ARTICLES

Black Sheep At San Luis Rey

CALL TO ACTION MEMBERS GROUSE ABOUT LOCAL PRIESTS

By Judith Martel

On the evening of March 8, 32 people gathered at Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside to organize a local chapter of Call to Action, a group working to re-vamp the Catholic religion on women's ordination, homosexuality, contraception, abortion, and election of bishops by laity.

Attendees at the March 8 meeting included members of groups like CORPUS and Dignity, along with some youth ministers and CCD teachers. University High School nurse and sex-ed pusher Ann Buko and her husband, ex-priest Joe Buko, attended. The Bukos are involved with the national CORPUS board.

A March 1 North County Times article announced formation of the Call to Action chapter, citing two founders of the group, Evi Quinn (who led the March 8 meeting) and Enrique Arregui, both parishioners at St. Patrick's in Carlsbad. The article identified Quinn as 76 years of age, although she pointed out at the meeting that she is 67. (Most attendees were in their golden years.) The Times article quoted Quinn saying she is impatient for the Church to change, fulfilling the promise of Vatican II. Quinn said, "The Pope says the church is best served by single men who can devote their entire life to service, but we don't believe that." Arregui, an elderly man from Latin America, agreed with Quinn that the Church is "in crisis," saying, "Many are leaving, especially the younger generation."

After Quinn's opening remarks at the March 8 meeting, Ann Buko presented a report on the CORPUS national conference she's planning, to be held this June at UCSD, including radical feminist (and "priest") Edwina Gateley, Richard Rohr, USD theology professor Florence Gillman, and Louise Haggett, proprietor of Rent-A-Priest (which supplies priests for illicit weddings). Buko suggested having Gateley speak to the CTA group privately when she comes to San Diego in June. It was arranged that Gateley would speak Sunday June 30, combined with a talk by Sister Dorothy McCormack, head of the RCIA program at Mission San Luis Rey, described as a "progressive" speaker.

Quinn turned the floor over to Linda Reider, who gave a presentation on her "dialogue" with the Church. She recounted how she tried to get involved at St. Therese parish, on the parish council, education committee, and other groups, but found it very conservative, the pastor "authoritarian," the parish council "window dressing," and no opportunity to discuss or participate in parish decisions. Finding other parishes no different, Linda set out looking for a "non-parish faith community," as recommended in books she had been reading about Church "renewal." She found such a group in Dignity (though she is married). She described Dignity members as, "spiritually mature, interested in following the teachings of Jesus...and very devout Catholics."

Reider shared insights gained from attempting to mediate between Dignity and the diocese. She warned participants that dialogue is a "painful experience," recounting how she and her homosexual friends were deeply offended by "incredible number of stereotypes" displayed by the two Social Ministries deacons at the Gay and Lesbian Support Group meetings.

Participants then broke up into small discussion groups. At one table, Margaret Lynn, a CCD teacher at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart parish, told how she and like-minded parishioners were on a campaign to rid the parish of their new pastor, Father Rick Perozich, whom she described as "straight out of the Dark Ages." Every Monday, she said, they call the chancery and complain about Father Perozich's words and actions at Sunday Mass.

According to Lynn, the chancery gets so many complaints about him that they don't bother asking which priest the complainers are calling about. She stated Perozich is so unpopular he has been at "four parishes in three years." (An inside source says Fr. Perozich's background as accountant may account for his moves, as the bishop could use him to straighten out parish finances.) Lynn described her parish's DCM, a "Sister Alice," as "progressive," saying she does not tell the catechists what to teach the children but noted that if they bring up women's ordination or feminist theology, the nun distances herself.

At another table, a woman gave qualified praise for her pastor, Monsignor Raymond Moore of St. Patrick's in Carlsbad, saying that, although he attended the 1995 Call to Action Conference in Chicago, he is sometimes cautious about making changes. Another woman opined that St. James parish in Solana Beach used to be "great," but now they are having troubles under a "very conservative" pastor.

Many participants expressed their "pain" at having their gifts "rejected," including two musicians whose pastors would not let them perform at Mass and a couple who refused to teach RCIA unless changes in teachings were made.

At the end of the meeting, Quinn gave grounds for hope. She told a story of one parish council, she believed in Ohio, who wrote a resolution to their bishop giving their ideas for solving the priest shortage, insisting that women and married men should be ordained. According to Quinn, all the parish councils in the state signed on to the resolution, and in the end all the bishops in the state became converted to the cause.

Numerous brochures, pamphlets and articles were set out on a table for participants, including registration materials for the CORPUS conference and a list of nine bishops responsible for the resolution to distance the U.S. bishops from papal authority, with a request that people thank them (according to those bishops' leader, Weakland of Milwaukee, over 40 bishops worked on the resolution, but only the nine listed on the sheet have been mentioned). A copy of a short essay, written by Arregui, was featured, with Arregui complaining about Lent in pre-Vatican II Ecuador, at which time "personal sacrifices were advised...pain should be tolerated rather than alleviated." He noted with sorrow that Lent changed only a little in his country after Vatican II. He described the "new way" to observe Lent which he devised for himself. The March 1 North County Times article noted that Arregui's "editorials on doctrine are sometimes rejected for publication in the parish bulletin."