Apply to join the Narrow Way community

Narrow Way Commons is a Catholic community that learns together and builds its own teaching material — courses, notes, videos, prayers — and gives it away for anyone to use.

There are two parts: this site, where the community lives, and the Saint School, where the courses run. One login covers both.

Narrow Way Commons is a Catholic community of people forming themselves and each other in the faith — and building the material they form each other with. Courses, notes, clips, translations, prayers: made here by members, and given away freely so that anyone can use them.

It is not a social network and it is not a shop. It is closer to a workshop with a chapel in it: people learning, people making things, and the making being part of the learning.

Two sites make up the whole: Narrow Way Commons, where the community and the making happen, and the Saint School, where the courses actually run. Your single account covers both — no second password.

Narrow Way Commons is a Catholic formation community and a commons of teaching material. Two things are going on at once, and each depends on the other: members are being formed — in doctrine, in Scripture, in practices of prayer — and members are building the material that forms them and will form the people who come after.

Everything contributed is dedicated to the public domain, so the corpus belongs to nobody and is usable by everybody, including parishes and apostolates with no connection to us. That is the "commons" in the name, and it is why the Contribution Agreement asks what it asks.

Architecturally there are two platforms. Narrow Way Commons (this site) carries the community, the guilds and the editorial work. The Saint School carries the courses. They share one identity: you sign in once, and the second site knows who you are. It is one membership, wearing two coats.

The wider apostolate this grows out of is Apostoli Viae; the form asks whether you are already part of it, but you do not have to be.

You ask to join, and a real person reads your application and replies. It is not instant and it is not automatic.

Once you are in, you can read everything, take courses, join the conversation, and — if you want to — help make things.

There is no fee. You give what time you can.

You need to be 18 or over. Some of the courses on the Saint School are written for young people, but that is material for adult leaders to teach from; under-18s do not join here.

You are admitted by a person, not by a form. Someone reads your application and writes back. That is slower than a signup button, on purpose: a community that forms people in the faith should know who is in the room.

What you get. The courses, the community, and — if you want it — a hand in making the material: writing, editing, translating, filming, testing, praying for the work.

What is asked of you. Good faith, and whatever time you genuinely have. There is no fee and no quota. Just fit it in as you please.

You set the pace. Read for a year before contributing anything if that is what you need. That is a normal way to be a member.

Adults only, for now. Membership of Narrow Way Commons is 18 and over. You will meet course material on the Saint School that is written for a youth audience; that is there for adult leaders to teach from, not an invitation for under-18s to join. If the Saint School is ever opened to young people directly it will be as a separate audience with its own safeguards — not through this form.

Admission is by review. Your application goes to the operator, who reads it and decides. You will be emailed either way. You do not have an account until you are approved; the account is created at that point and you set your own password.

Email confirmation comes first. After you submit, you get an email with a confirmation link. The operator is not notified until you click it — which means an application from a mistyped or hostile address quietly goes nowhere.

Membership is a relationship, not a subscription. There is no payment, no tier, and no metric you must hit. What varies between members is not status but participation: which guilds you are in, what you have taken responsibility for, and what you have chosen to switch on.

Age. The Terms of Use require a member to be at least 18, and this form is the adult path — the only one there is at present. The Saint School carries course material written for a youth audience; that exists so an adult leader can teach from it. A directly enrolled under-18 audience, if it ever exists, will be a separate one behind its own gate, and nothing on this form creates it.

Leaving is clean. You can withdraw the optional consents at any time, and ask for your data to be erased. Erasure is immediate on the live site; backups are kept 30 days, never restored to resurrect deleted data, and fully purged within 30 days.

There are two kinds of group here.

A guild is a group of members who work on one kind of thing — theology, writing, teaching, code, video, testing. A guild has levels you grow through, and someone to learn from.

An interest group is lighter: a group around one subject, with no levels. Turning up is all there is to it.

