OFFICE Notes

Dear Sojourners,

Effective June 30, 2008, I am leaving my post as editor of the Vineyard to complete graduate studies begun two years ago and to focus on other work. After six years, the Vineyard and I have survived – and, at times, prospered by – five executive and interim-executive directors, several new officers, a leadership council that is now a National Representative Council, and more than a few upsets and victories, congratulations and criticisms. I leave with gratitude for all of the above.

We become what we experience and as my Ignatian professor said so often in the past year, “We are always becoming.” That is good news for humanity, of course, but in our context, it is a profoundly urgent realization for the survivors of clergy sexual abuse. Their becoming is what fostered our own. First and foremost, I thank the survivors for the courage of their prophetic voices.

Since October 2002, a few days after Steve Krueger gave me the go-ahead to launch a VOTF e-newsletter, you and VOTF have been connected. The most important ingredient in the Vineyard has always been your voices – affiliate activities and milestones; one-off letters; commentaries pro and con on a variety of concerns; prayers written by people with no liturgical or theological background; tidbits only an engaged Catholic would want to know (the “stuff” of SITE-Seeing, Etc.); and letters you didn’t want published but I answered them anyway. I owe you the motivation to re-invest in our faith by returning to graduate study as a “seasoned student”!

I have genuinely loved my work on the Vineyard. The people who have been writing to, supporting and filling its pages for six years are why I invested as much as I could in its appeal, scope, etc. The Vineyard has a funny sort of free-wheeling history, too, which also made it enticing – from 34 pages (!) monthly (Here’s an exchange between Steve Krueger and me in 2003. Steve: “Peggie, just a brief word about the Vineyard.” Peggie: “What is it?” Steve: “That’s it – brief.”) to a 16-18 page/twice monthly (Ray and I were sure that publishing it twice monthly would shorten it), to the 8-12 pager it is today. In addition, we initiated a two-year hard-copy quarterly Voice (2002-2004) and had a shorter stint with our semi-annual Voice Matters (2005-2006) – both a generous gift from Brown Publishing Company, then in Wellesley.

Of course, the Vineyard will continue to survive and prosper for several reasons: because of its readers and the amazing volunteers and small staff who conduct the business of being voices of the faithful; because of the engaging ups and downs of both the institutional Church AND the VOTF organization; and, most important, because VOTF is ensuring that the genie (the voice of lay Catholics) will not be going back into the bottle.

Finally, a monk correspondent’s words: He wrote to us in the Spring of 2002 and I published it in the July 2002 issue of Voice: “As you stand in the valley, take a good look. A mountain is about to rise beneath your feet.” In the next Vineyard, I will reprint the other four letters published in that first communication vehicle. Their messages remain true and uplifting.

I wish each of you joy in your becoming,

Peggie L. Thorp