CCRI Strategy Team Meeting 9 March 2017
Present on the call :
United States : Rene, Clyde
South Korea : Paul
Kenya : Peter
India : Virginia
Mexico : Don
Australia : Paschal
Paul – the Catholic Church needs an official body of lay representatives and/or regional
bodies of lay representatives which have equal importance to the Rome Synod of Bishops and national and regional bishops conferences ( FABC, CELAM, UCCB )
– the Catholic Church needs an official representative body that consists of clergy, religious women and men and lay people, each group with equal status and decision-making power
– the Church needs to create new structures that can foster dialogue among all members of the church, not just the bishops
– does not agree with Pope Francis’ idea of the inverted pyramid structure for the church:
laity above, clergy below. This structure is still not an equal structure .
– we need a concrete and feasible structure for decision-making in the church that respects the equal status for all members of the church reflected in the idea of the priesthood of all believers. For this structure to be effective, it has to be based on the principle of solidarity.
– Paul is organizing two meetings in East Asia in 2017 : Seoul, Korea in April for about
30 people ( youth ?) and Jakarta, Indonesia from July 22-Aug. 2 for about 60 young people from all over Asia and 15-20 speakers who are theologians who do work in the church at the grassroots level or who are non-theologians who have experience in grassroots communities
Virginia – http://ecclesiaofwomen.ning.com/profile/VirginiaSaldanha
Have you all seen Virginia’s page ? This is wonderful.
Congratulations Virginia !
– is participating in two meetings in India in 2017
– IWTF ( Indian Women Theologian’s Forum ) April 21- 24 https://insecttheology.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/iwt_statement-of-2016-meeting.pdf
This statement is great – I hope you all get a chance to read it .
– INSecT ( International Network of Societies for Catholic Theology ) July ?
Kochurani Abraham is one of the organizers of this meeting.
https://insecttheology.wordpress.com/worldwide/
This is also an amazing site – there is so much on it . I hope you take a look at it .
Clyde and Virginia – we should not suggest that other groups that will partner with CCRI ( including the Diacastery of the Laity ) use Zoom until we have extensively tested it with individuals and groups in different continents. Different continents and countries have greater or lesser access to good internet connections and greater or lesser costs to users.
Virginia – good internet connection in Asia is hard to come by and often the cost is high.
We have to be extremely careful that a Zoom connection is set up in a place with
a reliable internet connection and at reasonable cost for the service and/or we need to find funding for the internet service.
Peter – there is very good internet service in Nairobi, but the service is poor or non-existent in other parts of Kenya.
– internet service is not reliable in some places in west Africa ( Congo, Cameroon )
– CCRI should set up a WhatsApp group chat for the Strategy Team that all members can access on their cell phone. We can exchange text messages, scanned documents, photos, leave voice messages and videos for one another that each person can access on their own schedule.
For those who don’t know about WhatsApp, below is a link that you can look up
in order to learn how the app works. I have it on my IPhone and I use it every day to communicate with my friends and family all over the world. My family from the Philippines uses it to keep everyone appraised about our family organic farm .
https://www.whatsapp.com/
