Founding, Growth and Mission
VOTF began when a small group of parishioners met in the basement of St. John the Evangelist Church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, to pray over allegations that a priest had abused local youngsters. Its meetings soon became well attended, as well as attracting significant media attention. A conference it held in July 2002 attracted over 4,000 lay Catholics, victims of clergy sexual abuse, theologians, priests and religious from around the United States of America and the world. Less than a year after its founding, VOTF was able to claim 30,000 members worldwide. VOTF currently has members in all 50 states and in 21 nations, with over 150 Parish Voice affiliates.
Jim Muller, one of VOTF's co-founders and its first president, has written a book about the group's founding called Keep the Faith, Change the Church.
VOTF's mission statement is: "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."
It has articulated three goals:
1. To support victims of clergy sexual abuse;
2. To support priests of integrity; and
3. To shape structural change within Church.
Read more about this topic: Voice Of The Faithful
Famous quotes containing the words growth and/or mission:
“Rights! There are no rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look at the history of the growth of our constitution, and you will see that our ancestors never upon any occasion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves; you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)