This San Francisco Chronicle article is either unintentionally ironic or clueless in that it portrays Voice of the Faithful as the aging hippie-infested liberal group that it is.
With their gray hair and their overwhelming preference for decaffeinated drinks, the nearly 100 members of the lay Catholic group Voice of the Faithful who gathered inside St. Matthew’s Catholic Church gym in San Mateo on Sunday didn’t look intimidating.
Oh, but they are intimidating, says the liberal theologian addressing the gray-hairs: “Fifty years from now, the Voice of the Faithful will be remembered as the tiny pebble that rolled down the hill and became the biggest thing to hit the church.”
Give me a break.
VOTF is already fading into the same obscurity that all the other liberal groups that have tried to change the fundamental nature of the Church. The very fact that nearly everyone attending VOTF meetings is a senior citizen and that it almost literally has no future doesn’t seem to catch on with these people.
Besides the VOTF members (do they still number 30K – LOL! – like they ever did) the only people who seem to take this group of aging ‘angsters’ and pretentious degree holders is the media. I think it’s because we’ve mixed up politics and religion, sadly.
Anyhow, it give me great pleasure (almost sinful pleasure, sadly) to know that the ‘gray haired, decaffeinated drink afficionados’ must be really ticked off at the apt description of themselves.
The expression: “a legend in their own minds” comes to mind.
And as I’m sure Kelly – being a crossword designer and aficionado – would point out, one of the meanings of a ‘legend’ is:
“A romanticized or popularized myth of modern times”
Just so.
Legends Minds, Hippy, Liberal, it all sounds like Timothy Leary to me. Isn’t it time for VOTF to tune in, turn on and drop out of society?
My dad is the organist at a parish in Florida, and he is always aghast at the attitudes of the gray-haird old liberals there.
Last week, he was talking to some people who had pro-life bumper stickers, and telling him about my wife and me, and how we are working on getting recognition for babies lost to miscarriage.
Some old woman walked by and huffed, “Well, there are two sides to every story.”
I’m afraid that for many of these folks, the (very selective) anger they feel at this or that “injustice” has replaced their love of God and His Church. As long as one is righteously angry at something, then there is no further need for reflection on whither he loves his neighbor sufficiently because, “Hey, I oppose war and injustice!”
These good things can and do become idols for some of our fellow Catholics.
Nice post, Dom.
Well it turns out that Sally is teaching at USF.
kumbaya…we shall overcome…
I am reminded of a line from P.J. O’Rourke about aging hippie men that goes something like this: “their hair is long and gray in the back, gone forever up top.”
Tim, Tim Benzedrine!
Hash, boo, Valvaleen!
Clean, clean, clean for Gene!
First, second, neutral, park:
Hie ye hence you leafy nark!
(from “Board of the Rings”)
Vance-Trembath is a VotF champion (their heroine, since she’s relatively youngish) who was also a part of the USF (actually VotF) conference that was black-listed by Vigneron.
She was supposed to summarize what one of their panels said, but instead rattled off a bunch of true (i.e., they all seemed to believe that), but not particularly relevant take-home-and-bug-your-pastor mottoes.
It will be interesting in ten years when most active priests will be under 45(granted there will be significantly fewer of them) to see if the 70 year old VOTF crowd still dares to claim to speak for the faithful?
RPF,
In ten years most of them will be in their eighties and nineties.