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Contact your Bishops – Again!

Get Democracy on the Agenda in November!

In April we wrote to ARCC members urging you to write to your bishops prior to their June meeting in Dallas.  Your response was wonderful.  Many copies of your communications have come to the ARCC office.  Now the bishops are back in their dioceses. Many of them have pulled up the drawbridge. The Bishop of Rockville Center, N.Y. has ordered his priests to have nothing to do with Voice of the Faithful.  Boston’s diocesan paper has told Catholics who miss Sunday mass in their diocese that they are in mortal sin.  (“Crummy theology” according to a Boston College theologian)  It is time to contact bishops again to help them prepare for the November meeting in Washington. 

We ARCC members will continue to emphasize three points that are basic exercises in the subsidiarity called for by Vatican II and the Charter of the Rights of Catholics in the Church.  We need to see signs that more bishops are acknowledging the need for dialog, accountability and representation.

1. 1.      Dialogue - We earlier asked bishops and pastors to institutionalize regular town meetings in parishes and dioceses to discuss issues of mutual concern.   Local diocesan sexual abuse commissions should be expanded so that they can deal with other church grievances and issues 
2. 2.      Accountability - We earlier asked bishops to appoint lay persons to the admissions and governing boards of all seminaries.    Now it is time to request that the financial records of all bishops and dioceses be made public and that annual audits be conducted by independent agencies.  This should be a national initiative. 
3. 3.      Representation - We earlier asked that local communities be consulted in the selection of leaders.    The fact that Catholics have no say in the appointment of their pastors can no longer be tolerated. We have seen the destructive results when personnel appointments were carelessly handled.  Diocesan personnel policies for appointment of pastors need to be made public

Our communications to the bishops should remind them that we have the right to make our needs known in accordance with Canon 212.2 (“The Christian faithful are free to make known their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires to the pastors of the Church…they have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church”).

In the United States a list of bishops can be found at:

http://www.nccbuscc.org/bishops.htm

The president of the US Bishops Conference is:

Most Rev. Wilton Gregory, President
USCCB
3211 4th St. NE
Washington, DC  20017 – 1194

Or

Diocese of Belleville
222 S.  3rd St.
Belleville, IL  62220

The Apostolic Nuncio in the United States is:

Most Rev. Gabriel Montalvo
3339 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC  20008-3687

Mary Louise Hartman                                              John Sheehan

President                                                               National Coordinator

Other voices

Another Voice

Questions From a Ewe

Challenges Facing Catholicism
(Bishop Geoffrey Robinson in converation with Dr Ingrid Shafer)