CL Life

Over a Kentucky Fried Chicken Dinner

A trip to the American heartland: to Evansville, Indiana, to visit the Bishop, for the presentation of The Risk of Education, and for the diaconia of CL responsibles in the States. “The response to the drama of sexual abuse is a profound and popular faith”

BY GIORGIO VITTADINI

Evansville is a small city in the far southern tip of Indiana, on the borders of Kentucky and Illinois. As it was founded by Bavarian immigrants, it is predominantly Catholic. It is a typical city of the heartland, with taverns (selling beer, fried chicken, and guns and ammunition, indiscriminately), karaoke bars, houses all alike, churches of various confessions, a middle-sized airport, a small university, the usual big American river (in this case, the Ohio), and long, straight roads cutting through the boundless plain and leading who knows where.
In this deep heartland of America, so far from Europe but also from New York, a year ago a CL community was born. While along the Way of the Cross in New York Christ rises where He is least expected, in Evansville the charism of the Movement is embodied in deepest America.
We went to Evansville with all the “responsibles” of the Movement in America. “Why did you come?” asked Philip, Mike Eppler’s right-hand man. Mike is the founder and head of this community, who has recounted his experience at the most recent CL International Responsibles’ Assembly (see Traces, Vol 3, No 8, 2001, p.16). After three days of living together, this was the question he asked us, amazed and pleased, but not wanting to take anything for granted. The report of what happened answers his question.

Ordinary people
As soon as we arrived at the airport Thursday evening, we were welcomed by Mike and his friends. They are “ordinary people,” sellers of industrial forklifts, office workers, nurses, and students, who took time off to welcome us. They have simple, clean, deep, open faces.
Just as “open” was the Bishop of Evansville, whom we met Friday morning. This farmer’s son (as he himself states with pride) is watching the rise of the Movement in his diocese in an extremely positive way. He has read Fr Giussani’s books. He said, “The answer to the drama of pedophilia is the return to an experience of profound and popular faith like that lived by CL.” This seems to echo what was said to us in New York by Fr Cameron, editor of Magnificat, a monthly booklet with a circulation of 120,000 copies, which accompany the faithful in the daily liturgy.

Surprises
In the simple rooms of the Bishop’s house–which includes the ever-present basketball court and meeting rooms–over a Kentucky Fried Chicken dinner, we listened to the presentation of The Risk of Education by Msgr Albacete; Mike Eppler, Diocesan Youth Director; and Phyllis Bussing, Director of Catholic Schools for the diocese.
The event had been well publicized by an article on the front page of the local newspaper and numerous flyers. Before it began, Albacete was interviewed at length by the local radio and TV stations, along with the Bishop and Chris Bacich, on the question of sexual abuse by priests. After the stupendous lesson given by Albacete, we were left open-mouthed by Bussing, who said, “After the first two chapters I thought it was an outstanding book; at the third chapter, I who have been an educator for thirty years understood that I had to learn all over again what it means to educate.”
But the surprises were not over: after the talks, a lively debate ensued with the audience, who wanted to understand, who were not content with just a little. Young people and not so young, a reality untouched by the scandals or the question of women priests, people propelled by their unconditioned trust in the faith and in the Church, they are searching for something in a different and the same way as the 3,000 people at the Way of the Cross in New York. In tones familiar to us, Philip closed by saying, “To understand better, come educate with us. The Movement is something we have always been waiting for without knowing it.”

The headquarters in the attic
Then we visited the CL headquarters, on the top floor of a kindergarten in an attic populated with a lot of old couches. On the walls are the Stations of the Cross, CL posters, the American flag, and photos of the most important events in the community’s history; on a table are Fr Giussani’s books and Traces. In this room, two Schools of Community meet, the GS and the adults, with epic discussions that continue by e-mail. They discuss the meaning of CL within the Church rather than the human desire reawakened by the encounter.
The Movement has truly reshaped this group of young people’s way of being together, who were earlier used to being with each other only during spiritual retreats organized by the TEC movement. They are discovering that the Movement involves all of life. Thus, they have started singing together (instead of doing karaoke), judging what happens, and helping each other with their needs.

Because of a sign
Mike, who accompanied us on every step of our visit, is the deepest source of information. His secret is his wife Mariah, who is a support teacher for handicapped children. Like every great wife, she sustains him in his commitment with her sacrifice. As the visit progressed, we grew to know and love her. The Epplers have three beautiful children, who were the protagonists of these days, and would like to adopt some more. Another presence that struck us is Sarah, a 21-year-old girl who works ten hours a day doing piercing in a beauty shop. “What is the Movement? You can’t put it into words. It is a fact that is grafted into the depths of your heart.” She is from Jasper, a town not far from Evansville. The people there don’t understand this strange friendship with the ones in Evansville. Mike and the friends in Evansville, and then Riro and Stella, were able to discover and welcome her humanity, her desire for good and for constructiveness, accepting her as she is with her pierced tongue and her style of dressing like a girl who “loves life.”
The public gestures, too, have been initiated in Evansville: there was the Way of the Cross, during which the Cross damaged, luckily only slightly, the sign of a tattoo shop. When the owner, who came out of the shop to see the damage, discovered that Mike was Catholic, he showed great interest and wanted to know the Movement.

David, Rob, and the others
Friday evening the responsibles of various communities in the United States arrived, familiar faces and new faces: David Jones, the captain from Missouri, and his father, a retired engineer from St Louis, the new group from Indianapolis, Rob Jones, and all the others. We all went to New Harmony, a symbolic place. This little town, today a tourist attraction, represents what the Movement traditionally has been fighting: the utopia of a city of “equals,” with as its point of reference first a Protestant sect, then the utopian socialism of Owen. It was an attempt, immediately aborted, at “communist” equality, which conceived a cemetery in which there were no names on the gravestones in order to avoid any kind of personalization.
The national diaconia was held there and at the University of Evansville. Questions flew thick and fast: “How can we respond to sexual abuse in the Church in order to rebuild?” And again, “What does it mean and what is the starting point of the belonging to a charism for me who already live in the Church?” “How can we avoid closing ourselves off in this belonging as though it were a box, seeing that America is populated by sects, groups, enclaves, and exclusive ethnic groups?”
The discussion was very lively. Fr Jerry showed how in his experience the Movement has given new meaning to his being a priest in charge of a parish in Rochester (and he witnessed to the birth of Studium Christi in Minnesota). Msgr Albacete showed that the “tension between charism and institution” is love of Christ, which in a living experience makes us love all the Church even in her institutional aspects. Starting from the Pope’s beautiful address on the topic, we realized that at the source of the problem of sexual abuse is the profound void left by the loss of a consciousness of the living Christ, true and simply alive.

The only real answer
The deepest meaning of this meeting emerged. We are not glad so much because of the “ability” to talk about Jesus. Rather, we are happy because what is written on the green T-shirts they were wearing is happening once again in them too: “The purpose of life in CL is to propose the presence of Christ as the only real answer to the deepest needs of human life in every moment of history.”
This awareness exploded when almost by chance the diversity of origin of the “Americans” from the “heartland” and from New York generated a “strange” sight (Poles, Brazilians, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Irish, Ecuadoreans, Puerto Ricans…) reminiscent of an earlier time: “[Are we not] Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians…?” (Acts 2:9-11). We, too, two thousand years later, can wonder, in amazement.