Call to Action: What it is, Why Bishop Bruskewitz Objects

A little background...

all To Action is the brainchild of Dan and Sheila Daly, former religious, who chose the subtitle from the 1976 U.S. Bishops Conference in Detroit as the name for their group. The Dalys still lead CTA. Its stated purpose is to "accept our responsibility to reinvent the Church from the ground up-modeled on an American charism; the spirit of open consultation, the new way of being Church in America."

A "who's who" in dissent... CTA prides itself on "providing a collective Catholic voice," and toward that end in 1990 CTA founded Catholic Organizations for Renewal (COR). CTA calls COR "a forum that generates successful coalition efforts-like last September's signature ad about contraception that helped neutralize Vatican lobbying at the Cairo population conference." A look at the constituent members of COR provides insight into the group's agenda. Among those listed as members on their web page are the following :

Call to Action (national and assorted local chapters)
Catholics For Free Choice, Frances Kissling's decidedly unCatholic pro-abortion group.
Catholics Speak Out, a Quixote Center offshoot. Feminist theologian Maureen Fiedler is the contact. (Quixote is known for its "conferences of Gay/Lesbian Christians", and for using the same folks to form new groups with new names.)
Celibacy Is the Issue
Conference for Catholic Lesbians
CORPUS, the married priesthood people
Dignity/USA, whose espousal of homosexual behavior forces it to meet in protestant churches.
Friends of Creation Spirituality, Matthew Fox's earth-and-witch clan.
National Coalition of American Nuns, Jeannine Gramick, SSND, is the contact.
New Ways Ministry, like Catholics Speak Out, an offshoot of the Quixote Center. Jeannine Gramick, SSND, was cofounder. New Ways has been ejected from two diocese because of its support of homosexual behavior.
Women's Ordination Conference

A consistent track record...

CTA's mission Statement is followed by a list of 'achievements' which includes the following:

"White House Meeting-Ten COR groups had leaders in the June 25, 1993 meeting with White House staff. The groups offered the Clinton administration a link with progressive Catholics, especially on issues where most U.S. Catholics differ with the hierarchy. Examples:
- Vatican blockage of any discussion of contraceptive family planning at the 1992 Rio earth summit...
- Alternative Events during Papal Visit to Denver -Twenty-two COR organizations supported a public forum, a news conference, and several press briefings at World Youth Day, August, 1993. The COR/Denver initiative enabled the national media not only to cover the papal events but to report responsible Catholic disagreement with the pope on many issues, including women's ordination, gay/lesbian rights, and sexual morality.
- Signature ads in major newspapers - An open letter to the Pope saying he's wrong on contraception appeared in the New York Times in September, 1994, during the U.N. Population Conference in Cairo, with 2,500 signatures. Another letter to John Paul II appeared in the Baltimore Sun in October, 1995 the week of the pontiff's visit to that city. It said U.S. Catholics are hungry for Eucharist and want the priesthood open to women and married men. Both ads were coordinated by Catholics Speak Out and co-sponsored by many COR groups."

Their recent conference...

Mary Joe Anderson attended the 1995 CTA convention in Chicago last November...and her summary of that event (Crisis Magazine, Feb., 1996) is a scathing indictment. The opening address by CORPUS' Anthony padovano set the tone by proclaiming, "If the institutional church won't meet our needs we'll do it ourselves. We're not asking permission anymore." According to Anderson, Padovano told CTA members they were "called to heal the body of Christ wounded by structures of domination." Padovano considers that "pathologic popes" such as Gregory VII, Innocent III and Boniface VIII imposed such structures on the Church. A 'former' priest himself, he suggested initiating impeachment proceedings against John Paul II; his exhortation to "rock the barque of Peter" brought thunderous applause.

Bernard Cooke, small community guru, stressed the need to identify, befriend, and train promising high schoolers for FutureChurch leadership roles. On small faith communities, Cooke told his audience that "John Paul knows that the Church is dividing into grassroots communities-that's why he bounces around from country to country." According to Cooke, "the old model church of trickle-down holiness with the talent at the top is the church of the past."

His vision includes liturgy as an outgrowth of the small faith community-hardly surprising from a man who told the assembly that "We still don't know that we are the sacrament. The real presence is ourselves. Bread and wine are only instruments of Eucharist."

Anderson notes that, "given the acrimonious disaffection Bishops Gumbleton and Luker feel for John Paul II, one is nonetheless stunned they would officiate at a conference featuring Matthew Fox and his 'Seven Chakras of Creation Spirituality.' This ritual stars a priestess-prostitute who guides mankind into a form of self-impregnation in order to spiritually re-create oneself as a goddess-woman or god-man....at one with the universe." Anderson apparently asked one priest how he could be involved with such practices; he responded that "other faith traditions lend valuable perspective if not abused."

Individual speakers approached their subjects predictably. "Goodbye Father: Celibacy and Patriarchy in the Catholic Church" needs no explanation. "Reconstructing Catholicism for the Next Generation" announced the end of fear and guilt-we're now free to choose sexuality, abortion, even ordination.

Charles Curran (the moral theologian dismissed from Catholic University in 1990) presented a talk on "John Paul II and Catholic Moral Theology." Curran, too, was predictable. He found the Pope "schizophrenic" and labeled Veritatis Splendor "a caricature of leading moral theologians." "People who abort a four-week embryo don't exactly see themselves as a part of 'the culture of death,'" he noted.

Sr. Sandra Schneiders' discussion of the feminist interpretation of scripture bears scrutiny. Anderson notes, "All of Scripture is recast to fit feminist theology, complete with sacred sodomy, in a bare hour's time." Texts found to be "problematic" are jettisoned; "the bible becomes its own critic disallowing all test that contradict the message of liberation." Anderson quotes several pithy comments from Schneiders: "God is more than two men and a bird," for example, and "Jesus is a Sophia incarnation."

Anderson failed to find Veritatis Splendor on sale in the lobby-but noted a preponderance of pagan/goddess ware. The Alabaster Jar, a book relating the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, made an appearance on the tables. Most chilling is Anderson's analysis of CTA's future. They are confident of victory, she says, because "they know that the vast majority of Catholics are uncatechized and vulnerable to manipulation by appeals to the imputed 'spirit' of Vatican II. The CTA regulars are manic, bright, and entrenched in diocese around the country. They demand a reconfigured, demasulinized God so they can be free to release their inner divinity. They will serve no God but the God made in their image.

Defend Life, April 1996