By BRIAN CLOWES
Conclusion
(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For an electronic copy of the book Call to Action or Call to Apostasy, consisting of a detailed description of the current forms of dissent and how to fight them, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)
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As we have seen, dissenters subscribe to the articles of a so-called “Charter of the Rights of Catholics in the Church,” which was written in the mid-1990s and sets forth a long list of demands. These range from the acceptance of abortion and homosexuality to women and married “community-ordained facilitators.”
The unspoken but very obvious objective of the charter is the transformation of the Roman Catholic Church into just another dying liberal Protestant denomination, thus neutralizing her influence in the battle against the Culture of Death. Although not many dissenting groups still refer to the 20-year-old charter, their objectives continue to parallel its articles very closely.
The mechanism for enacting the charter is a parallel document called the “Proposed Constitution of the Catholic Church,” which was also formulated by the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church, or ARCC.
Its primary purpose is to call for a Constitutional Convention named Vatican III, which would enact all of the elements of the charter. It would be heavily staffed with liberals who would ruthlessly stifle orthodox voices.
Most important, the constitution states that every continent, nation, diocese, and parish would have its own detailed constitution, whose articles and amendments would be arrived at by popular vote of the bodies of individuals concerned. A lower level would not be subordinate in any way to a higher level, and so these “concentric circles” would lead to a riot of conflicting rules that would completely paralyze any attempt by Rome to impose order, thereby fulfilling the dissenter’s dream of “the destruction of the cathedral.”
This would, if enacted, go far beyond reducing the Roman Catholic Church to a liberal Protestant denomination. In effect, every parish would be its own denomination.
Try to imagine what society would be like if every block, town, county, and state were allowed to make up its own laws and rules without interference from any higher authority. White supremacists could fulfill their dream of a homeland in the Northwest, where blacks and Hispanics could be expelled or enslaved. Radical Black Muslims could eject Jews from their neighborhoods. Homosexuals could be expelled from areas where they were not welcome. Laws would be completely different from city to city and county to county, and absolute anarchy would reign.
Interestingly, one of the most effective arguments used by liberals to support their demands in the secular world is a condemnation of a “patchwork quilt of laws,” which forced people to check the ordinances of every jurisdiction so that they could be sure they were not breaking laws. Yet the liberals support just such a crazy quilt within the Catholic Church, since they know that such a situation would create uncontrollable anarchy, and where all varieties of heresy and sin could flourish and be accepted publicly.
Such a system of constitutional “concentric circles” would also create an impenetrable bureaucracy without equal. Every jurisdiction would be overseen by co-chairs, a “clergyperson” and a lay person. At the highest level of the Church there would be a “General Council,” co-chaired by the Pope and a lay person, which would “function as the main decision making body of the universal Church” and would “set policy concerning doctrine, morals, worship.”
Under this system, the American Catholic Church would closely resemble the United States government, but would not be as disciplined, efficient, or logically organized. Parish councils would elect pastors from among the people for one five-year term. Bishops would be elected for ten-year terms by delegates from the “National Council,” in a process similar to primary elections. Finally, the Pope would be elected by a convention of “National Councils.”
Section IV of ARCC’s constitution would set up a very complicated judicial system that would in practice guarantee that nobody would ever be punished, regardless of the degree of their offense — unless, of course, they were orthodox. There would be diocesan, national, and international tribunals, culminating in a Supreme Tribunal whose job would be to “hear cases charging illegal or unconstitutional actions by the Pope.” Under the constitution, of course, such violations would include the Pope promulgating authentic dogma or teaching on any subject without wide consultation with the people, or even canonizing saints who did not champion liberal causes.
Why Don’t The
Dissenters Just Leave?
Many faithful Catholics wonder why the people who so loudly complain about the Church and agitate to completely change her don’t just leave if they are unhappy.
Dissenters offer many explanations as to why they stay in the Church, all of which are couched in impressively altruistic language. They also frequently cast themselves in the role of helpless and suffering victims as they make absurd parallels between their own situations and those of genuine victims.
For instance, Women Church Convergence claims: “Safety is a human right. We strive to dismantle hierarchical structures and to end discrimination because they can result in insult and injury.”
At one of the Call to Action national conventions I attended, I asked a number of the participants, “Why do you stay in the Church?”
A typical answer was “To heal the Church of its many sins.” These “sins,” of course, were racism, “homophobia,” “sexism,” and anti-Semitism — all collective sins that require no self-examination or personal repentance other than an increased commitment to tolerance, diversity, and non-judgmentalism.
What Call to Action and other dissenters desire is the classic shift of focus from personal to collective sin that has emasculated and destroyed so many mainline Protestant churches. CTA and other dissenting groups constantly urge Church leaders to spend less energy, money, and publicity on questions of sexual morality and more on social justice, combating racism and ethnic discrimination, promoting peace and nonviolence, and safeguarding the environment. As if to highlight CTA’s disinterest in personal sin, there is never any mention of Confession (either scheduled or on request) in the glossy programs for its national conventions.
When I asked Call to Action convention-goers the question “What motivates you?” they revealed the true reason that dissenters stay in the Church. They typically responded that “The Church has absolutely no right to make us feel guilty about activities that our consciences tell us are moral.”
This desperate and desolate desire to escape guilt permeates the dissenter’s writings. For example, Dianne Neu and Mary L. Hunt of WATER, the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual, who are lesbian “life companions,” claim:
“Painful accusations are made against women who have abortions. Rather than seeing that women have the abortions they need, not the abortions they want, women who choose abortion are made to feel guilty and judged to be ‘out of the church’.”
As long as the Roman Catholic Church exists in her current form, and as long as her teachings on moral issues remain inviolate, her very existence is a rebuke to those committing immoral acts and will cause them to feel guilty. So the dissenter’s emphasis is not on personal repentance and sanctification, but the removal of the sensation of guilt while continuing and justifying their past and current sinful and destructive behavior.
The only way dissenters can be free of this feeling of guilt is if everyone in society enthusiastically applauds their immoral acts. The only way to achieve this is to drain the Church of her vitality, in the same way a host of tiny spiders drains the vital fluids from a beautiful butterfly.
The “community” of dissent has become a sect of schismatics which has gradually burrowed into the structure of the Church like termites. And, like termites, they feed off the structure of the Church. Unlike heretics from previous ages, they do not have the honesty or the courage to simply leave the Church. They know that, if they leave, they will be nothing more than just another gaggle of splinter groups in the great world supermarket of bogus churches and false religions.
But there is a more practical reason that dissenters stay in the Church. For most dissenters, leaving the Church would mean giving up their paychecks, because they are full time workers in the Church. Almost two-thirds of the people who attend Call to Action and Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) conferences typically are pastoral assistants, teachers at Catholic schools and seminaries, or directors of religious education (DREs). This means that there is an average of about four or five active Call to Action and/or Women’s Ordination Conference members employed by every diocese in the United States.
No wonder we are having such problems dissent and division in the Church!
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