January 8 - Fraternity of Communion and Liberation

This week I am beginning a series of columns in which I am highlighting several international associations of the faithful of Pontifical Right that are present in this parish.  This week I am featuring the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation.  Communion and Liberation (CL) is a movement in the Church which has the purpose of forming its members in Christianity in order to make them coworkers in the Church’s mission in all areas of society.  Let me now present information on the history and identity of Communion and Liberation that can be found on the website for the Pontifical Council for the Laity.  (I have made some adjustments to reflect American, as opposed to the British, spelling of words in the material below.)
History
At the beginning of the 1950s, realizing the need to rebuild the Christian presence in the student world, Father Luigi Giussani, a professor at the Theological Faculty at Venegono (Varese) dedicated himself to teaching religion in schools. The experience of a small group of students from the Berchet classical high school in Milan, which gathered around him, led to the establishment of Gioventù Studentesca (Student Youth). With the strong encouragement of the Archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, Gioventù Studentesca spread to other Italian cities, and after 1968 it also began to involve undergraduates and adults.  This led to the establishment of Communion and Liberation which, in 1980, was to be canonically recognized by the Ordinary Abbot of Montecassino, Mgr. Martino Matronola.  The first fraternity groups were set up in the latter half of the 1970s by CL graduates who, using a method based on communion, wished to strengthen their membership of the Church as adults, along with the responsibilities that this entails.  It was through their spread to various countries that the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation came about.  On 11 February 1982 the Pontifical Council for the Laity decreed recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation as an international association of the faithful of Pontifical Right.
Identity
The essence of the CL charism is the proclamation that God became Man; in the affirmation that this man—Jesus of Nazareth, who died and rose again—is a present event, whose visible sign is communion, that is to say, the unity of a people led by a living person, the Bishop of Rome; in the awareness that it is only in God made man, and hence within the life of the Church, that man is more true and humanity is truly more human.  In the educational proposal made by CL, the free acceptance by the individual of the Christian message is determined by the discovery that the needs of the human heart are met by the annunciation of a message that fulfills them.  It is the reasonableness of the faith which leads men and women who have been transformed by their encounter with Christ to commit themselves with Christian experience to affect the whole of society.  This commitment strengthens their awareness of their own identity, enabling them to see their life as a vocation, and is supported by the experience of communion which makes the memory of Christ’s coming a daily reality.  The educational process, nurtured by proclamation and catechesis, attending retreats and spiritual exercises, and the celebration of the sacraments, give pride of place to the dimensions of cultural work as a means of deepening and expressing their faith and as a condition of having a responsible presence in society; charity work, as education in service to be freely given to others and social commitment; and the mission, as education in the sense of the catholicity of the church and as a vocational choice.  Bearing witness to Christ in schools and universities, in factories and offices, and in the local neighborhood and in the city, takes place through work, which is the specific way in which adults relate to reality.
The basic instrument for the formation of those who belong to CL is a weekly catechesis called the School of Community.  Our local School of Community meets every Friday night in the Assisi Room in the rectory from 8:15 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.  For more information about CL, you can contact Maria Dunn at [email protected].
Until next week,
Fr. John Dillon
Pastor