American Catholic Council July 2009 Newsletter

We believe that the Holy Spirit is actively present in each of you—each of us—and we invite you to call to mind the power of this Spirit.  This Spirit, so present in the dialogue of the Second Vatican Council—and the Church in this country as all the baptized began to recognize their potential and responsibility to bring about the Reign of God, needs to be on our lips, in our hands and hearts this day.

Welcome.  Most who receive this message will be receiving your first from us.  May we welcome you to this movement…may we invite you to become an active part of this effort…may we offer you companionship on our unique pilgrimage, our Emmaus walk together.  The website provides materials about who we are and what we are about—and so this note, which we hope will be a monthly note, will not retrace those issues.

Website.  We invite you to visit the website often (AmericanCatholicCouncil.org) —and we apologize in advance if the amateurs among us make mistakes—or promise more than we can deliver on this site.  We are all volunteers; we are all workers, not master builders.  The website will continue to carry our news, our resources, our calendars, our thinking—and it is an open website to which you are invited to provide your own dialogue.  This is our first request: give us your thoughts, what is the deepest desire within you for our Church?  What are your fears?  What are your concerns?  What is important to you?

Resources.  Recently, we formed a committee to solicit and edit commentary on the ecclesiology of our future, on the structural history of tour Church—and how that structure objectively furthers personal and communal mature spirituality and the Reign of God, on the mission of followers of Jesus today, and on the exciting unrealized theology of the Second Vatican Council (and how that theology is worked out in our daily Church and secular lives).  If you would like to contribute to this effort in any way, please feel free to get in touch with Gaile Pohlhaus, gaile.pohlhaus@villanova.edu, and offer your time and talent.

Local/Regional Assemblies.  We have also an active committee which is facilitating a grassroots outreach in preparation for our 2011 event.  We have developed a “toolkit” of materials to enable local and regional meetings (formal or informal) to give voice to our thoughts and issues.  The website will in the next few days inaugurate a new section dealing with this effort specifically—and will provide you with a chance to see what others have done, how to meet others who would work with you in this effort—or just keep you up to date on local meetings that you might like to attend.  Peg Bisgrove (peggybiz@comcast.net) chairs this committee and would welcome your participation and input.

The National Council   We have begun the work to plan our national event—an assembly to give all an opportunity to meet and to dialogue.  We have a committee working on themes and another dealing with the logistics of such a massive undertaking.  We need help with communications, with logistics, with thematic development (particularly as the local and regional meetings filter up ideas and concepts for the national event).  Please get in touch with us  (johnhushon@aol.com or jmwhauter@aol.com) if you wish to volunteer.  We will likely contract with a professional conference planner within the next few days—and shortly thereafter, we will contract with hotels and a convention center in Detroit for that national gathering, which (we hope) will occur on Pentecost weekend, June 9-11, 2011, in Detroit.  (We chose Detroit because of the historic importance of Cardinal Dearden’s Call to Action in Detroit in 1976—which was an attempt to “bring home” the implications of Vatican II to the United States.  If only his dream could have been actualized !)

Will You Offer Your Time and Talent?  The planners meet monthly by conference phone and semi-annually in person.  Committees meet as required.  If any aspect of our work (see the website) interests you—or if you think you can help, by all means let us know.  Many of you have offered assistance—and if we haven’t gone back to you, please try us again—as we are not “professional” in our administration—yet.

We need the welling up the Spirit that can only come from your prayers, thoughts, and commitment.  Please bring your friends (and if possible those who don’t agree with you) to this movement.  We are committed to hearing all voices because our Church is a “big tent” hospitably welcoming all to dialogue, inviting all and excluding no one as Jesus did.

Will You Offer Your Treasure?  Finally, we are now in a position to need financial resources.  Up to this point, the participants have self-funded everything and continue to demonstrate their commitment through monthly donations.  Currently we have two small Foundation grants for our work—but our organizational partners are not financially able to subsidize this large effort at this time.  The website provides an opportunity to give resources to us—and it has an address to which contributions may be mailed.  We are fully qualified as a tax exempt, not for profit organization under IRS rules—but please be patient for acknowledgment if you give as our volunteers have limited resources.

Please let us know what you would like from us in the future—and what you might like to talk about.  We are committed to dialogue and radical inclusivity—because we believe that is really what Jesus did. 

Welcome, the Peace and Fire of the Holy Spirit be with you as we begin this work together.

Janet Hauter and John Hushon
Co-Chairs