News

Ireland
Scotland
England
International

News from Ireland

THE FIRE BEGINS IN ATHLONE!

Kristina Cooper reports on the TINE network conference/or Catholic leaders involved in evangelisation which took place 29th-31sf January in Athelone.

Over 140 leaders from 20 lay movements and communities as well as diocesan priests and members of religious orders met over the last weekend in January for a time of networking, teaching and encouragement. It was the first time such a wide gathering of people involved in evangelisation had met in Ireland. Among those present were representatives from Youth2000, Focolare, Cursillo, Charismatic Renewal, Kergyma Teams, the Irish School of Evangelisation, the Nazareth Community, Koinonia Giovanni Baptista from Belfast, the Legion of Mary, Alpha, Irish Christians on Line, the Vincentians, the Franciscans, as well as various individuals involved in evangelisation. Surveying the group before him, Archbishop Sean Brady, the primate of Ireland, who celebrated the final Mass, said that as soon as he had heard about the conference, he wanted to come. "This marks the beginning of something new for the Church in Ireland", he said.

"Something New"

The gathering was the inspiration ofMgr Pat Lynch, who comes from Donegal and who returned to Ireland some years ago to set up the Ceili Community for Evangelisation. Feeling it was important to bring together the different groups who had a similar interests in proclaiming the gospel, he began building relationships and out of this the TINE (Irish for "Fire") network emerged. Interestingly there has been a prophecy going round Ireland forsome years that a "Fire" would begin in Athlone that would spread all over Ireland. The January meeting was the first event it has organised. It was so overbooked that the organisers have booked double the capacity in the same hotel for next year, so more people can come. The dates for this are 27th-29th January 2006.

Mgr Pat commented, "People can often feel very isolated and they were delighted when they came here to find that there were so much happening and so many groups and other people involved in the work." There were three main presentations - the opening one on evangelisation by Mgr Pat himself, then one by Bruce Clewitt from "Youth with a Mission", who gave a main talk and several workshops on leadership development and skills and finally a homily by Archbishop Brady on the challenge of preaching the gospel in an alien culture. There was also a talk by Bishop Martin Drennan, who attended the whole conference.

The conference was also very much a coming together on equal terms with people sharingtheir experiences informally over meal times and in workshops. This brought about some interesting cross fertilisation. One of the most popular workshops was the one by Fr Pat Collins on the use of the Charisms in Evangelisation. As this was not a charismatic renewal event, there were a good percentage of people who had no experience of the working of the charisms, but were nevertheless interested to hear about what it involved. One man, during Fr Pat's talk, asked what a "word of knowledge" was and how it operated. Fr Pat explained that, coming to the conference, he had asked the Lord for any word he might want him to bring and received something which he felt was to do with the illness "shingles". To everyone's amazement, a woman then stood up and said, that she had shingles, so the workshop was able to receive a teaching on the word of knowledge but also experience it being put into practice.

Other workshops covered topics such as modem day culture, the call to community, the relationship between catechetics and evangelisation and several of the recent papal encyclicals. There was also one on the use of the Life in the Spirit Seminars as a tool of evangelisation given by Marie Beime, the chairwoman of the Irish NSC and St Briget Dunne. There were lots of young people at the event including particularly those from Youth2000 and some very vibrant members from the Legion of Mary groups. Mgr Pat commented, "Just being there you had a sense that the Church is very alive."

Sr Briget commented, "What struck me most about the conference was the sense of purpose and hope about what was happening, and what we were seeing was something that was going to grow and develop and be fruitful. Our aim in creating TINE was to provide an umbrella group for evangelisation in Ireland and to be a force of envisioning, encouragement and education. Our third goal is to work together in creative initiatives in evangelisation. The first two aims, we have begun to achieve through what we have done, we now have to think how we can work on the third."

Remember dates for National Catholic Charismatic Conference
Athlone 17-19 June 2005
See Coming Events

News from Scotland

PRAYING FOR THE G8 SUMMIT

STEVE LAVERY reports:
This year, the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, halfway between Perth and Stirling will host the G8 Summit in July, when world leaders will gather in this small Scottish town to discuss issues of global importance. It would seem the Lord has been already spiritually preparing the ground for the summit. In June 2003, while he was praying in his parish church in Auchterarder, Chris McCrossan, the leader of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in the Dunkeld diocese, felt suddenly called to prostrate himself before the Lord. As he lay on the ground he received a prophetic vision and a word. This was of Christians entering the small town from the four points of the compass, claiming the town back for the Lord. Not quite knowing what to do with the experience, he first shared it with a local Church of Scotland minister. He was then invited to share it with the local Council of Churches. In May the following year Chris attended an ecumenical weekend hosted by the Glasgow CCR. Through this he got into contact with an ecumenical network called Pray for Scotland. This led to him and two other local members of Pray for Scotland to organise regular praise and worship evenings, praying for the area round Auchterarder. Then in July 2004 it was announced that the G8 Summit was coming to Gleneagles in the town. The idea of prayer and spiritual warfare for the meeting became doubly important and the local council of Churches resurrected the idea of praying for the area, and claiming it for Christ, in accordance with Chris' original vision. It seems that the Spirit is finding all kinds of other unexpected ways to increase the level of prayer and praise in the area too. It has been recently announced that the BBC will be coming to the town to record "Songs of Praise" from the town, during the summit. You are invited to pray for the area around Auchterarder and pray for the G8 Summit that the politicians will be guided by the Holy Spirit in their decisions and God's will be done

News from England

According to Catholic Youth Services, there are about 30 different groups going from England to World Youth Day in Cologne. Most dioceses are sending groups as well as various groups and movements like Youth2000, the Neo-Catechumenale Way, the Emmanuel Community and the Sion Community for Evangelisation. If you want to find out details of the other groups going contact Catholic Youth Services, telephone 020 7901 4870.

