'Are You Blocking Us?'

James Muller, a founder of Voice of the Faithful, describes his fractious run-ins with the Boston archdiocese.

BY: James E. Muller and Charles Kenney

The meeting in this excerpt from "Keep the Faith, Change the Church," by James E. Muller and Charles Kenney, took place in March 2002.

Bishop Walter Edyvean sat directly in front of me across an enormous conference table in the wood-paneled boardroom of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Over his shoulder, out a huge picture window, I could almost see down onto Commonwealth Avenue, where an encampment of journalists had maintained a vigil ever since the horrific news broke about the sexual abuse of children by priests and the cover-up by the Church hierarchy. The almost-daily revelations of new atrocities, first in the Boston Globe and then in papers across the country, triggered a widespread sense of shock and disbelief among the faithful. The leaders of an institution dedicated to promoting Christian values had desecrated those values. It was as if firefighters had become arsonists, or doctors had intentionally spread disease.

The shocking cover-up of sexual abuse by the hierarchy had caused me to question the foundation of my cultural and spiritual identity. The Catholic Church had guided and nurtured me in many ways. I was a graduate of St. Joan of Arc Grade School, Cathedral High School, and of the University of Notre Dame before attending the Johns Hopkins Medical School. An uncle was a priest, an aunt a nun. My father had been the medical director of a large Catholic hospital.

But I knew that I could not remain and simply accept what had happened.

And so I helped form a grassroots organization called Voice of the Faithful. We are a group of devout Catholics, now more than thirty thousand strong, with a determination to be heard. We started out meeting in a suburban church basement and now have nearly two hundred active parish affiliates from Florida to Alaska.

Early on, the founding members of Voice of the Faithful decided that our historical docility had contributed to the cover-up and it must end. We saw our meeting with Bishop Edyvean as a crucial step toward that goal. We wanted to be embraced by the hierarchy of the Boston archdiocese, to work in partnership with them on the local level. Our goal was to forge a trusting relationship with the cardinal and others in the hierarchy so that the laity could gain a seat at the table, become part of the process of decision-making, and help build a better Church. We would approach this goal with a cooperative tone, yet if our voice was not heard, it would rapidly become clear that we had moved beyond our prior "pay, pray, and obey" mentality.

Our group was just a few months old, and we greatly valued this first opportunity to meet face-to-face with a member of the hierarchy. As Vicar General, second in command to Cardinal Bernard Law, Bishop Edyvean was a powerful figure. Now in his early sixties, he had a reputation as an erudite, courteous man who was particularly well connected, having served for some years at the Vatican. In Boston he played a behind-the-scenes role, implementing the policies of Cardinal Law.

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