Put Out into the Deep
June 26 2025
We’re inviting you to share info about our first Confident Witness retreat—and to register if you can make it!
What Is a Confident Witness Retreat?
Confident Witness is a weekend retreat for formation in mentorship and leadership. If you are an LGBT/SSA+ Catholic who embraces Church teaching in full, and you want to be an encouraging mentor and a compelling witness in your local community, this retreat is for you. We’ll share the insights BCF has gained about the spiritual journeys of LGBT/SSA+ people and fortify you intellectually and spiritually for the challenges of witness in this area.
We’ll gather in Boston for our first Confident Witness retreat on the evening of Thursday, August 7, and go home on Sunday afternoon, August 10. Registration is open now!
Your voices are needed in our Church—and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to attend. If you’re able to register before July 4, you’ll help us manage the logistics, and so we’re offering registration for $250/person. Register and learn more about accommodations, schedule, and other details. Starting July 4, we will need to raise prices, so if you know someone who should hear about this, now’s a great time to share the link.
Many of you have seen how challenging it can be to act as an LGBT/SSA+ Catholic witness to Christ’s saving power. Even seasoned mentors can find it hard to know how to start the right conversations, or spark deeper cultural change in a parish or diocese. This retreat is a unique opportunity to gather with veterans and new faces for prayerful reflection—and to learn from BCF’s experience working in a wide range of Catholic contexts.
And while we trust that this is only the first of many Confident Witness retreats, those who join us in Boston will be able to say that they were there when it all began.
We can’t wait to see you in Boston!
Please forward this email to anyone in your circle who would like to join us.
A Teaser
How do queer people integrate their faith and their experience of sexuality? How does a childhood feeling of difference become an inspiration for mission? And… why do gay people go so crazy on our journeys?
BCF has mapped five stages on the Journey to Spiritual/Sexual Integrity. As we explore and discuss them, you’ll gain
As with all of BCF’s work, the Five Stages to Integrity are based on decades of mentoring and deep reading in the literature on gay spiritual journeys. Wherever you and the people you encounter are in your relationships with the Church, you can discern a step that will take you to the threshold into the next stage of sexual/spiritual integrity.
Eve & Keith