News from National

Help the Earthquake Victims in Haiti
Catholic Relief Services has set up a website for donations to the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. If you are interested in helping out, please follow the link https://secure.crs.org/site/Donation2?df_id=3181&
3181.donation=form1

VOTF 2010 Election Campaign has Begun
The VOTF Election Committee congratulates the nominees for national office in the 2010 National Officer Elections: Dan Bartley, Gaile Pohlhaus, Janet Hauter, Nick Mazza, Anne Southwood and Kevin Connors.

Our Election Campaign begins today and will end on Monday, February 8, 2010, when the voting period opens. Voting will be open for two weeks, ending at 12 noon on Monday, February 22, 2010. The results of the election will be announced on Wednesday, February 24, 2010, and the newly elected officers will take office on March 15, 2010.

During the campaign, we have arranged for several ways for the VOTF members to get to know the candidates and discuss the issues:

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News from the Affiliates

John Jay College Researcher Margaret Smith Presents Interim “Causes & Context” Report at January 4 New York VOTF Meeting
Submitted by Francis X. Piderit

On Monday, January 4th, Professor Margaret Smith from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice was the featured speaker at the monthly meeting of the New York VOTF affiliate. Smith, the mid-day speaker at the national VOTF convention held on Long Island at the end of October, gave an expanded interim report on the “Causes & Context” study now underway as she spoke before a New York audience of 60, which included representatives from VOTF affiliates in Westchester, Brooklyn and Queens, as well as interested members of the New York survivor community.

The presentation included more detailed data showing the distribution of incidence of abuse between 1950 and 2007 than was presented to the VOTF national convention audience. The graph of the total number of reported incidents shows a sharp increase in the 1960s, peaking in the 1970s, and then declining sharply in the 1980s and 1990s. A comparison between data from the John Jay historical study and data gathered since 2002 by CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) shows a consistent longitudinal pattern of incidents over the years. The pattern does not change – either for the abuse incidents reported before 2002, or the abuse incidents reported in each year from 2002 to 2007.

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Rigert’s New Database Available at Bishop-Accountability.org

Joe Rigert, whose book, An Irish Tragedy: How Sex Abuse by Irish Priests Helped Cripple the Catholic Church.” was reviewed in an earlier issue of In the Vineyard, wrote in to alert VOTF members of a first-ever database on more than 60 priests from Ireland accused of sex abuse in the United States. 

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Guest Commentary

Reflections from 25 Years of Experience At the Start of the New Year
Submitted by Thomas Doyle, J.C.D.

It is the beginning of 2010. Back many years ago when a new year would dawn, I remember when I would predict that this would be the last year of the Catholic sex abuse scandal.  This year the Church will change. This year the bishops will shift gears and focus on the thousands of victims. This year the lawsuits will end because they will no longer be necessary.

Some would call that wishful thinking. Others may believe it to be delusion. In either case it was obviously magical thinking based on unreality.

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VOTF Members Speak Out

Responding to an article in Long Island’s Newsday newspaper, VOTF’s Kevin Connors says:

By failing to distinguish between an institution and its leadership, spokesman for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Sean Dolan, misses the point when he accuses “dissident groups,” such as Voice of the Faithful of trying to harm the Church (Church watchdog revitalized, Jan.3, 2010). Dissident groups are not to blame for the critical shortage of priests; for the epidemic of church closings; or for the inexcusable failure to acknowledge the equality of women; or the practice of making decisions behind closed doors and announcing them as final and affirmed; or for the billions of dollars squandered in attempts to hide, and then explain away the indefensible treatment of defenseless children. Church leaders are responsible. And like their failed counterparts in industry who mindlessly squandered their organizations’ resources to bring near collapse to the world economy, it is the bishops, and the rules governing the way their institution is operated that need to be changed, not the faith.

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Site Seeing

For a comprehensive look at the investigation of U.S. women religious...
http://www.uscatholic.org/womenreligious

Several Irish media outlets reported on VOTF Ireland’s statement on Irish cover-up...

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Voice-of-the-Faithful-
targets-new-Irish-Catholic-bishop-over-child-
sex-abuse--80465207.html

Calendar

James R. Kelly Ph.D. will present “Radical but not Utopian: How the Peace and Pro-Life Movements Need Each Other” at Voice of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport’s first meeting of the New Year to be held on Thursday, January 14th, at 7:30 p.m., at the First Congregational Church on the Green in Norwalk. 

Dr. Kelly received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1969 and has taught at Fordham University since 1971. His areas of research have been in the sociology of religion with special emphasis on Catholicism.  A full professor of Sociology at Fordham since 1981, he has served as chairman of the Department of Sociology, and was elected President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in 1997. He has been a member of the New York Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue since 1975, and served as the first executive secretary of the Cardinal Bernadin Common Ground Catholic Initiative. In addition to his publications in professional journals such as The Review of Religious Research and Sociology of Religion, he has contributed to the publications Commonweal, Christianity Today and America where his article “Why the Pro-life Movement Should Return to Its Roots” appeared, February 16, 2009. He also appeared in a 2007 documentary, “Beyond the Politics of Life and Choice”.

All are welcome to attend. For more information about VOTF and for directions to the meeting, please visit our website, www.votfbpt.org.

The Church: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
VOTF-NJ presents a Special Program: Our Church: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Three speakers will help us understand how our institutional structures have changed from the early days of the church, the appalling situations we face today, and where hope lies for the future.

Saturday, February 6, 2010, 10:00 AM
9:30 AM Coffee
St. Mark's Lutheran Church
100 Harter Road
Morristown, NJ

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The Enduring Effects of Sexual Abuse by Clergy
Glastonbury Abbey, in conjunction with the Scituate Affiliate of Voice of the Faithful, is hosting a talk entitled, “The Enduring Psychological and Spiritual Effects of Clergy-Perpetrated Sexual Abuse”. The event will take place at the Abbey Center at the Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham on Tuesday evening, January 26th at 7:15 pm.

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Beyond the Fire Movie Premiere
The USA premiere of Maeve Murphy's award winning film (best feature, London Independent Film Festival), Beyond the Fire, will be held on Sunday evening, January 24, 2010, at 9:00 P.M. at the DEDHAM COMMUNITY THEATER, HIGH STREET, downtown DEDHAM, just off Route 1 (Providence Highway). 

Following the 77 minute film, a panel of clergy abuse experts/survivors and movie principals will share in a question and answer period. A donation of $10.00 would be appreciated but MUST not prevent anyone from attending the premiere. All proceeds will benefit the work of Road to Recovery, a non-profit organization founded and directed by Fathers Ken Lasch and Bob Hoatson that assists clergy abuse survivors with their recoveries. 

For more information
http://votf.org/vineyard/Jan14_2010/fire.html

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.