Taking Back The Church?
Crisis Magazine e-Letter
August 17, 2006
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Before I get to the e-Letter, I want to let you know that for the
next week, we're offering a full year subscription to Crisis Magazine
for only $10. You can get a new subscription, a gift subscription, or
renew your subscription for just ten bucks. I'll give you all the
details at the end of this letter.
In the meantime, you can click here to order:
https://www.ezsubscription.com/cri/sub.htm
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Dear Friend,
I've come to a conclusion about dissenting Catholics and how they
compare to their more faithful counterparts.
Here it is: Faithful Catholics start families. Dissenting Catholics
start organizations.
If you need proof for the second point, I give you Take Back Our
Church, the newest dissident group on the block. Started four months
ago by former Jesuit and Newsweek contributing editor Robert Blair
Kaiser and California businessman Robert Miller, the group joins an
already crowded gaggle of dissenting organizations.
So, what differentiates Take Back Our Church from Call to Action, or
FutureChurch, or Voice of the Faithful, or The Association for the
Rights of Catholics in the Church, or any other similar group?
Good question.
Take Back Our Church's Web site is stuffed with the same nonsense
you've read before: The Catholic Church is authoritarian... Current
Church leaders have turned their backs on Vatican II... The faithful
need to reclaim their Church, and reshape it to match their needs.
And so on.
None of this is terribly surprising, given Kaiser's involvement in
the project. He came out with a book earlier this year entitled, "A
Church in Search of Itself: Benedict XVI and the Battle for the
Future."
If you don't have time to read it, let me give you a quick synopsis:
The Fathers of Vatican II ushered in a golden age of openness,
tolerance, and progressive action. Unfortunately, the dark forces of
John Paul II and his diabolical collaborator, Josef Cardinal
Ratzinger, clamped down on this movement of the Spirit, dragging the
Church back to the Dark Ages. In light of this, thinking Catholics
need to reclaim their Church... and maybe even start an American
Catholic Church of their own (more on this in a moment).
Sound familiar? This is the same tired song we've heard from all the
other grey-haired dissidents of Kaiser's generation. Of course,
there's an added note of desperation in this latest entry. The years
are starting to thin the ranks of Kaiser's allies, and even liberal
commentators acknowledge that younger Catholics are noticeably more
orthodox than their elders.
So if you're Robert Blair Kaiser, now is the time to act, before the
dissident generation is no more.
And here's where it gets really interesting...
You see, Kaiser's organization is calling for more than just
reform... they want an autochthonous American Catholic Church. An
autochthonous Church isn't the same as an autonomous Church, as
Kaiser is quick to point out on the Web site. Rather, an
autochthonous Church is a native Church... an ecclesial body
organized and run by people in that specific country.
In the autochthonous Church of Kaiser's dreams, the faithful would
elect their own bishops. But that's not all:
"We will write a Declaration of Autochthony, one that will challenge
our priest-people and our people-people to work out a constitution
for the American Church that carefully puts aside the Rome-based
secretive, half-vast, culturally-conditioned legalisms codified in
canon law in return for the kind of servant Church envisioned at
Vatican II."
So... a democratic Church with elected bishops and a national
ecclesial constitution. If all of that sounds more political than
spiritual, it's no coincidence. According to Take Back Our Church's
July 4 e-mail to supporters:
"This will be a political battle in a Church that has gotten us used
to the idea that there's something shady, maybe even something
sinful, in trying to overturn the old pyramidal structure. We plead
'not guilty' to that charge. But we do plead guilty in our wish to
overturn -- at least in the United States -- what the last pope
called 'the divinely instituted hierarchical constitution of the
Church.'"
At least they're honest. They don't want a hierarchical Church that
disagrees with them, so they need to overthrow it.
Easier said than done. While Take Back Our Church may be long on
ambitions, they're falling short on methodology. Indeed, right now,
their principle concern appears to be finding members. As of July 4,
they had a total of 580 people on their roll. Not terribly
impressive. But don't worry... they do have a strategy for growth:
"Right now, we'd like each of you, 580 of you, to scour your e-mail
address books and urge your twenty closest friends to go to our
website and sign in. Do it now."
Okay, so maybe they need to work on their growth strategy as well.
But that gave me an idea...
I haven't made the $10 subscription offer for Crisis in quite some
time. So I'm going to do it right now. It's the perfect
counterbalance to Take Back Our Church's membership drive. Let's see
if we can get more faithful Catholic subscribers than they can get
dissident Catholic members.
Here's the deal: You can have a full year's subscription to Crisis
for just $10. That's ten issues... just a dollar an issue.
You can also give a gift subscription for $10... it's the perfect
gift for your parish, your pastor, a student heading to a secular (or
liberal Catholic) college, etc. Really, every Catholic should be
reading Crisis.
Finally, if you already have a Crisis subscription, you can renew it
for a full year for just $10. That's almost 1/3 off the regular
renewal price.
There's absolutely no limit on the number of subscriptions or
renewals you may order. I want to get Crisis into the hands of every
Catholic in this country. This is, after all, an apostolate as well
as a business. So while this may look like an odd business decision,
I do believe it's important for our overall mission. If I'm serious
about bringing authentic Catholicism into the public square, I've got
to step up to the plate.
So that's why I'm making you this offer.
Of course, there's a small catch: The $10 deal ends at noon Eastern
Standard Time on Wednesday, August 23. I suggest you order sooner
rather than later. The devil has a way of distracting us from things
like this... until it's too late.
Don't let that happen.
Click here to order:
https://www.ezsubscription.com/cri/sub.htm
Look, we often complain when dissident Catholics worm their way into
parishes and chanceries and distort the Faith. Here's a chance to do
something about it. Think of Crisis Magazine as a vaccination against
the disease of dissent.
I'll talk to you next week,
Brian
P.S. This is a great time to subscribe to Crisis, or to renew your
subscription. We have a bombshell issue coming up in December... the
fruit of a long-term project. I can't reveal much more than that
right now, but it's going to be an issue everyone will be talking
about. And there are some well known figures in the Church who won't
like it one bit.
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