National News
 In the spirit of the season, the Voices in Action Spiritual & Communal Growth team and our Winchester (MA) affiliate are making available a "Christmas Anticipation Service"—a prayer service organized around the O Antiphons to help us focus on the coming celebration. Bill Murphy put together the service for St. Eulalia's VOTF in Winchester, and the S&CG Team edited it for general use. You can download the document (a PDF file) from the VOTF web site.
Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year from all of us at the National office
Tax Donation Information
The 2010 Tax Relief Act allows taxpayers to make charitable contributions directly from their IRA’s without paying tax on the amount contributed. Click here to read more from the Independent Sector, http://www.independentsector.org/ira_rollover_background.
Please feel free to call Julie Dutcher, Development Coordinator at VOTF, at 781-559-3360 if we can be of any assistance to you. Happy New Year.
New Clergy Sexual Abuse Revelations Prompt VOTF to Reaffirm Its 10 Steps to Resolve Scandal
Fresh, seemingly daily, revelations of clergy sexual abuse continue roiling the worldwide Roman Catholic Church and have prompted Voice of the Faithful to reaffirm its Ten Steps Toward Resolving the Scandal initiative to help resolve the scandal and institute church reforms.
Two recent revelations in particular demonstrate the scandal’s broad extent and underscore the need to heed suggestions like those VOTF has made for resolving it, no matter what Church hierarchy claims about the sexual abuse scandal being behind us.
In one such revelation,
Continued http://votf.org/vineyard/Dec23_2010/scandal.html
Voice of the Faithful Emily & Rosemary Fund for Women in the Church Awards $10,000 Grants
VOTF recently awarded the first grants from the Emily & Rosemary Fund for Women in the Church to two women who reported losing their positions because of discrimination. The $10,000 grants were awarded to Carolyn Johnson, Ed.D., of Chestnut Ridge, N.Y., and Karen DeFilippis of Colleyville, Texas. Applications for the next round of grants can be found at www.votf.org. The deadline is February 1, 2011.
Lynette Petruska, formerly a Roman Catholic nun and now a St. Louis attorney, established the Emily & Rosemary Fund last year. The fund was established to support women who lose employment in the Roman Catholic Church as a result of injustice or discrimination and to help women who are working to bring about justice and equality in the Church.
Continued http://votf.org/vineyard/Dec23_2010/fund.html
Book Corner
VOTF member Don Brophy has written Catherine of Siena: A Passionate Life to much acclaim. The book, available on Amazon, was lauded by Booklist as "both gripping and enlightening.”
Affiliate News
Bridgeport VOTF sent the following letter to their Bishop asking that the Feast of the Holy Innocents be dedicated to victims of clergy sexual abuse. Many other affiliates have taken this letter and sent it to their own Bishops.
Dear Bishop Lori:
Each year, on December 28, just three days after Christmas, the Church celebrates the feast of the Holy Innocents in memory of the infants massacred by King Herod in his frantic search for the Christ Child (Mt. 2:16-18).
In our day, sad to say, many innocent children have suffered a different kind of massacre at the hands of predatory priests. Although our children’s lives were not taken away, their innocence was destroyed and many have endured severe trauma through their adult lives. This grievous tragedy weighs heavily on the Church today and all of us, as members of Christ’s Body, must take responsibility for it.
As a step toward acknowledging that responsibility, Voice of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport proposes that you designate the feast of the Holy Innocents as a special day of commemoration of the survivors of priestly sexual abuse.
Continued http://votf.org/vineyard/Dec23_2010/bridgeport.html
Site Seeing
Sister Maureen Turlish, a member of VOTF’s CPSS group asks for a universal pledge to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation...
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/childrens-rights-are-human-rights
Does the pope have it right?
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/crisis-does-pope-have-it-right
Bishop says hospital not Catholic; moral theologians back hospital
http://ncronline.org/news/no-direct-abortion-phoenix-hospital-theologian-says
Former Belgian Cardinal urges “openness” on sexual abuse
http://www.euronews.net/2010/12/21/former-belgian-cardinal-urges-openness-on-sex-abuse/
Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church
The last installment of a series that looks at Clergy Abuse in the Catholic Church from 1984-2010
By Tom Doyle J.C.D., C.A.D.C
The Church authorities and their defenders among the laity ask with increasing frustration: “What more do they want? No matter what we do it is never enough!” From the beginning the survivors have not been satisfied with the Church’s response and with the steps taken precisely because these are not enough. As long as the pope and the bishops insist on doing it their way, avoiding risks and claiming the dominant role, they will never be able to comprehend the true nature of this terrible plague. Their failure to “get it” is manifestly obvious from the efforts to shield the bishops from any accountability. Over the years John Paul II and Benedict XVI as well as numerous bishops have tried to frame clergy abuse as a problem for the entire Church, often calling on the laity to join in doing penance and asking forgiveness.
Continued: http://votf.org/vineyard/Dec23_2010/doyle.html
Letter to the Editor
Dear Editor,
As invited in your regular bulletins I am taking the opportunity to sound off on our mutual problems with the Church of our birth.
Yes, I am the vintage 'cradle Catholic', now 85 years and counting.
Parochial school, Jesuit high school and college, altar boy....the works.
Hung in there until I had to recognize that current Pope is a congenital liar (mea culpa, mea culpa) who with great naiveté seems to think that his Jesuitical locutions conceal that failing.
I think I might best be described now as a somehow passive bomb thrower.
Passive because I am not going to do anything about it but a bomb thrower because I believe that your people are spectacularly timid about their remedies.
For the past year I have stayed away from Mass and the sacraments meanwhile saying my daily rosary pretty faithfully and feeling closer than ever to our Lord, Jesus.
In other words it is now God and me and no intermediary involved.
This was actually precipitated by the reaction of a curate when I questioned the discontinuance of distribution of the parish bulletin. He pointed at his puny chest and said "we run the parish, not you....and the door you just came in swings out just as easily and you might like to try it"
I responded with a vulgarity I had never used before nor since which led to more unpleasantness when he 'reported' me to the pastor...and on and on.
At any rate I continued attending Mass for another 6 weeks but as I read in the daily press as well as your publications more and more of the idiocy of our 'leaders' there came an epiphany. And today I am on my own and happy with it.
I thank God I had all that early intensive Catholic life or I would have nothing to hang on to. But unless you people lead a real revolution I guess this is the way it will end for me.
So fight the good fight and God Bless.
J. Dougherty
Questions, Comments?
Please send them to Siobhan Carroll, Vineyard Editor at Vineyard@votf.org. Unless otherwise indicated, I will assume comments can be published as Letters to the Editor. |
