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.”
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By 
I fully admit that whether or not the clergy should be celibate is beyond my payscale, but if a married (former) Protestant can become a Catholic priest, why can’t a married Catholic? My best friend is an Orthodox priest. He’s a husband, a father, and a grandfather. He tells me that he understands all the reasons for opposing a married priesthood, but he feels that the benefits far outweigh them. (And believe me: I have no iron in this fire. Though married, I feel not so much as a whisper, let alone a call, to the priesthood.)
Married men can be ordained as deacons in both the Roman and Eastern Rites.
In the Byzantine Catholic Church, as well as the other various Eastern Catholic Churches, it’s not against tradition to admit married men to the priesthood, whereas in the Roman Church, priestly celibacy is viewed as a discipline. Many of the early Church fathers were married.
I’m in full support of a married Roman priesthood as an option.
Two of the best Byzantine priests I know are married, and they are very good in confession, because they have experienced the ups and downs of marriage.
There is no controversy with the prospect of a married priesthood.
Once they become a priest, they have to be celibate, married or not.
They do? Huh. News to me. As a longtime Eastern Catholic, I know quite a few married priests who have children and who are continuing to have children.
I think she means if their wife should die. I think that is the norm but may be dispensed.
Never heard of that rule…
No, we had an Episcopal priest who grew up in our hometown converted and became a Catholic priest. It seemed to work out fine
I agree with your friend that there are real struggles in having a celibate priest stood, but I believe the benefits far outweigh the difficulties. A celibate man better images and conforms too the image of a celibate Christ, who is totally wet to his bride the church and lays down his life for her and not his own will see Ephesians 5 and Matthew 19. Additionally living a life, totally committed to God now without the mediation of a wife is more a kin to, and is a sign of the heavenly reality where everybody will be totally devoted to God without mediation. The celibate is offered graces to do that now. I encourage you to make friends with happy celibate clergymen who can tell you of the grace of the sacraments and the way that prayer and a relationship with Mary has transformed and sustained him.
Since the article by Professor Spinello, The Second Vatican Council: A Guiding Star for the Church? is not available I wish to post a comment here on the Vatican II controversy.
Or a death star? A snare for large contingents of the progressive and traditional Church. Spinello apparently alludes to the multitude of progressive carpetbaggers who misused the Counsel’s documents to promote their new paradigm.
Reaction to the new paradigmers by traditionalists is that they, the radical left, are drawn into the alluring glitter of the death star only to be gripped by the devil. Whereas new paradigmers will contend it is the traditionalists who have closed their ears to the voice of the Spirit of the Council.
Ironically, Vat II has unfairly become a cause for distancing within the Church. Both reject what the Council actually teaches, injuring their faith in obedience to the Magisterium. Taking themselves to extremes that freeze compassion and Christian brotherhood.
For a test of manifest devotion to Christ present in the Holy Eucharist turn around at the consecration and note how very few are looking directly at the Eucharist, and are rather looking down piously or at a missalette. This is a hangover from the TLM. So the NO was intended to engage the parishioner in what is actually occurring before their eyes. To engage and participate, to learn what is being taught through the liturgy.
Professor Spinello analyzes all the pertinent Council documents to clearly demonstrate, one would wish once and for all, that both are out in Left Field. That if read properly sans a preconceived agenda will find the Council is indeed a Guiding Star.
If you are going to accuse people of rejecting what the Council teaches, perhaps you should include a quote of what that teaching is, and some evidence of rejection besides behavior. Sin is not generally evidence of heresy, and the direction of one’s gaze does not even amount to sin. Nor does it necessarily indicate what a person’s mind is on.
His argument subverts itself. He says the NO was intended to engage the parishioner in what is actually occurring before their [sic] eyes. And he now, as a practitionre of the NO, observes that few look.
