Rebels in the Pews

No matter what their bishops decide, Catholic lay people say it is time for their voice to be heard

The guerrillas are gathering in the basement. They used to meet Sunday nights at St. John the Evangelist Church in Wellesley, Mass., but the crowd got too big, so now they have broken into cells, gathering nightly by the dozen in parochial school cafeterias or places like this spare church cellar, plotting and testifying under flickering institutional lights. First up is a man in a gray suit. "If the church were a business," he says, "the hiring manager would be out of a job, and the CEO would be on the next boat out." Next comes a psychiatrist, who calls the...

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