Skip to content

Keep the Faith, Change the Church.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • LinkedIn
Voice of The Faithful
  • About
    • Mission
    • Who We Are
    • Financial Reports
    • Current Campaigns
    • VOTF FAQs
    • Contact Us
  • Media
    • Blog
    • In the Vineyard
    • Press Releases
    • Videos
    • Publications
    • Documents
  • Conferences
    • VOTF 20th Year Commemoration: 20 Years Keeping the Faith, Changing the Church
    • VOTF 2021
      Conference: Re–Membering the Church
    • 2020 Conference: Visions of a Just Church
    • 2019 Conference: Creating a Just Church
    • 2018
    • 2015
    • 2014
    • 2012
    • 2011
    • 2009
  • Giving
    • Give Now
    • Monthly Giving
    • Planned Giving
  • Programs
    • SYNOD 2021-2024
    • SURVIVOR SUPPORT
    • PRIEST SUPPORT
    • STRUCTURAL CHANGE
    • Bishop Selection
    • Child Protection
    • Clericalism
    • Financial Accountability
    • Healing Circles
    • Lay Education
    • Mandatory Celibacy
    • Ordain Married Men
    • Prayerful Voice
    • Women’s Emerging Voices
    • The BridgeDialogues
  • Home
Home / Carrying Out Our Mission and Goals

Carrying Out Our Mission and Goals

VOTF’s mission and three goals commit us to working within the Church. We do not seek to redefine dogma; we do not seek to create an alternative church. But our mission and goals clearly do not call for the Church to remain “the same.”

The Church of “the same” has fostered a climate where sexual abuse of our children can proceed unchecked by accountability; where the decisions of bishops to protect the abusers and forsake the abused has caused great human suffering and has sapped the moral authority of the Church; where the mechanisms that should have checked this abuse are not open and transparent to the People of God; and where the divide between clergy and laity impoverishes our efforts to live out the mission of Christ within the world.

To address these excesses, to renew and reform the Church we love, we believe that participation of the laity is essential.

  • We believe that the laity have the graced dignity, intelligence, responsibility and obligation to cooperate in Church governance in a meaningful way,according to the norm of canon law (cf. Canon 129).
  • We believe that meaningful lay participation is the only way to correct the profound flaws that have been revealed in the human institutional life of our Church.
  • We believe that the council documents of Vatican II illuminate the pathway for lay involvement in the Church.
  • And we urge that the openness and mutual respect advocated by Pope John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint (“That All May Be One”) be the model for meaningful dialog among bishops and laity.

This philosophy is centrist, and it is inclusive. We are committed to providing an open and safe forum for ALL Catholics to freely and respectfully discuss the challenges of our Church, regardless of their views on specific issues.

This inclusiveness commits us to a collaborative and collegial method of operating, and to an organization that develops its actions “from the bottom up,” with attention to all members of the organization and in communion with our Church.

Participating in VOTF requires a commitment to these principles. We seek to model the behavior that we ask from our Church: centered in Christ, open to the gifts of all, inclusive and loving towards all, accountable to all members, and transparent in actions.

Mission Statement

To provide a prayerful voice, attentive to the Spirit, through which the Faithful can actively participate in the governance and guidance of the Catholic Church.

Search VOTF

Follow...

Watch VOTF videos...

Confronting Clericalism
By the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests and Voice of the Faithful; endorsed by FutureChuch

    Voice of the Faithful
    P.O. Box 920408
    Needham, MA 02492
    (781) 559-3360

    Copyright © 2023 Voice of the Faithful, Inc.
    All rights Reserved.
    Privacy Policy  

    ↑