You do not have to be good at it to join either one. A guild is where you learn the craft, with people who already know it. Pick whatever appeals to you on the form below; you can change later.

Two guilds are joined by invitation and are not on the form: the Shepherds, who look after the community, and Copyright.

The form below offers two kinds of group, and the site keeps the difference everywhere, so it is worth a moment here.

A guild is a community of practice: members who look after one kind of work and teach it to each other. Theology, writing, pedagogy, code, video, testing. A guild has levels, mentorship, and — for some — a share in reviewing what the community publishes.

An interest group is lighter: an affinity community around one subject — design, marketing, translation, prayer — with no levels and no say over how work is routed. Taking part simply is your membership.

Joining either is not a claim to expertise. It is the opposite — a guild is where you go to learn the craft alongside people who already have it. Most members arrive able to do none of it.

Within a guild the levels follow what you have actually done rather than what you said on a form. There is also the possibility of being mentored.

Two guilds are not on the form. The Shepherds Guild, which is the community's oversight body, and the Copyright Guild, which looks after licensing, clearance and the project's own legal documents, are joined by invitation rather than by application.

On the form below, tick whatever appeals. It is an expression of interest, not a commitment, and you can change it whenever you like.

Guilds exist so that the different gifts in a community have somewhere to live, and so the community can trust the work that comes out. When a course needs a theologian's eye or a teacher's judgement, there is a guild standing ready to give it — and the person giving it is known.

Levels are earned from evidence. Progression follows the record of what you have contributed and mastered, granted by people already at that level. This is why the formation-data consent and guild levels are connected: levels are granted against a record, so with no record kept there is nothing to grant against.

Sojourners is the open door. Many members begin there — the general formation guild that everyone belongs to — and move into a specialist guild as their contributions accumulate. Guild membership follows service rather than claim.

The Tester's Guild is a special case: its work is to run courses in order to find what is wrong with them, and it does that in Trialing mode so that testing never pollutes a real formation record.

Two guilds are closed to application. The Shepherds Guild and the Copyright Guild are entered by invitation. That is not ceremony: the Shepherds hold the approval gate on published work and on new versions of the project's legal documents, and the Copyright Guild performs copyright clearance and drafts those documents, so in both cases membership itself carries authority that self-assertion must not be able to grant. The Theology Guild is closed for the same kind of reason — membership there is a verified credential — which is why the form's Theology box starts you in Sojourners, the open formation guild, instead.

Further down this form there are some agreements. Three are needed to join. Two are your choice.

Needed: the Terms of Use, the Acceptable Use Policy, and the Privacy notice.

Your choice: one lets you contribute work; one lets the site keep a record of your learning. Saying no to either is completely fine — you still join, that feature is just switched off, and you can switch it on later.

Near the bottom of this form you will meet the agreements. They are not all the same kind of thing, and the difference matters.

Three are foundational. The Terms of Use, the Acceptable Use Policy and the Privacy notice govern the whole relationship, so every member accepts them. There is no honest way to be a member without them.

Two are optional. The Contribution Agreement turns on your ability to contribute work. The formation-data consent turns on keeping a record of your formation. Each is a switch for one feature — not a condition of membership. Declining either never stops you joining, and either can be turned on or off later in a click.

Each agreement appears with a plain summary, then its full text in a box you scroll through. The summary is a guide; the text is the agreement. Please read to the end of each box — the tick-box unlocks when you do.

Agreements on this site fall into two kinds, and which kind an agreement is determines what happens if you decline it.

Foundational agreements — Terms of Use, Acceptable Use Policy, Privacy notice — govern the relationship itself and are a condition of membership, enforced at sign-in.

Functionality gates — the Contribution Agreement and the Art. 9 formation-data consent — are permissions for particular capabilities. Declining one leaves you a full member with that capability switched off: read-only in the first case, Trialing mode in the second.

