Voice of the Faithful is miffed that Bishop Richard Lennon of Boston won’t meet with them. They’re also put out that he hasn’t lifted a ban on new chapters of the group forming in parishes.
But why should Lennon meet with VOTF? Once again, they have a disproportionate sense of their own importance. Even if we accept VOTF’s own claims that it has 25,000 members (a highly suspect number to begin with), many of those people aren’t even in the Archdiocese of Boston. They only had 4,000 people come to their convention last summer and many of those came from outside the Archdiocese. But even if it is 4,000 hardcore members, there are more than 2 million Catholics in the archdiocese. VOTF is a little fish in a big pond, thinking it represents all the other fish.
By ignoring VOTF, Bishop Lennon makes a statement that VOTF and its amorphous goals are not the end-all and be-all of Catholic laity. It’s just another splinter group that wants to change things to suit its own worldview.
