The Vatican has just issued a new ruling that equates ordaining women to the sin of pedophilia.
How any person of Christian faith and vision can think and write this theological argument takes my breath away. While the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church is blindly adhering to their reactionary 17th Century theology and practice, the people of the contemporary American Roman Catholic community reel from the growing child abuse scandal that threatens to bankrupt every diocese and struggle with a severe and unending shortage of parish priests. Their leaders are making decisions and issuing decisions that should anger every believing Catholic. But where is the local protest?
Unlike a generation or two ago, the protest is out the door, beyond the parking lot and in the hearts and minds of the disaffected Catholic community. While many believing Catholics are struggling to do ministry, love God and neighbor, worship and educate their children in the faith, others have left the community and not looked back.
I believe that the small revisionist groups that have sprung up in and around the American RC community will, within another generation, cause a full split from the Roman leadership and create their own church. Or, at least they should. It’s time for a new Catholic reformation in America before there is no church left to reform.