Help us fight loneliness. Build inclusive Catholic communities.
Dear Friends in Christ,
We celebrate news of the coming Biden-Harris Administration. Still, we grieve. This evil pandemic has killed thousands of God's people, and we who survive have been cut off from community. It's been months since many of us last felt the touch of our siblings, children, and friends. Many of us will pass the holidays alone.
As Christians, we are called to look to Christ and Christ’s Church for spiritual comfort. But how do we do this during times of social distancing?
In a moment, I'll tell you about the incredible ways Call To Action's Re/Generators—the future of American Catholicism—are bringing Christians together in Christ’s name.
I write to you as one of these 2020 Re/Generators, and as a Catholic who will personally depend on Re/Generator-built communities for spiritual nourishment during this first holiday season since the pandemic began. I’m a frontline worker at a public hospital in Manhattan, where, as a chaplain, I provide succor to sick and dying New Yorkers. Due to visitor restrictions and the shortage of Spanish-speaking hospital staff, I’m too often the only person who can comfort dying immigrant Catholics in the only language they understand.
Claire Hitchins leading a 2019 CTA gathering in song. Claire runs our Re/Generator program, cultivating sacred spaces where connection, healing, imagination and justice-making become possible.
I don’t want my patients to pass Thanksgiving and the joyous Feast of God’s Birth alone. So I won’t be able to fly home to Arizona for the holidays.
And that’s why I’m writing to you today. Now more than ever, we progressive Catholics need community. Call To Action’s 2020 Re/Generators—the next generation of Catholic justice leaders—are at work building inclusive Catholic communities across America.
In Tacoma, Washington, Re/Generators are developing LGBTQ-inclusive liturgies taking place on Zoom each Sunday of Advent. These liturgies will be open to Christians around the world who desire a community with which to reflect and pray upon such theological themes as darkness, lament, waiting, resilience, and family.
And here in New York City, Re/Generators are organizing a series of Advent retreats to take place on Zoom during the second, third, and fourth Sundays of Advent. Some of these retreats will be led by ecumenical authorities like Pamela Lightsey, the first queer Black woman to serve as an elder in the United Methodist Church. Other retreats will be led by Catholic justice leaders like Jamie Manson, new Executive Director of Catholics for Choice (and former columnist for the National Catholic Reporter), and Karen Gargamelli-McCreight, co-founder of Benincasa (a Catholic Worker-inspired monastic community of intergenerational Catholics).
A screenshot of Zoom-based CTA community life. Our online liturgical community welcomes Christians wherever they are, as they are.
In October, CTA members from throughout North America invested an average of $48 in our movement. Last month, our budget expert summed up all the donations we’d received from you, my Christian siblings. We realized we had enough to give project stipends to five of my 21 fellow Re/Generators!
Whatever you chip in today is an investment in the creation of the local Catholic community our society so desperately needs during these dark, dark times.
As a chaplain to sick and dying New Yorkers, I thank you for your time and your work for God’s people. I invite you to join me in the Christian communities my Re/Generator peers are hard at work building; and, if you're able, I invite you to chip in today!
In Very Christian Solidarity,
Jacob Andrew Gonzalez
CTA 2020 “Re/Generator”
