Fresh from the Jan. 7-10 meeting of the "Church on the Move" European Network (EN) in Liechtenstein, CTA staffer Don Wedd reports three heartening stories for progressive church reform.

1. Liechtenstein rises up
The Vatican recently trampled on 1,500 years of tradition by excising the tiny principality of Liechtenstein from the larger Swiss diocese that had included it, forming a new archdiocese, and imposing the extremely unpopular Archbishop Wolfgang Haas, so fiercely regressive that the Swiss government had petitioned for his removal from the diocese of Chur. Out of 31,000 Liechtensteiners, 1,000 created the Association for an Open Church as a protest. Proportionately, it is as if a church crisis moved 9 million Americans to join Call To Action. After centuries of Catholicism as the state-supported religion, Prince Hans-Adam II, the monarch, reacted by proposing a separation of church and state -- which would leave the archbishop to find his own source of financing. The new association joined EN in solidarity with 30 other groups from 12 European nations.

2. We Are Church in Germany
Delegates from We Are Church(WAC) in Germany told EN that their movement enjoyed broad acceptance in mainstream Catholic circles in 1998, participating in the official Katholikentag or Catholic Assembly for the first time, and being instrumental in getting exiled French Bishop Jacques Gaillot invited as a conference speaker. WAC is being taken seriously by the German hierarchy as an authentic grassroots movement of Catholics, much as WAC was included in the official Dialogue by the Austrian bishops last fall. (WAC referenda gained 1.8 million signers in Germany and 500,000 in Austria in 1995.) So when Germany's Lutheran and Catholic leaders announced plans for the first Ecumenical Assembly in Berlin in 2003, WAC had enough credibility to urge that the event include shared communion.

3. European Synod next fall
The next window of opportunity for CTA's European allies to affect official Church deliberations will be the synod of European bishops in Rome next fall. A parallel, lay presence in Rome during the synod is in the planning stages, to remind the bishops and the media of the progressive church reform desires of a majority of Catholics, especially regarding women. Such a joint venture is being discussed both by EN and by the Europeans within IMWAC -- the International We Are Church Movement --w led by Elfriede Harth.