Spider-Man and the Return to the Honorable Hero
Spider-Man and the Return to the Honorable Hero
Steve Ditko, the original artist and co-creator of the Spider-Man comic, is the Greta Garbo of comic books.
With Spider-Man 2 again ready to break records, Ditko is still refusing to give interviews after 20 years. He refused interviews for major articles about him by the Los Angeles Times and one of Canada's leading newspapers, the National Post during the cinema run of the original Spider-Man movie.
Ditko, however, explained his philosophy of art in a narrative on a 1987 video titled "The Masters of Comic Book Art," hosted by author Harlan Ellison. In his introduction, Ellison dismissed Ditko's plea that heroes in art and literature be measured by the moral courage shown in objective good vs. evil choices.
The artist now seems prophetic for saying in the show that if we glorify the anti-hero in art, then anti-life and violence will come into our culture. The anti-heroes of the Columbine-like killings in public schools and the Sept. 11 terrorists seem to justify his claim.
What our American and global culture needs are heroes as models. In the program, the artist and co-creator of Spider-Man says, "Aristotle said that art is more important than history. History tells how man did act. Art shows how man should and could act. It creates a model.
"The self-flawed and anti-hero provide the heroic label without the need to act better. A crooked cop, a flawed cop, is not a valid model of a good law enforcer," Ditko said in the program. "An anti-cop corrupts the legal good, and an anti-hero corrupts the moral good."
Spider-Man as a model for goodThe power of Ditko's art has in fact influenced youth toward good. In the Fall, 2001 issue of The Jesuit, a teenager named Pedro tells how he was inspired to go to college by Spider-Man's message.
"Spider-Man got his power when he was a teenager and wasn't sure how to use it," Pedro explains. "So his grandfather [actually uncle] told him, 'With greater power comes greater responsibility.' That's the way it is at Cristo Rey. We're learning to make the world a better place. We're going to go to college and give a whole lot back from what we've been given."
Some are saying that Spider-Man is even a type of Christ. In his essay for the video, Ditko seems at times to be describing Spider-Man as well as the second person of the Trinity. He said, "Early comic book heroes were not about life as it is, but creation of how a man with a clear understanding of right and wrong and the moral courage to choose acts even if branded an outlaw."
On the Internet, I found the testimony of a man who used Ditko's art to turn to God. Mark Dukes, now a deacon of the African Orthodox Church, said:
"My father wasn't around. My mother was a single parent. It was a vacuum in my life. Who am I supposed to be? How am I supposed to be?
"For me, Spider-Man really resonated. Spider-Man's alter ego was Peter Parker, who was a nerd. And I didn't feel like I was a cool guy either. Spider-Man was disliked and feared. Everyone thought he was a crook, but he was a good guy. No one gave him any respect but he continued to do good even in the face of all that.
"He would sacrifice himself, get beat up and then people would say 'Ahhh. Spider-Man! Run. He's going to do something to us!' And really he had just now saved the world. That is very saintly.
"For me, Spider-Man was a type of Christ. He went through suffering just to do good. And he continued to do it even in the face of everyone misunderstanding him and hating him."
Spider-Man, icon art and invisible realitiesDukes is an artist of Orthodox icons for churches, an artistic pursuit similar in some ways to Ditko’s own work.
Blake Bell, creator of Ditko Comics Web site, said:
"Visually, Ditko had what most people would consider a cartoony style, but his work was far more real than the ‘photo-realist’ comic artists that would appear on the scene in the following 20 years.
"His was more real because the visual laws defined in his universe were so real, so consistent, that one suspends disbelief to its maximum."
Icon historian Andrei Navrozov, in the June issue of Chronicles, agrees with Bell that art can either be about "gaining a deeper understanding" of reality by symbols or can "mimic" reality.
Perspective was first invented in 470 B.C. by Agatharchus as a means of "geometric illusionism" to mimic reality in stage sets for theater, according to the icon historian.
Navrozov said the "theater set is conceived as a fiction, whereas [an icon] is born as an attempt at truth of life, an attempt that in no sense compromises the integrity of the original [reality]. ... They are symbols of real life, not lifelike imitations of reality.
