EUROPE
Anglo-Irish Province - "Partners in Faith"Fr Ciaran Earley was a missionary in Brazil for ten years. He now works in Dublin with "Partners in Faith", a group that tries to help adults develop their faith. He presented this work last year in an issue ofOblate Missionary Record.
Ciaran begins by describing the situation in some of Dublin's neighborhoods: unemployment, poverty, school dropouts, hopelessness expressed in vandalism and drug abuse. "Many lose faith in themselves, their society and in their God. They no longer believe that they can make a difference.... But these people share the same basic longings of the human heart as the rest of us: they want to love and to be loved; they want other people to appreciate their experiences and feelings; ... they long for solidarity with God and their neighbours.... They want to fulfil themselves... and exercise their rights...."
"Some years ago, five of us got together to work out a course for people from areas such as these, a course that would begin to help people to fulfil these basic wishes and encourage them to work for a better quality of life for their neighbours. We called the course, 'Partners in Faith.' It is based on our experience of working with many parishes in Dublin, Belfast and around the country...."
"It's not a bit like school. It's taken for granted that everyone has had a long experience of life and brings along his or her own wisdom, ideas, values and gifts. It is a community of equals where all are treated with the same respect and everyone can contribute.
"Above all, it sets out to be an experience of Christian community. People come in groups, usually two men, two women and a pastoral worker. Each course has six of these groups who undertake many activities together. Every week, all thirty participants come together, and one of the groups reports on what happened at the previous session; another gives a commentary. A further two groups lead a prayer ritual and relate what's going on in the course to current news stories from radio, T.V., the newspapers and the local area. The remaining groups take care of the tea-break and the tidying up.
"In this way members of the group gain confidence about doing things in public and also contribute to the common good. Little by little they begin to feel in their bones what it's like to be a Christian community.... They begin to explore certain major themes and relate them to their own life experience. They learn to recognise the presence of God in their life...."
Then there is a look at: the presence and call of God in our history (Moses), God's dreams for his people (the prophets), the Reign of God announced and inaugurated by Jesus.... The participants consider the needs around them and they decide what they want to do.... "In one area, people who have finished the course are training others to set up small Christian communities in which their fellow parishioners can take part in Gospel sharing, mutual support and practical action to improve the quality of life in the towerblocks and neighbourhoods."
