Rite and Reason: To those involved in it, Communion and Liberation movement (CL) is a friendship that proposes the presence of Christ as the only true response to the deepest needs of human life, write Margaret Murphy and Owen Sorensen.
CL was founded by Father Luigi Guisani in Italy in 1954. CL came to Ireland through the friendship of two Italians from the movement who came to study here in the early 1980s and decided to continue with Communion and Liberation while in Ireland.
People participating in CL activities are motivated by an interest first in themselves and their own happiness, and then in a desire to share this experience with others.
For this reason there isn't a requirement of "membership" to participate in CL activities. The movement is founded on friendship as opposed to membership.
CL attracts those truly interested in their own happiness. The only requirement CL has is that each individual is willing to take up this search seriously. Originally a proposal to young people, CL today extends its call to everyone, irrespective of age, occupation or social position.
Today, the mainstay of CL in Ireland is the "School of Community" which is held once a week (usually Friday evening) where friends meet to read, discuss and compare, with their own experiences, a selected piece of writing.
There are other activities such as the four-part classical choir. While members usually go to their own parish for Sunday Mass, they also try to meet once for Mass during the week or every other week. Communion and Liberation Ireland functions through a friendship born from a common desire.
In addition, CL Ireland has organised many missionary gestures over the years: The Religious Sense Meeting, The Way of the Cross annual procession on Good Friday, and a meeting entitled "Why the Church?" with speakers including Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and other multi-denominational speakers.
Those participating in the life of CL do not necessarily have any role to play - simply to come and see - although some CL participants dedicate considerable time in organising, at meetings, Easter processions and other events.
The movement was founded by Father Luigi Guisani because, as he saw it, "religion" had lost its essence, and had become just an element of life but was no longer part of the "real world". Young people had separated real life from religion.
Father Guisani began working with youth groups to highlight the way, that is Christ, to young people, even though living in modern culture so often hides and denies this.
He is influential for CL Ireland, as Irish people, like any of the other 70 other nationalities, are attracted by his completely human and reasonable way of judging life and reality. He has written numerous books, the best known being The Religious Sense, The Origin of the Christian Claim and Why the Church? His books don't uncover new theological departures - they reveal how Christianity is about all aspects of life.
The "Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples" in Rimini, Italy, every year is a typical CL initiative. With its average of 500,000 visitors the Rimini meeting, organised by Communion and Liberation, is one of the most well-attended summer festival of culture, seminars, music and entertainment in the world.
This year's 25th meeting took place from August 2nd-28th, 2004, and was themed "Our progress does not consist in presuming we have reached our goal, but in striving continuously to achieve it". The meeting starts from the bedrock of Catholic culture and goes out from there to embrace and evaluate all cultures and all aspects of modern life. Thus it is not a "Catholic" meeting in the sense of claiming to be in any way a voice of the "official" Church; but it is profoundly "catholic" in its attempt to welcome and dialogue with all that is of human value.
The list of those who have addressed the meeting over its 25 years is quite impressive and includes Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Helmut Kohl, Pope John Paul II, Boutros Boutros Ghali, Lech Walesa, Romano Prodi, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and Pat Cox.
Communion and Liberation Ireland describe themselves simply thus: "If the purpose is understood as our own happiness and the happiness of others, then the achievement is to be able to see it clearly in ourselves, our families and friends."