Notes for the end of June from CLC
It’s been a bit of whirlwind of a month, but we wanted to wrap up the month and start off our blog in earnest with a few points about who we are, what we hope for and what we’re doing.
The founding group of Concerned Lay Catholics is based in Hamilton, Ontario. You can read about how we got started and who we are individually under the CLC story tab on our website.
Another CLC group has recently formed in the St Catharines diocese, and has begun to bring people together there. Already. we have individuals signed up in 8 provinces and 12 dioceses in Canada. We hope that in time more groups will form in many/all dioceses across Canada.
CLC exists to engage, educate and empower lay Catholics to take their rightful place of responsibility within the Church. We do not require doctrinal “litmus tests”; but rather invite people who share our vision, mission, values and call to action (all set out here on our website), to join with other lay people in their own parishes and dioceses to establish the principle of lay participation in the life of our church-as Pope Francis calls it “synodality”.
We believe one of the reasons that many lay people tend to be passive and don’t get more involved in the Church - or perhaps even just leave quietly- is because they are not given access to meaningful information that allows them to engage the issues they care about. We recognize, therefore, that education of the laity is key to their empowerment.
This is why we undertook to create the website. It provides information, tools and resources that we have found to be helpful in the areas that we are concerned about: healing from clergy sexual abuse, including in residential schools; empowering lay leadership; transparency and accountability; clericalism; becoming a vibrant and spirit-filled church.
Our website offers educational and informational resources on these topics, and we also provide webinars, spiritual and prayer resources- because we believe, as Catholic Christians, while information is a necessary component, that it is ultimately through prayer (both individually and collectively), reflection on scripture, church teaching and tradition, and listening to what God is saying to us in the here and now, especially in the voices of those often silenced, that we will come closer to understanding God’s intentions- not only for the Catholic church- but for all of God’s creation.
We are just getting started and we don’t pretend to have all the answers. We are inviting people to share their suggestions for resources and also to indicate what they would like to do as lay Catholics to further the conversation around our 6 calls to action.
We are all volunteers and busy active people. But we feel the Spirit is working in this moment and we are striving to be attentive to it- and to be open to where it leads. We chose as our scripture Ephesians 4:15 “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into Christ”.
We believe this is what we are all called to do for each other. We cannot grow into Christ on our own.