Fresh from the Convention floor, here’s a glimpse of some of the presentations and speakers who made the event such a successful and energizing experience:

Richard McBrien gave the keynote address Friday night:

Another note on Friday’s events:

Words from some of the award winners:

• PRIEST of Integrity Award
• Catherine of Siena Distinguished Lay Person Award

VOTF Fall Action for 2007 leading to the National Convention CONSCIENCE + COURAGE = DISCIPLESHIP
As VOTF’s National Convention nears, we move from an internal grounding in conscience to the more active role of disciple. These surveys will provide you with a tool to assess how your diocese is doing in financial accountability, shared governance and child protection. The results of these surveys will be summarized and compared diocese to diocese at the convention giving each person a foundation for discussion and action. VOTF member's embrace their Baptism. One way we work towards our goal of structural change is by helping Catholics to take their Baptismal responsibilities seriously. Consider using another VOTF implementation tool, Profile of the 21st Century Catholic in your Affiliate.

The detailed Convention program as of August 24th is available in WORD format. Please click here to download.

The Voice of Renewal Working Group will be presenting a workshop on Friday afternoon called "Find your Voice, Trust your Voice, Share your Voice". Bill Murphy from that working group is convinced that the title cap-tures the spirit of this group. Bill observes that finding, trusting and sharing are the three central "moments" in all relationships. Relationship is the key to VOR. This working group has been creating resources to help Catholics recognize the depth of their Baptismal relationship with the Gospel and with the Church.

Bill describes what animates his membership in VOR this way: "We have to help each other as members of the Christian community, laity and clergy alike, grow in these three elements, just as any real friendship or marriage or relationship that is deepening and developing requires." In the workshop it-self, the working group will re-create the experience of finding voice, and growing to trust one's own voice, and most importantly developing materials and events to share our voice.

The workshop will make participants familiar with materials that VOR has crafted. It will provide a model process for starting such a group in your own area. VOR has created a workshop that will give people confidence in their own voice. Bill hopes that people will come away emboldened to share their Voice as members of the lay faithful who want to "keep" that faith and "change the Church."

Sally Vance-Trembath Vice-President VOTF

Who Says It’s Time to Blow Out the Candles?

Francis Piderit from the NYC affiliate has worked with Peter Borre from Boston and Carmen Villegas from New York to present this panel on parish closings on Saturday afternoon.

With wave after wave of parish closures and mergers hitting US dioceses, critical questions are forcing Catholic laity to rethink the structure, operation and ownership of the parish. This panel discussion raises and deals with the the following questions:

• Who decides when it’s time to close down a parish?

• Does the hierarchy hold this power alone, or do bishops have a responsibility to respect the authority of the parish faith community?

• What practical actions can believers take to protect their parishes from un-wanted closure or merger? How do you go about filing a canonical appeal?

• Who really owns parish assets, and where should these assets go when churches are closed?

• Are there new models of parish organization and operation that will allow more parishes to remain open in an era of declining priests?

In this panel, parish activists from Boston and New York will share their ex-periences on fighting closures on the streets, in the courts and in the Vatican.

May 17th Update - Our upcoming convention October 19-21 in Providence RI, “Disciples in Action,” will be a time for both celebration and education. We celebrate our first 5 years and share with each other what we have learned to inspire each other into greater action. Attendees will have the opportunity to attend two plenary sessions and choose two workshops and three panels from a variety of offerings.

One of the insights that emerged during our planning is that our members and their affiliates are at many different stages in the life of our organization. Some members are veterans who have been serving since the beginning in very active affiliates and working groups, others are just starting out, and the majority are someplace in between. We suggest that affiliate members strategize on how best to cover the available workshops and panels so as to maximize the tools and enthusiasm that they bring back to the affiliate.

All of our panels will emphasis the convention theme of action as the mark of discipleship. The more practical ones focus on the "action" part of Disciples in Action." Our more theological panels have been collected around the idea of "discipleship."

