Danusha V. Goska

Whose Catholic Church?

This is Danusha Goska.

I and many of my friends are feminists. We are active opponents of child abuse. We uphold the dignity of each human being. And we are Roman Catholic.

Many progressive people are Catholic. More than half of American Catholics, for example, think women should be priests.

We remain Catholic because of baptism. This sacrament, as Saint Paul wrote, ensures that no power nor principality, no height nor depth can come between us and God.

Too, we are Catholic because we built and we maintain the Catholic Church.

We volunteered our time to clean the church on weekends, to minister to the needy, to staff bake sales, to nurture the church through our prayers.

We earned and then donated the hundreds and thousands and millions of dollars that turned Catholicism into one of the world's wealthiest institutions. Church buildings, church lands, church doctrine: these are our property, and these are our responsibility.

Awakened as if from a trance by long overdue press exposés, groups like SNAP, Voice of the Faithful, and Call to Action heed the command given to Francis of Assisi, himself a lay person: "Repair my church."

Bishop Symons, who molested children, resigned. Bishop Weakland, who paid his lover almost half a million dollars, resigned. Cardinal Law, who systematically protected perpetrators and endangered women and children, resigned. These historic changes did not come from the top. They are proof that when the people lead, the leaders follow.

For Speak Your Mind, this has been Danusha Goska.

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