As a reminder of the true origins of Voice of the Faithful in a radical agenda to change the Church, here’s the PDF slide show that was originally posted on VOTF’s site back in its early days, but was then removed after people expressed fears it was too far out. But even though the document’s not on the site anymore, it’s still at the heart of what VOTF is about.
[Thanks to Kelly for sending it my way.]
This just shows that fundamentally VOTF has a fatally flawed understanding of what the Church is. They see it as a government, a power structure, a hierarchy, and they want a piece of the power. But that flawed understanding of Church is also one of the biggest contributing factors to the scandal: bishops who see themselves as administrators, as bureaucrats instead of shepherds, fathers.
It makes me wonder what VOTF thinks they are being faithful to. Certainly not to the Gospel: “you are Peter and on this Rock I will build my Church” not: “you are the faithful and I will make sure you all have an equal vote.”
And not to tradition, to the magesterium of the Church.
Laypeople certainly do need to be involved. We are the Church, built on the Rock of Peter. If the church is to be healthy, then we need to be fed. That is what the bishops are neglecting: feeding the faithful and guiding the straying sheep away from the cliff’s edge.
If we as laypeople want to support the Church we must do as Jesus told us: become servants, not masters. We must not seek after power and control, but obediently bend to do the hard work that needs to be done: after nourishing ourselves on the Word made Flesh (both in the Eucharist and in the Gospel) we must go out and spread the good news, evangelize, catechize. Our Church is weak because the sheep are not being fed. The focus is on the parish church and not on the living presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The focus is on politics and not on the Word. We have no culture of reading, no one studies the Bible, the source of Christian life.
VOTF wants checks and balances, but the Church is not a democracy nor is it a business, it is a body and there can be only one head: Christ.
Flawed yes, but it is the predominent paradigm especially the last 40 years. The Church has been stripped of her holy veil by modernists, materialists marxists.
This shows up in homilies, catechesis, Biblical studies, liturgy… its what happens when lay people “do ministry.”
Those graphics are really funny and a good self-parody by VOTF.
The “notes” section is most telling. First, they realized they will appeal to the “left.” With the “left” sewn up, they will “reconfigure” themselves to appeal to the “right.” The aim, of course, is to garner—or perhaps more accurately, to appear to have garnered, a “majority.” Until this “majority” is reached, there should be no discussion at all on “divisive” issues. This is why whenever abortion, gay marriage, birth control or any other hot button topics arise, VOTF claims that they are “not our issues.”
Incredibly, in the Archdiocese of Boston, anyway, the group has appeared to our leadership to have garnered that majority. It’s an illusion, of course, but a good one.
Good enough for the Archbishop to fully approve of his subordinates’ participation in, if not the workings of the organization itself (and I’m not even convinced that that’s not the case) then at least in its conferences.
It might have looked a little more credible without the “Heliocentric Solar System” thrown in without any pertinence.
I beg pardon—if the Earth, or Jupiter, were the center of the Solar System, would it make one whit of difference to the Church? I’m supposed to take these guys seriously?
Melanie has got it – the VOTF see this as money, power, and control. I see no religion in any of this. This is not a matter of corporate governance, where shareholders are ticked off at management… shareholders own the corporation. This is not a matter of political structures.
I’m disgusted by this.