Lay leadership in Leeds – a Root and Branch gathering of green shoots

In last Sunday’s readings for Sunday Mass, Jesus tells the religious authorities that all their ‘tradition’ is nothing but human teaching. It does not come from God. And James reminds us that ‘The commandment of God is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows when they need it and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.’

Last weekend at Hinsley Hall in Leeds, Root and Branch Community for Reform held a residential and online gathering on the theme of lay leadership which focused very much on the difference between human teaching and Jesus’ message; and included moving personal accounts of how the amour propre and worldliness of the Church had damaged so many.

Open Table at All Hallows Anglican Church Leeds, hosted by Revd Heston Groenewald (left)

Among the speakers there was an eclectic mixture of old and new faces. From the USA, indomitable as ever, Joan Chittister anticipated today’s readings when she said, ‘The model of the life of Jesus must be our measure, not the law.’ And silenced Redemptorist, Tony Flannery (a household name in Ireland but speaking on Catholic premises for the second time only in 12 years) picked up on Jesus’ warning about the fallibility of human teaching.

Flannery said ‘All learning, all knowledge is time bound. There is no such thing as truth for all time. Anything we say about God is more unlike God than like God. We should be content to ask questions whilst being happy not to know the answers. For example, Why did Jesus come? Surely not to atone?’

The conference was called ‘Empowering Ourselves: Flourish and Thrive’. Kevin Liston, co-Chair of ACCCR, the foremost Australasian umbrella group of reform movements, kicked off the weekend reminding us how Jesus said, ‘I have come to proclaim liberty to captives.’ As people shared experiences of Church-related misogyny and clerical abuse, rejection, exclusion, silencing and punishment, it became clear just how much work was needed to gain the sense of liberty Jesus wishes for us.

Mental health professional, Penny Brown, felt it would have to start by freeing ourselves from Catholic guilt, or in her words, freeing ourselves from ‘our fear of the coercive Father’s voice and rules’ which are not in reality from God the Father but have come out of human tradition. ‘Jesus did not found a priesthood (as we know it),’ said Flannery. ‘If that became accepted, then most of the arguments against ordaining women (and married people) would go.’

Open Table at All Hallows Anglican Church with resident vicar Heston Groenewald and Revd Ruth Gee, a former President of the Methodist Conference

There was no getting away from the very genuine disappointment in Pope Francis’s Synod on Synodality, preoccupied with worldly power as it has been. Saying that, since the weekend was about self-empowerment, the focus shifted quickly to the global change already brought about by synodality itself. How it has opened our minds to new ways of listening, given us the confidence to befriend priests, bishops, and cardinals, no longer in deference, but as grown-ups and equals, and to feed back to them our authentic feelings to aid their ministry of service. ‘Authentic feelings are interesting,’ Brown said, ‘Not wrong or sinful. But a good guide to reality and help us get in touch with our nudges of conscience.’ Her knowledge of the way the mind works and the way the body deals with trauma leads her to say that it’s those little nudges of conscience that will create movement to something new.

An unexpected highlight came from a former President of the Methodist Conference, Ruth Gee, in an ‘Open Table’ service at the nearby Anglican inner-city church, All Hallows. There, the vicar hosting, youthful Heston Groenewald (a Superman t-shirt just visible beneath his jersey) spoke about the recent race riots and how his parish had supported their neighbouring mosques and Hindu temples. Other Root and Branchers, also living in inner cities, said they’d done the same (in one instance when their parish priest would not) and spoke movingly of the pressing need to find shared commonality and sense of the sacred; in short, to make sure all are welcome.

Revd Ruth Gee, a former President of the Methodist Conference shared in the open table at the invitation of Groenwald. She and Groenewald welcome everyone to the Eucharist. 

It must have surprised this mainly ‘third age’ audience to be variously addressed as green shoots, and seeds, fresh roots and budding branches. Joan Chittister, a fine example of being both inside and outside the Church, accepted that ‘We are the seeds which will not see the flower.’ But, she added, ‘What we grow within us will create the world to come.’ Mary McAleese encouraged participants to harness the energy that was there at the start of the Synod to fill the jobs in our parishes that priests used to do when they were more numerous; to be the green shoots growing in the cracks of the walls of inequality, ultimately bringing them down as had happened in Berlin. In this context, Brown explored her professional belief that it is ‘the language of feelings that is the seed to future change’.

Mental health professional Penny Brown

Perhaps most powerful was the unanimous agreement in the room and online on the necessity of meeting in person. Covid enforced on us a form of self-empowerment, and many will continue to choose to meet and pray on Zoom. Meeting in person, however, has a different quality that must be protected and nurtured. It is why we go to the pub or have friends and family round for a meal. As McAleese, with long experience of sectarian violence, said, ‘It opens us up to our neighbour with different views.’ And so, this weekend, the green shoots (many of them grey-haired) inspired each other to go back to their parishes, however painful it might be for some; to go to Mass and afterwards to befriend the person next to them in the pew. To tell them about our authentic feelings about this dysfunctional but deeply loved family, to hear their feelings and love them, and to ‘come to their help when they need it’.

Genevieve Berwick, a member of the Root and Branch Community