"There is no deeper conflict in history than that between these opposing views of art. 'Is art to serve reality and the individual under God or is it to serve [materialistic] realism and the masses under communism?"
Navrozov shows us that the modern battleground against God and reality is imagery and the imagination. Michael O' Brien, in his book A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle for Your Child's Mind, said that the imagination is the way that mankind comprehends "God's territory" and his created "invisible realities."
The modern imagination, according to O'Brien, has lost "God's territory" by returning to its "pre-pagan split in consciousness," which is the Gnostic rejection of the "sacramental" unity of spirit and matter, the addiction to occult tales of will to power like Harry Potter, and the relativistic denial of good and evil with ends-justify-the means storylines.
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is for O'Brien a prime example of a return to the Western Christian epic tradition of the moral imagination, which comprehends "God's territory" and his created "invisible realities."
O'Brien wrote: "The discernment of the right paths that must be taken, if good is to triumph, is dramatized in the myriad geographical, emotional, spiritual, and symbolic choices faced by the questers. In each of these, Tolkein's world is faithful to the moral order of the universe, to the absolute necessity of freedom. Middle-earth is a "sacramental" world, an "incarnational" world. ... Spirit [invisible realities] and matter are never portrayed as adversaries."
Western culture based on reality and GodThe Western Christian culture was rooted in this service to reality and God. Reality was the belief in the objectivity of things that are both material and spiritual. During the last two to five centuries, materialistic modernity has been the adversary of this spiritual and matter "incarnational" worldview.
This "incarnational" reality was rooted out and refilled with the lone materialistic science and "realism" in art worldview in which reality was contained only within material objects that could be tested or seen.
Spiritual (invisible) realities like God, love, beauty, responsibility and free will were neither seeable, material nor testable, so they were not within modernity's realism.
Modernity attacked the primacy of realistic philosophies such as Thomism and realistic symbolic literature like Dante's spiritual epics and Shakespeare's dramas contrasting persons who were symbols of the conflicting real worldviews of modernity and the older realistic philosophy.
Hamlet's "To be or not to be?" illustrates what the two cultures were in conflict about. In our time, Bill Clinton ("What is the definition of is?") is the symbol of modernity's denial of "to be" or objective truth or falsehood.
Modernity, in its desire to stamp out the Christian culture, dislodged Thomism realistic philosophy and realistic symbolic literatures with Pavlovian behaviorism as well as the materialistic reductive studies and application of art, which represented only material acts. Such as Freud's deterministic reduction of all symbols of the mind to represent only the physical acts of sex and Picasso's sexual anti-art.
This cramped reality of only the materially seeable or testable led to rootlessness and alienation, which was so unbearable to modern man that there was a reaction. According to philosopher Allan Bloom, Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy of disbelief in all reality, seeable or unseeable, material or spiritual, became the language of the American reaction.
Friedrich Nietzsche's values philosophy led to the subjectivity of all concepts of objective truth, which included good and evil.
Many will remember when President Reagan called the USSR "the evil empire"; he was roundly criticized for violating the new language of "beyond good and evil." This language of value relativism allows for neither the words nor the symbols of evil and good.
Nietzsche's anti-reality philosophy of "God is dead" led to the anti-heroes of politics and art.
In society this led to the denial of the concepts of absolute truth and the law of identity in reality by modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso and by politicians such as Clinton. This rejection of good and evil in turn led to the degrading of women and sexuality.
In the case of Picasso, E. Michael Jones in Degenerate Moderns says:
"His break with the traditions was an index of his hatred not only toward the spiritual values of the West but toward the human body and spirit that the West prized as good. In the end, the only thing that Picasso portrayed realistically was the woman's crotch. Modern art had returned to its roots, and the gaping crotch was the only thing now that could keep the aging Picasso in touch with the real world."
Spider-Man the hero On the other hand, the hit Spider-Man movie may be a sign that our society wants to go back to the culture that Nietzsche, Picasso and Clinton rejected—a culture that was able to see the objective reality of God, love, beauty, responsibility, free will and the honorable hero.
