Editorial

965,000 Signatures Short

An embarrassing failure for American dissidents

If this really had been a "referendum"--that is, a free and open ballot--the dissidents would have been crushed by a landslide.

Ordinarily the cover of Catholic World Report draws the reader's attention to an important news story inside the magazine. But this month's cover does not correspond to any feature article. In a sense, we might say that our cover refers to a news development which does not really merit serious notice; the story is that there is no story.

Back in May 1996, a coalition of dissident American Catholics came together under the title We Are Church, and announced a massive petition drive, designed to bring about fundamental changes in the Church. Their plan involved the collection of one million signatures on a "referendum" calling for the Church to end the tradition of priestly celibacy, ordain women, allow public election of pastors and bishops, and jettison Catholic teachings regarding human sexuality and the integrity of marriage.

We Are Church was not fussy about the people who signed the petition. They made no effort to determine whether signatories were practicing Catholics. Pseudonyms such as "Distraught Deacon" and "Stifled Sister" were accepted, on the grounds that some Catholics might face punishment if they were identified. In January 1997, CWR uncovered a scheme in which We Are Church offered financial incentives to young children who collected signatures from their grammar-school classmates.

Still, despite all these concessions to expediency, the dissident had trouble collecting signatures. Originally they had planned to deliver the one million signatures to the Vatican on May 18, 1997, which was Pentecost Sunday. But the delivery date was set back by several months, allowing the organizers more time to drum up support.

Finally on October 11--the 35th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II--We Are Church held its long-awaited conference in Rome. With a last rhetorical flourish, the American dissidents delivered the fruits of their laborious effort: a paltry 35,000 signatures.

There are approximately 62 million Catholics living in the United States today. So after nearly 18 months, We Are Church had managed to collect signatures from just .06 percent of the eligible population, or roughly one of every 1,800 Catholic Americans.

How difficult is it to rally 35,000 people behind a cause? Mother Angelica receives financial contributions from that many people every month. On that same Saturday in October, dozens of American college football teams drew more than 35,000 spectators to their games. And unlike those football fans, who paid for tickets, braved the traffic, and devoted a full afternoon to the game--and perhaps did the very same thing again the following Saturday--those who signed the We Are Church petition only had to scrawl their names (or a pseudonyms!) on a piece of paper.

In the American political system, laws can be enacted or repealed through the two-stage process of petition and referendum. A successful petition drive--the collection of the required number of signatures--does not settle the issue, it merely places the question on the ballot, to be decided by the referendum vote. If ordinary public laws cannot be changed by a petition drive alone, what wild arrogance led the American dissidents to believe that they could collect enough signatures to change the laws of God and teachings of his Church?

No, Catholic doctrines are not decided by majority vote. But it is worth noticing that We Are Church could generate support from only an insignificant fraction of the Catholic populace. If this really had been a "referendum"--that is, a free and open ballot--the dissidents would have been crushed by a landslide.

By the time they arrived in Rome in October, the organizers of We Are Church had clearly lost their ability to command public attention, and their last desperate efforts took on an air of comic opera. When a Swiss Guard hustled her out of St. Peter's Square, Sister Maureen Fiedler, SL, the group's chief American representative, complained that he should have been charged with "sexual harassment." A group of feminists who had planned to disrupt ordination ceremonies at a nearby cathedral were thwarted when their train was delayed. The million-signature drive was an abject failure.

Do America's noisy dissidents really deserve a serious hearing? Or are they leaders without a constituency--generals without an army? In this month's CWR, our Essay asks why bishops do not take action against those who clearly reject Church teachings; our Interview examines the case of a bishop who did take action. In the wake of the We Are Church debacle, perhaps other American bishops will follow suit.