While that national organization of foul tempered heretics known as Voice of the Faithful has managed to hold off extinction for now with a infusion of cash, the local Milwaukee chapter is not so lucky.

This news of course makes me very happy. It also has me laughing. The leader of the soon to be defunct chapter has decided to stick her head in the sand over why they they have gone belly up.

“We’ve been active and vibrant; it’s not for lack of interest,” said Nancy Moews, who has led the local chapter since its inception in 2001-’02. “But there’s no new leadership willing to take it on.”

How many vibrant organizations do you know of which nobody – and I mean nobody – wants to be in charge? Doesn’t sound very vibrant to me. To borrow a phrase, I think they just don’t get it.

Somebody who does get it is Peter Isely of the local Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. He correctly diagnoses the problem.

Peter Isely, of the local Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests group, said Voice of the Faithful had lost its focus and centrist roots, alienated conservatives and ultimately came to duplicate efforts of the reform group Call to Action.

“If they would have focused exclusively on the abuse issue . . . including financial issues and matters, where I think they could have been really useful, they might have made it,” Isely said in an e-mail to the Journal Sentinel.

The abuse crisis was a horrible horrible thing and for sure there was a role to be played by the laity in pressing for the necessary reform to prevent it from ever happening again. With that said, VOTF became the home of every liberal and heretical crank with a bone to pick with this or that church teaching. Turns out that dwindling market was already saturated.

Anyway, in what I find to be a delightfully ironic twist, the Milwaukee chapter is not going out with a bang, but with a whimper. Moews said the chapter plans to dissolve after the Sept. 26 lecture by Father Richard McBrien.

Well if they weren’t dead already, that probably would have done it. Does this count as theologian assisted suicide?