Service to the Gospel is not just another social program, an insight that our own Pope Benedict has been proclaiming during his time in Latin America. Discipleship flows from our experience of being loved by God and convinced of Jesus' proclamation of God's love for us. Discipleship requires actual change in the real world. Discipleship needs to be rooted in the depths of our inner experience of God's presence and displayed in our commitment to God's Church. One of the lessons of Christian discernment is that we need to be relentless in checking in with the community whom we wish to serve, so that we continue to provide something we need not just something we prefer doing.

Theologian, Michael Himes, in discussing discipleship asks the question, What am I good at? This is a question that we all ask ourselves, What difference can I make? Whether you are new to VOTF or have been around a long time, panels will be offered that invite you to discover that you are good at some activities you never imagined. These panels might also help you to decide that you are not using your gifts in ways that both spring from and feed the joyful experience of serving God's people.

In future issues if In the Vineyard we will highlight the various choices that you can make at the convention.

May 3, 2007 Update - Our convention will take place October 19-21 in Providence, RI. Between now and then, I have been asked to keep VOTF informed about the convention. VOTF is a distinctive organization that does not readily fit into any existing category in the life of the Church. Our conventions reflect that distinctiveness. This convention, like the others before it, will have its own distinct style and reason for being. In this way, our convention is not typical of other national gatherings labeled “conventions.” For example, when the American Heart Association holds its convention, it follows a form and structure that has been in place for decades. Many of us go to annual professional conventions; they too have a regularity and formula. VOTF is still its formative years; we are still developing.

Our past conventions display this. They each reflect the character of VOTF as well as its emerging identity. Our character is located in our mission and goals. Our identity is located in the actions we take towards that mission. At Indianapolis we sought to discern central plans of action that would take us forward. While we will have a program that involves various actions, in Providence our main purpose is to celebrate and to reflect. We have shaped a program around the over-arching theme of a birthday party. At such a party, people gather to celebrate the present, to remember the past and to look forward to more birthdays in the future. We have created a convention with this in mind.

The convention committee has been working on our gathering. In our early phone calls we talked and listened to each other’s ideas about themes and speakers. As we did that we kept asking “who” is celebrating – Who are we? When we peeled away all the various layers of our identity, we came to our root, core identity as disciples of Jesus Christ. During this process we discussed our prior conventions. We noticed that when VOTF members gather, they want to learn and discuss and they also want to pray. We have created a program that involves both.

During a series of meetings, we collected ideas for the convention theme then asked the committee members to take the ideas back to their affiliates and VOTF constituencies for feedback. After a long process we decided upon the theme “Disciples in Action.” This theme allows us to include both education and prayerful reflection.

We will begin on Friday October 19 with workshops that will be presented by our Working Groups. These workshops are designed to display and celebrate the kind of work that has been going on in VOTF. They are also designed to inspire others as well as to provide the basic tools for implementing similar activities across VOTF. We open this way to celebrate who we are and where we are and have been. After the Workshops we will have refreshments and fellowship before we move to our Keynote speaker Richard McBrien. Professor McBrien is a long-time supporter of VOTF. Both Jim Post and Jim Muller approached him for advice when they were considering how to respond to the crisis. There are few theologians who know as much about the life and theology of the Catholic Church. Fr. McBrien will reflect upon where we have been and also upon the challenges of the present and future for VOTF.

On Saturday morning our President Mary Pat Fox will address the gathered community with her birthday reflections. Dr. Edwina Gateley will follow her talk. Dr. Gateley will share her insights about the spirituality for disciples who wished to be active and engaged. Judge Michael Merz will also address the convention; the Judge will converse with us about his work on the National Review Board for the USCCB. After lunch we will have several sessions, where panelists address various topics around our theme of discipleship. Saturday will end with our Liturgy and then a vigil and walk along the river in Providence. At this season of the year Providence lights the river with fires that make their way out to the sea. We will build upon the symbol of moving light with a procession of our own.

Our Convention Implementation Team from Indianapolis has been working on our next action with the up-coming convention in mind. They are developing resources on the conscience. It is the adult, carefully formed conscience that animates the life of disciples. We encourage you to look for that action from the CIT to prepare for October. We also follow in the wisdom of good Pope John XXIII who asked that the whole Church pray each day in the time before Vatican II convened. We ask for your prayers as well.