Calendar Watch and Heads Up!

• September 11 - VOTF Falmouth, MA extends an invitation to a promising and timely panel discussion made up of clergy, religious, and laity. The discussion will focus on roles and relationships in our Church now and in the coming years as the number of clergy continues to decrease. Click here for the August 11 Vineyard coverage of this September 11 event.

• Boston College, October 23. SAVE THE DATE for the presentation of a study conducted on Voice of the Faithful. See the August 11 issue of In the Vineyard for details and watch the BC web site calendar.

• The July 15, 2005 National Catholic Reporter editorial noted a more reticent USCCB as the bishops’ bi-annual meeting November 14-17 approaches. “They clearly have little to say as a conference to the wider world.” John Allen wrote, “In the future, the US bishops’ conference will be more narrowly focused on core objectives related to Catholic identity, especially catechesis, liturgy, and evangelization, producing fewer documents on social questions ….” Read more.

• November 12-13 - While the US bishops may be narrowing their focus at their meeting in Washington, DC, the VOTF National Representative Council will be “right next door” sharpening the VOTF focus. Frank Douglas, NRC steering committee, reports.

• Jean Bartunek, member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart and professor of Organizational Studies in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, has edited with Mary Ann Hinsdale and James Keenan Church Ethics And Its Organizational Context: Learning from the Sex Abuse Scandal in the Catholic Church (Boston College Church in the 21st Century Series) (Paperback). It will be published in September. A chapter by Jim Post is based on a 2004 presentation at Boston College.

• Readers might also be interested in following the discussions at the Boston College Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. To learn more, click here and avail yourself of the Center’s free, bi-annual newsletter

Commentary – [What do you think? Respond to pthorp.ed@votf.org] VOTF members, attorneys Bob Morris and Sharon Harrington, consider the ramifications of legislation that would require a church to open its books.

• Sharon Harrington – “First Amendment protections are not affected by improvements to law”

• Bob Morris – “A church is not just another charity”