Notes: Conference Call, Dialogue with the Church
Date: Thursday November 15th 2007
Present on the Call: Eileen Brown –Facilitator; Norm Bengel; Mary Garvin
Present in Spirit: Carol Fleitz; Jeanenne Weis; Kathy Harrington; Mary Ellen Holohan; Judy Ryan (new member of our group)

Although few in number the conversation carried on our tradition of rich and thoughtful exchange which we send on in hopes of further discussion on these topics.

We appreciated Kathy Harrington’s comments and “doing our homework” of reading along with us.
1. We shared some of the books we are reading that are influencing our ideas and recommend them to others. Besides those on Church we see value in paying attention to competent sources that deal with world events. We are intrigued with the dialogue between theology and world events, the newspapers, media and public conversations. Some in our group are reading:

“Year China Discovered America” – Gavin Mezies
“From Empire to Earth Community” David Corten
“The Real Wealth of Nations” Raine Eisler
“Abraham” Bruce Feller (common roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam)
“Reel Bad Arabs” (book and documentary)

2. We continue to be drawn to the importance of Laity in the church and raised as an immediate example our close association as SNJM vowed members and Associates. We stressed the importance of collaborative ongoing education for us all in Charism, Church, Religious Life and its history and current realities. We talked about the importance of networking, speakers, ongoing study groups that could gather those coming from different places and background on these topics to come together and be mutually enriched.

3. We continue to see the inter-relationship of our interest in church with Inter-Religious Dialogue and cite as an example National Catholic Reporter for October 26th on “Church in Asia” featuring comments of theologian Peter Phan.

4. We continue to be aware of how the contemporary media portrays “Church” We will be specially aware of the accounts of the US Bishops recent statement “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship”. We hope to read the document ourselves and then observe and compare the various accounts in the media with our own studied opinions.

5. A resource of interest: Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a non-partisan non-profit organization dedicated to the fullness of the Catholic Social Tradition in the public square. www.catholicsinalliance.org. Associated with them is the alert “The Catholic Media Report” www.catholicmediareport.org.

6. Attention and Agenda for next conference call: Identifying major issues of today’s discussion on church and the value of knowing both the history and contemporary dimensions of these issues. We want to recover some of the history of those who have history but who have been invisible. We ask what has been left out?

Continue to watch for manifestations and questions arising out of John Allen’s MegaTrends.
Send a New Year’s reminder a week before our next conference call.
NEXT CALL; THURSDAY JANUARY 24TH – 7PM PST
Submitted by Mary Garvin – Note Taker