Looking to Advent
When Call To Action first launched the 2020 National Campaign, we shared a clear timeline and goal. Advent 2020 would be a time of coordinated action across our four strategies. The full-throated demand of Advent was a 2021 constituent assembly, where laity and clergy would gather around a table to be Church together. A constituent assembly is a theologically radical demand. That demand draws on Call To Action’s roots, reminding us that it was just 44 years ago that the bishops of this country welcomed the people of the Church into a time of open dialogue and co-creation. It imagines a Church that embraces the Holy Spirit speaking through the laity. In a new constituent assembly, we would invite priests and bishops to join us on a level playing field, acknowledge our grievances, and commit to co-creating a more just Church as our partners.
So why Advent? We chose Advent as a time for coordinated action because of its symbolic resonance. Advent is the beginning of the Catholic year. It is the time of preparation for the birth of Christ, a time of gestation, anticipation, and longing.
Advent is not a time for passivity. We believe that the whole Church, the whole body of Christ, has a part to play in Christ’s incarnation. We are called to midwife God, to help birthe the Christ-child into our world. We are called to kneel before Christ with the blood of life on our hands. Our original plan for Advent 2020 centered around occupations, which meant that we would reclaim space, hold space, and offer space for Christ’s arrival.
The uncertainty of the pandemic makes it difficult to occupy space or call for a constituent assembly in 2021. We are instead relying on our team of strategy leaders and working groups to reshape the 2020 campaign. What do we demand? What will Advent 2020 mean for us? How can we lay the groundwork for a constituent assembly without a timeline? We maintain the assembly as an ultimate goal even though we don’t know when it will be possible. COVID-19 necessitates uncertainty, so over the next few months we will let the way emerge before us.
The strategy leaders and working groups are steering the campaign through 2020. As the working groups enter their second month of meetings, participants have already brought specific, concrete, local projects on the table. For instance, members of the lobbying group have drafted four projects so far! From the midwest to the south, members are thinking about how to lobby local Church leaders around justice issues.
The alternatives group has a few members with dreams to start intentional communities in their own contexts. There’s a group on the west coast and another in the east. One member is exploring her call to ordination. Strategy leaders Dora Saavedra and Fred Dabrowski are collecting and cultivating resources for how to start intentional communities, drawing on their experience with the intentional Eucharistic community that Dora helped start almost 20 years ago in McAllen, Texas.
The strategy leaders also constitute a Coordinating Committee, which meets weekly to discuss and shape the campaign. In our first meeting, we shared resources - anti-racist practices, group activities, and more - and thought about how we will use the second month of working group meetings to make our efforts coordinated and concrete. We started out by articulating our dreams for working with the strategies; now we are looking to Advent. We take comfort in the uncertainty of Advent. Mary didn’t know quite what was coming. No one did. No one could have fully imagined the incarnation. We still struggle to imagine it, two millennia later.
The campaign is coming together, and the people of CTA are leading it. The strategy leaders facilitate the monthly working groups, but on video chats, email threads, and phone calls, the people gather together to imagine a way forward. We need you to join us in the trek toward Advent, through Advent, and beyond. Advent 2020 will be a time of action, coordination, and co-creation, and we invite you into the preparation for God’s arrival.
Sign up for July working group meetings here and sign up for updates about all upcoming meetings at our Working Groups page.
