As the US bishops opened their meeting in Baltimore on November 15, lay Catholics from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum demonstrated outside the hotel where the meeting is taking place.

About 200 people participated in the “Men’s March,” calling for effective leadership in the fight against abortion. The prayerful march began at a Planned Parenthood clinic and proceeded to the hotel, with three bishops joining the march: Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas; Josephn Hanefeldt of Grant Island, Nebraska; and Joseph Coffey, an auxiliary of the military archdiocese.

A smaller group, Catholic Organizations for Renewal, including representatives of several dissident Catholic groups, organized their demonstration to encourage bishops to “act like pastors not politicians” and to “oppose orthodoxy tests at Jesus’ table.”