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Catholic Coalition for Church Reform
Synod of the Baptized 2013 PDF Print E-mail
Wednesday, 08 May 2013 17:02

Come join us in co-creating a living church.  Saturday, September 28, 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.  It will be held at Ramada MOA, 2300 E American Blvd., Bloomington.

"Somewhere deep down we are all filled with a mystical longing, with a longing for ultimate meaningfulness, and therefore we need to see all of our world in that context. To attain this in today’s climate, we need a new theology of the cosmos —one that is grounded in the best science of our day. It will be a theology in which God is very present precisely in all the dynamism and patterns of the created order. A theology of evolution sees God as deeply involved in the evolutionary process of the world. God is making the world by means of evolution. And the evolutionary process in its turn is seen as striving toward God. So, you see, God is Self-expressing and Self-realizing in evolution." Beatrice Bruteau

What CCCR is about:  We are a growing community of Catholics within the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis actively working to co-create a living church.
The local church we envision is a community alive with the message of Jesus – a message of inclusivity, equality, and transforming love.
We are energized by integrating the gospel message, Catholic practice, and the ‘new creation story’ emerging from contemporary science.

Gail Worcelo, a Catholic practitioner of evolutionary spirituality and co-founder with Thomas Berry of Green Mountain Monastery in VT, will be the keynote speaker, giving us insight into how to be Catholic Christians at home in the universe, co-creating a living church.  We would love to see you there! Register at right.

 

Sister Gail Worcelo' s biography:

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

Dance has always been my passion. I began taking ballet and tap lessons as a child and continue to this day, using dance as an art form for healing Earth.

In the 1980′s I studied Liturgical Dance with Carla DeSola and became a choreographer of this style which I have been able to integrate into the beauty of liturgy as an embodied expression of praise and adoration of the Divine.

I joined the Passionist nuns, a monastic community of women in 1982 with a Master’s degree in Christian Spirituality from Fordham University. During my novitiate in 1984, Thomas Berry, who was a priest in the same congregation came to the monastery to give us classes on The Universe Story and our Role as Humans in that Story.

Thomas became my mentor and guide and I began to study with him at the Riverdale Center for Religious Research in NYC. He continued to mentor me until his death in 2009.

During my years at my former monastery I founded and directed, Homecomings: Center for Ecology and Contemplation, (1990-1999) served on the Leadership Team as Councilor and Novice director of the community, (1992-1999) obtained a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology (1993) and began traveling around the world giving retreats to congregations of men and women religious based on my work with Thomas Berry (1990-present).

I have been a workshop presenter and speaker at gatherings such as: The national assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), Congregational Chapters of Men and Women, Sisters of Earth, Spiritual Directors International, Catholic Theological Union, The International European Passionists Gathering, The International Gathering of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Quito, Ecuador, Sophia Center, The Network of Religious Congregations in Melbourne, Australia, and seminaries, formation houses and universities throughout India and Indonesia.

I am passionate about giving myself fully to the fire of Christ’s love and connecting with others whose deep desire is the same in order to become Love In Action for the total Earth Community.

I want to wholeheartedly contribute to the revival of women’s religious life in North America and invite vibrant women into this vital dimension of the tradition. I am currently working on a book on the topic of the Evolution of Christ Consciousness and its New Emergence within Religious Life.

Sister Gail was interviewed, in December 2010 for the Advent of Evolutionary Christianity teleseries. Listen to that conversation here: http://www.greenmountainmonastery.org/sister-gail/

 

Do you think we can come together as an Archdiocese, a local church, to co-create the kind of community Jesus envisioned? We can begin with ourselves.

You can read the entire wonderful interview with Beatrice Bruteau and find a selected reading list at the "Evolutionary Catholicism" tab in the main menu to the left on this home page.

