Lay Movements: Part VIII.

Madonna House

The Madonna House Apostolate was founded in 1947 by Catherine de Hueck Doherty, a woman whose life was filled with drama. Born in 1896, by the time she founded Madonna House she had been a wife and mother, a nurse, a refugee from the Russian Revolution, a waitress, a laundress, a journalist, and a successful lecturer.

In the 1930s she experienced a deep call to serve the poor and to identify herself with them. For thirteen years she lived and worked in the slums of Toronto, New York, and Chicago. She was a passionate advocate for the downtrodden, the marginalized, and victims of racial and social injustice. A community of men and women-Friendship House- gathered around her, establishing soup kitchens, clothing rooms, and youth centres. Catherine's approach to apostolic work was always intensely personal: one-on-one encounters, simple reaching out to others in friendship and humble service. When she did create projects, her aim remained person-to-person, heart-to-heart evangelization.

In 1947 her apostolic focus changed radically. For various reasons personal and apostolic, she moved to Combermere, Ontario, a village buried deep in the Ottawa Valley, and there, with the blessing of Bishop Smith of Pembroke, began serving the local people, establishing at the same time "a training centre for the lay apostolate."

Catherine had grappled deeply with the spiritual and moral decline of Western society, experiencing it firsthand in the unjust suffering of the poor she had served. Her solution was radical: to establish a community whose primary mission would be to "restore all things in Christ," to begin rebuilding a Christian civilization by forming a community rooted in the commandment of love, drawing its life from the Holy Trinity, being nourished by the sacramental life of the Church, and finding its unity in faithful obedience the Church and to Christ Our Lord. The scope of her vision extended, both in theory and in the lived reality of Madonna House, to every aspect of human life: art, music, literature, handicrafts, work, recreation, etc.

In 1978 the Bishop of Pembroke gave ecclesiastical approval to the constitutions of Madonna House, which has now grown into an international centre of Catholic life, where hundreds of people from around the world come every year to live, work, and pray for a week, a month, or longer. The community has 210 permanent members-laymen, women, and priests-who make lifetime promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

The community has 21 mission houses around the world. In Canada there are houses in Moncton, Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, Edmonton, Regina, and Whitehorse. Elsewhere there are houses in the United States, the West Indies, England, France, Russia, Belgium, Brazil, and Ghana. The community engages in a wide variety of works in these houses, responding to the needs of the people, the mandate of the bishop, and the prompting of the Holy Spirit. In Edmonton and Regina it runs soup kitchens, offering food and clothing to the poor, extending to them at the same time the hand of friendship and love. Other houses also distribute food or clothing, teach catechism, or do other works of service.

In many houses, the primary work is to be available for people to come and talk, to be a presence of prayer and peace amid the clamour of modern life; to offer a listening ear, a place to come and pray and be prayed with; for many people, an oasis of human and divine contact in the urban desert of isolation and alienation.

In Combermere there is an integrated experience of Christian life. Opening the community to live-in guests makes it possible to pass on the Combermere spirituality, which is one of applying the Gospel to every aspect of human life. In this incarnational approach to the Gospel, no dimension of one's humanity, and no task or activity engaged in, is disconnected from the redemptive mission of Christ. Because of the practical needs of communal life in a rural setting, much of the work is simple manual labour: cooking, cleaning, farming, carpentry. No task is so menial or insignificant that, done with love, it does not build up the Kingdom of God. In this the Holy Family is taken as the model: the ordinary run of life made holy by the presence of Christ. The essence of Madonna House, however, is not what its members do but what they allow God to do through and in them. The call to personal holiness, and the centrality of prayer, is at its heart, as it is for each baptized person.

The author has been a member of Madonna House for twelve years. For more information, visit the website at www.madonnahouse.org or write to Madonna House, Combermere, ON, K0J 1L0, or phone [phone].

Pope sees "new movements" as aid for priests

Vatican City, June 27, 2001, John Paul II says the new ecclesial movements can offer "effective" help to priests attracted by their charisms. The Pope explains in the message, published in June by the Vatican, that the movements are not only of help for priests, but also for seminarians, "particularly for those who come from specific associative realities, articulating firmly the respect due to the discipline established by the Church for the seminaries."

