"Out of steam": SNAP's David Lorenz, BishopAccountability's Terence McKiernan, and
therapist/Church basher Ann Hagan Webb

It seems that the mission of bludgeoning the Catholic Church for abuse episodes from a half century ago is not as thriving as it used to be.

Few major media outlets have overplayed and exaggerated the abuse narrative more than the Washington Post. So it was big news when even the Post was recently forced to take notice that the abuse story is now so old that professional Church-bashing groups such as SNAP and Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) are dying and fading away, as they are comprised of an ever dwindling number of cranky codgers.

According to the recent Post article:

• Attendance at recent VOTF events has "plummeted, as have donations";
• Bill Casey, a VOTF board member, admits, "The average age is gray-haired folks. And they're 10 years grayer"*;
• Terry McKiernan, the crotchety but frequently quoted "head" of BishopAccountability.org, admits that the abuse story has now become so long in the tooth that his people have "run of out steam"; and
• "Many of the groups that appeared during the early and mid-2000s have shrunk or disappeared."

Indeed, the most recent national conference of VOTF looked more like a nursing home than the gathering of a burgeoning activist group.

Voice of the Faithful 10th Anniversary Conference in Boston, September 2013:
The remnants of the geezer rebellion.

As always, it was never really about sex abuse

As the Post chronicles the demise of SNAP, VOTF, and other Church bashers, it again becomes clear that these groups' true mission was never really about protecting children. Instead, the real motivation behind the formation of these groups had always been to try to force the Church to conform to their own "progressive" agenda.

As the Post notes, these groups were always comprised of dissident folks interested in "changing the church" and debating "dramatic structural changes such as electing bishops and allowing priests to marry."

The Post reports that SNAP member David Lorenz "worships with a breakaway independent group" and "his wife has become active in ending celibacy."*

In other words, the issue of sex abuse by clergy several decades ago has just been window dressing to conceal the real agenda of radical "reform," a point we have made several … times … before.

As the Church cannot change its essential truths to accommodate the demands of aging radicals, it is little wonder that these groups are slowly dying off and disappearing.

[* - Two lines in the original article have since been deleted by the Post: 1. The line that quotes Bill Casey, "The average age is gray-haired folks. And they're 10 years grayer," and 2. "[SNAP's David Lorenz's] wife has become active in ending celibacy." Fortunately, we captured a cached version of the original piece.]

Judge Anne Burke turns to the experts

Illinois Justice Anne M. Burke (wife of Chicago ward boss Ed Burke) once served as the interim chair of the National Review Board, a lay group who advises the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on sex abuse policy. However, after her spiteful speech at this year's Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) Conference, one cannot help but ask, "If these are the 'faithful,' who needs enemies?"

Burke's 30-minute diatribe on September 14 at the Boston get-together took sharp aim at the Church's bishops, as she accused Church leaders of:

• treating lay people as "second class citizens" and "serfs";
• asking Catholics "to check [their] brains at the front door";
• prioritizing "pride, untruths, [and] protecting the institution at all costs";
• "resurrecting the Inquisition"; and
• committing a "new form of lay abuse."

Just.plain.weird

Yet the most bizarre aspect of Burke's speech was her citations of various cultural and Church figures sprinkled in her talk. Among others, Burke variously quoted Cher, Wayne Gretzky, John Wayne, Thomas Edison, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, John F. Kennedy, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Burke's most surreal moment came near the end of her speech:

"I always believe that Jesus had a lot of Dr. Seuss in him. I can hear him now setting his disciples at peace and calling forth great things from them – 'Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind'."

That's right. Burke actually put the words of Dr. Seuss into the mouth of Jesus Christ.

You can't make this stuff up. What is even more embarrassing, however, is that the quote is not even from Dr. Seuss. Although the quote has often been attributed to him – it has even been displayed on posters – it appears nowhere in any of Dr. Seuss' books. The quote, "Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind," was attributed decades ago to the early 20th century American financier Bernard Baruch.

A note to Anne: Next time, try putting the words of Jesus into the mouth of Jesus. That should work better.

Correct on one matter

Burke's talk did not miss the mark entirely, however. At one point of her speech, Burke stated:

"We are aging."

Well, she is right about that. Having actually attended the conference, TheMediaReport.com estimates that the average age of the attendees was 102 66. Of the estimated 450 people in attendance, the number of those under the age of 50 was likely less than 30.

The same tribe of people who rejected Church teaching, threw out the Communion rails, embraced intolerable Marty Haugen tunes, and led generations of Catholics into an abyss of ignorance and selfishness is thankfully dying away.

