We Are Church (UK)

We group our report from the UK under the points of the Petition of the People.

We Are Church (UK) collaborates closely with other Church reform groups in the UK. Many of these work on single issues and have gained considerable expertise. WAC(UK) often provides a communications link between groups and enquirers /the media.

WAC(UK) encourages its supporters and sympathisers to be as active as possible in their parishes or communities. Issues which exercise WAC are often those which parishioners wish to discuss. WAC(UK) is able to offer support and fortitude to those raising discussion, especially when there is attack, undermining or intimidation.

The WAC(UK) Coordinating Team represents good practice in clergy and laity working together as equal partners. Spiritual formation and prayer are very important as the foundation of all that we do.

One of the Co-ordinators or WAC(UK) is the Vice-Chairman of Affirming Catholicism, an Anglican organisation with broadly similar objectives to our own. This is a valuable ecumenical link. WAC(UK) is also in regular contact with Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.

Catholic Women’s Ordination (monthly vigils outside Cathedrals, regional meetings, study and research); Catholic Women’s Network (excellent quarterly magazine focussing on various issues, annual national gathering + local meetings, monthly liturgy in South London, member of the National Board of Catholic Women); St Joan’s International Alliance (explores many Catholic women’s issues; was calling for the ordination of women in the early 20th century) and the team who run www.womenpriests.org are all represented on the WAC(UK) Coordinating Team. These organisations are regularly interviewed by the media and have on going contact with the hierarchy.

Our knowledge of issues connected with women in relationships with clergy and children born of those relationships is increased by our connection with Seven-Eleven and Sonflowers.

The Catholic Women’s Resource Centre in south London gives a great opportunity for study and research. Drawing on its extensive library of documents and papers, the Centre answers requests for information from all over the country and abroad.

Advent is the major group in the UK for married Catholic Priests and their wives. They are founder members of the European Network of Married Catholic Priests. Advent does a lot of work in supporting men who are leaving the clerical state and women leaving religious life. There is also another group with whom we have contact, Movement for a Married Clergy. Both these groups have meetings with members of the hierarchy and Advent is invited to the annual National Conference of Priests. Our Coordinating Team has members with the special responsibility of linking us with these groups.

We work closely with the RC Caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, Quest and Catholics for AIDS Prevention and Support (CAPS). The RC Caucus sponsors a fortnightly liturgy in London's Soho for lesbian, gay bisexual & transgendered Catholics, their friends and families. This also attracts heterosexual supporters drawn by the vibrant liturgies. The RC Caucus also organises regular seminars and retreat-days. It is currently dialoguing with the bishops' conference on governmental civil partnership proposals for same-sex couples. In May 2003 WAC(UK) was invited to a meeting of Quest, another national lesbian and gay Catholic organisation to tell them about We Are Church. There was a lot of interest.

Our link-person with Catholics for a Changing Church writes papers on married sexual love and conducts much interesting and entertaining correspondence in the Catholic press with the fundamentalists. (CCC, then known as the Catholic Renewal Movement, was as a result of the concern about Humanae Vitae)

WAC(UK) is well represented on the Department of Health’s Inter Faith Forum on Teenage Pregnancy.

A WAC(UK) Coordinating Team member has a special interest in the Christian ecology and environmental movement together with Church finances. He has a particular expertise in challenging dioceses as to their investments and investment policies.

Christian Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Ministers and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors have done excellent work over many years in raising awareness of the sexual abuse of the young and women in a Church environment. Often disparaged and undervalued, they have played a key part in pressurising for policies in the Church to protect children and vulnerable people from sexual abuse and harassment.

WAC(UK) participates in Christians for Human Rights who came to the fore when European Human Rights legislation was incorporated into British law. At the time the Christian Right were demanding all manner of exemptions for Churches. Now there is a struggle taking place over discrimination in employment legislation.

WAC(UK) has quiet contact with many who have been unfairly treated in parishes, dioceses and the Church in general. It is able to put them in touch with those who may be able to help. The WAC(UK) electronic group is able to share stories anonymously and this has proved a great help to others in a similar situation.

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We have recently been given permission by their author, a well-known Parish Priest, to publish some of his weekly articles that have appeared in a national Catholic paper. Our website is in the process of a major reorganisation and these articles, which are thought provoking and challenging, will feature on it.

In the Autumn the WAC(UK) Coordinating Group have invited one of their number who has expertise in public relations and media to make a presentation and lead a discussion on our way forward. Many people at the grassroots of the Church in the UK are singing our song. We are considering how best we may support and encourage them.