Lay movement helps Catholics suggest alternatives to secularism

Julie Lasher, a student at Marian College in Indianapolis, reads from a book by the late Father Luigi Guissani, the founder of the international Catholic lay movement Communion Liberation, during a Nov. 9 “School of Community” meeting at the Ruth Lilly Student Center on Marian’s campus. Listening to Lasher are, from left, Filippo Pattacinni and Rick Rush. (Photo by Sean Gallagher)

By Sean Gallagher

While living in the middle of Indianapolis and reaching out to those who feel no need for God in their lives, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate Brother Paul Daly, Father John Mark Ettensohn and Brother Pat McGee are entering an arena that they realize is first and foremost where lay Catholics are called to evangelize.

“[We] recognize that the primary vocation of the laity is in the world,” said Brother Pat. “We want to add a special kind of support, if you will, to that.”

A group of young adult Catholics in Indianapolis to whom they may be a support are those involved in Communion and Liberation, an international Catholic lay movement founded 54 years ago by an Italian priest, Father Luigi Guissani, who died in 2005.

Erica Heinekamp, a 24-year-old member of Our Lady of the Greenwood Parish in Greenwood, learned about Communion and Liberation while attending college in Evansville, Ind.

When she graduated and took a teaching job at St. Susanna School in Plainfield, she became active in Communion and Liberation in Indianapolis, which has been holding meetings for the last four years.

Heinekamp said Communion and Liberation helps lay Catholics carry out the kind of informal ministry to people with a secularist mindset that the Oblates are working at.

“Our specific charism in CL [Communion and Liberation] is the Incarnation. It’s Christ in human form, in a face,” Heinekamp said. “We’re incredibly interested in turning around this opinion that you have your own life over here and then God is over there, that you have a compartmentalized life.”

Communion and Liberation has two weekly meetings in Indianapolis, one on Tuesday evenings from 7 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. in the Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) library and the other on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. at the Ruth Lilly Student Center at Marian College.

During the meetings, those present discuss excerpts from the writings of Father Guissani that have been assigned in advance.

According to Heinekamp, the name of the meetings, “School of Community,” comes from the fact that those present are “being in communion and learning in communion with each other.”

Communion and Liberation’s Web site states that the movement’s name was coined in 1969 and encapsulates its belief that being a Christian in communion with other believers is “the foundation of the authentic liberation of man.”

Rick Rush encountered that freedom when he first attended a Communion and Liberation meeting in Indianapolis a little more than a year ago.

“I was struck the very first time being there that everybody was sharing about their life and being completely vulnerable before me, who was a complete stranger,” said Rush. “They were all trying to [learn] how we live our life in such a way that it speaks of Christ.”

Rush, 26, is an architect and a member of St. Luke the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis.

Like Heinekamp, Rush has learned through Communion and Liberation a way of suggesting an alternative to a secularist worldview.

“We all have this religious sense. We all have this desire to look for happiness,” Rush said. “Secularism is, in a sense, a reduction of that desire. It’s saying that I’m going to look for happiness in a lesser source, within the world.

“I’m not interested in living life to a lesser extent. I’m interested in living life to the fullest. That’s what I propose. I don’t have a problem proposing that in my workplace or amongst my family … .”

Brother Pat and his fellow Oblates foresee collaborating with Catholics like Heinekamp and Rush, but only after they have more firmly established what they foresee as a long-term ministry in Indianapolis.

“We’re just in it to get things started, so to speak,” said Brother Pat. “Perhaps our [ultimate] role is just to turn it over to interested lay people and then move on to another city.”

(For more information on Communion and Liberation, log on to www.clonline.us or www.archindy.org/youngadult/cl.html.) †