THE VOICE OF THE FAITHFUL OR THE UNFAITHFUL?

By David J. Webster, M. Div., Director of Save Our Church
P.O. Box 1404
Medina, OH 44258 6/18/03

We have the claim by yet another organization, VOTF, out to fix the Church, that claims to "love the Roman Catholic Church," "believe what the Catholic Church teaches," and "accept the teaching authority of the Church." FutureChurch, lying through its teeth, has claimed the very same thing. The facts tell us that we are here facing people with the same propensity to lying as those leading FutureChurch/Call to Action (See, FutureChurch / The Truth Behind the Mask).

The Poisoned Pot from which VOTF Emerged
Call to Action, which is only more honest and open about its embrace of utter apostasy and rejection of the Christian faith than its regional branch in Cleveland called FutureChurch, boasted in its February, 2003 Annual Report that VOTF began with the help of its members in Boston and is "a partner in the struggle."

The Poisoned Pottage VOTF is Peddling in our Churches
Dr. James Muller, founder of VOTF, promotes the abolition of the Church as the Kingdom of God which Jesus established and mentioned over 150 times in the Gospels and the construction of a Church as a democracy where the people are in control. Most outrageous of all, he calls the absolute power given to the Apostles by Christ in this Kingdom and passed on to the Apostolic College to this very day as the disease and cause of sex abuse by priests! ¹ The facts reveal that if there is any relationship between the authority structure of the Church and sexual abuse it would be democratization that should get the most blame. Research by Richard Blackman at Fuller Theological Seminary shows 12% of clergy in "democratized" protestant churches had sexual intercourse with a parishioner and another 38% had inappropriate sexual contact. In respect to convictions for "pedophilia," Phillip Jenkins in his book, Pedophiles and Priests, states that while 1.7% of priests have been found guilty, 10% of protestant clergy have been so convicted. Jim Post, President of VOTF, similarly, wants an overthrow of Christ's order of authority in His Church by defending the control of parishes by lay people.

Susan Troy, national chair of VOTF's Prayerful Voice, actually claimed the abuse victims are "the new prophets and martyrs of our faith." ² Incredibly, those accepted as the new prophets at the first national conference in Boston July 20, 2002 and allowed to speak included avowed homosexuals, agnostics and married priests. Though 95% of the abuse in the Church has been homosexuality (sex with an adolescent of the same sex ) homosexuality is never mentioned by these folks as the problem. The problem is unequivocally, the way Christ set up the Church as a Kingdom!!

Seeing Through the False Claim of Catholicity by VOTF's Leaders ("VOTF Statement of Beliefs" under the lens)
1. The positions stated above are as Anti-Catholic as you can get. Democratize the Church and you have destroyed the Church of Jesus Christ. To call the Kingdom of God prophesied to come to earth and established by Jesus Christ, a disease and the cause of sex abuse, is outright blasphemy. Sinful priests and failing bishops do not at all mean there are "flaws" that need correcting in the "institutional aspect of our Church." The flaws are in the priests and bishops who fail the plain moral teachings of the Church and in those who continue to justify moral perversion condemned by the Church even after they have seen the consequences of their teachings that have dominated numerous Catholic schools and seminaries since the 1960's.

2. When VOTF leaders claims to believe in "the Life, Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ," they may not even be speaking of the person we know who lived 2000 years ago in Israel. Even if they are, they in all likelihood do not believe He was God of very God and the only one who literally and physically rose from the dead. The modernist view widely accepted in academic Catholic circles is that this person orthodox Catholics call Christ arose only in some "spiritual" or imaginary sense.

3. When VOTF claims to "accept the teaching authority of the Church" they do not mean what we might think. The teaching authority of the Church to these people is not the Bishops in union with the Pope but in all the people, especially themselves. "We are Church" means all the people have magisterial authority and, in particular, those who understand this "higher truth." Since the hierarchy has "suppressed the people," the Church, including Pope John Paul II, in their view, lies in error on many moral, theological and ecclesiastical matters. The Catechism is thus not a reliable measure for ecclesial communion as our Pope claims.

4. When VOTF claims to "believe what the Catholic Church believes" they do not at all mean what we mean. We would mean this is everything expressed in the Catechism just as our Holy Father plainly declared. The Church to these people includes all those baptized whether (and especially!) heretics or apostates. What they believe then is also what "the Church" believes.

5. When VOTF says that "Vatican II illuminates the pathway for lay involvement in the Church" they falsely imply, if not actually claim, that means the relinquishing of governing authority for the Church to the laity. This is pure deception. Here is what the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, No. 18 of Vatican II says: "[T]his Council is resolved to declare and proclaim before all men the doctrine concerning bishops, the successors of the Apostles, who together with the successor to Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the visible Head of the whole Church, govern the house of the living God."

6. When VOTF claims "the laity has . . . the obligation to assist bishops . . . in a meaningful way," they are clearly saying this is more than in an advisory way. Their claim is to the Apostolic authority that Jesus gave only to the Apostles which was transmitted to the Bishops and priests by the laying on of hands for 2000 years to this very day.

7. When VOTF says it supports "collaboration among the bishops, other clergy, and the laity in strengthening the unity of the Church," it has deliberately avoided the most urgent need of strengthening the Faith of the Church in order that our unity will be assured and genuine. VOTF is divisive not unifying because it undermines the Church and its faith. VOTF will require the suppression and elimination of any voice in the Church that insists on authentic Catholic faith and that opposes the destruction of the hierarchy of the Church because that voice will never tolerate what these apostates are doing within the Church.

¹Miriam Hill, "Catholic Group in Boston Sows Seeds of Revolution," The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 15, 2002
² Peggy Thorpe, ed, http://www.votf.org/vineyard/vineyard3/vineyard3.htm