Yesterday, a Dominican priest homilied on what “active participation” per Aquinas intends. One’s senses are not necessarily engaged. One’s spirit IS participating in sanctifying grace. One gains grace is through reconciliation and receipt. Reconciliation and receipt of Holy Eucharist are spiritually mindful, not sense-based acts.
One would have hoped that a doctorpriest would, late in life, have come across such notions.
“This is a hangover from the TLM.”
The stunningly arrogant bias and assumption by one human-mind led me to gasp. Have you been ill, Fr. Dr.? One who cares nothing for Who He Is will level such thoughtless uncharity to another of His Own.
Other persons adore the Eucharist at His Elevation within UA rubrics since that is the first time during the Mass the parishioner may view The Presence of the King. He is elevated. Not manhandled.
The premise underlying the changes to the Mass was to present the liturgy as a means to engage and instruct the faith. Few persons understood was was occurring at the altar, except for a few like yourselves who made the effort.
I don’t accuse you, although I accept your insults as a blessing.
Few persons understood [what] was occurring at the altar. A miracle of love to be adored. If laity continue to disregard the immense beauty of Christ’s real presence it’s in part due to those who condemn Vatican II and attempts to promote the Novus Ordo as a means of fulfilling the ancient dictum, ut legem credendi lex statuat. To allow what Benedict XVI envisioned as a parallel embellishment of the two liturgical forms.
If there’s sin, is may be in vilification. Examine your consciences before the Blessed Sacrament.
Seems odd that a married non Catholic can become a priest while denied to a life time Catholic. All the while we have a shortage of priests. Does not make any sense when you consider that we have always recognized the non celibate priesthood of the many Eastern Rite Churches. Since we now have severe financial problems in the Church and many congregations are struggling to afford a priest, it seems to me that new ways need to be found to solve these problems. A married priest with a family does not necessarily put a greater financial burden on a church. I have known many Protestant ministers who were self supporting by working at secular jobs. Another possibility would to look at the “worker priest model “ movement experimented with in post Vatican II France. The idea was that priests would take secular jobs in order to evangelize in the secular work place. This would also allow them to say masses on Sunday. Lay people could easily be employed to run the every day nut and bolt operations of the church- maintenance, business management etc. married deacons could also handle many of the sacraments as allowed. What I am trying to say is that we must be creative in trying new ways of meeting needs as they present themselves. Some of our traditions can be broken without damaging our faith. The life of the diocesan priest is becoming harder and harder as more and more have to live alone in their parsonages. Many also have to do their own cooking and housekeeping. This causes loneliness extra burdens and opens them to many needless temptations. Perhaps religious order priests living together and serving several nearby parishes would be another consideration. I think that it is becoming increasingly apparent that the old ways of doing things are no longer working and we must change.
Brilliant reply. You are so right. It makes no sense at all. Unfortunately, what you say here just continues to fall on deaf ears. Things will just have to get worse before they begin to consider more prudent alternatives.
I concur.
What bothers me MUCH MORE is that singular “right” of a priest to withhold the confession of a crime–no matter how heinous–from the authorities. How CONVENIENT: and no wonder so many boys were violated again and again! No womN of any faith would allow this outrage to continue, year after year after year. Seems God cannot protect the violated as long as the RC protects the violators!
Would you apply the same standard to a doctor/patient relationship or a lawyer/client relationship. If I was accused of sexually abusing a minor and retained legal council, should my attorney report my guilt to authorities?
A good chunk of the reason for repeat offenders was that a bunch of bishops decided to ignore their obligations under canon law and instead follow the advice of psychologists (who claimed they had cured the priests). It’s not like the only evidence they had was obtained in Confession.
Our legislators seem to also want to believe it can be easily solved in a few years too, judging by the typical penalties for child molesting.
The Catholic views on marriage for priests is incredibly short cited! Also denial of communion to CHRISTIANS of other faiths is DENIED!!! Now this former Baptist pastor can receive and GICE COMMUNION TO OTHERS BECAUSE WHY????
