When the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) meets in Washington, November 11-14, they will be pressured by agenda-ridden Catholics to institute various reforms. Addressing this issue today is Catholic League president William Donohue:
“Yesterday, I issued a news release that was highly supportive of the new norms regarding priestly sexual abuse that were written by the mixed U.S.-Vatican commission. Today, I am making a statement that is highly critical of those who are condemning the work of the commission.
“Rogue Catholics should be ignored. Who are they? A good place to begin is by identifying the 22 reform groups who comprise Catholic Organizations for Renewal (COR). This is a motley crew of anti-Catholics (Catholics for a Free Choice) and those who are at war with the Church’s teachings on sexuality (all the rest). They feign interest in reforming the Church when their real goal is to topple it.
“Many Catholics these days are calling for a greater role for the laity. The Catholic League stands with the bishops in insisting that this role should be advisory only. Yet COR and others insist ‘The Vatican and U.S. bishops [every last one of them!] have simply lost their credibility as agents of due process’ and should therefore institute ‘impartial and independent lay review boards with deliberative power and the imperative to report directly to civil authority itself.’ This, of course, is just for starters. As anyone who has tracked these disaffected Catholics knows, their goal is to reconstruct the Church from top to bottom.
“The National Review Board headed by Frank Keating and the Office for Child and Youth Protection headed by Kathleen McChesney will do what lay Catholics should do: act as monitors and facilitators. Their role is not to govern the Church. More important, the very last persons that any sensible Catholic would ever want governing the Church are the likes of rogue Catholics that comprise COR.”
