Let's cut right to the chase. Everyone talks about the weather in the U.S. Catholic Church but no one does anything about it. We propose to do something about not only the weather, but the climate as well -- with your help. In fact, without your help, and the help of a million others like you, we won't be able to demand the action necessary to create the Church we need. If you've been following the horror stories for the past four years, you know it isn't only the spectacle of sex abuse by a relatively few American priests that makes us ashamed of our Church. It is the systematic cover up of that abuse by most of the nation's bishops. Bishops have covered up because they labor on the mistaken assumption that this is their Church, not ours, a Church that is constitutionally unaccountable because of a history that goes back almost a thousand years. In 1086, Pope Gregory VII created a monarchic papacy and a two-tier citizenship in the Church, with elite, celibate priest-people on one side, who set the rules, and common, non-celibate people-people on the other who obeyed them. In 2001, a cardinal in Rome would tell a roomful of reporters how far the modern Church had run with Gregory's high-jacking of the Gospel. "Bishops are only accountable to the pope," said Cardinal Jan Schotte. "And the pope is only accountable to God." This was a far, far cry from the way Jesus envisioned the life of his followers. We learn in Luke 22 that Jesus told the apostles he was giving them a different kind of authority than "the kings of the Gentiles" who lord it over their subjects. "Among you it shall not be so. Rather, let the greatest among you be as the youngest, and the leader as the servant."
