A few weeks ago, we noticed a fringe group starting up its own illicit Mass with a married ex-cleric at a suburban Boston Elks’ club. Now they’re moving up in the world, and finding themselves a more suitable worship space: the local Unitarian meeting hall. A few observations:
- It’s not very nice, as a matter of inter-religious relations, for Unitarians to help a group that’s trying to start a schism in the Catholic Church. However, this is not surprising, since the UUA has in the past subsidized frauds like “Catholics for a Free Choice”.
- The celebrant of their first Mass in the new location is someone named Ed Minderlein, whose writing for VOTF urges people to leave “the current pyramid hierarchical structure” and “move into small healthy communities” like the Reverend Ed’s fringe group where they “espouse the theology of personal freedom”.
This is a clarifying little event that shows what kind of thinking shapes the agenda at VOTF: they’re reaching the stage of overt rebellion against the Church. They’re not far from certain fundamentalists who hand out tracts and urge Catholics to “come out from among Babylon”.
(Thanks to Jeff Miller for the link.)
God bless the Unitarians for speeding along the inevitable. They and the VOTF folks must see the handwriting on the wall.