Appeal: A new season of church reform

Dear friend,

As summer comes to an end, we at Call To Action once more look back and look forward—at what we have cultivated and at what has emerged organically. We invite you to plant your resources and grow our Church with us, through our campaign for vital, coordinated church reform.

This year we wrote to you weeks after social-distancing started, and again after George Floyd was murdered. Amidst this pain, I smell the dead leaves of fall and know that their decomposition is natural and good, compost for a forest of new life. Our work reminds me of walking down the path behind my house in every season, taking in the “signs of the times” under a canopy of trees.

Our “People’s History of Vatican II,” a project that we introduced to you at this time last year, is blossoming into a new phase. After a year of interviewing elders about their memories of those electric years of hope and transformation in our Church, two student interns are writing reflections like the enclosed. The memories of Vatican II remind me of the solid roots I see poking through the earth, while the reflections from our interns remind me of the new growth of summer, reaching upward, drawing life from the sturdy body of the tree.

Our 2020 National Campaign is the path through the woods that I am walking along these days. It has been mine to coordinate since we announced it last winter, and over months of talking and planning, it is coming into focus. Our four working groups, each grounded in a different strategy for church reform, have met monthly since we first came together at our virtual Convergence in June. Together they form a movement ecology, an “ecosystem” of strategies for social change.

I see this ecosystem coming into fullness around me: The alternatives working group is imagining new intentional communities and compiling inclusive liturgies. The lobbying group is calling on Catholic institutions through open-letter campaigns, listening sessions, and power analysis. The direct-action group has joined our church-reform partners to stage protests for ordination justice. And the education group is supporting the other three strategies—enriching the soil from which they grow. This Advent, these projects will emerge as coordinated actions demanding church reform.

A healthy ecosystem is complex, interconnected, and even confusing, because each strategy is integral to the life of the whole. In the National Campaign, each working group is a branch, growing toward a common goal: a just and healthy Catholic Church. A more specific goal is also emerging: To see how our strategies connect—how each CTA member and Catholic has a place in this work—we need to be together. Thus campaign leaders are already laying groundwork for a Constituent Assembly that we envision for when it's finally safe to gather in large groups again.

Our Anti-Racism Team has increased activity in light of the toxin that is racism, that continues to erode the ecosystem. The group is organizing separate caucuses for people of color and white people in our organization. The people-of-color caucus is a space for solidarity, the white caucus is a space for accountability, and both are spaces for mutual learning and support in this work. Anti-racist work must be in the air we breathe: without it, we cannot walk a path of life and justice.

Finally, our chapters and young leaders (2020 Re/Generators) continue to gather (virtually), and to dream. Some of them are using the new nation-wide working groups to bring projects to life, while others are moving within their local context. The writer adrienne maree brown says that “small is all,” a truth that I often recall in the context of CTA: we want to change something as big and unwieldy as the Catholic Church, but small, local, personal change is the source of our power. Our many projects form a horizontal network of roots, sometimes hard to see until you look under the leaves and discover how they have joined and spread under our feet all along.

As we walk this path into autumn toward Advent, through the cycle of the seasons and of the liturgical year, help us cultivate this movement’s strength and sustainability. Visit cta-usa.org to see how you can plant your time and talent. Your treasure is also an irreplaceable part of Call To Action’s ecosystem. With $15 we can use “Zoom” video-call service for a week of working-group and other meetings. With $100 we can staff a working-group meeting. With $500 we can support or facilitate an anti-racism training for a parish. With $1,000 we can add a Re/Generator to next year’s cohort. With $10,000 we can staff a new project, especially for anti-racist action. No contribution is too small.

Thank you for helping us live, breathe, and grow—in every season.

Sincerely,

Abby Rampone

CTA Communications and Activities Coordinator