Denver, Colo., Sep 1, 2018 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When sex abuse scandals first rocked the Catholic Church in the United States in 2002, Miriel Thomas Reneau was young, and felt “truly shocked to realize that men of God could inflict such terrible wounds on victims with impunity.”
This summer, as accusations of abuse against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick surfaced, a grand jury report from Pennsylvania detailed decades of clerical abuse, and the Pope has been accused of allegedly covering up abuse, Reneau, as well as many other lay Catholics, wanted to do to something.
“I wanted to express my solidarity with the victim-survivors of these abuses and do everything within my power to urge the leaders of the Church to act as courageous fathers in enacting meaningful and visible reform,” she told CNA.
That’s why Reneau, along with a friend who wished to remain anonymous, started The Siena Project, which encourages laity to write letters to their bishops “to enact meaningful reforms in light of recent revelations of grievous abuses in the Catholic Church.”
On its website, the Siena Project includes printable letter templates that can be sent to the apostolic nuncio to the United States, to Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and a template letter that can be sent to one’s local ordinary.
Reneau told CNA that she had already written letters to her bishop and to Cardinal DiNardo when she felt inspired to build a website that would help other Catholics do the same.
Using St. Catherine of Siena as the namesake for the project was a no-brainer for Reneau, who has a strong devotion to the Dominican tertiary, even naming a daughter after her. Furthermore, St. Catherine met and corresponded with Gregory XI so persistently that she eventually convinced him to move back to Rome after 67 years of papal exile in France.
Her example “shows us that courageous and persistent correspondence with Church leaders can be a channel of renewal during times of crisis in the Church,” Reneau said.
The project also lists in their mission statement six points which they affirm, including that clergy publicly admit the sins of the Church, that they submit to outside investigations, that seminaries and places of formation be reformed, and that the Church works to extend statute of limitations laws so as to give victims more time to find justice in court. Those who affirm the mission statement in whole are encouraged to sign it.
However, “we care much less about acquiring signatures than we do about encouraging people to write to their bishops in their own voices and from their own convictions,” Reneau said.
“I didn’t really know what to expect when I launched the website, and the response has reassured me on the most important point: I am not alone in perceiving a need for profound and visible reforms within the Church that I love so much.”
A similar letter-writing initiative was organized by a group of Catholic women, who signed an open letter to Pope Francis demanding answers to the questions and accusations raised in a letter by former U.S. nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.
As of Friday afternoon, the letter had more than 20,000 signatures.
Kendra Tierney is another lay Catholic who felt called to do something as the news of scandals in the Church kept coming this summer.
A mom who blogs at Catholic All Year, Tierney said the response to the scandals was something that frequently came up in a Facebook group of female Catholic bloggers to which she belongs.
Together with Bonnie Engstrom, who blogs at A Knotted Life, Tierney launched a social campaign encouraging prayer and fasting, which is how #SackClothandAshes began.
The women designed shareable graphics which describe the mission of the campaign, explain the purpose of prayer and fasting, and provide prayers of reparation. The campaign is set to last 40 days – it began Aug. 22, the feast of the Queenship of Mary, and will last through the month of September.
“We are Catholic, faithful to the Magisterium and disgusted by the abuse and cover-ups that have plagued the Roman Catholic Church. We are heartsick over the 1,000+ victims of abuse in the state of Pennsylvania and all the other boys and girls, men and women who have been sexually abused by priests and further victimized by the bishops who covered up these crimes,” one graphic for the #SackClothandAshes campaign states.
Tierney said she didn’t expect as big a response to the campaign as it has received.
“The response has been really heartwarming, because it felt like here was something real and concrete and based in Catholic doctrine and tradition that we could do,” she said.
Fasting in particular is a practice that has “sort of fallen by the wayside in Catholicism recently,” Tierney said, “yet this is a tool that makes us better and makes our Church better.”
Tierney said one of the most encouraging responses to the campaign she has received is from a woman who was sexually abused by a priest as a child. While the abuse happened many years ago, and the woman has since married and left the Church, she told Tierney that “it was the first time that she felt like the Catholic Church was supporting her and all that she had gone through.”
