Democracy-minded Catholics aim for laity 'Bill of Rights’ with Jacksonville meeting
By Jeff Brumley
IF YOU GO
Registration has closed for Saturday’s American Catholic Council listening session in Jacksonville, but limited numbers of walk-ups may be able to attend, organizers said. The meeting will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the University Center at the University of North Florida, 12000 Alumni Drive in Jacksonville. Visit the website at acn.americancatholiccouncil.org for more information.
Catholics pushing for a democratic reform of their church will gather in Jacksonville Saturday to remind bishops lay people need to be heard.
The idea behind the “listening assembly” at the University of North Florida, and at least 72 similar meetings held nationwide in the past year, is to formulate a “Catholic Bill of Rights,” organizers say. Participants in the American Catholic Council hope their effort will give the laity a greater and more consistent voice in matters concerning the running of parishes, dioceses and the church as a whole.
The movement’s goals “are largely in opposition to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the Holy Spirit,” Galeone said in his written directive
A Catholic theologian described the movement as one of many American efforts seeking structural reform of the church and that, like others, will likely make little or no dent in the way the Vatican does business. It joins other groups — seeking everything from the ordination of women to returning to the Latin Mass — considered “pressure groups” by the church.
The American Catholic Council is “pigeon-holed ideologically as Catholics on the left” and represent “a tempest in a tea pot” when seen in the context of global Catholicism, said Lawrence Cunningham, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.
But the organizers of the North Florida listening session see things much differently. In a recent planning session and in individual interviews, they said they are confident that church history and the divine are with them.
“The Holy Spirit is not just manifested in” the hierarchy “but also in the laity,” said John Frank, chairman of the planning committee for the North Florida listening assembly.
That’s an idea foreign to most Catholics, who, Frank said, are unaware they have not only the right but the obligation to voice concerns to their priests and bishops. American values of democracy and participatory government would infuse the church with openness and accountability, he said.
Opinions gathered from the 90 participants Saturday in Jacksonville, online and at other meetings will be collected and presented to a national gathering planned for sometime this summer in Detroit, Frank said.
Gainesville resident and planning committee member Natalie Cornell said issues like the clergy sex scandal and people leaving the church must be addressed with lay input.
“The bishops make all the decisions about everything in the church,” she said. “They don’t necessarily have to listen to anyone.”
That fact is contrary to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, which imparted more rights to the laity than has been implemented since it concluded in 1965, said Tom Umlauf, another Gainesville resident and planning committee member.
Umlauf said it stings that critics have branded listening session participants as heretics and schismatics.
“If we do not take our problems with the church to our leaders, it verges on sin,” Umlauf said.
Participants are often asked why they don’t simply join a denomination that has the kind of governing structure they want to see adopted by the Vatican, Umlauf said. The answer: He wouldn’t leave the United States despite wanting it to be a better place, so why would he leave his church?
“I’m staying here to make it better,” Umlauf said. “It’s better when the people are being heard.”
The Vatican Council was a three-year gathering of the world’s bishops that decided that the Mass and sacraments should be in everyday language instead of Latin. It also stipulated that lay people have a right and obligation to share matters of concern with the hierarchy, Cunningham said.
But he added that most dioceses around the world, including Galeone’s, have formed councils through which lay people can express concerns and ideas to their bishops, Cunningham said.
Regarding differences of opinion about the meaning and future of Vatican II, and whether it has been properly instituted or not, “is a huge, huge debate in the Catholic Church today.”
jeff.brumley@jacksonville.com
(904) 359-4310
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