European CWers Gather for Community, Clarification, and Fun
About 25 Catholic Workers from five European communities gathered in Cudham, Britain, in May. They shared community news, held roundtable discussions on pressing issues…and competed for top prize in the talent contest.
For five days last month, five communities from the European Catholic Worker gathered in Cudham, in the southeastern United Kingdom county of Kent.
Around 25 Catholic Workers spent the weekend at the Environmental Activity Centre in Cudham, according to Judith Samson, of Brot Und Rosen in Hamburg. Cudham is a small village on the border between Kent and the outer boroughs of London.
Dietrich Gerstner said they try to keep the meetings, which have occurred since 1997, in the same format and the same locations each year. They choose child-friendly, simple, cheap locations for camping and cabins, much like the Midwest Catholic Worker gathering in Sugar Creek, Iowa.
Gerstner, one of the founders of Brot und Rosen 28 years ago, said that the gathering was conducted in English. But language can be a barrier, he said. About a third of the group were German Catholic Workers, and the English language is not equally accessible to everyone.
The European Catholic Worker communities who attended the five-day gathering took turns providing dinner, leading morning prayers and meditations, and giving a report of their community’s activities to the others gathered. Brot und Rosen, the community from Hamburg, reported on the new solar panels their community installed with the help of several donors to provide more electricity for the house’s water heating. Gerstner said the 320 square meters of solar panels on the roof can produce 200 kilowatts of electricity on a sunny day during the long northern European summer.
Workshops–similar to Roundtable Discussions–were hosted on various provocative questions. One was on police violence. The question: “Are you still non-violent if you rely on police (violence) for protection?” guided the session.
An open letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Christians was featured in the autumn newsletter of the London Catholic Worker. This letter guided another workshop on Palestine, apartheid, and the Israeli military’s action in Gaza.
“Again and again they identified a double standard in Western attitudes: while Israeli Jews are humanized, Palestinians are dehumanized,” wrote Samson about the letter in the German magazine Contraste.
Samson, who has been living and working at the Brot und Rosen community for a year and a half, said that each national had a special connection to the conflict: British Catholic Workers because of the history of the Balfour Declaration and British colonial rule in Palestine from 1920 to 1948. Samson said the discussion about a hot topic was calm and meditative. “It’s a challenge to the Catholic Worker and also Christians in Germany,” Samson said. She said the discussions revolving around anti-Semitism and liberation theology within the Gaza conflict are very loaded discussions in Germany. “It’s really a challenge for us German Christians,” she said.
Another workshop tackled the question about the morality of national borders, global migration and immigration–“What would a Christian border look like?” was the opening question. “As long as there is such a grave disparity of wealth in the world, we have to deal with harsh borders,” Dietrich said. He said the discussion revolved around the definition of a border, capitalism and witnessing to one’s country that “the good life” is not defined only in wealth or economics.
Other round tables addressed neurodiversity in Catholic Worker communities, racism, sexism, and decolonizing Catholic Worker communities.
A cabaret performance closed out the weekend. A glow-in-the-dark statue of Fatima is the trophy for the winner, much like the Midwest Catholic Worker’s famous “football Mary” trophy. The Fatima trophy had been won by a community of Catholic Workers who had not attended in several years. Gerstner visited the community to bring the Fatima trophy back to make a glorious return appearance at this year’s gathering. Sometimes the “most pitiful” sketch wins, rather than the best one, Gerstner joked. The smaller, plug-in glow-in-the-dark Madonna that had been the replacement trophy went to the winning children’s skit.
Samson described the gathering as a family reunion. These gatherings inspire members, she said, encouraging them on their counter-cultural path of nonviolence, care for creation, and personal responsibility for and hospitality toward their neighbor. And the workshops sharpen ideas, truly creating a clarity of thought!
The closing liturgy included scripture readings, a visio divina or meditation on an icon of the Trinity, and a special blessing of their guest, Susan Crane. Crane, 80, is a peace activist who began a prison sentence of 229 days in Germany earlier this month for a nonviolent civil disobedience action at the Büchel Air Base last summer.
Gerstner said that, like Crane, Catholic Workers and guests from other places in the world are welcome. The European Catholic Workers used to fly in guest speakers to their gatherings, he said, but the organizers felt that was no longer appropriate with the climate crisis. But Catholic Workers and interested folks are welcome to come, visit, and learn more about the movement in Europe. “In the States, the Worker might seem like a smaller movement,” Gerstner said,” “But, compared to Europe, the U.S. Catholic Worker is really big.”
