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We need to do more than simply report on the dissenters who seek to change the Church rather than change themselves

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) – My friend Bill Donohue reminds me of an Irish pugilist who uses words rather than gloves to defend the Church against those - within and without - who seek to harm and disparage her. I am grateful for his work through the Catholic League. However, I recently received a release from the Catholic League which I thought was a bit too optimistic entitled “Voice Is Toast.” In it Bill reported on the financial troubles of the “Voice of the faithful” (VOTF), a dissenting organization within the Church. Frankly, I think Voice of the Faithful is just reconfiguring itself.

John Hushon, a VOTF board member, recently announced that he is a co-chair of a new umbrella organization of dissenting Catholics calling itself the “American Catholic Council”. This “Council” includes other dissenting groups, including the notorious “Catholics for Choice” which has been rejected by the Bishops as having no claim to be Catholic. We include a report from “California Catholic Daily” on the Councils’ future plans below. They are planning a public gathering on June 10-11, 2011 (Pentecost), in Detroit, Michigan.

I have come to a conclusion, we need to do more than simply report on the dissenters who seek to change the Church rather than change themselves. We need to respond with an informal coalition, perhaps called “Catholics by Choice”; representing Catholic Christians who knowingly choose to embrace the fullness of the Christian faith found within the full communion of the Catholic Church with gratitude, fidelity and evangelistic zeal. I am one of those Catholics and I invite the global readers of Catholic Online who share this desire to consider a response to this newest effort to dissent from the Church.

I am a “revert” to the Church. Though I was baptized into the Church as an infant and received the other Sacraments of initiation as a child, I wandered from the faith as a teenage “hippie” in search of “truth” all those years ago. Like Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz” I discovered there really is “no place like home.” I became a “Catholic by Choice” at the age of 18 and fell in love with the Catholic Church. Since then, I try to live my life within the Church, experiencing the graces I need for ongoing conversion through the Sacraments and reforming my mind through her continual instruction. I know that the Church is not “Some – thing” but rather “Some – One”, the Risen Body of the Lord Jesus Christ continuing His redemptive mission in the world until He returns. Let me share a few salient quotes from Patristic sources:

“Let us love the Lord our God; let us love His Church… Let us love Him as our Father and her as our mother” (St. Augustine) "No one can have God as his Father who does not have the Church as his Mother” (St. Cyprian) “For where the Church is, there the Spirit of God is also; and where the Spirit of God is, there the Church is, and all grace. And the Spirit is truth.” (St. Irenaeus of Lyons)

Do we experience the Church as our “mother”? Do we accept the invitation to live in the Church? Do we love the Church as “Some – One” more than some-thing? Catholic theology teaches what the early fathers, Saints and Councils throughout the ages all affirmed; to belong to Jesus is to belong to His Body. Our membership in the Church is a participation in the life of God; what the Apostle Peter referred to as a “participation in the Divine nature”. (2 Peter 1:4)

The Church is not some “thing” which we try to “fix” or have our “issues” with or which we try to “change” by remaking it into our image. The Church is a communion with the Trinity in and through Jesus Christ and with one another in Him. Living in that communion we are called to love the world as He does. Through our Baptism the Church became our mother, the privileged place in which we live our lives in Christ. To perceive, receive and live this reality requires a continuing conversion.

We are sons and daughters of the Church called to carry forward in time the continuing redemptive mission of Jesus Christ who is the Head of His Body. In its treatment of this “mystery” called the Church, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. The Church is "the world reconciled." She is that bark which "in the full sail of the Lord's cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world." According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah's ark, which alone saves from the flood." (#845)

Contrary to what one reads on the web site of this new “American Catholic Council” http://americancatholiccouncil.org/ , the Church is already engaged in a season of genuine renewal and reform. She ...