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Category: Workshops

Published: 24 May 2012

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In All Things - Hope!

 

You're aware of injustices in the Church.

You know action must be taken to stand against it until it is brought into the light.

You're not alone!

The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC) invites you to a time of reflection and empowerment - moving from identifying issues, to taking effective action in response.

These workshops will empower you to identify issues of injustice, then determine in community with others how to respond in a way that is both non-violent and effective. Together we will follow the example of Jesus of Nazareth, who eschewed violence while insisting on living faithfully his relationship with the Father.

As the workshop progresses, we will become aware of the following:

• All hierarchical systems of government are dependent on the obedience and cooperation of the governed and their social institutions.
• The governed have the ability to limit or retain their contributions and obedience to the system.
• If the governed retain their contributions and obedience to the system in large enough numbers and for a long enough time, the system will have to negotiate or collapse.

By the end of the workshop, you will be equipped, with tools and a community, to take action against injustice in a way that is non-violent while fully consistent with who you are before God.

To help organize a workshop in your area, contact us at 
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or
call 1-484-480-8311 .

 

Workshop Facilitators

Dr. Patrick B. Edgar, DPA is the current President of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church. 

He has a broad background in the church.  After graduating from St. Bernard School in Rockville, CT he attended the Carmelite Junior Seminary in Hamilton, MA.  Later, after raising his two children, he decided to serve as a priest and attended Pope John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, MA.  Finding that an overly clerical culture, in 2000 he joined the Society of the Divine Savior (the Salvatorians) and was sent to the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, CA.  While he completed his M.Div. degree, he left the Salvatorians in 2004 when he realized that his family's needs took precedence over his desire to serve as a priest.

He has also been a lector and Eucharistic Minister for over 40 years, and taught religious education classes for high school students for over 20 years.   

Dr. Edgar received his BA in History/Political Science and Master of Public Administration degrees from the University of Montana, a Master of Divinity degree from the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, CA, and his Doctor of Public Administration from the University of Southern California.  He has worked for a variety of agencies including the Department of the Navy, the Veterans Administration, and Dawson Community College in eastern Montana.  Dr. Edgar also taught at the University of Montana.  He operated his own consulting firm for over 20 years, providing services to state agencies and local governments throughout the Northwest.  Consulting projects spanned a wide variety of topics from housing studies and plans, and citizen satisfaction surveys to morale interventions and an analysis of administrative strategies.  Dr. Edgar is currently the Director of the Master of Public Administration program and Associate Professor at Southern Arkansas University. 

 

Dr. Sonya Quitslund PhD. has served on the ARCC Board for almost 20 years, most of them as Treasurer. She is professor emerita in Bible and Religious Thought from the George Washington University.  

Educated almost exclusively in Catholic institutions, she earned her B.A. at Seattle University, M.A. and Ph.D at the Catholic University of America. Her career in education started at Edmonds Junior High and Edmonds Senior High in Washington State, teaching primarily French and Latin, then religious studies mostly in the field of Sacred Scripture at Catholic U., Seattle U. and the George Washington University.

Recipient of many scholarships and grants over the years, her Fulbright Scholarship enabled her to spend two years in France.

Over the years Dr. Quitslund has been active in the Catholic Church as choir director, liturgy chair, Eucharistic minister in the parish and in a nursing home, lector, trainer of altar boys, team member on the Cursillo movement, Core Commissioner on Women's Ordination Board (WOC), CCD, Director of RCIA, involved in Tribunal work (annulments), board member of National Catholic Council for Interracial Justice, and founder of the Christian Feminists.

Her M.A.(1964) thesis dealt with a critique of ecclesiastical externalism. She turned her doctoral dissertation (1967) into a prize winning book: Beauduin: A Prophet Vindicated (recipient of the book of the year award of the College Theology Society in 1973). Her comments on Beauduin are most enlightening:

Beauduin started the Belgian liturgical movement in 1909, with missalettes in the vernacular to promote active participation in the liturgy. He went on to become involved in ecumenism and to found a bi-ritual monastery, to educate Belgians in the Russian Orthodox rite and to provide a welcoming ambiance for refugees streaming into Belgium after the Bolshevik revolution of 1918. His activities ultimately got him in trouble and he was exiled from Belgium and his community for many years. In exile, in France, he played a role in the French liturgical and ecumenical movements. Beauduin prophesied while Pius XII was still in good health that Roncalli would be the next pope and that the first thing he would do would be to call an ecumenical council. (Beauduin met Roncalli in Rome, when Roncalli was under suspicion of heresy- modernism. Beauduin told him of an opening in Bulgaria, where Roncalli ultimately went,)

Beauduin and his monks did much of the preparatory work for this council since from his earliest publications he called for the resumption of Vatican I, abruptly ended by the outbreak of the war of 1870. When his prophecy was fulfilled, he was ecstatic. He died in 1960. It was my privilege to know some of his closest collaborators and peritii at the Council. The treatment of Beauduin by Rome opened my eyes to the inner workings in the Vatican- not a pretty picture.

He is a prophet vindicated because the very issues that got him into trouble became key documents of Vatican II: liturgy, ecumenism, ecclesiology, religious freedom, and the laity. He identified 3 zones.

The first two, the people of God and the sacraments, are key; the third, ecclesiastical government (and to a lesser extent even the sacraments) is not absolutely necessary to the work of Christ when the tremendous good of human freedom is at stake. Christ can still apply his merits even in the absence of the last two zones. He has been a major influence in Dr. Quitslund's life. He was also influential in the lives of Cardinal Jean Jadot and Benedictine liturgist Fr. Godfrey Diekmann, who spiritual sons of Beauduin.

In retirement Dr. Quitslund actively continues in ARCC and in the US Coast Guard Auxiliary where she facilitates Risk Management classes, is a vessel examiner, active in surface and air patrols, among other Coast Guard activities. Gardening, fishing, crabbing, shrimping and helping out in a winery round out her days.

 

Why hope?

 

Cardinal Leo Suenens, one of the leaders and key architects of the Second Vatican Council, once wrote:

 

“Why am I a person of hope even in these days?

Because I believe that God is new every morning. I believe that God is creating the world today, at this very moment. That means that we have to expect the 'unexpected' since it comes from God.

God is here, near us, unforeseeable and loving.

I am hopeful, not for human reasons, but because I believe in the Holy Spirit present in Church and in the world even if people don't know God's name.

I am hopeful because I believe the Holy Spirit is still the creating Spirit. I believe that the Spirit will give us every morning fresh freedom, joy and a new provision of hope, if we open our soul to the Spirit.

The story of the Church is a long story, filled with the wonders of the Holy Spirit. Think of the prophets and saints who have discovered a spring of life and shed beams of light on our path.

I believe in the surprises of the Holy Spirit. John XXIII came as a surprise, and the Council, too. They were the last things we expected.

Why should we think that God's imagination and love might be exhausted?

Hope is a duty, not just a luxury. Hope is not a dream, but a way of making dreams become reality. Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true!"

from Suenens' book: A New Pentecost, Seabury Press (1974)

To help organize a workshop in your area, contact us at 
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 
call 1-484-480-8311 .

 

 

Inspirations for Hope

From Dictatorship to Democracy
Gene Sharp, 2003
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html

Self Liberation
Gene Sharp
http://www.aeinstein.org/selfLiberation.html

Making the Rights Real
James Coriden
http://www.arcc-catholic-rights.net.previewdns.com/making_rights_real.htm

Charter of the Rights of Catholic in the Church
http://arcc-catholic-rights.net.previewdns.com/arcc_charter.htm