Faithful Revolution: How Voice of the Faithful is Changing the Church (review)

In 2006, local leaders of the lay Catholic group Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) met with the new Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley. This meeting seemed to promise a warmer relationship between the hierarchy and the marginalized organization. Since 2002, VOTF had grown from its Boston roots into a national movement organized under the motto “Keep the Faith, Change the Church.” A response to revelations about clergy sexual abuse and its cover-up, VOTF had mobilized Catholics with calls for transparency in finances, enhanced lay participation in decision-making, and stricter policies related to accusations of sexual abuse. Sociologist Tricia Bruce witnessed VOTF’s emergence and development, and documented its rapid growth and accompanying struggles. By 2006, VOTF had suffered a “loss of energy” (170) but clung to a chastened hope.

After their meeting, the Boston-area VOTF leaders decided they would not publicize the content of the conversation. The “ironic” character of this “compromise” – an organization founded on calls for openness becoming “inured to secrecy” (176) in order to protect a fragile institutional insiderhood – neatly summarizes Bruce’s key insight about VOTF and its place in American Catholicism. As an “intrainstitutional social movement” (4) VOTF faces one especially troublesome obstacle: faithfulness and revolution make profoundly uncomfortable partners. While they seek change, VOTF members are also eager to affirm their loyalty as Catholics. This delicate position (as well as the significant overrepresentation in VOTF of older, white, and college-educated suburbanites) invites debates about the very meaning of the word “Catholic.” But VOTF members understand that even entering into these debates puts their loyalty as Catholics into doubt, a position that is untenable given their commitment to change from within.

VOTF members try to avoid this kind of “catch-22” (106) by distinguishing their concern (“structure”) from the faith (“doctrine”). But this strategy poses its own challenges: many among the hierarchy and the laity refuse to acknowledge the distinction; many VOTF and other Catholics are profoundly concerned with issues of doctrine, such as church teachings about women’s roles in leadership.

So far, the result has been “absorption” (154) of the movement into existing church structures, an outcome entailing ironies like the Boston group’s secrecy as well as “success[es]” (172) like the 2002 USCCB “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” which owed its passage at least in part to the high profile of groups like VOTF and Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP). More directly, Bruce documents a change felt by Catholics who were empowered by VOTF to inhabit their tradition differently as a result of VOTF. In particular, Bruce demonstrates members’ retrieval of the Vatican II call for aggiornamento, a change in church tone that was a crucial, if heretofore forgotten part of this generation’s formation in the tradition.

Bruce tracks these dilemmas with great care. Drawing on participant observations, interviews, and discourse analysis, the book’s theoretical contributions (related to social movement studies) never outweigh its attentiveness to the voices of the people. With the help of Bruce’s insightful explanation of the structural dilemmas of existence in the “church that can and cannot change,”¹ future studies can deepen our understanding of the sensory, emotional, familial, and relational fabric of life as a VOTF Catholic. This book is an excellent choice for upper-level Catholic Studies courses and for graduate seminars on social movements and/or post-Vatican II Catholicism.