81: This is about all of us. We can offer ourselves to God.

Episode 81 This episode comes from a parish in the Leeds diocese. Fr Michael and Fiona explain how the parish, and the people in it, help each other to be open to the working of the Holy Spirit. Father Michael shares how through the work of the Parish Mission team, 'We are trying very hard to be outward facing as well as looking for growth within the church.'  Fiona says, 'It certainly is an exciting place to be.' 

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro.  My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today.  Pope Leo, quoting St Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good.  We are the times.  I hope you feel encouraged and affirmed and sometimes challenged as I am in these conversations.  Join our podcast community, get news and background information about the conversations and share your thoughts if you want to. You can get the newsletter and each episode straight to your inbox by going to allkindsofcatholic.substack.com and clicking on subscribe. It's free.  That web address is in the episode notes too and I'd love you to draw closer to our community. Thank you.

Just before we get into this episode listeners, I just want to make sure you know that there's a special episode coming out next week for Christmas Eve  and another special episode for New Year's Eve the week after and that one will be with a peace focus looking ahead to the World Day of Peace on New Year's Day. And the week after that if we're allowed to look ahead into 2026 there's a special episode for the Feast of the Epiphany too and that'll be going out unusually on a Tuesday because Tuesday is the Feast of the Epiphany.  So keep listening for those really wonderful episodes coming up. But first, let's hear about today's conversation.  Listeners, thank you for joining the podcast today. This is going to be a really interesting episode. I've wanted to do for a while an episode with people in a parish and talk about the life of that parish, particularly. And so I'm delighted to be joined by two people from a parish in Brighouse in the Leeds Diocese. Why don't we start with you, Fiona, one of the parishioners in Brighouse? Perhaps you’d just help us understand the context a little bit. Tell us how long you've been in the parish and how your life has been, as part of that parish.

I've been in the parish all my life. I'm now 68 years old. So yeah, a long time. I never moved parishes really. Lived outside, but only as a student nurse. So the parish obviously has changed dramatically because when I first was a child, we had two priests. had a parish priest and a curate just for Brighouse and it was all just very different. I think the one thing that I've found over the years is that the parish has to continue almost despite the priest without being rude, Father Michael. But the parish is the parish. The parish is the people and the community and the families in there. Priests will come and go. Each priest will have their own ideas, their own strengths, their own things that they bring to the parish. But it’s the people and the community that have got to keep the parish going. 

Thank you, Fiona. I think that will resonate with lots of listeners, absolutely. So you've introduced our other guest today and that's Father Michael. So tell us, Father Michael, a bit about how you fit into the parish then in Brighouse.

I've been parish priest here almost exactly seven years. I've been a priest for 27 years, but for most of my time in the priesthood, I worked in Catholic education. I actually lived in the parish, but was involved with education. Then seven years ago, our bishop asked me if I would step in and care take the parish for seven or eight months. And I'd always dreaded being a parish priest. I'd been an Anglican vicar in my previous history and didn't think I'd done a very good job. But I thought it was okay. I said, Okay, I'll take it on. And I was bowled over, not just by the welcome I received, but by how different this parish was. They'd obviously had some very good priests in the past who had encouraged lay ministry and lay involvement. And when the bishop had me in again and said, How's it going? And I said, Well, I'm going to be really sad to hand this over to somebody else.  He said, How would you like to be that person? So that's what's happened. Now, even though I did not have many pastoral links in my first 20 years as a priest,  I had a vision that what I wanted to do if I ever did get pastoral responsibility would be to encourage and release lay people into their baptismal gifts. And being here at Brighouse was a step in that journey. The next major step, I bet Fiona's been sitting wondering how soon it would take me to get to this, was to get the parish involved in a process called Called and Gifted, which comes from the United States. It's all about people discovering the gifts that God has given them in baptism and learning to use them and move in them.

I'm glad you've introduced the Called and Gifted programme there because somebody was telling me about that previously and I'm glad to have an opportunity to find out a bit more. Perhaps you'd explain to us what you mean by baptismal gifts. Let's just start at the beginning there because I think that concept might be a bit woolly for some of our listeners. It certainly is for me. 

