Local Catholics Share Their Thoughts on the American Catholic Council

A number of Catholics from the local church of St. Paul-Minneapolis attended the American Catholic Council in Detroit on the weekend of June 10-12.

What did they think of this gathering of almost 2000 Catholics dedicated to church reform? Did they like what they saw and heard? Following are some of their thoughts on this landmark event.

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I thoroughly enjoyed the conference this past weekend. I was excited by the energy for reform and saddened by brokenness reported. How is it possible that an institution as old as the Catholic Church got so broken? Why has it taken so long for us to stand up and demand that it be right and just. It cannot continue! We owe it to generations to come to stop the hurt and the pain that the current church structure is causing. Tell a friend, shout it from the roof tops. Many have questioned the wrongs but, few know there is a movement to address them. Thank you to all of the planners and organizers. Well done good and faithful servants! I wish we could say that to those in Rome!

– Nancy Ritt

So much energy for renewal and reform emanating from Detroit...so much encouragement to press forward. Joan Chittister was superb in her challenge to us to remember those who pressed on despite water cannons, police dogs (MLK), the suffragettes, all those who led the movements that resulted in reform, all those who speak truth to power! Special thanks to Father Wurm for his courage to celebrate Mass with us despite the AB's threats. It really is "time to LEAP".

– Colleen Wehling

For Jim and me it was a marvelous experience to be there to share the enthusiasm and commitment of so many. The main address presenters were spot on. What Anthony Padovano laid out, Jim Carroll placed in historical context with engaging personal touches and then Matt Fox came with blazing guns aimed at the Vatican. Matt does his homework, so he was not blowing smoke.

Having the Hans Küng interview up front set the proper tone for feeling that we were on the right track.

The only drawbacks for me were the limited time for exhibits and the lack of the perspective of an "insider Catholic" on the typed words. The mistakes were often humorous, but also distracting.

As an annual CTA participant, I am used to seeing a primarily older crowd, but at CTA there are some young families and a growing number of young adults because the leadership has spent some energy on "Next Generation" work. The participants at ACC were decidedly older. Are the people between 40-60 not as interested or unable to get away or what?

– Karen Fitzpatrick

I found the talks by the main presenters at the conference thoughtful, balanced, challenging, respectful and hopeful. While talk does not a reform make, these were inspiring and necessary. It is up to us now to keep moving forward locally in the same spirit--a major task, yes, not fast enough or radical enough for some, yes, but I believe it is the right way to move.

– Jim Moudry

The AAC was a real energizer. Speakers went over all our complaints but filled us with hope. The workshops focused on action. Action is where change will occur. As James Carroll said MOVE -- MOVE. Any small action in a parish will put a stick in the cogs of authority. Letters, refusal to "go along", respectful disagreement with homilies, all are movements in the right direction. The reformation stone is rolling down hill; it cannot be stopped if we continue to act.

– Judith Pryor

The Other Side of the Catholic Tradition

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By Matthew Fox


Editor's Note: This commentary was first published June 14 in The Washington Post.


People who came of age in the past 40 years have known only one version of the Roman Catholic Church—a version of an iron-fisted ideology that first John Paul II and then Benedict XVI have enforced in the process of condemning condoms, birth control, liberation theology, creation spirituality, women, gays, the “secular world” and much more. World-over the hierarchy are being criticized for coddling pedophile priests and bishops while denouncing theologians and others who bring ideas to an age-old tradition.

All these thoughts and more emerged last weekend at an event in Detroit sponsored by progressive Catholic groups networking as the “American Catholic Council.” So opposed to the event was Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron, that the priest who was to lead the final Mass was told the day before that if he did so he would be laicized. At the last minute a Canadian priest was shipped in to lead the Mass for the American Catholic Council of 2000 participants including representatives from similar groups in Europe and Australia.

