Reform-minded Catholics upbeat, active - Call to Action convention, Chicago, Il

CHICAGO -- Quiet confidence and a sense of determination seemed to mark the mood of 2,300 renewal-minded Catholics who gathered here Oct. 29-31 for the third national "We Are the Church: What if We Meant What We Said?" conference.

Officials of the Chicago-based Call to Action church reform group, which sponsored the meeting, were pleased to note the number eclipsed last year's 1,800 and 1991's 900 participants.

"I'm not picking up any of the anger I once saw at meetings like these," said veteran Catholic reform advocate, Patty Crowley of Chicago, a surviving member of the 1960s' papal commission on birth control. That commission recommended to Pope Paul VI the church birth-control ban could and should be lifted. "The mood is upbeat. You have a sense people here are living their faith."

Crowley's remarks were echoed by others as they wound their way up and down stairs and through hallways from plenary session to workshop to caucus gathering during the Hyatt Regency O'Hare hotel meeting.

Bill Thompson, CTA official and coordinator of Catholic Organizations for Renewal, a loose network of more than two dozen Catholic reform organizations that came together two years ago, traced the changing mood of Catholic reform as follows: "In 1991 the mood was more dispirited, angry. In 1992 a lot of people were asking what to do. In 1993 we are doing it."

There was widespread agreement here that the "doing it," of which Thompson spoke, has much to do with small faith communities. In the eyes of many Catholics at the CTA gathering, small faith groups, both inside and outside parish structures, are becoming the focus of new U.S. Catholic energy and renewal.

Said Thompson: "Development of small faith communities may not be a key but the key in church renewal." At the end of the conference, CTA announced it will develop a national directory of small, renewal-minded Catholic faith communities.

Some noted during discussions that these communities are not intended to be an "alternative church," but rather to meet the worshiping and activist needs of local Catholics -- needs viewed as frequently going unmet in parish settings, especially in an increasingly restrictive church climate.

Another associated sentiment echoed during the gathering dealt with the hierarchy's insistence on maintaining a male, celibate priesthood and the way this insistence is making the Eucharist less available to Catholics.

Many participants agree that the Eucharist is what most unites Catholic Christians, including renewal-minded faith activists. Said CTA board President Mary Ann Savard, "People here don't want the Eucharist to die."

Bolstering this worry was news last week of the publication of the book, Full Pews and Empty Altars: Demographics of the Priest Shortage in United States Catholic Dioceses, by sociologists Richard A. Schoenherr of the University of Wisconsin and Lawrence A Young of Brigham Young University (University of Wisconsin Press). The nine-year study found that U.S. ordination rates continue to fall. As reported in NCR Nov. 5, there were 35,000 priests for 45 million U.S. Catholics in 1966; projections indicate there will be 21,000 priests for 74 million Catholics in 2005.

"The issue of the Eucharist really has led to the question: |Whose church is this?'" Thompson told a plenary gathering on the conference's last day.

The answer, it appears, comes personally and in a variety of ways. Some were suggested during the conference.

One woman religious, for example, spoke of a new sense of empowerment that came over her recently when she gathered with a group of Catholic women to pray. "We read scripture. Then bread and wine were brought out. We blessed them, repeating the words Jesus gave to us. No one defined what we did. No one claimed it to be anything other than what it was, the breaking of bread, the drinking of wine in memory of Jesus."

It was, she said, "One of the most moving experiences of my life. ... A light went on and I finally understood."

In a way, her story characterized the nondefiant defiance typical of the assembly. Another example could be found in the meeting's reverent, but sometimes extracanonical liturgical celebrations.

On the first day, the group celebrated an opening rite. Later it witnessed an Old Testament reading dramatized by a group of performers. Still later, it met for a New Testament reading and a eucharistic prayer. Inclusive language and "God" replaced "Lord."

A gathering of more than 2,000, packed into the hotel's grand ballroom, sitting around nearly 200 tables -- a stage and altar in the middle -- prayed in word and song. The celebration was presided over by a woman, Edwina Gateley, founder of Genesis House, a ministry to prostitutes in Chicago, and an ordained priest, Sacred Heart Fr. Robert Bossie.

During that prayer service, CTA presented Detroit auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton with its annual leadership award. He spoke on the beatitudes the day he was to have accompanied exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide back to Haiti, were it not for unrepentant Haitian generals.