Bay area bishops nix conference ad

National Catholic Reporter, April 16, 2004 by Dennis Coday

Organizers of a late March conference titled "Imaging the Future Church" and held at Jesuit San Francisco University couldn't get pre-event advertising in local Catholic media because Bay Area prelates do not like one of the sponsors--Voice of the Faithful of Northern California.

The conference featured the president of the Catholic Theological Society of America as the keynote speaker.

Media spokespersons in Oakland and San Francisco confirmed to NCR that after Voice of the Faithful tried to place an ad for the conference in the Catholic Voice, Oakland's diocesan newspaper, Oakland Bishop Allen Vigneron and San Francisco Archbishop William Levada talked about the ad and, at Levada's request, Vigneron instructed his paper to refuse the ad.

The conference went ahead as planned March 27 with some 500 people in attendance--double the anticipated turnout.

Besides Northern California Voice of the Faithful, "Imaging the Future Church" was sponsored by three San Francisco University organizations: the theology department, the St. Ignatius Institute, and the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good.

It featured addresses by two associate professors of theology from Jesuit Boston College, M. Shawn Copeland, who is also the president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, and Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Mary Ann Hinsdale.

Speakers on a panel discussion included the author Fr. Donald Cozzens and Vatican watcher Robert Blair Kaiser. James Post, president of the national Voice of the Faithful, offered closing remarks.

"It was a very straightforward conference with nothing terribly radical discussed," according to Evelyn Seely, who attended the conference and describes herself as "an orthodox Catholic."

Seely and her husband, Gordon, coordinate Voice of the Faithful in San Mateo county, part of the San Francisco archdiocese.

Seely told NCR that one of the main themes discussed at the daylong conference was how "we need more transparency in the church and the bishops [need] more accountability."

The turnout for the event shows that Voice of the Faithful is not dependent on Catholic media, Seely said. "We're concerned about the suppression of advertising. That's a stab at freedom."

Maurice Healy, editor and publisher of Catholic San Francisco and archdiocesan spokesperson, told NCR that Voice of the Faithful never sent notice of the conference to his newspaper nor tried to place advertising. "[That] struck me as rather strange, but maybe they thought it was a foregone conclusion," Healy said. Other Voice of the Faithful event notices sent to Catholic San Francisco have gone unpublished.

Levada met with Voice of the Faithful organizers last May. Last September the archbishop told the Council of Priests that he did not approve of Voice of the Faithful and he recommended that pastors not allow the group to use parish property.

Healy explained to NCR: "[Levada] was asked to endorse VOTF and he said he would not do se. He said using facilities of the archdiocese to promote a group that would be divisive and a source of disunity would not be appropriate."

Minutes from the September Council of Priests meeting say that Levada believes that Voice of the Faithful's "goals of greater lay participation are entirely valid" but he believes diocesan and parish pastoral and finance councils are adequate to this task.

Healy attended the conference "as a Catholic and a curious person" but said he would not be writing a story for his paper.

Neither Levada nor Vigneron responded to requests for interviews for this story.