The "positive efficacy" of the new communities for the life of priests, the Pope says, "is manifested when the latter find in the movements 'the light and warmth' that help them mature in a fervid Christian life and, in particular, in an authentic ecclesial sense--'sensus Ecclesiae'--which leads them to firmer fidelity to legitimate pastors, and to attention to ecclesiastical discipline."

However, the participation of seminarians, deacons, and priests in movements cannot become "a presumptuous and restricted narrow-mindedness," the Pope warns. On the contrary, he states, "it must open their spirit to acceptance, respect, and appreciation of other forms of participation of faithful in the ecclesial family," leading them increasingly to be men of communion, "pastors of the whole."

"With these premises," the participation of priests in new movements and communities can become "a possibility for spiritual and pastoral enrichment," the Holy Father explains. By being in touch with these realities, he says, priests can "learn to appreciate better the way in which they live in the Church the sacramental, hierarchical, and charismatic gifts, according to the multiformity of ministries, states of life, and tasks that edify her."

The Pontiff explains that priests' participation in movements should not lead to the "clericalization" of the laity, or to a "laicization" of priests. "A priest," he comments, "must participate in a movement as a singular presence of Christ, Head and Pastor, minister of the Word of God and of the sacraments, educator in faith, through union with the hierarchical ministry, regardless of the functions and tasks that he is called upon to assume."

The Holy Father explained that on these conditions "will depend, to a large extent, the growth of the movements in that 'ecclesial maturity'" that he himself encouraged at the 1998 Pentecost meeting of hundreds of thousands of members of these communities, in St. Peter's Square.

The above statement is part of a message that John Paul II sent to a congress "The Ecclesial Movements for the New Evangelization." The meeting, organized by the Focolare Movement of Priests, brought together cardinals and bishops, as well as founders and leaders of these new ecclesial realities, which grew particularly after the Second Vatican Council. Among them are Communion and Liberation, Sant' Egidio Community, Charismatic Renewal, Neo-catechumenal Way, Regnum Christi, Work of Schonstatt, Cursillos of Christianity, and Focolare. (Zenit, June 27/01)

NET ministries

Fr. Leonard A. Kennedy, C.S.B.

NET stands for National Evangelization Teams, whose ministry is to facilitate retreats for junior and high school students. It began in 1981 when an "experimental" travelling retreat team was sent out by the Catholic Youth Centre in St. Paul, Minnesota. There are now eight teams in the United States.

Sometimes these teams came to Canada, and in 1994 Archbishop Gervais of Ottawa invited, and assisted, a group to form a team centred in Ottawa. And now NET Canada sends two teams of young adult volunteers to lead retreats for Catholic youth across Canada and Alaska. There are also now six teams in Australia. In the three countries, about 150 volunteers are trained each year. The Canadian teams are under the ecclesiastical supervision of the Archdiocese of Ottawa.

The teams challenge young Catholics to love Christ and embrace the life of the Church. They proclaim the Gospel through a personal witness of faith, and equip young workers and young adults with the ministry skills for evangelization.

In Canada 24 young men and women (aged 18 to 30) are trained annually intensively for five weeks in faith formation, evangelization, and retreat ministry skills. There is also follow-up training on the job. They volunteer one year of their life. When trained they are placed on two teams and assigned itineraries. They travel on their mission in vans. Each itinerary includes 12 or 13 dioceses, at the invitation of the local bishop, and retreats are conducted in five or six parishes weekly. Each year the teams reach out to over 16,000 young people in 25 dioceses. The retreats consist of dramas, music, games, large group presentations, small group discussions, and, of course, prayer. Week-long Discipleship Week summer camps for youth who want to grow in their faith are offered also.

NET team members thus gain experience and training that prepare them for a lifetime of service to the Church. At the present time, 90% of the former NET teams volunteers four hours or more a week to their parishes, and 14% of them pursue a religious vocation after their year of service.

NET is a non-profit organization and receives one third of its funding from private donations, one third from modest program fees charged to the parishes, and one third from the sponsors of team members.