TakingBackTheirCrutch

Watch out, Boomers, there another group with which you can share your gripes about the Church, and plot to "Take Back Our Church". As if there weren't enough outlets for neo-retro-heretical musings, Robert Blair Kaiser wants you:

In fact, without your help, and the help of a million others like you, we won't be able to demand the action necessary to create the Church we need.

Mr. Kaiser, like the millions of others that he's seeking, was not properly catachised as to the origins of the Church:
Matt 16:
18"I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

19"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."

Notice that Jesus said "I will build My church": The Church we need is already built, and was built by Christ. Why does someone need to build another? Ask Photius, Henry VII, Luther, and Rev. Jonas Q. Biblethumper why a "New Church" needs to be made, and how that Men are worthy to build it.

The need of another SoVIIette (Spirit of Vatican II worshipper) group is also in question. Here's a poster in TakeBackOurChurch's forum:

Honestly, aren't the goals (both stated and implicit) of takebackourchurch.org pretty much the same goals of the "We Are Church" movement, Voice of the Faithful, the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC), and those of a myriad of other dissident groups?

Even Commonweal is a bit skeptical:

I'm all for having a serious discussion of Roman centralism, a problem the Church has been struggling with since at least the Gregorian Reform, if not earlier. But pretending that the Council fathers at Vatican II had the same mindset of the Founding Fathers of the American revolution is just nonsense.

Mr Kaiser responds to the Commonweal argument:

Those in favor of "the divinely instituted hierararchical constitution of the Church" can, of course, like Talmudic scholarsm, quote paragraphs 18 and 19 of LG [Lumen Gentium](and other grafs) to support a position that simply isn't working in the context of our times.

FYI, I think it is poor scholarship to quote verses from Vatican II in order to make any kind of case for anything. We have to look at the legislative history of the Council, some of which is written down, and some of which I was personally privvy to because I was there, conducting Sunday night salons and watching the drama of the Council unfold for four sessions. I can attest that phrases like "the divinely instituted hierararchical constitution of the Church" were inserted AFTER the decisions for a people's Church were already made by huge conciliar majorities.

Hearsay also makes for poor scholarship, Mr. Kaiser, but you probably already know that. But, these assertions also highlight my contention with anti-Vatican II bloggers, that the cancer of dissent was already in the Church before the documents hit the street, as evidenced by the popular reaction to Humanae Vitae.
I'll take Jesus' Church over a 'people's Church' any day, and twice on Christmas. You want a 'people's Church'? Check out the Episcopalians, and their weather vane doctrines.