I don’t think most anger over the Church’s sheltering of child abusers constitutes a mere pretext for anger over its stands on things like contraception, divorce, women priests or homosexuality. Nor do I find it easy to believe that lay-clergy tensions, such as the publicized years-long occupation of several shuttered Catholic churches around Boston by discontented laity, are a mere mask for Culture War clashes. If you think otherwise, I doubt we’ll convince each other.

Incidentally, I should note that a press release from Voice of the Faithful flatly denies that that group either drafted or sponsored the bill in Hartford. That is not inconsistent with what I wrote about the group being the most prominent organizational constituency for the idea, as reflected in its holding of seminars promoting trusteeship concepts with presenters like Prof. Paul Lakeland of Fairfield U. (who, with the bill’s main backer, Greenwich businessman/lawyer Tom Gallagher, appeared at a news conference in Hartford this week to explain the rationale for the bill).

There’s no dispute that there are Church money scandals–being from Milwaukee, I know about that stuff.

But the agenda of VOTF is substantially at odds with the heirarchical order of Church governance; and if you look far enough into their papers, you find the typical laundry-list of “reforms”–beginning with the artificial contraception question, which is the Holy Grail for these folks.