Why this is the stronger design, not the looser one. Consent is only valid in law if it is freely given, and it is not freely given when it is bundled as the price of a service that does not require it. Browsing courses and taking part in the community genuinely do not require us to keep a ledger of your beliefs and practice. Making that consent optional — with Trialing mode as a real alternative rather than a token one — is exactly what makes the consents we do hold valid.

Withdrawal is graceful. Withdrawing the formation-data consent erases the record and moves you into Trialing mode. It does not freeze your account. Earlier versions of this site did freeze people; that behaviour has been retired.

You can try courses out with nothing saved. That is called Trialing mode.

Work through a course, see what it is like, and when you leave nothing is kept. If you decide later that you want your progress remembered, you can turn that on in one click.

Not sure yet? Trialing mode is the site running with nothing kept. You can work through a selection of courses to see what they are actually like, and when you leave, it is gone — no progress record, no reflections, nothing about your faith or practice.

Three kinds of person end up in Trialing mode, and it feels the same for all of them: someone just having a look; a member who has not turned on the formation-data consent; and a Tester's Guild member deliberately testing courses without generating a real record.

A banner tells you when you are in Trialing mode, so you never lose work you thought was being saved. Turning on saving is one click, whenever you are ready.

Trialing mode is one mechanism with three doors: an anonymous guest (where enabled), a member who has not given the Art. 9 consent, and a Tester's Guild member. All three are precisely the case "may not keep formation", so all three get identical behaviour.

How "nothing kept" actually works: formation writes are routed to an ephemeral, session-scoped store that clears on logout and self-expires on a short timer, so even a visitor who never logs out leaves no residue. Nothing reaches the durable ledger.

What is unavailable: no mastery ledger, no practice record, no reflections, and no guild levels that depend on tracked formation — levels are granted against a record, and there is no record. That is a consequence of the choice rather than a penalty for it, which is the distinction that keeps the consent freely given.

The trialable set is a curated selection of courses rather than the whole catalogue.

1. You get an email. Click the link in it to confirm your address.
2. A person reads your application.
3. You get an email with the answer.
4. If you are approved, you set a password and sign in.

How long? There is no set time. A person reads every application, and it takes as long as it takes.

Check your spam folder if the first email does not arrive.

If you are not sure yours reached anyone, the contact page has an address you can write to.

1. We email you straight away. That email has a confirmation link — click it, because nothing moves until you do.
2. A person reads your application. Not a filter, not a scoring system. This takes as long as it takes.
3. You get an email with the decision, either way.
4. If you are approved, an account is created for you, you set your own password, and you sign in. Your Saint School access comes with it — same login.

How long does it take? There is no fixed timeframe, and we would rather say that than give you a number we cannot keep. A person reads every application; it is not a queue with a service level. If you are wondering whether yours arrived at all, look in your spam folder for the acknowledgement email — and if it is not there either, the contact page has an address you can write to.

You do not have an account until then, so there is nothing to sign in with in the meantime. If the first email has not arrived, check your spam folder before assuming something went wrong.

1. Acknowledgement + email confirmation. Submitting triggers an acknowledgement email carrying a per-application confirmation token. The operator is not notified until you follow that link, so an application from a mistyped or hostile address goes nowhere quietly.
2. Operator review. Confirmed applications enter the review queue. Admission is at the operator's discretion.
3. Decision email. Sent either way.
4. Provisioning on approval. A Drupal account is created, your guild interests are turned into real enrolments, your agreements are recorded against your account, and your Saint School identity is linked so a single sign-in reaches both platforms.

There is no stated turnaround, deliberately. None is published because none has been measured, and a figure nobody has measured is a promise waiting to be broken. What can be said exactly is where the waiting starts: the operator is not notified when you submit but when you follow the confirmation link, so an application whose confirmation email was never opened is not slow — it has not begun. If you are unsure yours reached anyone, the contact page carries an address that does.

Until approval there is no account, so there is nothing to sign in with. If sign-in fails after approval, the usual causes are an unconfirmed email address or a password that was never set.