December 2001 Call to Action News

Three conferences help push CTA over 25,000 members

Seven weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, over 2,000 CTA
believers thronged a Chicago hotel Nov. 2-4 in a stirring recommitment to be
a Church in service to the world.

It was the third national conference for CTA's 25th anniversary year: one in
Los Angeles Aug. 3-5 drew a crowd of 600. In Philadelphia Sept. 14-16, amid
the shock of Sept. 11, 1,100 of the 1,700 expected conferees managed to
attend - many of them from the New York region devastated by the World Trade
Center tragedy. Combined attendance equaled the crowd in Milwaukee last
year. And on the West and East Coasts there were many more fresh faces than
usual - good news for expanding the base of CTA. In Philadelphia, Sr. Nancy
Langhart of Albany, N.Y., told CTA staff, "It's wonderful. Almost every
person I've met says she's here for the first time."

One clear payoff was a surge in CTA membership. "We set a goal of 25,000 by
the end of 2001, our 25th anniversary year," said Mary Ann Mueninghoff, CTA
board president. "We asked our members to recruit a friend through a
mailing. We asked those at conference, especially in Los Angeles and
Philadelphia, to help. Thanks to all, we will meet our goal before Jan. 1."

News media also spread the CTA message. Articles appeared in the Los
Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune and Time
magazine. Network television affiliates in Philadelphia and Chicago covered
the CTA events on the evening news. The Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, seen
on public television, covered the Chicago meeting, and is preparing a
program on CTA.

Younger adults take charge

As usual, the 2001 attendees were overwhelmingly active Catholics: 71
percent of them laity, 24 percent women religious, and five percent priests..
Of the total, 29 percent are church employees. And the recent trend toward
younger people continued. Twelve percent of participants were in the 18-42
age group, and played visible roles, especially in prayer sessions and
liturgy. CTA Next Generation leader Laura Grindstaff of St. Louis, Mo.,
chaired liturgy planning. Over half the prayer leaders and lectors were
under 40. So were many speakers, ten or more at each convention.
Mueninghoff observed, "This is the first year not a single person came up to
me to ask, 'Where are the young people?'"

War casts its shadow

The plenary speakers - Nancy Sylvester, Bernard Cooke and Joan Chittister -
addressed all three conventions. But in Philadelphia and Chicago, the war
on terrorism and the war in Afghanistan gave their words a new, global
urgency. Cooke spoke the sobering truth: "On Sept. 11th, the United States
was invited to join the human race, by realizing its vulnerability and its
humanity." Chittister asked, "What does religion have to offer a wounded
world awash in great fear, with a microcosm of world religions in every
major city in the world?"

Sylvester said CTA represents the U.S. Church since 1976 trying to follow
Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes, to be a church open to the modern world. But
we are now at an impasse: "The values we have held as a Western dominated
world have brought incredible prosperity and advancement to some, but if
continued as the exclusive way, they will destroy us and the planet," she
said, probably in the next 25 to 30 years. The chilling prediction seemed
even more credible when she spoke Nov. 2, as bombs rained on Afghanistan and
biological weapons were coursing through the U.S. mail.

The only alternative, Sylvester said, is to work for transformation: "to
enter a new consciousness, to begin to define ourselves by what we share in
common rather than by what makes us different." Edwina Gateley echoed the
sentiment in her workshop: she suggested for homework that CTAers visit a
mosque and become acquainted with Muslims.

Church reform urgently needed

Though war and terrorism might seem to make church reform trivial, Sylvester
emphasized that church and world together must be transformed by a new
paradigm, "a worldview that replaces patriarchy with mutuality, cooperation,
interdependence, inclusivity - values that reflect the feminist vision."
Fresh from three years as president of the Leadership Conference of Women
Religious, when she met regularly with Vatican officials and U.S. bishops,
Sylvester said that many of them are threatened by the new vision and cling
to the old. They need love and compassion. "The worldview of the past is
dying," she said. "We need to be hospice workers for the old paradigm,
gentle and loving. We must help all of us let go. But then we must be
midwives to the new, creating a safe place for birthing."

The day after her address at each conference, Sylvester played midwife for
over an hour in an interactive, "fishbowl" discussion of her themes with 50
or 60 of CTA's younger adults. Many from the Next Generation identified
this session as a highlight of the conference. Michelle Watters, 35, of
Dubuque, Ia., commented, "It reminds me that the Church is alive and in
process."