The future of the Church is in the youthful orthodox. Yes, the kind that attend World Youth Day.

'Voices of the Disgraceful'?: National Catholic Reporter's Jamie L. Manson (l) and Phyllis Zagano (r)

The 10th anniversary conference of Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) in Boston this month proved to be anything but "faithful" to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

Youthful rebellion

TheMediaReport.com was there when Jamie L. Manson, a writer for the dissident newspaper National Catholic Reporter, unleashed a vitriolic attack on Catholics who have the audacity to be faithful to the Magisterium.

The title of Manson's talk was "Church and young Catholics: Is there a future?" but Manson reserved her harshest venom for those young Catholics who have celebrated Church orthodoxy. After deriding those who would attend "World Youth Day," Manson unleashed a barrage that can only described as bigoted, condescending, and nasty.

According to Manson, orthodox Catholics:

• "don't want to see women's equality in church or even in society" (!);
• "do not want to see gays and lesbians and transgendered people treated with dignity";
• "are in denial about the sex abuse crisis";
• "are afraid of cultural flux and uncertainty"; and
• "are afraid of the world."

Without providing a shred of proof to support her attack, Manson also went on to imply that young, orthodox Catholics are "not immersed in the world." She then accused the institutional Church, which she compared to a "burning building," of creating a Church of "exclusivity" and "orthodoxy tests."

It was truly mean stuff. But, then again, Manson is shilling a dissident, anti-Church agenda. Manson has served on the board of the "Women's Ordination Conference" and has been active with a gay, lesbian, and transgender advocacy group called "Dignity USA." (While studying at Yale Divinity School, she worked under the dissident theologian Sr. Margaret Farley (a fact that drew applause from the sea of white hair at the conference).)

But first there was Phyllis

The night before Manson's assault, VOTF presented the National Catholic Reporter's Phyllis Zagano with the group's "St. Catherine of Siena Award."

Fortunately, Zagano was not nearly as choleric as Manson. However, from the way Zagano spoke of St. Catherine, one would have thought that the 14th-century figure was an anti-hierarchical zealot who was forcefully muffled by an all-male clergy. Instead, Catherine was an admired advocate who fought for the unification of the Church in a time of schism and was a pioneer whom the Church declared a saint within a century of her death and later a Doctor of the Church.

As numerous biographies have noted (this, this, and this, for example), so deep was her thirst to serve Christ and the Church, Catherine once cut off her hair in her youth as an act of defiance to her family, who ardently opposed her wishes for a religious life and wanted her to get married. And within a few years after her brash move (which was suggested by a Dominican friar, by the way), Catherine convinced her family of her desires, and she was soon donning the habit of a Dominican tertiary. The rest is history.

However, when talking about the life of St. Catherine, Zagano implied that that Catherine believed that "the only way" for her to speak the Gospel in her era of a male-dominated Church was to cut off her hair, "abandon her femininity," and become like a man. "How like today!" Zagano exclaimed.

What gobbledegook.

The real agenda surfaces

Predictably, Zagano addressed a recurring theme from many at VOTF: women's ordination. Zagano has long argued that the Catholic Church can, and should, ordain women as deacons. She reiterated this point in her speech, and near the end of her speech, she added:

"Will any of the goals of Voice of the Faithful or the hopes of women for ordination be met? I would advise: don't quit. Don't quit, because if what you do is from the Lord, it cannot be stopped and it cannot be denied."

Although Zagano did not explicitly make any case at all for women in the priesthood, one could not help but wonder if the audience was inferring that she was. And if there were any doubt that the VOTF crowd of aging left-wingers want to see women in the priesthood, prominently displayed near the entrance of an exhibition room at the conference was the following can't-miss poster:

Yes, the same Roy Bourgeois: the staunch advocate for female "priests," whom VOTF nominated for its "Priest of Integrity Award" in 2009. Bourgeois is also a favorite fundraiser for the National Catholic Reporter.

Stay tuned for more about the 2012 VOTF Conference in the coming weeks.

Voice of the Faithful is not merely an innocent "lay group." Many see their goals as disrupting and attacking the structure and teachings of the Catholic Church. (See the wealth of information at FaithfulVoice.com.) In other words, there is much evidence that the group is dissident in nature.

Newspapers like the Globe leap at the chance of labeling traditional Catholics as "conservative" or "ultraconservative." But those with open hostility to the Church hardly ever get the "liberal" or "dissident" label they so rightly deserve.

Double standard? Absolutely.