For more info see COMING EVENTS section under "Youth".

JOEL'S DAYS

A group from the Sacred Heart parish in Flintwick, Hertfordshire, hosted the first of a series of charismatic oriented family days called Joel's Days on the 15th January this year. The idea, was the inspiration of Tim Dawson, formerly of the Upper Room Community, fellow parishioner Maggie Dullagan and Mike Mulroy, a musician friend. The main speaker was Roy Hendy from the House of the Open Door Community in Worcestershire. The organising team had no idea how many people would show up and were delighted when 115 people came, including 20 children ranging from toddlers to twelve year olds. Some were those from a charismatic renewal background, but about 25% were from the parish and totally new to the experience of charismatic style worship and use of the spiritual gifts. Tim commented, "The feedback we got was very good. People seemed to have come from all over and it was real mixture of people.

One man, who had never been to anything like this before, commented that it felt like a real family because of the sense of community and togetherness generated by the worship and prayer.". The parish priest, Canon Frank Duane, has been very supportive of the project. The days are 12.30 to 5.30pm and begin with family worship aimed particularly at the children. Then there is a shared lunch, after which the children go to their own ministry leaving their parents to have more worship time and a talk. The team plan to have a family day every three months (the next day is 16th April, speaker James Parker) and worship evenings in the intervening months - 5th March, 7th May). For further details contact Goodnews Office.

YOUNG PEOPLE PRAYING FOR LONDON

The capital seems to be particularly the focus of prayer at the moment, with various initiatives happening at the start of the year. Jesus Youth, a youth ministry that comes from India and is rapidly expanding in England, held 10 days of prayer for London at the chapel of the Missionaries of Charity near St George's Cathedral, Southwark. Twenty six young people participated over the ten days, kneeling in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament from 10am to 5pm, praying for the needs of the capital, particularly young people and the mission of Jesus Youth in Britain. The event was the initiative of the London leader of Jesus Youth, Joseph Dasan and his wife Jeeva. They plan now to organise twenty days of prayer, then 40 days, until they reach their ultimate vision of having a place of constant prayer for the capital. Already two Jesus Youth nurses have taken off ten days each of their annual leave so they can help with the 20 day prayer vigil.

Fraternity of Jesus

Yuppies in wine bars gawped as an ecclectic mix of 250 or so young people, including 30 young monks and sisters in long white habits, walked through the centre of the capital as part of their witness for the week of Christian Unity. The processions of witness and evenings of prayer which took place over three evenings (Jan 21st - 23rd 2005) were animated by the Fraternity of Jesus. This is a new religious community, drawing on Benedictine spirituality, which was founded only 30 years ago and which is based outside Rome. About 1500 people in total took part in the events, including Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Fraternity of Jesus, which has both a monastic and missionary dimension has recently started conducting small missions to various cities in Europe. This one to London was the largest. Thirty of the community, including the founder. Abbot Tarcisio, came by bus to the capital for the event. Dom Peter Kingsely, one of the monks, who is English, has been building relationships over the past year drawing together many groups and ministries working with young people in London, including CASE (Catholic Agency to Support Evangelisation), Alpha, Youth2000, SPEC Youth Centre, National Office for Vocation, At Your Word etc. The vision was simply to pray and witness together in Christian unity week. The abbot and the community have built up warm relationships with many Church leaders in the capital. The theme of the weekend was Jesus the Fullness of Life and the speakers emphasised that the point of unity as Christians was to be found in the Word of God. Each event combined a rich mix of both traditional monastic style song and contemporary worship and Gospel music. Br Peter commented, "The event surpassed our expectations.".

CENACOLO COMMUNITY OPENS FIRST COMMUNITY HOUSE IN ENGLAND

The Cenacolo Community, which works with drug addicts, and which we wrote about in the last Goodnews, has, at long last, received permission from the local authorities to open a community house in the north of England. The 17th century house and chapel at Doddington Green, near Kendal will become a small residential community, in the Lake District, for 16 recovering addicts. The property dates back to penal times when Catholics were not allowed to practice their faith. It has been administered over the years by the Stephenson Trusts who lent it to the diocese of Lancaster for many years, where is was used as a presbytery. The Cenacolo community helps addicts through prayer, manual work and community life to overcome their addictions and be restored to society. The community which was founded by an Italian nun, Sr Elivira, now has 43 other Cenacolo communities round the world. The work relies on Divine Providence to meet their needs. There has been some opposition locally to the project but the Cenacolo community hope, that people will soon realise what a blessing the community will be to the neighbourhood, with their life of prayer and service. There are Cenacolo prayer groups round the country to support addicts and their families in Brighton, Coventry, Birmingham, Bideford, Glasgow, Liverpool and London.