Reader Maureen, a consistently moderating influence around these parts, has issued a challenge for other readers to refrain from being so reflexively critical of VOTF. After all, she says, at least they're doing something. What are
we doing about the problem,
we being St. Blog's parishioners and staff.
Good points. Let's take them one at a time.
I can speak for no one but myself, so I guess that's what I'll do. I've not devoted a lot of time to analyzing VOTF in this space, mostly because I found the reports of the group's activities in the secular media singularly unenlightening. That is to say, the articles all said what I would expect them to say, but I didn't know if that was the real story or not. I didn't know if VOTF was really trying to steer a middle course and stay out of hot-button issues about which it could do nothing, or if there was, indeed another agenda lurking and energizing the group. I suspected the latter, but only because I know that Caucasian Catholicism in the Northeast tends to be very, very liberal - when it's not just indifferent, that is. But I didn't know, so I didn't say much, leaving that to Mark Shea and others.
The meeting this past weekend shed some light on the matter, as well as reports on VOTF's message board battles, accounts of which you can find over Mark's way. What they revealed was, it seems, a leadership that is not exactly centrist and agenda-free. You've got your SIECUS-associated speaker. You've got your censored message boards. Already I'm bored.
Plus, the whole money thing gets me. Yes, I've said for ages that finances are a key part of this - I think laity should be the controlling factor in parish and diocesan finances - like a broken record, she says again - it's our money, after all. I think that money talks, especially when diocesan and parish administrators are so oriented toward the bottom line, which they are. But I don't agree with VOTF's establishment of itself as an alternative financial base to the Archdiocese. Rather than set up their little fund to replace the Cardinal's fund, they should simply have strongly encouraged, exhorted and nagged people who were dissatisfied with and distrustful of the Archdiocese to give to individual institutions in the diocese. They should have come up with a list of particularly needy Catholic schools and charitable institutions and told people to bypass any other funds and write their checks directly. Write ten checks if you need to, but just do it, so you make sure these services don't suffer, but that whatever money you give goes to people who need it to live and grow in Christ, not to lawyers and pedophile priests' retirement funds.
But other than that, I've simply watched. I respect the rage and the energy, but, as I've said before, I just don't know what they think they can accomplish.
So, the reader persists - at least they're trying, right?
Well, this is what I'll say in defense of the good people of St. Blog's.
Maybe I'm prejudiced in this funny way, but I do believe that writing is "doing something." Bloggers hash out ideas, argue, bring news to light and bring theological and historical perspective to that news. Catholic bloggers are doing a service - dare we call it ministry - that no one else - and I mean no one else is doing, not even, for the most part, the Catholic press. We are seeking, day by day and (for some!) hour by hour to understand this situation and, in doing so, help others understand it and move forward.
That's doing something.
As the story fades in the current news cycle, we're trying to keep it alive, asking questions, not letting anyone off the hook - compliant parishioners, bishops who welcome pro-aborts on board their little panels, and ourselves, as we seek to balance justice and mercy in our view of things. That's doing something
Secondly, most of the folks in St. Blog's are already engaged in church ministry of some kind. We are writers and speakers, psychologists, DRE's, priests, seminarians, music ministers, publishers, Catholic school teachers, grad students preparing for ministry, apologists, and so on. We are out here in the real world of Church, ministering one-on-one in our parishes or one-to-thousands on paper. We may not have formed a club and come up with a budget, but we are committed to opening ourselves to the Spirit and answering the call to holiness, one day at a time, one person at a time. This situation has been frightening, shattering and clarifying. It has invigorated most of us and given us a sense of what has been lost in the past few decades and what desperately needs to be rediscovered and shared. We're just praying that we can help.
That's doing something.
Finally, as important as it is for the structure of the institution to make way for the Gospel being preached, rather than put up obstacles to it, my interest in Church history prompts me to take the long view. I'm with Catherine of Siena, calling for clergy to mirror Christ, not princes. I'm for stripping them of their mansions and their fascination with the proper social and political contacts. But I also am not convinced that me sitting in a meeting hall haggling about mission statements and worrying about a budget for an organization is going to do a whole hell of a lot about any of those problems. No, I'm not particularly interested in those kinds of organizations which, I regret to say, can't do much. The secular press and the justice system actually have more power to impact in those areas than even fifty of me sitting in that darn meeting room enduring some unendurable opening prayer service about empowerment. And in the end, the temptation of our instutional problems, as serious and as meritorious of attention as they are, is to distract us from the work of Christ that we can be doing right here and right now, with other human beings in need. We should do what we can to demand accountability and transparency and fidelity to Christ on the part of our leaders, at the same time as we demand it of ourselves. But we can't let institutional issues distract us from the good work that needs to be done and is, in fact being done. By the Sisters of Life. By the Missionaries of Charity. By the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. By the people in your parish who visit the home- and hospital bound and organize weeks of dinners for the parents of a terminally-ill child. By the underpaid teachers in your Catholic school. By the good priest in your parish who is doing the work that four priests would have done forty years ago. The call to focus on the way we live out the Gospel in our own parishes, neighborhoods and communities, is not a distraction. It's at the core of the problem. And, I cannot help but believe, somehow, in ways I'm not exactly sure of, it's at the core of the solution as well.
That's doing something