Calling for a revolution against the Roman Catholic hierarchy, some 4,000 lay Catholics met in Boston vowing to rid the church of its culture of "Pay, Pray and Obey."
The movement called "Voice of the Faithful," created in February by a small group of churchgoers from Wellesley, Massachusetts, has snowballed into a global militia of 19,000 bent on empowering parishioners.
Fueled by outrage over the recent child sex scandals that rocked the parishes across the US, the group has become the fastest-growing Catholic lay organization in the world.
Enraged Catholics from 35 states and seven foreign countries mounted the group's first nationwide rally Saturday to demand drastic changes and reform. A petition was signed urging Pope John Paul II to endorse reform policies the US bishops approved in June.
Outside the meeting hall, enraged Catholics carried signs demanding the immediate resignation of Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law.
"Jesus Loves Children and Despised Hypocrites" read one poster, and "Reject Cardinal Law" buttons expressed opinions on the priest sexual abuse scandal.
Voice of the Faithful issued a statement saying ways must be created to allow lay Catholics to actively participate in the governance and guidance of the Catholic Church. Proposals discussed included policy-making power for lay church members and including giving parishioners a hand in the appointment of pastors and bishops.
The Reverend Thomas Doyle, a US Air Force chaplain, addressed the faithful, saying millions of people have been praying for change.
"We are telling everyone who is part of the church to abandon the concept that the church is a kingdom made up of a string of fiefdoms called dioceses," Doyle said.
Urging Catholics to get up their nerve, he said parishioners must shed "timidity or fearful deference to the very structures that have betrayed us." The recent sexual abuse scandal, he said, was caused by "the delusion that the clergy are somehow above the rest," damning some as having "unbridled addiction to power."
On the sensitive issue of donations, he advised, Catholics to "stop enabling through financial support the power structures" that have led to the "horrific consequences" of the scandal and cover-ups of pedophile priests.
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