Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron warned his priests and deacons
June 3 that they could be “dismissed from the clerical state” if they
participate in a eucharistic liturgy June 12 closing an international
American Catholic Council convention in Detroit.
The ACC, a coalition of liberal Catholic groups seeking changes in
the church, said Vigneron’s warning brought a sharp spike in visits to
its Web site, and in registrations for the convention.
“There are good reasons for believing forbidden concelebration will
take place by the laity and with those not in full communion with the
church” at the June 12 Mass,Vigneron said in his June 3 letter.
He did not explain why he thought lay people or clergy not in full
communion with the church would be engaged in concelebration of the
ACC’s closing Mass.
The ACC Web site gave no such indications, and
leaders of the convention said there was no such intention.
In an e-mail to NCR June 7, John Hushon, co-chairman of the ACC,
said, “We stated categorically to Msgr. [Robert] McClory [Detroit
archdiocesan moderator of the curia] that ‘There will be only one
presider, an ordained priest in good standing.’ We could not have been
any clearer.”
Under church law, a local bishop has full authority over all
liturgical celebrations in his diocese, and Vigneron emphasized that he
has given no authorization for the closing Mass at the convention of the
American Catholic Council.
The June 11-12 gathering is to be held at Detroit’s Cobo Hall – a
historic venue symbolically recalling the church’s famous American
bicentennial Call to Action conference on social justice in 1976, hosted
by then-Detroit Cardinal John Dearden.
That conference, featuring mainly social action personnel from
dioceses across the country, spun out of hierarchical control and
produced many resolutions in apparent conflict with traditional Catholic
teaching.
The bishops subsequently adopted some of its proposals but
rejected many of them.
An independent progressive Catholic organization
based in Chicago, Call to Action, was later formed to advance many of
the conference’s proposals and goals.
Among featured speakers on the ACC agenda is Sr. Joan Chittister,
former prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pa., and an NCR
columnist.
Swiss-born theologian Fr. Hans Kung, 83, long a leading ecumenist and
professor at the University of Tubingen, Germany, is expected to
address the group in a video recording if health prevents him from
appearing personally.
Kung’s 1971 critique of papal infallibility led to
a 1979 Vatican order declaring he could no longer teach as a Catholic
theologian.
In a news release June 4 ACC organizers said the convention will draw
“several thousand center-left Catholics committed to the principles of
Vatican II.”
One of the goals of the gathering is to endorse a “Catholic Bill of Rights and
Responsibilities” which stresses the primacy of conscience and the
rights and responsibilities of lay Catholics, by reason of their
baptism, to participate in the ministry and governance of the church and
in working for social justice.
An archdiocesan announcement for parish bulletins sent out to Detroit Catholic parishes www.aodonline.org/bulletins
for the weekend of June 11-12 reiterated Vigneron’s warning against
participation in the meeting or its June 12 liturgy.
It said the
archbishop has “serious concerns over the ACC’s distortion of church
teachings and issues, and most notably the group’s expressed opposition
to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.”