In twelfth century Germany, the Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen, healer, scientist, composer and author of 10 books, awakened popes and abbots alike, firing off letters like this one to Pope Anastasius IV: “O man, you who sit on the papal throne, you despise God when you don’t hurl from yourself the evil but even worse, embrace it and kiss it by silently tolerating corrupt men. . .And you, O Rome, are like one in the throes of death. You will be so shaken that the strength of your feet, the feet on which you now stand, will disappear. For you don’t love the King's daughter, justice.”

Thomas Aquinas, who followed a century after Hildegard, wrote commentaries on 10 works by the greatest scientist of his day, Aristotle, even though the pope had forbidden Christians to study Aristotle. So controversial was Aquinas in his day that the king of France had to call out his troops to surround the convent where Aquinas lived to protect him from Christians aroused by fundamentalist clergy. For Aquinas, “revelation comes in two books—the Bible and Nature” and “a mistake about nature results in a mistake about God.”

Aquinas insisted that one is always responsible to one’s conscience, more than to any other authority. (Indeed, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. cites Aquinas on this point in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.) Aquinas was condemned by church authorities three times after he died but eventually was declared a saint.

Another Dominican, Meister Eckhart, is probably the greatest mystic the West has produced. His writings abound with depth, humor, paradox and challenges to establishment Christianity. For example, he declares, “I pray God to rid me of God.” He emphasizes what contemporary Biblical scholars are saying, that Christ is found not just in Jesus but in all of us. Eckhart says, “What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God 1,400 years ago and I do not do so in my time and my person and my culture?” Eckhart was condemned by Pope John XXII a week after he died. It was reading Eckhart that converted Thomas Merton from a dualistic monk of the 1950’s to a prophetic mystic of the 60‘s.

Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit mystic and scientist who was banished from his home country to China early in the 20th century by church authorities, but who found plenty of scientific and mystical work to delve into in his exile. He spent his life researching the deeper meanings of science and spirituality and, being forbidden to publish most of his works in his life time, he left his books in the hands of a lay woman who got them published after he died.

Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council of the early 1960’s has been called the “greatest religious event of the twentieth century.” Sadly, the papacy of John Paul II turned its back on its principles, including the courageous response of Latin American Liberation Theology that supported the poor and oppressed in direct expression of Gospel values. Further, contrary to the spirit and law of Vatican II, a modern day Inquisition was launched with Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) as chief inquisitor. One can argue that in squelching the Vatican Council, the Vatican has been in schism for 40 years since traditionally Councils trump popes, popes don’t trump Councils.

Can the Catholic Church resurrect from its self-dug grave and experience another renaissance in giving great souls and ideas to the world? As I point out in my recent book, The Pope’s War, if an angry lay movement rises up and launches Lay councils instead of Vatican councils, and moves to deconstruct the church as we know it and reconstruct it on the authentic principles of Jesus’ spirit and teaching, surely something wonderful and needed could occur. The Detroit gathering, the archbishop not withstanding, seemed to be such a launch.

Matthew Fox is author of 29 books on spirituality and culture of which the most recent are The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved and Christian Mystics. He was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years until Cardinal Ratzinger expelled him in 1993. He now operates as an Episcopal priest in the diocese of Northern California.

Hans Küng Urges Peaceful Revolution Against Roman Absolutism

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By Jerry Filteau


Editor's Note: This article was first published June 11, 2011, in the National Catholic Reporter.


DETROIT – Famed theologian Fr. Hans Küng has called for a “peaceful” revolution by world Catholics against the absolutism of papal power.

He made the call in a video message June 10, the first evening of a conference in Detroit of the American Catholic Council.

“I think few people realize how powerful the pope is,” Küng said, likening papal power today to the absolute power of French monarchs that the French people revolted against in 1789.

“We have to change an absolutist system without the French Revolution,” he said. “We have to have peaceful change.”

Küng, who was perhaps the most famous of the theological experts at the Second Vatican Council nearly 50 years ago, was born in Switzerland but spent most of his life teaching at the University of Tubingen, Germany.

Now 83, Küng is ecumenical professor emeritus at Tubingen and rarely travels for health reasons, so his message to the ACC was delivered in the form of a half-hour videotaped interview with American theologian Anthony T. Padovano, conducted last year at Küng’s home. [Note: Padovano will be the keynote speaker at the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform's September 17 Synod of the Baptized: "Making Our Voices Heard."]

