It started as a small issue. It soon became a thorough-going heated exchange. In conversation with a young Catholic priest I objected to the growing separation between the clergy and the people in our small parish church. The post-Vatican II altar has been pushed ever closer to the wall. And we the people have been informed that “our place” in church is not in the ever-expanding sanctuary. I objected.

 

 

I told the young man, all snug and arrogant in his new cassock, that I have just as much a right to be in the sanctuary and close to the altar as he. “You don’t!” He shot back. “You stand close to the altar if I give you the privilege to do it!” I replied that all baptized members of the community have the right to gather around the table of the Lord and celebrate
Eucharist. “You do not have rights in the Church!” He shot back.

When I got back home I sent him information about ARCC: The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church.

ARCC is an older association that is experiencing a wonderful rebirth…and the time is ripe for such a rebirth. Please sign up for the new ARCC electronic newsletter. Sample below…..

 

 

Some of the things we’ve been reading

Exodus as pope’s Legion reform lags 

By NICOLE WINFIELD – Associated Press 

VATICAN CITY (AP) – When Pope Benedict XVI took over the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order last year, expectations were high that heads would roll over one of the greatest scandals of the 20th century Roman Catholic Church.

One year later, none of the Legion’s superiors has been held to account for facilitating the crimes of late founder Rev. Marciel Maciel, a drug addict who sexually abused his seminarians, fathered three children and created a cult-like movement within the church that damaged some of its members spiritually and emotionally.

An Associated Press tally shows that disillusioned members are leaving the movement in droves as they lose faith that the Vaticanwill push through the changes needed. The collapse of the order, once one of the most influential in the church, has broader implications for Catholicism, which is shedding members in some places
because the hierarchy covered up widespread sexual abuse by priests.

Read more

Vatican document calls for global authority to regulate markets

John Thavis      Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A Vatican document called for the gradual creation of a world political authority with broad powers to regulate financial markets and rein in
the “inequalities and distortions of capitalist development.”

The document said the current global financial crisis has revealed “selfishness, collective greed and the hoarding of goods on a great scale.” A supranational
authority, it said, is needed to place the common good at the center of international economic activity.

Read more

Full Text:   Towards Reforming the International Financial And
Monetary Systems in the Context Of Global Public Authority

Charges a clear message to church, lawyers say 

Joshua J. McElwee

In charging Bishop Robert W. Finn and the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese each with failure to report suspected child abuse, Jackson County, Mo., prosecutor Jean
Peters Baker sent a clear message to the Catholic church, and to any organization that has an obligation to protect children, say local lawyers.

Read more

Accountability in Missouri 

New York Times Editorial

 It has been seven years since the Roman Catholic Church’s investigative board of laity warned that, beyond the 700 priests dismissed for sexually abusing children, “there must be consequences” for the diocesan leaders who recycled criminal priests through unsuspecting parishes. American church authorities have done nothing to heed this caution. 

Read more

Aussie Bishops Meet Vatican on Fired Colleague

Cindy Wooden  CNS

VATICAN CITY   Australian bishops had a special meeting with top Vatican officials in mid-October to discuss the case of a bishop Pope Benedict XVI removed from
office after years of tension with a variety of Vatican offices. Cardinals Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, and William J. Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, met the Australian bishops to discuss the aftermath of the removal in May of Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba.

Read more

This is just a sample from a recent electronic newsletter.

Reporting is contemporary and accurate.

No Roman style old time religion here!

Association for the Rights of Catholics in the  Church  877-700-ARCC   arcc-catholic-rights.net

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