For me, it's the, perhaps the greatest, undiscovered teaching of Catholic theology, that in our baptism, we are given a share in the ministry of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. And at several points in the documents of Vatican II, in the teaching of Pope John Paul particularly, they will go into that and talk about how as part of that, the baptised are given, it uses different words, gifts, charisms, ministries. Some of which are quite routine to do with administration, helping, visits, you know, that sort of thing. Others are more extraordinary. The American Catholic evangelist Sherry Waddell wrote a brilliant book, which I read years and years and years ago on evangelisation called Forming Intentional Disciples. And it was, I've been interested in evangelisation all my Christian life. But towards the second half of the book, Sherry Waddell says, Actually, I don't spend most of my time evangelising. I spend most of my time working with Called and Gifted and this process of helping people to discover what gifts God gave them in their baptism on top of the general being prophet, priest and king. Well I read this and I thought, Yes, if ever I got a parish, I'd want to do that. The problem being that the only way you could access that was either buying Sherry in from America at some ridiculous cost or Bishop Philip Egan down in Portsmouth had brought Sherry over and run that out in his diocese but I didn't have any mates in Portsmouth that I could nobble to get on the course. However, during the Covid lockdown they put the material online and Bishop Egan issued an invitation to the people of the United Kingdom through their bishops, to get involved. And I thought, Right, I'm going to sign up myself, have a bit of a taste and see whether this is suitable. Rather arrogantly I thought, I'm going to know all about this.  And yes, there were some bits that were familiar, but very quickly I found that I was being instructed, challenged, inspired. And I knew straight away that yes, I wanted my parish to be involved in this. And I invited about a dozen people to be involved in what we call the first cohort. Now we've actually had, in Brighouse, we've had four cohorts now, of Called and Gifted. Fiona, I think you were in the second cohort. 

Okay, Fiona, tell us a bit about how you experienced this then. Was the idea of having special gifts from your baptism, was that news to you? 

That's a really difficult question to answer. Yeah, I suppose, yes, it was news to me. I think I'd always thought people have a mission and maybe we won't know what that mission was until we've gone to heaven, hopefully. But the idea of having special gifts that you could discern as a lay person, I think, was really interesting. Both myself and my husband decided that we would start doing this, of course we found it quite challenging. I had to go see Father Michael and go, Are you sure this is for us? But he convinced us to stick with it. I think it set us both on a kind of a new path, really. I'm obviously born Catholic and I think you can get a bit stale really in your Catholicism because you need things that are going to challenge you and make you think again.  

Can I perhaps explain a little bit about how the process works. There is a stage one which is the sort of learning stage and it's about five hours of teaching which you can either access online  or as we've done in the parish, we've done it over four evenings now  that introduces people to this idea of a baptismal gifting and calling  and  goes through the 23 charisms that they've identified. And then everybody as part of that, people do an inventory where it is suggested to them which six charisms might be at the top of their list. People then have a one-to-one interview with a trained facilitator. Our bishop, the Bishop of Leeds, has been incredibly supportive and allowed, first of all, five of us to be trained as facilitators and then another five. So we've now got quite a big team in the diocese. You have a one-to-one interview where you talk through the beginnings of your discernment and identify one charism with which you are going to experiment in the next three months. Some people don't like the word experiment. Test out, I suppose. What happens then, as you enter what we call stage three, people meet together four times in a group. At first it was virtual, online, but now we have physical groups if we can. And talk about, In the last few weeks, I've continued to experiment with my charism of whatever it is. This is what's happened, this is what's not happened. And the other members of the group reflect back, give encouragement. Perhaps spot things that that person didn't spot. The interesting thing for me is that's as far as the official process devised by the Catherine of Siena Institute, that's as far as it goes. But as a parish priest, I found there are several other stages. There's a sort of, What next?  And to see within the parish, people beginning to use their charisms and use them collaboratively, it isn't just about getting people jobs in the parish. It's about people being able to operate out of their giftedness in the whole of their lives.  But in the parish, and it's been utterly marvellous for me seeing that collaborative working, the synergy of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. The other aspect for me, which has been fascinating, is it raises the question for me as a parish priest, how do I exercise - I talked about those Christ-like gifts of prophet, priest, and king, the governance aspect, the kingly aspect of being a priest, if you want to use that. How do I oversee the building up of the Body of Christ? And I have to say, Theresa, that unfortunately, this isn't something that's dwelt on very much in priestly formation. I've kind of jumped up and down and said, Help, help, help, I want some advice. There isn't any. I am very much - I won't say ploughing a lone furrow because there are other priests in my position now, but we are discerning and searching forward a very new aspect within the church of how you oversee people. And just using that word makes me realise that like all things with priests, the primary overseeing governance function belongs to the bishop. The bishops have lots of instruction on this. But how do we oversee that? How do we make sure that somebody doesn't shoot off down a blind alley or whatever? 

