Well, Martin, I suppose you could just stick a "liberal" label on it and discount it, but I think the reformers have many good points.

Because of a "vocations shortage," my diocese is importing priests from Nigeria and the Philippines. We have many devoted, articulate, educated American Catholic men and women who could serve as priests - but they're disqualified because of marriage or gender. As a result, congregations get priests they can't understand.

The Catholic Church rightly condemns the huge number of abortions that take place. The number of abortions would be greatly reduced if unwanted pregnancies were reduced by birth control - but the Catholic Church still prohibits "artificial birth control," and suggests that married couples should use a calendar to determine when they should have sex.

Marriages sometimes fail. Once a marriage ends, it rarely can be put back together. The Catholic Church has always believed in repentance and forgiveness and starting over again - but not when it comes to marriage. If divorced Catholics want to start over again in a new marriage, they have to go through a complicated judicial annulment process to dispose of a failed marriage that may have ended ten years earlier - and there's no guarantee of an annulmnent even that long after a previous marriage has ended.

And homosexuals....well, I don't know about homosexuals, but my sense of fairness says they aren't getting fair treatment, and the churches need to re-think their opinions on homosexuality.

So, yeah, these are not just liberal ploys, and it's not just people not liking rules - these are real problems that need to be solved. And in general, they don't involve doctrine, which is what people are supposed to believe. These are matters of procedure, not belief.

-Joe Offer-