What happened in Boston last month was emblematic of what has been happening in the Catholic Church nationally and, to some extent, worldwide over the past two decades and more.

A tiny group of ultra-conservative Catholics protested the decision of Catholic Charities of Boston, the largest private social services agency in Massachusetts, to confer its annual award upon Boston's mayor, Thomas Menino. Catholic Charities honored him for his commitment to the poor and to the cause of justice. The activists, on the other hand, regard him as an advocate of abortion and gay marriage.

Unfortunately, Archbishop Sean O'Malley yielded to their pressure and boycotted the dinner, whose sole purpose is to raise money to fund the wide-ranging work of Catholic Charities on behalf of the needy of the Boston area.

Significantly, the activists were unable to force the mayor to step aside and decline the award, nor were they able to discourage prominent Catholics from attending the $500-a-plate dinner in support of Catholic Charities. Indeed, for every conservative Catholic who ran for cover, there were many more lay Catholics ready to take their places.

The dinner was a sell-out, raising more than $163,000 (at last count), which was more than $25,000 greater than last year's net.

As dozens of pickets marched outside Boston's Seaport Hotel, Mayor Menino faced his critics head-on. The Boston Globe characterized his remarks as a "relatively rare discussion of faith" on his part.

Menino said that his understanding of Catholicism was derived from the nuns who taught him in parochial school and that it had to do with reaching out to people in need: "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the sick, and yes, the imprisoned," referring to the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew's Gospel.

The mayor also pointed out that Jesus "did not give priority to piety. He didn't make holiness the big thing. And he did not tell us to go around talking up God, either."

His critics, however, saw it differently. In their eyes, they alone are "authentic Catholics." Everyone else, it seems, can be written off as dissidents or heretics --- "bad Catholics" all.

These ultra-conservative activists, for whom abortion is the only moral and political issue that counts, not only miss the Latin Mass but also the former archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, who allowed Operation Rescue, a militant anti-abortion organization, to use Catholic churches as staging areas of illegal blockades of abortion clinics.

The foundress of Faithful Voice, a counterpart to Voice of the Faithful, has said on her Web site that the Republican governor of Massachusetts, by urging all hospitals to obey a new state law mandating that emergency contraception be offered to rape victims, was in effect saying that Catholic hospitals "must be forced to kill children."

Regarding the president of Catholic Charities, Father J. Bryan Hehir, one of the most respected priests in the United States and a long-time staff member at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, she wrote: "That man is pure unadulterated evil. He literally sends shivers up my spine. If he and his cronies think we're going to tolerate he and the Archbishop's material cooperation in abortions --- we'll chase them out of town faster than you can say Voice of the Faithful."

What has changed on the ecclesiastical and political fronts over the past decade is the broad accessibility of the Internet. With it has come a new capacity of individuals, who could never be published by reputable newspapers and magazines, to gain an audience via personal blogs and to attract the attention even of the mainstream media, which are always interested in controversy, especially of the man-bites-dog variety.

The rhetoric of these self-styled defenders of orthodoxy is so recklessly hot that it automatically gets attention. This is the new reality.

Ironically, what used to be called "the silent majority" during the Nixon presidency is now composed largely of liberals and moderates, not conservatives. The real "silent majority" in the Church consists of mainstream Catholics like Father Hehir, Mayor Menino and the hundreds of other committed lay Catholics who support Catholic Charities and who attended last month's fund-raising dinner in spite of the shrill protests and threats from the Church's far right.

What is most distressing, however, is the failure of church leadership to name what is going on and to stand firmly against it. Instead, too many bishops cave in to these pressure-groups, allowing even an outstanding priest like Bryan Hehir to absorb their barbs and insults.

One hopes that the defiant support for Catholic Charities in Boston is a harbinger of things to come.

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.