Rarely have I interviewed a religious leader as impressive as [Mariann] Budde. She built a small, struggling parish in Minneapolis into a growing, vibrant spiritual community. In person, she comes across as a deeply spiritual woman: caring, articulate, knowledgeable, democratic in spirit, with a sense of where she hopes to take the diocese.
Later in the interview, I asked her about early influences in her life, and it did my heart good to hear her say that “progressive Catholics” were a major influence in her life in the 1980s. She was referring to those who opposed the Reagan wars in Central America and the folks in the Catholic Worker Movement. She actually lived with homeless people at a Catholic Worker house in Rochester, N.Y. She later related to a Catholic Worker community in Tucson, Ariz., a city where she also found local Methodists inspiring. She says she was moved by the willingness of both to identify closely with the poor.
Ah yes, written by Maureen Fiedler, founder of Call to Action who initiated a famous petition, that fell far short of its expected number of signatories, to get the Church to change. Because of course it’s the Church that should change, not us sinners who seek salvation in the Church – right? In the interests of full disclosure the NCR also has a revealing article from a young woman who ‘felt called to be a priest at age 14’ and is now addressing meetings of this same group ‘Call to Action’ to stir up the tatty aging liberal fringe of the US Catholic Church in the causes that TEC has been so successful with. Why they can’t just hive off and become Episcopalians, God only knows – they know they want to.
Make believe bishop inspired by make believe Catholics. Sounds about right.
The notion of the modernist Catholic needs placing next to the waterproof sponge and the square circle.
What a dangerous suggestion this is, born from postmodern understanding. For in truth, there is but two types of Catholic; those who show fidelity to their faith and those who do not. The REAL Catholic is therefore the one who embraces the whole Catechism. By definition this person must be traditionalist since they are embracing eternal unchanging truths stemming from Christ himself. The same yesterday, today and forever.
This is no simple academic/debating point for these eternal truths are salvific and the modernist who seeks to discard
uncomfortable and challenging parts of Cathechesis places themselves in mortal danger and outside of the church. The Catechism is to be taken whole and no Catholic is given an opt out.
For ultimately it is only total fidelity to God’s truth- as contained in the Catechism which is the product of holy scripture and tradition, that can protect us from the myriad man-made philosophies of death- the left wing gulag, the right wing death camp, the silent genocide of abortion within our current liberal age – towards a proper understanding of society in which every soul is held to be sacred
Thinking perhaps I should fact-check my claim above (which was from memory), I did find this article from 15 years ago about the petition mentioned:
http://www.ncregister.com/site/print_article/13111/
The movement known as ‘We are Church’ is directly translated into German as ‘Wir sind Kirche’ and Italian as ‘Noi siamo Chiesa’.
It seems to me they got 100,000 or less when they expected 1,000,000 signatures.
But still, they don’t hive off into a ‘former-Roman Episcopal’ body or something, which really would be the honest thing to do.
Wow, what an amazing fiasco her ‘consecration’ appears to have turned out:
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=15193