 

 

 
Last Updated on Wednesday, 08 May 2013 19:21
 
Toward an Expanding Lay Spirituality for the 21st Century PDF Print E-mail

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…and God saw that it was good.” That is how the book of Genesis begins the Hebrew people’s creation story, written down in the 6th century BC.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens (a species that knows that it knows) is a meaning-making creature, a spiritual seeker looking for answers to the ultimate question—why? Where did we come from? Where is it all going? Humans need coherent stories to survive and thrive. Their creation stories give them a secure understanding of their place in the world. Anthropologists have written about archaic societies that have disintegrated or become extinct when the story broke down. When they have a cosmology—a sense of belonging in the big picture—humans can work together to make supportive cultural systems, institutions where life can thrive. They can work together to reform institutions, even the religious institutions that carry the traditions of meaning.

In the 21st century we have global communication and economic systems, and the know-how to globally destroy ourselves, but do we have a shared story, a common meaning system? To what extent do we have a shared meaning system as a nation? What is the creation story of 21st century American Catholics?

Here is one creation story prevalent in the 21st century: Our knowledge of the beginning is by no means certain, but it has about five centuries of cumulative scientific investigation behind it. There was nothing but a pinpoint of energy until it exploded into a universe of matter about 15 billion years ago, the beginning of space/time. Particles of matter joined their energies to form increasingly complex structures till billions of stars, many with orbiting planets, spin ever outward in an expanding universe. And ten billion years later one medium-sized planet formed around one star amid twelve billion other stars in one of 100 billion galaxies. Earth was born.

 

The conditions on this planet earth are just right for molecules of matter to combine energies to form living cells, and they combined to form organisms, which combined to form ever more complex organisms in billions of species. And then, one species of very complex organisms, walking upright, with a cranium large enough to house an expanded brain, became conscious of itself as experiencing the world. The universe became conscious of itself and saw that it was good.

The evolutionary pattern is that new being emerges from the combined energies of already existing being; for example, hydrogen and oxygen combine and there is water. Looking back at that pattern of new creation emerging, from sub-atomic particles to atoms, then molecules, then cells, we can see that humans too have combined conscious energy to create cultural forms to produce new consciousness. They created increasingly complex or nuanced systems to live in community--governments, economic systems, educational systems—and complex systems to create meaning—religions, art, literature, music, dance. They have become co-creators of the evolving universe that now includes the culture of the species that has covered the face of the earth.

CCCR wants to explore how the above creation story can reveal Jesus’s message of God’s love for the world. Can the Christian religion, growing out of a Middle Eastern and Western cultural combination, fit with the evolutionary view of the universe? How do the concepts of incarnation, redemption, salvation, grace, and human deification fit in? How does Jesus’s vision of the Kingdom of God fit in? Is the call to personal and communal holiness the same as the evolutionary impulse to ever-expanding consciousness? Was Vatican II an evolutionary step forward in the history of the Roman Catholic Church?

We held workshops in the NW and SW quadrants of the Archdiocese during February of 2013 to talk about this shift in perspective.  Our keynote speaker for Synod 2013, September 28, is Sister Gail Worcelo who is a practicioner of the evolutionary perspective.  Look to the right of this article to register.

If you are interested in helping to set up further workshops on the questions for religion arising from this creation story, call (612) 379-1043 or email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

 

Click on Evolutionary Christianity on the Main Menu to find articles, events, and a bibliography.

 

 
 

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Calendar of Events

May 7 Council of the Baptized meeting, 7 - 9 p.m., Gloria Dei Lutheran in St. Paul
May 15 CCCR Board meeting
June 6 Council of the Baptized meeting, 7 - 9 p.m., Gloria Dei Lutheran in St. Paul
June 19 CCCR Board meeting
July 17 CCCR Board meeting
August 13 Council of the Baptized meeting, 7 - 9 p.m., Gloria Dei Lutheran in St. Paul
August 21 CCCR Board meeting
September 3 Council of the Baptized meeting, 7 - 9 p.m., Gloria Dei Lutheran in St. Paul
SAVE THE DATE – future events
September 28, 2013 – Synod of the Baptized