If you have seen a notice in your local Catholic newspaper, a flier in the back of your parish church, or on the Internet, about an upcoming Catholic Voices USA training, you may be wondering about the answers to these questions. Let me try to give you a taste of what a committment to a CVUSA training weekend looks like .... 

In our upcoming training for New England Catholics in Boston, we’ll be gathering on Friday night for some introductions to set the scene and get things rolling for the weekend.

Everyone who is invited to the training after our application process (we only have about 16 slots) will have walked into the weekend with some background reading -- this saves us from having to bombard you with facts and figures and theology during a busy weekend and so it really is essential that the prep work is done.

Saturday gets us to a deeper familiarity with the reframing approach and practical interview pointers and then we are off! The heart of the work of Saturday and Sunday is modeling and sitting down for and reviewing radio and TV interviews.

Expectations for anyone who goes through the training is that you’ve signed up for this media apostolate work. That you feel called to and can make yourself available for drafting letters to the editor, parish talks, radio, and TV interviews. After our May training, a number of those who participated spoke at religious freedom events, wrote letters to the editor -- which were published including by the New York Times and Los Angeles Times -- and appeared on Catholic TV and radio. This year, we’re focusing much more on media placement along with training, and look forward to meeting those of you in New England who feel called to being a more public voice, making the case for the Church in the public square -- which you might already find yourself doing at family and neighborhood gatherings anyway; the training will helps with your personal call to evangelize on all fronts.

Catholic Voices USA is taking applications for the New England training through January 31. More details can be found here, along with the application. Thank you for considering! We will pray for your discernment! Please pray for our efforts!