“The Year of Faith will also be a good opportunity to intensify the witness of charity.”

Will it make a real difference?

Will the effects of the Year of Faith be felt beyond the doors of our Churches and in the wider world? There is a danger that the Year of Faith might be seen as concentrating on our own personal faith development or merely end up as a personal intellectual exercise – if so that would be a terrible misunderstanding and severe limitation of what the Year of Faith is intended to achieve.

In his Apostolic Letter ‘Porta Fidei’ announcing the Year of Faith (Section 14), the Holy Father says: “The Year of Faith will also be a good opportunity to intensify the witness of charity. As St Paul reminds us: ‘So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love’ (1 Cor 13:13). With even stronger words – which have always placed Christians under obligation – St James said: ‘What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled’, without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But some one will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith’ (Jas 2:14-18).”

Throughout the Diocese of Middlesbrough there are a very large number of people who live out the ‘witness of charity’ in a great variety of ways; sometimes working unknown and unseen as individuals, sometimes working as part of an organised group. Below is just a selection of the organised witnesses to charity that is generally known about in and around the Diocese:
a) Aid and other practical support is given to people in the developing world through parish CAFOD groups, the Diocesan CAFOD structures, Aid to the Church in Need and all those Red Boxes for Missio.
b) Support to people who come to our country is offered by the Apostleship of the Sea and by far more people than we often realise who support local ecumenical and secular initiatives for refugees and asylum seekers.
c) Families receive encouragement through Marriage Care, Marriage Encounter and Teams of Our Lady.
d) Senior members of the Diocese can benefit from membership of the ASCENT Movement.
e) Practical support is given to lots of families and individuals through the work of The Society of St Vincent de Paul, The Catenian Association, The Catholic Women’s League, The Knights of St Columba, The Legion of Mary, The Union of Catholic Mothers.
f) People who live on the street are given practical help by the Upper Room Project at the John Paul Centre in Middlesbrough and other similar projects.
g) Various local branches of the Catholic Handicapped Fellowship provide mutual support throughout the Diocese, as does The Catholic Deaf Association.
h) A number of groups and organisations work to challenge our perceptions and beliefs as well as undertaking good works and these include parish Justice and Peace groups and the Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission, The Diocesan Women’s Commission, The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, LIFE, CAUSE (Catholics against Unemployment and Social Evils), groups concerned about ecological issues and the parliamentary constituency groups who challenge our politicians.
i) Clergy and people working together serve the needs of people admitted to hospital or committed to prison and many priests and people are involved in Churches Together groups witnessing to charity together with Christians of other traditions.

Apologies are due to the many groups who will inevitably have been left off the above list – the intention of the list was just to provide a flavour of what we know is happening. Of course, the witness of charity undertaken by individuals alone or working ecumenically or with secular groups remains unacknowledged because it is not known or listed in the Diocese.

How can the Diocese encourage its members to intensify the ‘witness to charity’

When Bishop Terry established his governance structures for the Diocese, he deliberately included a Vicariate or ‘department’ for Christian Discipleship alongside his Vicariates for Evangelisation, Spirituality and Worship and the Clergy. The principle purpose of the Vicariate for Christian Discipleship is to offer mutual support and encouragement to the individuals, groups and associations who are involved in the witness to charity in the Diocese. This is a new step for the Diocese and very much a case of navigating unchartered waters with great care while seeking to offer support to a very disparate aspect of the life of the Diocese where there has been little organised support offered in the past. It is very important to make the twin points that on the one hand the Diocesan structures are not in any way seeking to impose on the many groups and individuals involved in the witness of charity and on the other that the Diocese does not have the resources to provide significant financial or organisational support. What is intended is that the ‘good works’ undertaken in the Diocese be more effectively recognised and valued and the people and groups involved are given opportunities for mutual support and encouragement.

How might support and encouragement be offered?

By happy coincidence, the Conference of Bishops of England and Wales is taking a fresh look at its agency ‘Caritas Social Action Network’, which is the social action arm of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. This is what CSAN say about the agency:
a) CSAN (Caritas Social Action Network) is the official agency of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales for domestic social action.
b) We are a family of social action charities collectively known as the Caritas network which is supported by the CSAN team.
c) The Caritas network works for the most vulnerable people of society across England and Wales, providing support for families and children, the elderly, the homeless, refugees, the disabled, and prisoners.
d) The national team of CSAN, based in London, works to strengthen and facilitate the network, conduct policy and advocacy work and use its ‘voice’ at a national level.
e) CSAN is a member of Caritas Internationalis within the Caritas Europa Group.

For more information, you can visit www.csan.org.uk and www.caritas.org for Caritas Internationalis.

The ‘Network’ is the core of CSAN’s work. It is formed of a family of 40 member organisations as well as friends including religious communities, dioceses and other Catholic social action groups. The Network exists to:
a) Promote best practice of social care provision by organisations with a Catholic ethos.
b) Provide opportunities for collaboration and sharing information between like-minded organisations.
c) Form a strong common voice for Catholic social action.
A significant part of the work of CSAN currently is engaging with individual dioceses and offering a ‘Roadshow’ that will gather together every individual, group or organisation in the Diocese engaged in the work of social action, the ‘Witness to Charity’, to explore how to develop simple and undemanding methods of mutual support and encouragement.

A date for your diary

All Saints Lower School in York has been booked for Saturday 4th May 2013 when members of CSAN will visit the Diocese with a ‘Roadshow’. The day will include comment on Social Action in the Diocese by Bishop Terry, presentations by Helen O’Brien, the Chief Executive of CSAN, by Doctor Philomena Cullen on Social Action Research and by John Battle, formerly MP for Leeds West, who is providing strong support for CSAN. The day will include a ‘Market Place of the Church in Action’ which will be an opportunity for groups in the Diocese to set up displays about what they are doing and a number of workshops.
The hope is that by gathering together as many people as possible who share in the ‘Witness to Charity’ in the Diocese in a particular way, we will take the first steps in establishing a network which will develop into ‘Caritas Social Action Middlesbrough’ to provide opportunities for mutual support and future development.

Nearer the time, invitations will be sent out more formally to share in the CSAN Roadshow but for now, the first purpose of this article is to alert everyone to the date – please put the date in your diary now! The second purpose of this article is to seek help from the people of the Diocese in identifying who should receive an invitation. Throughout this article we have acknowledged that the witness of charity is carried out by a wide range of individuals, ad hoc groups and formal organisations, some of these workers for charity are known in the Diocese but many are not on anyone’s list. If you would like to take part in the CSAN Roadshow or would like to suggest someone else, whether they are part of an organisation or an individual who gives their time and effort, please complete the response form and return it as soon as possible.