John Hushon, co-chairman of the ACC, said the conference, being held June 10-12 at Detroit’s Cobo Hall had more than 1,800 registered participants, from at least 44 states and 13 foreign countries.

In the interview with Küng, played on two giant screens in one of the convention center’s main rooms, the theologian predicted change in the church despite resistance from Rome. Vatican II “was a great success, but only 50 percent, he said.

On the one hand, he said, many reforms were realized, including renewal in the liturgy, a new appreciation of Scripture, and other significant changes such as recognition of the importance of the laity and the local church and various changes in church discipline.

“Unfortunately the council was not allowed to speak about the question of celibacy, about the question of birth control and contraception. Of course, ordination of women was far away from all the discussions,” he said.

“Many documents of the council are ambivalent documents because the Rome machinery – the Roman Curia – was able to stop any movement of reform, to stop it not completely, but half way.”

“What also I did not expect,” he added, was “that we could have such a restoration movement as under the Polish pope, and the German pope now.”

When asked what reasons he had for hope of reform in the church today, he answered that hope today is “sometimes a little difficult” in the face of a restorationist hierarchy, but “the world is moving on, going ahead, with or without the church” and “I believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is stronger than the hierarchy.”

Referring to current crises in the church – clerical sexual abuse of minors, the shortage of priests, alienation of women and youth – he said, “Humanity learns most by suffering” – whether in the church or in the recent U.S. economic crisis. Even though many economists and others saw the economic meltdown coming, “it was not possible to have a law in Congress before the catastrophe,” he said.

He said he thinks at least some Vatican officials are similarly recognizing that change is needed in the church.

“If we do not learn now, we have to suffer more – more priests will be leaving, more parishes will be without pastors, more churches will be empty” and more young people and women will leave the church or dissociate internally from it, he said. “All these are indications, I think, that we have to change now.”

Chief sponsors the American Catholic Council are three independent Catholic groups seeking changes in the church: Voice of the Faithful, CORPUS and FutureChurch.

Hushon said when the ACC was formed three years ago it sought to create a “big tent dialogue among all” sectors of the U.S. church, independent of partisan or ideological lines, but “group after group, bishop after archbishop, said no, or ignored us.”

The divide was highlighted last October when Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit warned his priests and people against participating in the ACC conference.

It was exacerbated further June 3 when Vigneron threatened to laicize any priest or deacon who participated in the ACC closing liturgy Pentecost Sunday, June 12, saying, “There are good reasons for believing forbidden concelebration will take place by the laity and with those not in full communion with the church.”

In a pre-meeting exchange with NCR Hushon denied the claim and documented it with correspondence in which the ACC told the archdiocese that “there will be only one presider, a priest in good standing.”

The ACC chose Cobo Hall as its venue because this year is the 35th anniversary of the bicentennial Call to Action conference, a national gathering of Catholic laity sponsored by the U.S. bishops, was held there, with Detroit’s Cardinal John Dearden as presider and host.

The 1976 conference, despite its flaws, has been credited with providing groundwork for and impetus to the bishops’ economic and peace pastorals in the 1980s as well as greater attention to racism, minorities, family life, people with disabilities, respect for human life and a wide range of other pastoral and social justice initiatives developed nationally or in dioceses in the ensuing years.

Jerry Filteau, NCR Washington correspondent, is covering the Detroit meeting. Watch NCRonline.org for updates.


See also the previous PCV posts:
Hans Küng Says Only Radical Reforms Can Save the Catholic Church
Catholics Speak Out in Nationwide Listening Sessions
American Catholic Council to Convene in Detroit in June
Reflections on an Ordination Golden Anniversary
Launching a Council of the Baptized in St. Paul and Minneapolis
Listening Sessions Underway in the St. Paul-Minneapolis Local Church

Recommended Off-site Links:
The American Catholic Council: Küng Starts Things Off But I Write About Fox – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, June 11, 2011).
American Catholic Council, Detroit – First Impressions – Brian Coyne (Catholica Forum, June 11, 2011).
The American Catholic Conference – A Place Where No Roman Catholic is Allowed to Go – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, June 7, 2011).