What’s changed?? Some Man priest said it’s okay now???? Surely God is amused by the teachings of the CATHOLIC RELIGION….
Ms Brechtel:
God is not amused by the teachings of the Catholic religion. God IS the founder of the Catholic religion.
Catholic priests are not allowed to marry after ordination, no matter whether they are Roman or Eastern.
Married men are admitted to the priesthood, even those who were formerly Roman, but underwent a formal change of rites, which transfers their canonical status from Roman (or Latin) to Eastern (Byzantine, Alexandrian, Maronite, etc) but again, most married men who are admitted to the priesthood are in the Byzantine Churches, or other Eastern-Rite branches of the Catholic Church.
Denial of Holy Communion to non-catholic Christians is a long standing law that will not change. Communion is for those who are in good standing with the Catholic Church, and who truly believe and profess that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. How can someone who rejects the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist receive Him in Holy Communion? They can’t, and you know it.
From the tone of your posted comment, I’m guessing that you are either a non-catholic, or someone who doesn’t like those who are.
Connie: I’m curious. Are you Catholic?
What changed is that he converted and then was ordained
In what way is Fr. Moger’s journey unique?
Fr Moger didn’t know there was a pathway for him to become a priest after converting.
Either way, even if it’s not unique to you, it is to him as a convert. If you’re a cradle Catholic like myself, it’s often harder to see the uniqueness of someone’s conversion.
In general, a typical Baptist believer is regenerated and saved according to the Bible. Christ lives in them and they have a relationship with God. A typical catholic is not regenerated, not saved, and has religion,which is void of a normal loving relationship with God. Therefore, this person never knew God and regressed to religion where there is no God. Pity
JF Acosta: Say what????
I am a trad. Catholic my whole life and always look up at the Eucharist during the Consecration and the 3x: Lord, I am not worthy. It is all about the presence of Jesus, of course.
Unfortunately many of Catholics do not believe in the Transubstantiation which is why so Sadly many Catholics drifted
Miss Connie , Christ may be amused or saddened sometimes by our actions but He founded the Catholic Church.
If you believe in Catholic teaching, especially about the Eucharist,and wish to be received into the Church the door is open. There’s a process though. You don’t just show up at the Communion rail.
Jesus Christ was celibate. Vatican II Council unequivocally endorsed priestly celibacy.
From Fr. John Hardon (Servant of God):
“If anyone asks me, and I have been asked more than once, what positive good has come from the Second Council of the Vatican, I could give a dozen answers. But somewhere near the top is its unmistakable support for priestly celibacy. As the following statement of the Council makes clear:
‘Based on the mystery of Christ and its mission, celibacy, which at first was recommended to priests, was afterwards on the Latin Church imposed by law on all who were to be promoted to Holy Orders. This Sacred Council approves and confirms this legislation. (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 16).'”
See: https://www.therealpresence.org/archive/archives/Priesthood/Priesthood_010.htm
Didn’t Think So above (8:16 p.m.) –
What I was getting at is that Fr. Moger is not the first Protestant pastor/minister/priest to become a Catholic priest.
Fr. Dwight Longenecker, e.g.
Maybe Fr. Moger is the first (American) Baptist pastor to make the trek?
Cleo
It almost seemed slightly downplaying to me.
I’m sorry for my snappy response.
Fr Moger could be the first American baptist minister to be ordained as a Catholic priest. As you said, many Lutheran and Anglican ministers have been ordained.
Fr. Longnenecker is a former Anglican priest. He became a Catholic priest under a special provision made by the Holy See for Anglican priests. Fr. Moger was given a dispensation from celibacy by Pope Francis to be ordained a Catholic priest in the Latin rite. These circumstances are not the norm in the Latin rite. The discipline of celibacy remains in the Church, that to be ordained a priest in the Latin rite one takes a vow of celibacy, which the Church teaches is a higher calling because Christ, himself, was celibate.
I bet that there are married, permanent Deacons who would be good priests.