The Church is a Community of Communities!

By Issac Gomes –

In the recent past, we have been coming across reports of various conventions/activities of Basic Ecclesial Communities (BEC) which is synonymous with Small Christian Communities (SCC) and Basic Christian Communities (BCC). BEC members try to emulate the virtues of the first/early Christians who lived in small communities, prayed and broke the bread together, and shared simple meals including belongings with fellow Christians. They were the living church. The institutional church of today did not exist then.

In keeping with the ethos of the first Christian Communities, BEC aims to express Christian love in three ways: giving, service and non-violence. Members proclaim Christ’s good news to the poor, tell them of hope, and remind them that there are some people who love them and that they still have a chance in life.

Brief History of the Commission

The CCBI established Commission for Basic Ecclesial Communities during the XXXI Plenary Assembly (07-14 January 2019), at Joe Animation Centre, Mahabalipuram, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Then members of the Assembly voted in favour of establishing the Commission and elected His Excellency Most Rev. Ignatius Loyola Mascarenhas as its first chairman. The Bishops decided to establish a Commission for Small Christian Communities to promote the Gospel values at the grass root level and prepare all faithful to witness the compassionate ministry of the Church in their local life situations.

The spread of BEC is due in part to the documents of the Second Vatican Council which called for the Catholic laity to take a more active role in the church in view of the shortage of priests. Because established Christian parishes with active priests were often miles away and high-level church officials rarely visited even their own parishes, BECs often organized illiterate farmers and proletarians (mainly in rural areas) into self-reliant worshiping communities through the guidance of a priest or local lay member.

In 1960s BECs spread in Latin America (mainly in Brazil and Mexico) and Africa. In the African context in 1994 at the first African Synod, the Bishops Conference in Africa described Small Christian Communities (SCC) as “the theological mainstay of the model of Church as Family of God”. They are seen as “the ecclesiastical extension of the African extended family or clan”, where the Christian faith is more intensely lived and shared. “Due to the emergence and growth of SCCs, the church is no longer considered a remote reality subject solely to the direction of the ordained clergy. …Women and men feel a sense of belonging, celebrate their shared faith and take responsibility for the mission of the church in the local context.” Already in 2001 there were over 180,000 SCCs in the nine Association of Member Episcopal Conference countries in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) namely, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

In India’s context, the 1980 Bombay Priests Synod recognized SCCs as necessary to build community in city parishes characterized by individualism, impersonal relationships, superficial religious practice, and unconcern for others. “Believers were defined by the doctrinal truths they adhered to” with a privatized Christianity that ignored the social and communitarian dimensions of being disciples of Jesus Christ. The sense of community experienced at Sunday Mass was found to be too superficial to realize the sense of Christian community. From 1984 to 2006, Bombay archdiocese was formed into 1,800 SCCs. The program involved bringing together Catholics in neighbourhood communities for Gospel sharing and service to the poor and needy, while maintaining links with the universal Church. To facilitate presence and participation at the monthly meetings, SCCs were divided into smaller clusters of about ten families.

We must remember the Church is a Community of Communities. This means even though in our parishes across 174 dioceses we have different cultural and linguistic groups, we are ONE community through one baptism. While we may follow our respective cultures, there should be no difference among us spiritually and in practice. We all belong to one church and one community where no one is high, no one low. The whole essence of BEC is to inculcate this spirit of the first Christians.

BEC in today’s context means sharing our resources, our talent, our knowledge and expertise with our less fortunate brothers and sisters. The Parable of the Talents or ten gold coins (Matthew 25:14-30) encourages us to share our talents and enrich our community. How often do we do this?
The church hierarchy too should share its resources with the Laity – the fulcrum on which the church revolves. Most of the church contracts go to non-Christians who laugh all the way to the bank. If contracts are given to eligible Christians, money will circulate within the community. As a cascading effect, Christians will prosper and enrich the church. Example, Marwari and Gujarati communities help their own community members first by doing business within their own circle. We can learn from their mutually beneficial enterprise. This is the way of Intensive Culture the Jews of Israel have phenomenally prospered in financial and scientific arenas and continue to do so.
BEC cannot be just another pious group. Spirituality will not work on empty stomach (without income on hands). Even Jesus, during his ministry, combined his spiritual discourse with food for his followers. Even in his Last Supper he shared food with his disciples. Therefore, for the growth of the church, BEC needs to package its spirituality with income-generation activities at the grassroots and middle-income levels.

In this context, it is worthwhile to mention the efficacy of the 13 Commissions in our churches, namely: Laity, Social Communications, Education, Health, Evangelisation, Christian Life, Environment & Social Justice, Ecumenism and Inter-Religious Dialogue, Small Christian Communities/ Basic Ecclesial Communities, Family, Youth, Women and Migrants Commission. According to Church guidelines, ideally each parish is supposed to have these Commissions for fruitful implementation of Archdiocesan / Diocesan Pastoral Plans.

However, it is felt several commissions overlap each other, for example Evangelisation and Christian Life; Family and Women; and Laity, Education and Health. The Archbishop/Bishop of a Diocese happens to be Chairman of all Commissions. Thus he is unable to justice to any Commission. Because of this overlapping, most Commissions in parishes have been on paper only; many parishes haven’t been able to form all the 13 Commissions; and one parish in Kolkata hasn’t even bothered to implement the Archdiocesan Pastoral Plan, including institution of Parish Finance Committee!