The Catholic Church is in serious need of reform! Check the media: be it print, radio, television, or social networking and you will find unbelievable stories describing how the Church has lost its sense of integrity, distorted the gospel message, and injured and alienated the very people it is committed to serve. If we just talk about the Church's exclusion and injury of members, we will lose another generation of people with the financial and political potential to transform the Church. Now is the time to challenge the status quo and make a clarion call to action! To that end, Pat Westerhouse has written Blowing the Incense from Your Eyes: Awakening the Courage to Implement Personal and Institutional Reform in the Catholic Church. This book sets forth the process for personal independence from the Church, as well as outlining a path for committed laity to challenge clerical authority and to reform the institution. The intent of this book is to motivate all "Christian Catholics" to become conscious of the nature of their relationship with the Church, and to evaluate whether their membership is the result of informed choice, or of an unexamined acceptance of dependence on a hierarchical institution. This material will inspire all members who have felt frightened, abused, excluded, injured, embarrassed, or just plain fed up, to insist on and create an experience of Church based on the message of love, forgiveness and freedom within the gospel.
About the Author: Pat Westerhouse was ordained a priest in 1969 and served as a parish priest and hospital chaplain. After leaving active ministry, he spent 20 years in corporate life, and then built a consulting practice where he focused on the design and implementation of organizational change strategies, strategic planning and leadership development, with emphasis on executives and their teams. This book takes his considerable business and organizational development experience, merged with his knowledge and experience in the Catholic Church, and creates a path for the People of God to free themselves from psychological and spiritual dependency, and to engage them in reforming their church. In short, the book challenges the laity to own their church, and to emphasize its Christianity rather than its Catholicism as they build their parishes into worship and service communities. In addition to his theological training, Pat holds a Masters Degree in Organizational Development from Pepperdine University, and an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the University of San Diego. He lives with his wife Patti in Lincoln Ca.