Members of the American Catholic Council, meeting in Detroit, are concerned the Church’s hierarchy is not listening to the Church.
Specific mention was made of the role of women, married clergy and the treatment of homosexuals.
Members of a liberal group of U.S. Roman Catholics on Sunday called on Church leaders to open talks with their members on controversies ranging from the ordination of women to allowing priests to marry.
“When in God’s name are the conversations going to begin?” asked Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun who addressed the meeting of about 2,000 people — part of a liberal wing that represents a minority in the 1.2 billion-member Church.
She likened the structure, with bishops and archbishops answering to the pope in Rome, to “a medieval system that has now been abandoned by humanity everywhere, except by us.”
The Archdiocese’s website said, “All of the invited keynote speakers have manifested dissent from Catholic teachings or support for dissenters,” and clergy who attended the meeting were warned by Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron they might be de-frocked.
The group’s “Catholic Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” reads like a list of grievances against the conservative leadership of Pope Benedict, who has frustrated liberals by ruling out the possibility of women priests or a married clergy and putting pressure on dissenting theologians.
“Few people realize how powerful the pope is,” Swiss theologian Hans Kueng told the meeting through a video presentation. “We have to change an absolutist system.”
About 600 people attended a rival meeting espousing a more conservative version of Catholicism in nearby Livonia, Michigan, on Saturday, according to local media reports. The archdiocese endorsed but did not organize that meeting.
Sources
- Reuters
- Image: Detroit Free Press