In the climax of the movie, at the top of a bridge, the Green Goblin's hand holds up the woman that Spider-Man loves and in the other hand he holds a cable with a tram full of children dangling at the other end. Then the villain lets them fall to their deaths. As he does this, he gives Spider-Man a choice by saying, "You can save either the girl or the children."
Spider-Man, almost miraculously, saves both. For some, this is symbolic of the need in our society to return to the Christian tradition of men retaking the heroic responsibility of showing love by committing both to his woman and the fruit of their love through "better or worse" for life.
As our hero slowly lowers, by the cable, his love and the children to safety, he is repeatedly knocked around by the Green Goblin.
The Goblin taunts him to let go and save himself, which would mean the deaths of those he is lowering. But as the villain zeros in for the kill, Spider-Man is ready to give his life for others, as another hero did 2,000 years ago.
With the help of New Yorkers, Spider-Man saves his love and the children and defeats the Goblin, who finally begs for mercy. As our hero is about to give him his hand, the villain sends his high-tech vehicle to kill Spider-Man from behind. Spidey avoids the vehicle and it ends up killing the Goblin.
This is the Christian message in a symbolic nutshell. God will forgive anyone no matter what the offense, with only one exception. The only offense God can't forgive without destroying our free will is one's choice to reject mercy. By the Judas choice, one freely sends oneself to where God is not, which is the definition of hell.
Clinton the classic anti-heroThe Democrats and their public relations agency, the media, are at the other end of the symbolic spectrum, as real-life anti-heroes who use the seduction marketing trick of association to sell lies.
Years ago, in Catholic books, association meant personal relationships with good or bad companions—friendships that led to either depravity or honorable lives.
‘Association’ now means creating the false impression that a product, place, thing or politician is like the symbol he figuratively stands next to. Nike shoes are "good" because stars like Michael Jordan wear them, or toothpaste will make you popular because that's what happens in the commercial.
It's a con job to sell products and politicians. Sadly, the shadier part of our economic culture is based on this tactic. This shallow magician's trick, as with all lies, leads to meaninglessness and despair. The selling of pornography to the masses by associating it with constitutional freedoms would make our founding fathers turn over in their graves.
Pornography is not only bad, it is also an empty evil that can only mimic reality. It's men having imaginary relationships with glossed-over images of what was once a picture of a real woman, betraying her most intimate self and future relationships. The emptiness keeps multiplying.
Porn is not symbolic of real life, but a lifelike imitation of reality.
As Navrozov said, "There is no deeper conflict in history than that between these opposing views of art. Is art to serve reality and the individual under God or is it to serve [materialistic] realism and the masses."
The marketing and selling of pornography brings us to Bill Clinton, who, despite promises to the contrary, disrupted the "obscenity prosecution" of Ronald Reagan's task force, which had the porn industry in "serious trouble in the late '80s and early '90s."
Instead, Clinton lived like a presidential X-rated soap opera star for the $10 billion per year pornography industry.
Our society was willing to accept a degenerate like Clinton as an anti-hero. And as Ditko said, "[A]n anti-hero corrupts the moral good."
Fred Martinez is the author of The Hidden Axis of Evil: The Clintons, Sex Abuse, and the Aborting of America, which can be purchased at www.amazon.com.
Is San Francisco VOTF Mainstream?
Is San Francisco VOTF Mainstream?
The pro-gay San Francisco Chronicle recently printed an article about a controversial “Catholic” organization including an email address and phone number on how to get in contact with the group, which the newspaper described as not being “fringe.”
The group is Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) that is opposed nationally by Faithful Voice. Spokeswoman for Faithful Voice, Carol McKinley claims the organization is “profoundly” deceptive.
“VOTF is controversial as a result of the profound deception of the individuals in leadership and teaching positions. While they deny their affiliation with Call to Action, VOTF's founding members Jan Leary, Fr. Walter Cuenin and others are keynote speakers at the Spring Call to Action Conference, right along with Joanna Manning of "Catholics for Free Choice", an abortion advocacy group,” McKinley said.
“In VOTFs meetings with the Bishops, they purport they are "centrist" on the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. But the agents who act on their behalf, Fr. Ray Schroth, James Carroll, Anthony Massimini, Anthony Padovano, Bishop Gumbleton and many others, are teaching philosophies contrary to the Church.”
As reported in the San Francisco newspaper Peg Gleason and her husband, Ed, begin the first Bay Area chapter of Voice of the Faithful, a national group started in Boston, which claims it wants to end the church sex abuse scandal by ending “medieval” traditions.
“A lot of them [the bishops] want to continue the cover-up. The bishops and their spokesman still want the cover-up,” VOTF Bay Area leader Ed Gleason said. “This is medieval tradition. The only ones who still have this are the Moslems. But some are more open than others.”
Faith Voice claims that VOTF has more on it’s agenda than to end to medieval traditions.
“Their [VOTF‘s] agenda is to create a democratic American church which votes on the acceptance of Divine Law by 2/3 vote, hires and fires its priests, Bishops and in fact Pope,” McKinley said. “Here in Boston, they actually have a "Bishop's Search Committee" who believes they are recruiting for the next Archbishop of Boston. It is delusional.”
The Chronicle however presented VOTF as being mainstream by quoting Theresa Murphy of St. Ignatius Church who attended the Voice of the Faithful meeting at the Jesuit run University of San Francisco on February 4.
Murphy said in the San Francisco newspaper that the leaders starting VOTF in San Francisco such as Ed and Peg Gleason who are members of St. Teresa Parish are"not fringe people; they are the real backbone of their churches."
According to Lesbian Jane Meredith Adams in her article for the San Francisco Magazine Online website she returned to the Gleason’s parish St. Teresa’s Catholic because a teacher at the class for returning Roman Catholics claimed "The church is awful on that stuff [“Rome saying gay people are ‘objectively disordered’.”] Nobody listens to them about sex."
Adams also said recently deceased Father Peter Sammon pastor of St. Teresa’s Catholic “was the reason I’d returned to the church.” The San Francisco Magazine article presented Sammon as a close associate of Rep. Nancy Pelosi who is now House minority leader.
“Later, at the funeral [of Sammon], Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi described how Father Peter gave her hell for not moving fast enough to help the poor,” according to Adams writing for the pro-homosexual San Francisco Magazine.
Homosexual and abortion leader Pelosi even made a congressional floor statement in honor of Father Peter Sammon on April 16, 2002.
The radical national gay & lesbian newsmagazine Web site The Advocate on December 24, 2002 had a headline that said “The Selection of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Ensures Gay Rights will Stay on the Agenda”
Also according to the Human Events online November 18, 2002 issue “Few! members of the House over the years have been as zealous in their pursuit of unlimited abortion rights as Mrs. Pelosi, a Roman Catholic who has steadfastly supported partial-birth abortion.”
The Human Events article as well said “Pelosi backed an amendment to the District of Columbia appropriations bill that would have permitted the use of local funds to force the Boy Scouts of America to reinstate two gay leaders and compensate them with $50,000 each.”
When VOTF organizer Ed Gleason was asked what was Father Sammon’s relationship with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. He said “Fr. Sammon was the one of the greatest priests in San Francisco. You are way off base.” Then Gleason hung up the phone.
To be fair to Gleason, the question could have sounded to him like a suggestion that Sammon had a romantic relationship with Pelosi. Unfortunately instead of allowing this reporter to clarify the question for him he started name-calling and hung up the phone.
But the question still stands as to why “one of the greatest priests in San Francisco” was so closely associated with one of the top congressional ringleaders of radical homosexuality and abortion.
Is associating with a top leader of the radical homosexual and abortion movement part of the criteria that “mainstream” VOTF Catholics use to judge if a pastor is “one of the greatest priests in San Francisco?”
As stated earlier the Chronicle presented VOTF as being mainstream by quoting Theresa Murphy a founding member and parishioner at St. Ignatius Church who attended the Voice of the Faithful meeting at the California Jesuit run University of San Francisco on February 4.
The pro-homosexual The Jesuit Urban Center website presently has a link to Theresa or John Murphy of St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco. VOTF leader Theresa Murphy was emailed from the Jesuit website link, but declined to be interviewed for this article.
The Jesuit Urban Center director Father Thomas Carroll is a strong supporter of VOTF. He recently attacked Faithful Voice on the Jesuit website for not “dialoguing” with Voice of the Faithful.
“One of the hallmarks of Call to Action and dissenting groups is their use of the word ‘dialogue‘. They wish to bring unity through ‘dialogue‘. The problem is, the dialogue must end in concession to their ideas of the ‘dialogue’ or we are silenced... You use your free will to accept it or reject it - - but the dialogue ends where the Magisterium begins,” Faithful Voice spokeswoman McKinley said.
”The Jesuit Urban Center places the crucifix as a symbol of the Roman Catholic Faith. Yet, its reputation for advocating the virtue of homosexual acts is historical. I suspect this is real impetus for Fr. Carroll's attack on our group.”
Fr. Carroll, a native of San Francisco and member of the California province of the Society of Jesus on April 10,2002 opposed an amendment before the Massachusetts legislature to ban homosexual marriage in that state according to the October 2002 San Francisco Faith.
In the October San Francisco Faith investigative report Maria Kennedy said that “The Jesuit Urban Center seems to be at the center of homosexual activism in the Boston area.”
Carroll’s California province of the Society of Jesus, which allowed VOTF (a self proclaimed anti-sex abuse group) to meet at University of San Francisco on February 4, also has incongruously allowed the pro-homosexual sex abuse play "The Vagina Monologues" to be preformed on the USF campus.
The California Province of the Society of Jesus in Los Gatos while in the middle of its own sex abuse scandal according to a April 23, 2002 San Jose Mercury article reported that Fr. Joseph Fessio, S. J., despite being America's top orthodox publisher of Roman Catholic literature was “forced into an obscure chaplain's job in Los Angeles after he criticized the University of San Francisco as too liberal and sought to open his own orthodox college."
The Mercury said “One criticism he [Fessio] made in February – just before the enforced exiled happened – was about the USF establishment's plan to allow students to enact a production of a play called "The Vagina Monologues.''
E. Michael Jones said in Culture War magazine that "The Vagina Monologues" is a sex abuse play. Commenting on the play when it ran at Notre Dame University, he said, "It also features a graphic description of the lesbian seduction of a minor, which is excused precisely because a lesbian is doing the molesting.”
Faithful Voice claims it isn’t incongruent that VOTF would meet at a campus that promoted a pro-homosexual sex abuse play. McKinley asserts that VOTF’s philosophy is not inconsistent with pro-homosexual activism or amoral theologians and teachers.
“Gays, Lesbians, Bisexual and Transgenders are attracted, naturally, by the VOTF philosophers, theologians and teachers who tell them they may decide what is right and wrong in their own conscience. In fact, it attracts anyone who rather hear that their salvation is independent of their obedience to Divine Law...Now, they wish to "change" it from within. I think they are astounded at our refusal to submit to their demands,” McKinley said.
“This is their American Church and Roman Catholics are extremely offended by it, and are resisting it. Why? Because it makes Christ's Redemptive Incarnation and Crucifixion unnecessary.”
When Gleason was asked if the church scandal is a homosexual problem.
He said “ The evidence isn’t out on that.”
However U.S. News & World Report columnist John Leo reported that studies have shown that 5 percent or less of priests fit the pedophile description. He said, "Most sexual victims of priests are teenage boys [abused in homosexual acts], according to one estimate. A study of Chicago's 2,200 priests identified 40 sexual abusers, only one of whom was a pedophile."
Also according to the News Agency's "The World Seen From Rome," Hastings Wyman, syndicated homosexual columnist, wrote: "[T]he pattern of sexual abuse among Catholic clergy does suggest a gay problem … 90 percent of the cases of sex with adolescents that have come to light in the Church involved teenage boys, not girls. Do the math." (Between the Lines, May 22, 2002)
When Gleason was told most church experts say that 90% of the priests who committed sex abuse are homosexual and then asked if he thought homosexuals should be priests? He said “ I don’t think we have any answer on that.”
But on December 5, 2002 the Catholic World News wrote:
“A leading Vatican official has confirmed the Church's position that men with homosexual tendencies should not be ordained.
In a letter dated May 16, 2002, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez-- who was, at the time, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship-- said:
‘Ordination to the diaconate or priesthood of persons with homosexual tendencies is absolutely unadvisable and imprudent, and from a pastoral point of view, extremely risky.’
The letter by Cardinal Medina Estevez, which was a response to a query from a bishop, has now been published in the November-December edition of a bulletin put out by the Congregation for Divine Worship.”
Fred Martinez is staff religion editor of the Conservative Monitor and a regular contributor to the San Francisco Faith, a Northern California newspaper. In addition, he wrote for, produced and hosted the Latino Love Show on Channel 38, San Francisco. His new book The Hidden Axis of Evil is at amazon.com.
Is VOTF's Agenda Still "Ultimately, Anti-Catholic?"
Is VOTF’s Agenda Still “Ultimately, Anti-Catholic?"
Archbishop John Myers of Newark, N.J. on Oct. 11, 2002 wrote “Voice of the Faithful [VOTF]...has used the current crisis in the Church as a springboard for presenting an agenda that is anti-Church and, ultimately, anti-Catholic.”
Myers is considered one of the most pro-life and orthodox members of the American Bishops. When bishop of Peoria, IL, he published a pastoral letter calling it "morally illicit" for Catholics to vote for pro-abortion candidates.
In the October column called “A Voice Not Rooted in Faith” printed in the Catholic Advocate, the archdiocesan newspaper of Newark, the Archbishop said that VOTF “has as its purposes: to act as a cover for dissent...and to openly attack the Church hierarchy. Myers wrote:
“[A]ltering Church teaching on sexual morality, and defiance of the apostolic authority that has guided the Church since its founding 2,000 years ago by Our Lord Jesus Christ, have all found a place in the ranks of Voice of the Faithful.”
I contacted Voice of the Faithful’s central office so they could respond to critics of their agenda.
The VOTF receptionist said Steve Krueger, the Interim Executive Director, would call this reporter back shortly. After not getting a return call, I again contacted the central office a second time, but the receptionist said Krueger was not available. Krueger never called back.
When the publisher as well as editor of Crisis Magazine and former professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, Deal W. Hudson was asked if he agreed with Archbishop Myers’ criticism on VOTF.
The former philosophy professor concurred that “absolutely” Voice of the Faithful’s agenda is still “ultimately, anti-Catholic.”
He has for months been warning Catholics about VOTF through his Catholic monthly published in Washington, D.C. and other publications. Hudson in a recent interview with this journalist said:
“I think it’s anti-Catholic in the sense that they are trying to change fundamental Church teachings, which are at the heart of Catholic identity.”
Deal Hudson said that orthodox Catholics who join VOTF “are being fooled. They are falling for a bait and switch tactic, which is being used throughout the United States. Voice of the Faithful leadership well know what they are doing, but they are willing to practice a deception for the sake of spreading a dissenting agenda.”
One day before Archbishop Myers’ statement that VOTF “has as its purposes: to act as a cover for dissent,” VOTF president James E. Post wrote a letter and did an interview with the Boston Globe on October 10, 2002 where he claimed “we are not a dissident group.''
The Globe article said that Post's letter “posted on the group's Web site, www.votf.org, asserts that ''we accept the teaching authority of the church.”
However the VOTF site then and now also states that they do not ''advocate ...the exclusion of homosexuals from the priesthood,” which is contrary to Church directives.
On December 5, 2002 the Catholic World News reported that the Church reaffirmed the Sacred Congregation for Religious in Rome in 1961 statement: "Those affected by the perverse inclination to homosexuality or pederasty should be excluded from religious vows and ordination."The Catholic World News wrote:
“In a letter dated May 16, 2002, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez-- who was, at the time, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship-- said:
‘Ordination to the diaconate or priesthood of persons with homosexual tendencies is absolutely unadvisable and imprudent, and from a pastoral point of view, extremely risky.’”
When Hudson was asked why Voice of the Faithful appeared to be covering up the fact that 90% of the sex abuse scandal was homosexual priests acting out on adolescents, he said:
“Because their agenda is being supported by priests in the Boston [Archdiocese] who themselves do not want the homosexual dimension of the scandal addressed. And these are the members of the Boston Priests Forum.”
In an article on Voice of the Faithful’s agenda, the Notre Dame Magazine website called Keep the Faith, Change the Church Richard Conklin wrote:
“It is the third objective -- structural change in the church -- that holds the seeds of divisiveness that some bishops have accused VOTF of fostering.”
“’It is a struggle to keep traditional Catholics in VOTF," [Voice of the Faithful founder Jim] Muller concedes, "but we must keep 'structural change' undefined until its specifics can be determined by a lay voice that includes all spectrums.’"
VOTF founder Muller despite claiming “structural change” must remain undefined in the Notre Dame Magazine said:
"The problem is a concentration of power in the hierarchy," he asserts. "It is as though the executive, legislative and judicial branches were combined. We want...more 'democracy' in the church. Muller makes it clear it is not a democracy of theology he envisions -- there will be no votes on the Nicene Creed.”
However, when Hudson was asked what are the structural changes that Voice of the Faithful wants to make he said:
“They’ve never defined them in any way. So the only conclusion you can come to is that the kind of structural changes they want are those represented by the people they invite to address their meetings,” Hudson said.
“Which are those who want ordination of women, married priests, to end priestly celibacy and finally to end Vatican authority over the parishes in the United States.”
The VOTF website (www.votf.org/Structural_Change/structural.html) said that the Structural Change Working Group (SCWG) ”has been working to define what VOTF means by its Goal 3.”
According to the site “The group [SCWG] has also consulted with Fr. Ladislas Orsy, S.J., in an effort to ensure that its conclusions are sound, and that none of its statements could be misunderstood. Fr. Orsy has been retained as a professional outside consultant in canon law and related matters by VOTF.”
It appears that Fr. Orsy might be a questionable choice as a consultant according to the American Cardinal Dulles and Cardinal Ratzinger of the Vatican.
The American Cardinal in a November 25, 2000 America article (www.bigbrother.net/~mugwump/Dulles/dulles_online.html) said of the priest:
“On the papal teaching office, Father Orsy renews his plea (made in several other places) that Catholics should be free to dissent from definitive teaching.”
Cardina1 Ratzinger in an article published in Céide May/June 1999 (found at www.womanpriest.org/teaching/ratzing1.htm) said:
“Father Orsy assures us that the new canons were not needed because the category of definitively proposed teaching “as it appears now in official documents had not developed yet”...How the author could have come to this thesis is inexplicable.“
A few paragraphs later the Cardina1 wrote:
“I do not find it objective that Fr.Orsy constructs an opposition [contradiction] between Ad tuendam fidem and Vatican II. [He writes that] the Council intended no threats and penalties because the Fathers of the Council “trusted that truth will attract by its own beauty and strength” ... In fact, a large number of the bishops of the world wish today for the “sharpening” of the penal law; this is a consequence of the cases of priests guilty of paedophilia. The protection of the rights of the accused priests has become so strong that the bishops feel powerless in cases when for the sake of the faithful they should have the power to intervene.”
Fred Martinez is the religion editor of the Conservative Monitor, a former columnist with NewsMax and a reporter with the San Francisco Faith as well as a former TV broadcaster. He has been a pro-life activist, speaker and speaker for many years. In 1985 he founded the Juan Diego Society through which hundreds of babies under threat of abortion were saved. His new book “The Hidden Axis of Evil” is available at amazon.com".