Catholics Speak Out in Nationwide Listening Sessions

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Editor's Note: The following is a media release from the American Catholic Council.


A key component of the inaugural convening of the American Catholic Council, to unfold in Detroit on Pentecost Weekend June 10-12, will be the release of a report on nearly 100 local and regional Listening Sessions across the country over the past 18 months.

These sessions have taken place in diverse settings, from parish halls and living rooms, to hotel conference rooms and retreat centers. Each has been an occasion where the faithful have had the opportunity to dialogue and listen to the promptings of the Spirit as they prayerfully considered fundamental questions about the future of the Catholic Church. Many gathered out of a sense of urgency and a shared sense of responsibility to build a better Church, and one grounded in the vision and promise of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

The overwhelming issue echoed throughout Listening Sessions is the hierarchy's unwillingness to enter into dialogue with the laity about real issues which affect the lives and faith of real people in the church. From the perspective of the vast majority of participants in these listening sessions, the hierarchy is increasingly remote, disengaged and irrelevant to the faith lives of rank and file Catholics. This suggests a fundamental crisis of leadership in an increasingly dysfunctional institutional Church. Many see this failure to engage the diversity of the faithful as undermining the promise of a more inclusive Church that is central to the reforms called for by Vatican II. It is increasingly evident that the primary focus of the ACC when it convenes in Detroit will be to address issues of leadership, governance and structural reform.

These dialogues were informed by three fundamental tenets drawn from the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Vatican II).

• As baptized Catholics, all the faithful share in the ministry of Jesus, the Christ;

• Because all of us are the Church, the common sense of faithful Catholics (sensus fidelium) is a legitimate agent of the Holy Spirit and serves to inform Church practice and teaching, in tandem with Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium;

• As adult Catholics, we are called to nurture an informed conscience that is the final arbiter of our actions.

Preliminary data demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of participants in the listening sessions love the church and do not wish to leave the church like the 30 million who have left in recent years. Many are greatly concerned that the spirit of Vatican II has been repressed.

The 2011 Detroit Council celebrates the upcoming 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council convened by Pope John XXIII and seeks to reinvigorate the Council's reforms, which have been increasingly downplayed in recent years. These include openness to all peoples and cultures, collegial and responsible decision-making, the primacy of a well-formed conscience, and sincere ecumenism.

The ACC Listening Session process also recalls two years of similar sessions leading up to an historic gathering convened in Detroit in 1976 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to implement Vatican II. Honoring the U.S Bicentennial year, that event 35 years ago recognized that many reforms called for by Vatican II mirrored foundational American principles of freedom of conscience, individual rights, and democratic practices, thus encouraging increased involvement of the laity in Church governance.


To register for the June 10-12 American Catholic Council, click here.

For program brochure, click here.


See also the previous PCV post:
American Catholic Council to Convene in Detroit in June

American Catholic Council to Convene in Detroit in June

By Jerry Filteau


Editor's Note: This article was first published May 2, 2011 by the National Catholic Reporter.


The American Catholic Council, a reform group formed in Washington in September 2008, plans to hold its first national conference in Detroit June 10-12. The organization has already drawn fire from the hierarchy for parts of its platform.

Last October, Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron cautioned local Catholics not to attend the conference and ordered local parishes, schools and other Catholic institutions not to sponsor or host any of the preparatory listening sessions leading up to the conference.

In a media advisory, the archdiocese called the planned conference a “misguided effort” that proposes goals “largely in opposition to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council” and “distorts the true spirit of Vatican II.”

Among organizations that banded together to form the American Catholic Council are: Voice of the Faithful, an international lay organization started in Boston in the wake of the clergy sex abuse scandal in order to promote greater transparency and accountability in the church; FutureChurch, a Cleveland-based Catholic group, headed by St. Joseph Sr. Christine Schenk, that advocates expanding ordained ministry to women and married men; and CORPUS, an organization of married priests seeking an end to mandatory celibacy for Catholic priests in the Latin church.

