I’m happy to see this op-ed statement by William H. Slavick getting wide circulation. It has just appeared in the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, and has been picked up by both National Catholic Reporter and Bishop-Accountability.org. Bill Slavick is a retired professor and peace activist who formerly headed Pax Christi in Maine.
Slavick tells it like it is, as he calls for the resignation of key Catholic leaders: he notes the deliberate choice of John Paul II and Benedict to slam shut the window opened by Vatican II, because implementing the ecclesiology of that council would threaten our current clerical system and its patriarchal basis.
And so the future of our church is now premised on maintenance of a badly out of kilter clerical system rooted in patriarchal power and privilege, while the church implodes as a result of this choice to put a mutable human system ahead of the future of the church itself.
And there’s this:
And there’s this:
To reassert authority, the patriarchy has engaged in a heartless war on "objectively disordered" gays and lesbians that runs roughshod over their dignity and human rights and flouts Vatican II recognition of church-state separation, religious liberty and primacy of conscience. In Maine, the anti-marriage equality campaign was, for many, the last straw.
Slavick’s statement is powerful. I hope it reaches many ears. When it grabs the attention of the Catholic right (and its centrist fellow travelers), look for fireworks to ensue, and for some rabid attacks on Bill Slavick for speaking the plain honest-to-God truth.
