“Today promises to be one of the most significant events for the laity in the history of the Catholic Church.”

In making this statement about their July 20th conterence, leaders of Voice of the Faithful cannot be accused of excessive modesty. After all, the history of which they speak stretches back some 2,000 years and includes at least a few other events of note.

However, these leaders and their associates have certainly begun with a bang that has resounded across the Boston area and, they would say, the country and the world. To sit in the Hynes Auditorium, as I did, among the 4200 Catholics who took part in the conference,  was to feel an excitement at something unprecedented in the life of this faith community.

Being there for a day of impassioned speeches and theological reflection was heady. So were personal contacts with friends long experienced in social action. And so was the enthusiasm expressed in the Mass that concluded the formal program. These features reminded me forcibly of the peace movement of the sixties and seventies, and especially of the atmosphere created by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65.

If, as reported, people over age 50 were in the majority at this gathering, many of them could remember the excitement Catholics felt when Vatican II brought about radical changes in the church. I, for one, recall being astonished by the decision of the council to substitute the language of each country for the Latin with which I had grown up. And that was only one such change among many.

Those days were different from the decades that have followed. The open-hearted John XXIII was pope, far-reaching change –  – in both mentality and practice –  –  filled the air, and many church  members felt the future full of promise. For people like me, at least, the first half of the 1960s was the most dynamic time we had ever known as Catholics.

The years since then have brought great disappointments through retrenchments of the hopes held out by Vatican II. Of course, they have also brought events deeply gratifying to most people, especially Pope John Paul’s reaching out to the Jewish community in apology and love. But the spirit of openness that so marked the Council has been replaced, in the Vatican and elsewhere, by a narrowing of outlook.

What is distinctive about the Voice of the Faithful is its character as a movement of  Catholic laity. Beginning only five months ago in the basement of a Wellesley church, it has already grown to some 19,000 members (in large part through the adroit use of the Internet.)  This new organization arose from outrage at the abuse of children and adolescents by Catholic clergy and the cover-ups of these criminal actions by the bishops.

Though outrage at what happened to the young victims fueled its formation, Voice wants to accomplish much more than to express indignation. Among its principal goals, it lists three: to support the abused; to support priests of integrity;  and to shape structural change within the church. This last purpose is obviously highly ambitious and will be sure to bring determined resistance from church leaders.

The radical change that Voice most wants to bring about was laid out at the conference by Jim Muller, the founding president. Dr. Muller is a cardiologist who shared in the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War in 1985. Using graphs, he contrasted two models of church, the first from the top down, and the second from the bottom up.

The top-down structure is what Catholics have been used to since the church’s early centuries but that has to change, says Dr. Muller. Currently, all the power and authority is centralized and that includes the basic three kinds: executive, legislative, and judicial. The pope and the bishops have it all and members of the laity have virtually none.

Other speakers echoed the same call for lay people to take power in the church. Father Tom Doyle, the canon lawyer who first called attention to clergy sexual abuse 18 years ago, portrayed this disaster as “the deadliest symptom of the unbridled addiction to power.” With applause-provoking irony, he spoke of the bishops as themselves suffering from  that addiction, and welcomed the opportunity to “help them free themselves from their chains.”

Jim Post, current president, envisions nothing less than the time when there will be a Voice of the Faithful chapter in every parish in the whole world. “We will not give the bishops a free ride,” he promised. And he claims Voice will hold fast: “We will not negotiate our right to exist, to be heard, to free speech for American Catholics.”

Is Voice of the Faithful going to succeed with its ambitious agenda and bring about a radical change in Church structures? At this point, no one knows what its chances are. A prudent person would not place a heavy bet on this David and Goliath struggle. Members and supporters will no doubt have frequent need to remind themselves who won that epic biblical battle.

Richard Griffin