2002 was a critically important year in two countries on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

In Boston, the most Catholic major city in the USA, Catholics were outraged to learn that their archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, had, in spite of guidelines adopted earlier by US bishops, reassigned a number of highly dangerous clerical paedophiles over a period of years, without warning, to other Boston parishes.  Appalling and unnecessary suffering, sometimes ending in the suicide of victims, had followed.

Boston Catholics, many of Irish ethnic origin, were torn between leaving their church in disgust and staying in order to reform it.  Those who chose to stay came together to found Voice of the Faithful  - a lay movement to restore the integrity of the church.  (To learn more about VOTF (USA) click the link to the right of this.)

In Ireland 2002 was the year of Cardinal Sins (RTE) and Suing the Pope (BBC) - two TV documentaries about similar failures of Irish Catholic leadership in the Archdiocese of Dublin and the diocese of Ferns (Wexford).  There too, predatory priests had caused havoc over decades, unchecked by leaders who wielded the Christian symbol of pastoral care - the crozier.

Soon Irish people were taking an interest in what was going on in Boston, and spreading across the USA - the steady growth of VOTF.  The expert advice available to US Catholics in canon law, theology, ecclesiology (knowledge of the church), church history and every other aspect of Catholicism was obviously spreading into VOTF as lay Catholics embarked on probably the steepest learning curve in the history of US Catholicism.

Most interesting from an Irish point of view was the growing appreciation of the wasted opportunity of Vatican II, the great council of the church in the 1960s which had defined the church more clearly as 'the people of God' - all the baptised.

I was one of those who looked with interest at the rise of VOTF in the US, and wrote an article on the movement for the Redemptorist monthly Reality (October 2002).  Called 'No Donations Without Representation' it included an interview with one of the founding members of VOTF, Dr Jim Muller.

I hoped at the time that the article would prompt someone in Ireland to launch a similar initiative.  However, this didn't happen until, visiting Boston in 2004, I called in out of curiosity on Mary Ann Keyes, then international co-ordinator of VOTF.  To my own continuing amazement I found myself flying home with a floppy disc carrying the names of those Irish people who had 'signed on' to the VOTF website since 2002.

My brief was to do what I could to co-ordinate these three dozen plus people, and plan, at a suitable time, for a public launch of VOTF in Ireland.

The 'suitable time' came with the imminent publication of the Ferns report.  We held two successful launch meetings in early December 2005, and are growing from there.

Voice of the Faithful in Ireland must obviously be a different voice from VOTF (USA).  We are not as polarised over 'hot button' issues as the US church, and we must find our own way out of the present crisis - rediscovering all the resources of our own proud Irish Catholic tradition. 

And what the voice of the Irish faithful will say has still to be discovered.  This website will reflect that voice, so it's now over to you - the Catholic people of Ireland - to raise your voices and set the direction for the church we love over the next critical decade.

Although Voice of the Faithful Ireland must be an independent voice, unafraid to speak the truth to our pastors, it is in no mood to be a destructive or disruptive voice either.  All of us have received too much of ourselves from our church, and our many good priests, to want to destroy it.  Instead we want to build something we thought we had in the past, but didn't quite have - a church that is entirely truthful and caring, capable of resisting all the contrary cultural trends of the moment, and protective of its most vulnerable members.    

We in Voice of the Faithful in Ireland will enthusiastically collaborate with all who honestly share that goal.
 

VOTF™
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.

Our Goals

2. To support priests of integrity

3.To shape structural change within the Catholic Church.

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