Gathering Nov. 14-16 on the first anniversary of the death of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the national CTA conference in Detroit reached for values he modeled in his dying days: a compassionate heart, and a spiritual wisdom that runs deeper than the issues that divide the Church.

Like past CTA audiences, the 3,500 from all 50 states and several Canadian provinces were decidedly mainstream Catholics, two-thirds of them laity, and 25 percent employed by the Church. Over 90 percent are regular churchgoers, and 70 percent volunteer regularly at church. More than 40 percent belong to a small faith community. They were ready for a serious spiritual challenge.

In the keynote address by Sr. Joan Chittister, "Heart of Flesh: A Feminist Spirituality for Women and Men," they heard not just a stump speech against patriarchal power in church officials, but a call to change our own world view from the patriarchy that affects us all to the feminism of Jesus. Quoting Ezechiel 36, Chittister said God wants to "replace our stony hearts with hearts of flesh," meaning "a spirituality of compassion, of dialogue, of openness, of non-violence, of circles rather than pyramids." Such feminism is not optional, she said. "It is what we need if the church, and the planet, is to survive."

Fr. Michael Crosby was equally challenging in his plenary talk before Sunday's closing Eucharist. Likening the situation of CTA-minded Catholics to that of Israel in the Exile in Babylon, he suggested that God's Spirit may be using our current disenchantment to purify us of either/or categories of left vs. right, progressive vs. conservative. In our Exile, he said, "Vengeance and exclusion give way to compassion and wisdom." He invoked the serenity prayer: "We need courage to keep working for what in our church and nation can be changed, and serenity to face what cannot be changed. Wisdom is the feminine face of God that enables us to discern the difference."

Neither Chittister nor Crosby was silent about the ongoing need to reform the official church. As the supply of priests dwindles and dioceses close parishes, Crosby compared the Catholic landscape to Vietnam under U.S. saturation bombing. "The Vatican and the Bishops seem ready to destroy this church in order to save it, to send long-standing worshiping communities into exile just to save the male, celibate, clerical form of the church," he said. But the mood throughout the weekend was to affirm who we can be as Church, not just rail against the hierarchy.

Young adults organize
This was especially true among young adults. Joe McGovern, a 24-year old high school teacher from Virginia, addressed the convention Sunday morning on behalf of the 300 attendees under 35. Fresh from young adult caucuses, Joe drew a standing ovation when he said, "Young adults are not just the future of the Church. We are the Church now. We have decided to stay Catholic, and we are committed to develop the young adult community within CTA." He challenged every conferee to bring one young adult to the 1998 conference, where he pledged there would be an all-day youth retreat to start things off. The crowd of 3,500 was smaller than the 5,000 who came in 1996, but nearly 9,000 attended events in CTA regions in the past year. California, for example, had a 50 percent drop in attendance at Detroit after 300 attended the first three-day regional conference near Los Angeles last August. Commented Linda Pieczynski, national board president, "In the long run, we welcome the regional growth. We'll be reaching many more people." (For regional developments, see Regional Groups page)

Also, many CTAers skipped the Detroit meeting in order to stand among the over 2,000 activists at Fort Benning, Ga., the same weekend, praying and witnessing for closure of the U.S. Army School of the Americas. In Detroit or elsewhere, action for social justice is a hallmark of CTAers.