Letter to the Church
Dear Call To Action members,
You have been with CTA through many years of church reform work. Since our beginning in 1977, we’ve seen the CTA national conference grow from a basement gathering to become the annual event around which many of us have built our Catholic life. We’ve encountered Popes and engaged with bishops; we’ve protested, picketed, and prayed for our church all across the country.
At the 2015 National Conference, Jim FitzGerald asked CTA to realize our present moment of rebirth. Paul also memorably uses a birth metaphor in his letter to the church of Rome, “We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now.” (Romans 8:22) And we realize with Paul that hope is a natural companion to birth, “for in hope we were saved...we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.” (Romans 8:24)
As we take our first steps forward in the comfortable shadow of the past 40 years, hope and reflection feel like good themes for CTA’s first new project.
So we would like to put these questions on hope and reflection to you:
We invite you to respond to any or all of these prompts. CTA staff will collect and organize your responses based on which prompt you react to. If you choose to respond to more than one prompt, please send them in separate communications.We have three objectives for this project:
1. To inform, inspire, and hold accountable the future work of CTA.
2. To present these letters at the USCCB national conference to remind the bishops of our unwavering commitment to the creation of a Just Church for all.
3. CTA’s 20/30 group will "steward" this collection of letters. Members from the group will write their own responses to the issues and themes most resonant to them. CTA will publish this intergenerational “dialogue” to our website. We will also print them in future CTA publications.You can send your responses on paper to our office at 2135 W Roscoe St., Unit 1N; Chicago IL 60618, or email them to cta@cta-usa.org.
This is an exciting time for Call To Action, even as the work in front of us is as daunting as ever. But we are a community defined by faith: faith in our Sacraments, faith in our future, and faith in each other. We look forward to collecting your reflections and moving into action.
Prayers,
Zach Johnson