“There’s so many intentions for this (campaign), but that has to be one of the main ones, is showing the people who have survived this kind of abuse that we are aware of them and that we want to do what we can to support them,” Tierney said.
She noted that September is an especially appropriate time for a campaign that calls for fasting and reparation, as it contains the feasts of Our Lady of Sorrows and the Exaltation of the Cross, as well as the autumn ember days – the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the third Sunday in September, which were, historically, days of fast and abstinence.
The sacrifices and prayers are “a daily reminder that I haven’t given up on this, I haven’t forgotten about it, it’s…40 days that I keep it in the forefront of my mind,” she added.
Author Leah Libresco is also inviting laity to use the Sept. 14 feast of Our Lady of Sorrows as an opportunity to call their bishops about their concerns.
In her Facebook event, Libresco said she will be asking her bishop “what (he) knew about McCarrick, what he did, and what he plans to do now. I’ll also ask for him to work for the release of documents that would confirm or refute Archbishop Viganò’s testimony.”
She encourages attendees of the event to use the letter templates from The Siena Project as a guide for what to say on the call, and also to pray the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary or the Chaplet of Seven Sorrows for the bishops and their staff ahead of time.
“Let them know when you call that you’re praying for them!” she noted.
Kevin Heider is a Catholic singer-songwriter who has responded to the scandal through song.
“The Body” is the result of thoughts that Heider started having as news of sexual accusations against McCarrick came out this summer, as well the thoughts he had surrounding his wife’s pregnancy and the birth of his son.
“As we snuggled and stared and held our son close for two days in the hospital, our minds were split between the joy of this new life and the shame and sorrow wrought by recent revelations of the extent of the suffering our church has brought to so many of the men, women, and children she was supposed to shelter — not abandon,” Heider wrote in a reflection which he shared on his Facebook page.
Heider told CNA that he had been reflecting on the Church.
His song opens with a meditation on the ugliness of sin among the members of the body of Christ, the Church.
As member of the body of Christ “we have to embrace the pain caused by our members and bear it and deal with the weight of it all,” he told CNA.
Music helps Heider process, and he said he hopes his song could help others who are struggling with the scandal in the Church to do the same. He said he hoped it might have a unifying effect, and could help his listeners move from anger to sadness.
“When people allow themselves to just be sad, they’re truly united in that sadness. There’s a beauty in that, I think, in the simple acknowledgment that we’re in this together.”
In his Facebook reflection, he closed with an apology to anyone who has been hurt by members of the Church.
“To every beautiful body one of her members has ever perversely desecrated: I do not have the words to tell you how sorry I am.”
Chris Stefanick, a Catholic speaker and evangelist with Real Life Catholic, told CNA that the pain of the abuse crisis “hits very close to home,” as he has had family members endure the devastation of abuse, with effects that can last for decades.
“So any form of institutionalized cover ups infuriates me on a very personal level. I know I’m not alone in that. I think that watching this kicks up a lot of personal pain for a lot of people…even if it wasn’t a member of the clergy who abused them,” he said.
He encouraged Catholics to do four things in the face of the abuse crisis: demand transparency, pray, hope, and remain faithful.
“Don’t ever let anyone inside or outside the Church tell you not to talk. Solid accusations must be dealt with until they’re resolved. Be an annoying voice if you need to be,” he said on the need for transparency.
At the same time, Catholics should not let the crisis “rob you of your focus on Jesus.”
“I’ll never let Judas drive me away from Christ,” he said.
“In every crisis in the Church God sends saints as the solution. This is a time of profound crisis. God is calling us to be saints. To rebuild his Church.”
[…]
Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle courage to embrace the Gospel teachings in the Archdiocese of Seattle is to be respected and commended. I applaud the Archbishop for moving towards a respect for traditional marriage. He does so in the face of state legislators who want to re-locate all planned parenthood facilities into the public schools (since they no longer have access to Federal funds), beginning with the middle schools. The legislature has current bills to have mandatory sex education on homosexual and transgender issues, and gender theory (a heresy in the eyes of Pope Francis) in the public grade schools systems. The State of Washington legislature wants to advance the homosexual agenda to have access to the public school’s children through indoctrination. Seattle has a lesbian Mayor after the previous Mayor resigned for being a pedophile. The Archbishop is swimming against the current, and is championing the rights of children in Catholic schools. Good for him. Let the Catholic Schools be a safe haven for children against the secular world’s gender theories that the Catholic Church regards as heresy.