That's given me a lot to respond to that. First of all, I'm thinking just winding back a little bit, the process sounds like -  I can see Fiona, why you and your husband had a bit of a wobble there. It sounds like you need quite a bit of courage to go into a process like that where you're going to be talking about yourself and your faith, you know, one-to-one with someone who's some kind of qualified expert in some way. You know, it takes courage to open up your life in that way, I'm sure. And then to meet with people and talk about what went well and what didn't go well. Some people would find that pretty terrifying, I think. But as you indicated, Fiona, there's growth to come from that challenge and that kind of opening yourself up to something new. So I'm interested in that. And then I think the part, Father Michael, about, I was kind of thinking while you were describing what it's like having a parish where people now are using their gifts  in more active ways. It reminded me a little bit of the early church. The first Christians finding their way. And a little bit about you and other priests having to sort of go back to first principles a little bit to see how to, like you say, oversee, I don't know what the best word is there, manage those people. 

Can I say that I often say to my brother clergy and to other people I meet, it's like living in the Acts of the Apostles. 

Okay, Fiona then, tell us a little bit about that process for you and how it was going through it and where you are now.

I think because I went through as the second cohort and we did it online, although I did it with Simon, I did it with people that I didn't really know. A, online and B, people you don't know makes it harder, makes it more challenging because you're opening yourself up. Maybe displaying quite a lot of ignorance really about your faith and about your position in your faith. And I think the online bit just added to that because you don't pick up the vibes the same do you, when you're sat in a room with people. From our cohort, we suggested that it might be better face to face really. We sat with it, we went through the process. I identified various charisms. Sometimes very difficult to work out whether they are just things that you are good at or things that you've been socialised into because of your life, because of what you've done and where you've gone, or whether they're actually charisms, which is why you kind of need this experimental time. And one of the charisms that came up for me was that of pastor, which was a complete shock because I hadn't thought about myself in that light at all. But I did test it out by running some Bible study groups, which I've enjoyed doing. The other strong ones really are kind of ‘helps’. 

Thank you. That's really interesting Fiona. That's reminded me of some management training I did years ago where the person facilitating it, said, Don't make the mistake of thinking that skills are the things that people at work get you to do because you can do them, you take the time to do them well and you end up lumbered with these really annoying jobs that people say, Oh, you're good at that because actually you're the one who's kind of putting the time to do it. A little bit like what you're saying about being socialised into particular things and pushed in particular directions, which actually is not the same as something that you are gifted with.  

One of the things in the Called and Gifted discernment process is listening to the feedback of others. So I'm really going to embarrass Fiona now by giving some feedback and a little bit of clarity on the two charisms that she mentioned, pastoring and helps. Pastoring in the Called and Gifted system is about working with small groups. Until I did Called and Gifted, there was an aspect of my priestly ministry that made me feel I was a rubbish priest. Working one-to-one with people, fantastic. Energising, effective. Standing up and preaching, great. Put me in front of a dozen people and I become a gibbering idiot. And I always thought, You're useless, that's it. But then I realised that that's the charism of pastoring and I don't have it. One of the great things about Called and Gifted is to be able to look at people like Fiona, draw her into doing some pastoring and then sitting there and be thinking, That's how you do it. There's the collaborative ministry there of getting people to do what I can't do, but also, it's not that I'm a rubbish priest, it's just that it's not my charism. The other thing, the charism of ‘helps’, just sounds as though it's in general going and helping people. It's a bit more specific than that. It's about discerning how somebody else needs some help to achieve their calling, their mission. But in a particular area, they're floundering. And the person with helps comes alongside and literally helps. And I have to say, in more ways than I can tell you, that's what Fiona has done for me, even something as practical as ringing the doctors’ for me. What Fiona hasn't mentioned is, reasonably quickly after she and Simon, her husband, did Called and Gifted, we actually founded our Parish Mission Committee. 

Let's talk about this Parish Mission Committee. That sounds really outward facing, full of energy and something good to focus on as a parish. You know, what's our mission? What are we actually doing to spread the Good News? 

So Fiona, would you tell us a bit about what the Mission Committee is then in the parish? What does it do? What does it mean?  

