NEW YORK, NY July 22, 2002 — The first international conference of lay Catholics to convene as a result of the child sexual abuse scandal drew about 180 people from the Tri-State area. Saturday's day-long "Voice of the Faithful" conference in Boston focused on ways to encourage greater involvement by the laity in how their churches are run, and how their money is spent. WNYC's Amy Eddings reports participants came away enthusiastic about starting their own VOTF chapters here. But many acknowledged that the growing movement faces enormous challenges.

Maria Coffey of Manhattan had a confession to make.

Maria Coffey: I'll be honest with you, I have confessed to being a lazy Catholic. I think I have slid through going to Mass and doing the essential jobs. But now, this is a challenge. And I feel I have two options, either leaving the church, or doing something.

Coffey is helping to start a Voice of the Faithful chapter at Saint Francis Xavier in Manhattan. She said their first meeting last week drew 50 people from about seven parishes. Coffey attended sessions on how to change the church, and one titled "The Authority for Lay Participation in Church Governance."

Coffey: And I think what we learned is what we don't need to be afraid of and that we should not be being intimidated by people kind of quoting canon law, when it isn't necessarily either God's law nor is it necessarily the truth of what we're hearing.

That feeling of empowerment was palpable for most of the participants at the Voice of the Faithful conference, the first of its kind for an organization that, just five months ago, consisted of twenty-five people who met at a suburban Boston church. A monk wrote to founders, " As you stand in the valley, take a good look. A mountain is about to rise beneath your feet." Standing before more than four thousand people at the Hynes Convention Center, president Jim Post appeared to feel like he was standing on Mount Everest.

Jim Post: Look around you! This is fantastic!

Catholics from 35 states and four countries were in attendance.

Post: Your presence confirms that Voice of the Faithful has become -- not is becoming, but has become -- a truly national and international organization.

Participants were drawn here by their outrage over the sexual abuse of minors by clergy, and by many bishops' attempts to ignore complaints, and skirt the problem by shuffling priests from parish to parish. The solution, said co-founder Jim Muller, is for church leaders to include the laity in their decisions, as outlined three decades ago in documents that came out of the church's groundbreaking Second Vatican Council.

Muller: We can argue for a long time about the proximate causes. On the left, I've written "obligate celibacy, lack of women priests, secrecy, too little of Vatican II." On the right, "homosexuality, permissive society, too little prayer, and too much of Vatican II!" We felt it was not fruitful to enter this debate, but to go right to the core of the problem: centralized power, with no voice of the faithful.

Muller said the answer is to build VOTF into an organization that can open dialogue with the church hierarchy at every level, starting with individual parishes.

Jim Muller: Now, you may say, "Why build another bureacracy? It's just the same, we'll have some dictator like Jim Pope -- uh, Jim Post as president . (Audience laughs. So does Muller.) That was a Freudian slip, by calling Jim "Pope." Sorry about that, Jim! Well, why build this? Here's the difference.

He pointed to a big screen, where there's a projected image of an organizational flow chart.

Jim Muller: These arrows are going up, these arrows are going down. So . (applause.)

VOTF's other goals are to support what it calls "priests of integrity" and victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests. Susan Renehan said she was sexually abused by a priest for three years, starting when she was eleven. She warned participants that victims did not want to hear platitudes of forgiveness and healing.

Susan Renehan: We do not want your voice. We want your shoulders, next to ours, outside your churches, in solidarity against crimes committed against children and vulnerable adults. We do not need your voice. You need ours, to show you how to give voice to healing, and to justice, to anger and to mercy.

Renehan invited people to join her and other victims after the conference in a march to Boston's cathedral, where Cardinal Bernard Law preaches.

Speaker after speaker acknowledged that the obstacles facing the nascent movement was great. While the Boston Archdiocese has pledged to have a dialogue with Voice of the Faithful, some members say other bishops and parish priests have prevented chapters from forming. Jim Alvord, from Norwalk, Connecticut, says his group is currently meeting at a university.

Alvord: Recently I talked with a fellow who I know very well who's on the parish council at our church, and he had heard an explanation of Voice of the Faithful, and he had heard the pastor's reaction to it, and he said he didn't want to talk about Voice of the Faithful when we broached the subject. He says, "It's like talking about religion, you shouldn't do that!" (Laughs)

There's also the challenge of getting other people in the pews involved. John Slevin and Mary Scott are from South Orange, New Jersey.

John Slevin: From where we were sitting, up here --
Mary Scott: You could see the whole audience.
Slevin: -- and it was very devoid of color.
Scott: And youth.
Slevin: And youth! Yeah. Which is disturbing.
Scott: and it's more female. It appears to me to be more female than male, which probably is the church.

And Voice of the Faithful founders also say they must keep their message centrist and prayerful. One organizer says many conservative Catholics turned down invitations to speak, saying the group's goal to change the structure of the church was too vague, and could be interpreted as a call for a breakaway church.

That tension facing Voice of the Faithful -- of remaining respectful and mainstream, while demanding change -- was addressed by sexual abuse victim Arthur Austin.

Austin: Children and young men and women were raped in and by your church. People, that is not a call to a new, more well-pressed form of micro-managed politeness. Rape is catastrophic. It never ends. There can be no refined response to a sexually defling church. What will you choose? The world is watching you. And so is the God of radical grace.

After Mass, an estimated one thousand participants walked with Austin, Susan Renehan, and other victims to stand on the steps of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Renehan: Everyone, everyone. As many as you can! Get up on the steps and stand in solidarity! Oh my God!
Amy: What do you make of this?
Renehan: Oh, I mean, you know, we've been standing on these steps and standing here, sometimes ten of us, sometimes twenty, sometimes, thirty. Now look at us! It's hundreds. And these are Catholics. These are Catholics, protesting!

People linked arms, and let tears come, and sang hymns, swaying from side to side. Willaim Bendazick, from Dover, New Jersey, led them.

Bendazick: We'll walk hand in hand!
Crowd, singing: We'll walk hand in hand ..we'll walk hand in hand .

Bendazick: I'm led very much to quote Lee Ioccoca, if I was to be able to talk to my bishop, Bishop Rodimer, I would say, with a "please" in front of it, I'd say, "Please, either lead, follow, or resign, get out of the way."

Bendazick plans on starting a Voice of the Faithful chapter. In the planning stages are chapters in Maplewood, Red Bank, Cedar Knolls, and Long Valley in New Jersey. In Brooklyn, members of St. Boniface are thinking about starting a group. And the fledgling chapter at Saint Francis Xavier Church in Manhattan will hold their second meeting next Monday. For WNYC, in Boston, I'm Amy Eddings.