Cardinal Murphy-O?Connor wants to restructure the diocese of Westminster. The Tablet?s deputy editor, Austen Ivereigh, met the man entrusted with the task

The former Anglican priest charged with leading the diocese of Westminster to the promised land sits at his desk in the diocesan HQ, breathes out deeply, and rolls up his sleeves to reveal hirsute meaty arms. Fr Stuart Wilson is not tall, but there is an energetic, macho quality about him. If he were a builder, he would be blowing brick dust from his hands.

It is clear why Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O?Connor opted for a man of action. Soon after he became Archbishop of Westminster, the cardinal promised there would be fewer exhortations and more ?great deeds?. Last year, he launched a plan which took up Pope John Paul?s millennium challenge in Novo Millennio Ineunte to ?put out into the deep?. The name of the plan ? ?At Your Word, Lord? (AYWL) ? repeats Peter?s response to the risen Jesus? fishing instructions on the shore of Lake Tiberias.

Novo Millennio Ineunte blew Fr Wilson?s mind when he first read it at New Year 2000. ?I knew it was going to be important?, he recalls, in an educated voice flecked with Yorkshire vowels. ?I saw in my parish the need for it. We needed renewal.?

He explains that AYWL is a ?process? designed to bring about ?pastoral restructuring?; it will last for five to seven years. The Renew programme chosen by the cardinal for the Westminster diocese ? duration two and a half years ? is one of the instruments to that end. It was first devised in New Jersey 25 years ago and introduced to Arundel and Brighton by Cormac Murphy-O?Connor when he was its bishop.

When I ask why the diocese needs restructuring, Fr Wilson surprises me with a vision of lay people assuming the mantle they were entrusted with by the Second Vatican Council. AYWL aims to give ?a new importance to the ministry of the laity?, he explains. At the moment, ?many people go through those courses and then find they have no entry into ministry?. AYWL will help each parish recognise that within it ?there are people who can be effective ministers?. So while this is a process organised from above, it is designed to foment new growth from below. ?That?s the risk that the cardinal has taken?, Fr Wilson tells me, ?to free up the energies of the laity, the result of which will be that they come knocking on his door.?

He became a Catholic in 1996 after 25 years as a ?papal-Anglican? priest who always used a Roman missal. He believes there is ?more energy? among Catholic laity than their Anglican counterparts, and that Anglican lay ministers can often appear to be ?pseudo-clergy?. One of the joys in becoming a Catholic, he says, was to be able to work collaboratively with lay people ?who understood their dignity as baptised persons, without needing a structure or a status in order to minister?. This, he says, is the energy which now needs unleashing.

And the task is urgent, because of the generation gap all too evident in Westminster?s parishes: those who were fired by the call of the Second Vatican Council are now ageing. Take Kentish Town, Fr Wilson?s former parish in north London which has a long history of lay involvement in parish ministries; the actively committed there are ?basically the same people who were there 30 years ago?. Almost all of them are white English people in a parish which now has more than 40 first languages. Before he left it he saw there was a need for a ?new group of laity and a new leadership?, one that would reflect more its new ethnic diversity, and prepare the parish for the next generation.

But if one of the end results of this process will be that people put themselves forward for parish ministry, and given that the bishops refuse to close any of their outsized seminaries, from where will the money for their training come?

?I don?t think it?s been thought of?, he smiles. ?In directing this programme, I ask a lot of questions and then leave them on someone else?s desk.?

If equipping new lay leaders is one of the fruits of AYWL, its focus is the fostering of small communities. Modern parishes, especially in London, have congregations which are often transient, roving, unengaged. They call for a return to the early-Church model of smaller intimate communities, which suit the new sociological and secular realities far more than the mass institutional model of the 1950s. Community, reckons Fr Wilson, will be the main gift of AYWL to the parishes.

?It?s clear in every parish: although we still have good numbers for First Communion and Confirmation, they are not forming part of the community. They come and then they go. We are serving moments in people?s lives which are important for them, but are we through that bringing them into the community? The measure must be: is the community growing? And if it isn?t, we must do something about it. That?s the challenge we?re responding to.?

AYWL follows the model in the General Directory on Catechesis, which is in turn nourished by the model of the Church in Acts 2:42, where the first converts devoted themselves to the apostles? teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers. The best-known expression of this is the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) ? the programme for people seeking to enter into full communion with the Church ? which the diocese is committed to. But, says Fr Wilson, this is not at present a model for the whole parish. He is happy for AYWL to be described as an attempt to achieve just this.

?When people do RCIA, what are they asking for? That God knows them by their name, that God loves them, and they feel they belong in community.? But then he adds: ?The problem in RCIA is that we teach this ideal, and then let them loose in the community and the community fails them.?

The take-up for Renew in Westminster has so far been impressive: 179 out of 216 parishes ? ?a much bigger number than we thought?, says Fr Wilson ? have already selected their ?core communities?, groups of 6-12 who will direct the programme in their parishes. The core communities are currently helping to form three further teams: an ?invitational ministry? to foster a culture of welcome, a ?mission team? which will co-ordinate the parish mission in September, and a ?liturgy team? to take charge of liturgies during the six-week cycles, known in Renew-speak as ?seasons?. There are five such cycles: ?God, A Community of Love? (October-November 2003), ?Conversion? (Lent 2004), ?Reaching Out? (October-November 2004), ?Reconciliation? (Lent 2005) and ?Renewing for the 21st Century? (October-November 2005).

During each season, small groups of 10-12 parishioners will meet to discuss specially prepared materials, share their experience of faith, learn more about the sacraments and prayerfully read Scripture. Experience suggests that around 25 to 30 per cent of the parish will join these faith-sharing groups, which from September will begin meeting in parish rooms or people?s houses.

Fr Wilson would regard that figure as a success. But how else will he know if Renew has succeeded? He outlines his criteria. ?When Season Five comes about, would there still be in place for the years that follow a core community of lay people who believe in their role as spiritual leaders in the parish? Would there come new initiatives for parish life ? adult catechesis, for example? We would be looking to see if parishes were working in a new collaborative way within parishes; that collaborative ministry had become the norm; that we would have a new leadership. Have we created young adult leaders? How is the diocese moving? Are we beginning to have a more collaborative structure in diocesan decision-making? Are we beginning to look at the possibilities for the structural reorganisation??

The programme will cost around half a million pounds over three years, to which each participating parish contributes about a thousand pounds each. Despite the Westminster clergy?s joke name for the programme, ?At Our Expense, Lord?, this does not seem unreasonable: there is the fee to be paid to Renew International, and the cost of Fr Wilson?s own office, with its team of five religious and lay people. But isn?t booking Wembley Stadium in September at a cost of ?60,000 a little over the top? And doesn?t the idea of a mass Catholic rally to launch AYWL smack of 1950s triumphalism?

Fr Wilson doesn?t think so. ?It?s about finding ourselves as a diocese once again?, he says, citing as an example the clergy?s meeting at Bognor ? the first time since 1850 Westminster?s priests had all met with their bishop. ?That?s what the diocese needs: this experience of being together, not to celebrate what has been but to celebrate something that?s coming.?

And with that, we end ? with the energy of Westminster?s master builder still, apparently, intact. This article concludes the series.

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