Once again a double standard. All Catholic teachers who sign such pledges are faced with choices and challenges. Yet those who use birth control, divorce and remarry, masturbate or have sex prior to marriage remain. Kudos to the students for speaking up. Perhaps families opposed to hypocrisy will choose other schools for their children.
The decision to marry is a public statement of intent to commit to a way of life. The teachers who decided to marry same-sex partners were publicly stating they intend to live in a way contrary to the teaching of the Church. That is why it is just they resigned from teaching in a Catholic school.
The prior commentator has a point about divorce and re-marriage. That is clearly a public commitment to lead a life contrary to the teaching of the Church.
I agree with this post! Hypocritical!!
Thank you Archbishop Paul Etienne from the bottom of my heart! We must, we must defend the precepts of the Church! I love you for your courage, knowing the outrage you would suffer. The Church needs MORE like you willing to stand up for Christ! But we, as a Church, must go further! We must help these poor LGBT people find their true humanity. These poor souls are sick and that demands our help and compassion. The Church must do more! We cannot simply let these people go along with their current life but convince them of their erroneous and sinful choice of a lifestyle. They, as fallen souls need our help, not our approval OR OUR VOTES! Silence is not an option when truth is compromised!
Paul Etienne needs to be run out of town and certainly needs to be evicted from the new mansion. He did not use his personal finances to buy the mansion but the money of the church parishioners. Makes me sick! Run Paul out of town today!
When Archbishop Etienne arrived in Seattle in 2019 he declined to reside in the historic Connolly House, saying “I am a pastor, not a prince.”
Instead, the House is among four structures within the archdiocesan complex adjoining the cathedral now being sold to enable a new and overall development scheme, including up to 1,300 homes. (Connolly House will be retained by the new owner as a designated heritage site.) https://www.archbishopetienne.com/exciting-plans-for-archdiocese-of-seattle-properties-announced
Perhaps Fontenot would like to enlighten CWR readers about the Big Apple and all of New York State (rather than getting it wrong in our Apple State) where the “tolerant” Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in 2014 that those who oppose abortion and gay “marriage” (that is, those affirm the right to life, and real marriage) “are not welcome in New York.”
So much for running people out of town…
Welllll. The archbishop may not be a prince, but he is no pauper either. His new 3460 ft digs cost 2.5 mil.
Redfin described it: “While the stunning views will capture your attention, it is the thoughtful, elegant details that will keep it. Every room delights in this special Mt Baker home, ideally situated on a charming & friendly street. Beautiful hardwood floors, a decorative tiled fireplace & artisan stained glass warm the expansive living space. Sophisticated chefs’ kitchen features high-end appliances, Quartzite countertops, w/custom island. The grand dining room – ready to serve its purpose with charming built-ins primed to display your treasures…Beautifully landscaped, multi-tiered yard.
A few weeks ago, I observed a Seattle church hosting the homeless in its basement doorway. At dusk, rats scurried among the dried leaf litter and fast food trash on the sidewalk and portico of the entrance into the church’s main vestibule.
At least one church in Seattle is decrepit. And I doubt one could find a parish which has increased its revenue or attendance stats following its Covid lockdowns. The Seattle archdiocese was one of the country’s firsts to shutter churches.
But it’s incongruous to know that the bishop, for one, chooses to enjoy upgraded living quarters with quartzite countertops, stunning views, stained glass windows, and a view to boot.
As for Seattle archdiocesan schools, at least one family I know moved to Idaho to escape their daughter’s being subject to CRT, taught not as theory but as fact, in her Catholic high school.
More than lifestyle choices of teachers and preachers is at issue in Seattle archdiocese schools, churches, and residences. All speak to serious temporal and spiritual decline.