WAC in Austria led to parallel petitions in Germany, the U.S., and other nations, and the formation of the International Movement We Are Church (IMWAC), in which CTA participates. IMWAC international coordinator Elfriede Harth of Germany told CTAers in Milwaukee the stunning news: 11 of the 12 subpoints in the WAC petition had been endorsed in some form by the Dialogue for Austria, generally by whopping majorities. Examples are ordaining married men (75 percent), diaconate for women (81 percent), full welcome for homosexuals (77 percent), communion for divorced-remarried (89 percent), more open laicization for married priests (86 percent), a people's role in selecting bishops (90 percent), voluntary contraception (77 percent).

A message from Pope John Paul II at the opening of the Salzburg delegates' summit called the Austrian process "a kind of sacred experiment." Two weeks later, the Austrian bishops delivered all the recommendations to the Pope and Vatican officials during their ad limina visit. The whole exercise seems likely to impact other European bishops' conferences, and to be copied in other nations.

In an op-ed piece in the NCR Dec. 11, CTA directors Sheila and Dan Daley drew parallels to the 1976 U.S. Bishops' Call To Action Conference in Detroit, where delegates adopted similar resolutions for church reform. The hierarchy failed to follow up, so Chicago-based CTA was founded as an independent movement.