Featured speakers at the June gathering in Detroit are to include:

* Famed Swiss-born theologian Fr. Hans Küng, ecumenical professor emeritus at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Since 1979, Küng has been barred from teaching as a Catholic theologian. Advance notices say that depending on his health, he may address the group only by a pre-taped video.

* Sr. Joan Chittister, former prioress of the Benedictine Abbey of Erie, Pa., a noted author and an NCR columnist who has often criticized church positions on a wide range of issues.

* Anthony Padovano, a theologian, author, former priest and former CORPUS president, who has long advocated the abolition of mandatory celibacy in the Latin church and other changes in church practice.

* James Carroll, a Boston Globe columnist, former priest, and award-winning author whose 2009 book, Practicing Catholic, is sharply critical of the papacy of Benedict XVI.

* Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and former lieutenant governor of Maryland.

* Jeannette Rodriguez, chair of theology and religious studies at Seattle University and author of several works on Hispanic theology. Rodriguez also serves on the NCR board of directors.

In preparatory work for the Detroit conference, the American Catholic Council has held numerous listening sessions around the country and has drafted a “Catholic Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.” It says in part that every Catholic has the right to:

* Develop an informed conscience and to act in accord with it.

* Participate in a faith community” and have “responsible pastoral care.

* Proclaim the Gospel and to respond to the community’s call to ministerial leadership.

* Freedom of expression and the freedom to dissent.

* A voice in the selection of leaders and in the manner in which governance and decision-making are exercised.

* Summon and speak in assemblies where diverse voices can be heard.

“Church leaders,” it says, “shall respect the rights and responsibilities of the baptized and their faith communities.”

“One must not be told that one becomes a Catholic at the cost of being less an American,” the preamble to the Catholic Bill of Rights and Responsibilities says. “We cannot declare that fundamental rights have no place in the church of Christ.

“We often hear that the ‘church is not a democracy,’ ” it adds. “This is not true: Ecumenical councils, papal elections and the election of religious superiors occur regularly. The first ecumenical council in 325 [in Nicea] declared that no priest was validly ordained unless the community made the selection. Popes and bishops were chosen by the people at large. Fundamentally, Catholic doctrine maintains that the Spirit is given to all and that baptism makes every Catholic equal.”

On its web site the council describes itself as “a movement bringing together a network of individuals, organizations and communities to consider the state and future of our church.”

“We believe our church is at a turning point in its history,” it adds. “We recall the promise of the Second Vatican Council for a renaissance of the roles and responsibilities of all the baptized through a radically inclusive and engaged relationship between the church and the world. We respond to the spirit of Vatican II by summoning the baptized together to demonstrate our re-commitment.”

Among other presenters at the June gathering, to be held at Detroit’s Cobo Hall Convention Center, are Loretto Sr. Jeannine Gramick, a co-founder of New Ways Ministry and longtime advocate of fuller Catholic ministry to the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender-questioning community; Leonard Swidler, professor of Catholic thought and interreligious dialogue at Temple University in Philadelphia and a founder of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church; Diana Hayes, a leading African-American Catholic theologian; Jesuit Fr. James Hug and Dominican Sr. Maria Riley of Center of Concern, a Jesuit-founded social justice think tank; Barbara Blaine and David Clohessy, leaders of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests; and Jason Berry, whose NCR writings on clergy sexual abuse of minors have helped change the way the church approaches that issue.

For complete details, visit: www.americancatholiccouncil.org.


Jerry Filteau is NCR Washington correspondent. He plans to cover the Detroit American Catholic Council conference for NCR and to write about pre-conference developments in coming weeks.


See also the previous PCV posts:
Launching a Council of the Baptized in St. Paul and Minneapolis
Listening Sessions Underway in the St. Paul-Minneapolis Local Church
CCCR's Action Plan for 2011
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission