Archdiocese's Newspaper Nixes Ad

The newspaper of the Archdiocese of New York has refused to publish a paid advertisement for the Catholic lay organization, Voice of the Faithful, according to the organizer of an upcoming conference.

The Voice of the Faithful wanted to publicize their Oct. 25 conference on the church’s sexual abuse crisis. According to a conference program, the meeting is an effort to “go forth in a spirit of healing and hope.”

…The Voice of the Faithful conference is to be held at Fordham University and features a speech by psychologist and author Eugene Kennedy.
[http://www.nynewsday.com/nyc-cath1004,0,3008096.story?coll=nyc-topheadlines-left]

This is probably the same Eugene Kennedy who wrote an article in the National Catholic Reporter that to promote pro-life we must ordain women.

…How could women react otherwise when, while an abstract femininity is exalted, male ecclesiastics tell women, even at the poorest and most shadowed ends of the earth, that they may not choose contraceptive services even if they suffer rape or incest? Were church leaders to welcome a theological review of this question, they would thereby communicate their acceptance of women�s equality with men.

…In other words, making women equal in the church would address the broad social struggle for women�s equality with men, which is the real basis for the reproductive rights movement. Men surrendering control over women would lessen women�s need to keep fighting for it, one of the chief motivations of the pro-choice crusade.

In his latest article in this month’s National Catholic Distorter called Healing the Wound: The Sacraments and Human Sexuality he tries to cast down on holy orders being passed down through the episcopacy, but instead through priests. He then goes on to talk about a sexual Jesus and the sacraments:

…Like us, the sacraments are sexual, filled with the exhilarating creative energy that brings and enlarges life that touches, now softly and now transcendentally, the strings of every human sensation. Should we be surprised at the passions put to use in God�s giving himself for us in the sacraments, would we be dismayed — although neither John of the Cross nor Teresa of Avila — were, at the ecstasy, at least partly sexual, that exploded out of their wholehearted surrender of themselves to God or in his response to them? We humans are never moved thoroughly without, even outside our awareness, being moved sexually. We can never create anything without engaging our sexuality in the process. We, and the sacraments, in the curious but commonplace harmony of all things human — more often like the disjointed everydayness of Charles Ives than the melodic high tides of Ludwig van Beethoven — are thoroughly spiritual as well.
[Article]

VOTF keeps wondering while they are not treated as a group of faithful, despite the fact that they have chosen very questionable speakers such as Richard McBrien and Eugene Kennedy to lead their conferences. They might want to look further than the index page of the National Catholic Reporter if they truly want to use the world faithful in their name.