A new journal dedicated to reporting the life of  St. Andrew the Apostle Church and its members.

The publication of Witness originated in the summer of 2005 in discussions by members of the St. Andrew’s Peace and Justice Committee. It arose out of the desire to deepen the dialogue about issues of peace and justice and to link them with a focus on renewal at St. Andrew’s. A member of the Committee suggested that one way to do that would be to create a journal that documented efforts to live out our mission, to “capture the living text of a community struggling to renew itself and the wider church.” A central aim of the journal would be to test the proposition that renewal comes from the bottom-up, that genuine reform in the Church will arise in communities like our own.

Issues:           

May 11, 2006  First issue

November 4, 2006  Second issue

     Witness Editorial Board at Work

 (continued from above left)
Witness would be more than a church bulletin but not an academic journal. One model for the proposed publication might be a parish equivalent of The Catholic Worker. It would not aim at a national audience, although we hoped that many outside our parish might subscribe to it or read it on the St. Andrew’s website. But like the Worker, its success would not be measured by circulation size but by evidence that its publication deepened and stimulated the conversation in the parish and had some impact on the dialogue of reform throughout the church. The new journal could also be a means of attracting new parishioners who want to join a community dedicated to reform and to living the Gospel message. Finally, Witness would aim to provide a historical record of what paths one parish took in the era following the Second Vatican Council and what hopes it realized as well as its failures and disappointments.
The Peace and Justice Committee voted unanimously to put a proposal to publish such a journal before the Parish Council, which also unanimously approved it, and voted to fund Witness as a journal representing St. Andrew’s with an editorial board that would include at least one representative from St. Lucy’s parish. The Parish Council agreed to serve as publisher of the journal, with the primary responsibility for its editorial direction to lie with an editorial board of nine or more members representative of the parish as whole. Gerald Grant was asked to chair the Board and to select the founding members. In subsequent meetings the Board decided to publish a spring and fall issue each year, with rotating co-editorships for each issue.