On the occasion of Faithful Revolution’s release in paperback, I sat down with Phillip Sherman of Marginalia Review of Books (a Los Angeles Review of Books Channel). We talked about the emergence and impact of Voice of the Faithful as a movement inside the Catholic Church, and what it means for thinking about social movements, Catholicism, identity, and change.
Find a small excerpt below; read the full interview here.
Faithful Revolution: A Conversation with Tricia Bruce
APRIL 1, 2014
Phillip Sherman talks with Tricia Bruce about a movement that arose within the American Catholic church as a response to revelations of abuse.
Tricia Bruce is Associate Professor of Sociology at Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee. The paperback edition of Faithful Revolution was released today. This interview took place on the campus of Maryville College and was transcribed.
PS: Can you begin by telling us a little bit about the nature of the research that led to this book, what this group (“VOTF”) is, and what they attempted to accomplish within the life of the Church?
TB: The Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) emerged in 2002, at the peak of revelations regarding the crisis of abuse within the Catholic Church. The outrage stemmed from not only new knowledge that Catholic priests abused children, but in discovering the complicity and institutional cover up of leaders who transferred abusive priests from parish to parish. So, VOTF emerged first in Boston. They were a group of enraged parishioners who loved their Church and yet felt it needed to change in light of these revelations. They mobilized together in order to find a way to act from within to change the Church so that this abuse would no longer occur.
Read the rest of our conversation here.
Tricia C. Bruce, PhD 