From my point of view, it came about with a conversation with Simon and with Father Michael. Part of what I talked about earlier was that the parish has to go on despite the priest and we need some way of that happening. So we need the parish to be involved in defining that mission, if you like, and taking that mission forward. That is obviously in conjunction with whoever is the priest at the time following their leadership but is not dependent on them because otherwise people fall away when a particular priest goes and that isn't healthy. Father Michael, very shortly after coming to St. Joseph's, was given Elland parish as well. So two parishes, four weekend Masses plus weekday, plus two schools. It kind of felt a bit like he was a CEO, but he didn't have any finance director or - the Church of England have always had, what do they call them? PCCs, which Father Michael didn't particularly relish. But from the point of view of this being a Parish Mission Committee, we were able to get some people together. We did think about it being a formal process, didn't we, Father Michael, and actually inviting people to apply? And Father Michael, with his education background, put together some lovely job descriptions and application forms. And I suggested that we might just leave it to the Holy Spirit and see who volunteered. 

And what does the Mission Committee focus on then? It's not the same as a sort of parish council. It sounds like it's something different from that, with a different focus. So explain then what the kind of focus of meetings might be. 

When we kind of launched this, I put three objectives down. The first one being to work with me to come before God and listen to God's will for the parish. Secondly, to form a strategy to put that will into practice. And thirdly, to engage others in the church to put that strategy into practice. So broadly, that's the aim. Now, we do think about things like car parks and church windows and toilets and roofs. But when Fiona suggested we narrowed down the recruitment process, I narrowed it down to a sentence and asked people who were prayerful disciples of Jesus Christ with a heart for mission.  Mission has been - even when we're talking about the church car park, it has a mission focus. We have done some amazing things, one of which has been the development of our monthly Family Mass at four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. 

That sounds like a radical move. Tell us about that then. How did that come about? 

Well, we were very clear as a Parish Mission Committee that we needed our hope to be in the future. It's the children. We're aware having a Catholic school, many of the children didn't come to Mass on a regular basis, particularly post-COVID, the attendance just fell off in terms of the children. I think previously at the parish we'd had, what do they call it, when the children go out, children's liturgy, but taking the children out and then bringing them back in again can be disruptive for the children and for what's going on in Mass. And I'm not sure that they actually got out of it what they needed. And so we talked Father Michael about maybe having a Mass specifically for children. We started off, before having the Mass, having ‘crafternoons’ on a Sunday afternoon where they just came in and did some crafts and we maybe sang a couple of action songs and fed people, which seems to be a very important part of our ministry on the Parish Mission Committee. And then that progressed into the Family Mass. I think it's growing exponentially in terms of numbers of people attending. 

We had 103 there in September. 

Which was phenomenal.

And what makes it a Family Mass? Do the children do the readings? 

Not necessarily. I have to go back a stage now. So as part of the Parish Mission Committee, my daughter, adult daughter, decided that we could do with a voice for the children in the parish. And so she has set up, with another of the TAs at school, a Junior Parish Mission Committee, which she runs after school one day a week. The Junior Parish Mission Committee take junior school aged children, Key Stage two children and work with them to look at, What do you think the church needs? What would work for you? What helps you to go to church? They've done some amazing stuff. But in a way, the Junior Parish Mission Committee, because of the children that are getting involved, not all Catholic children, but the children that getting involved, are kind of feeding the family mass and bringing friends along. And so sometimes the Junior Parish Mission Committee will read the bidding prayers or do the readings - or I think it's just spread by word of mouth and they come along and we have Mass. We have a projector and music and so it's quite interactive really. Father Michael simplifies some of the liturgy so that the children can engage with it. He's really good at bringing them all up onto the altar or around the altar, getting his guitar out, or lions and tigers and sheep on the altar steps and so he really engages them and there's no pressure on parents to feel like they have to keep their children quiet. This is a Family Mass. You're here and that's lovely and the children will pray in their own way. And then after Mass, we go over to the hall and we feed them and the children sit on the floor on checked tablecloths with sandwiches and juice and cakes and the parents sit around and develop that sense of Catholic family because this is the time they get to talk to each other.  And it may not be a faith-based talk, but it's talking. As the Parish Mission Committee, we get to go around and sit with them. Maybe begin some stages of accompaniment. 

Wow, that sounds amazing Fiona. You know, conversation, that's why I started the podcast. These conversations are so important for supporting our faith, these everyday conversations. So to provide an opportunity for that as well as all that amazing stuff for children is fantastic. I think listeners will be very inspired to hear that. 

Just to say that as well as the growth in numbers, we have had real engagement from the parents and we have had several parents wishing to be received into the church, baptised, confirmed, take the next step in their own faith journey. The charism I experimented with in Called and Gifted was evangelism.  I learned that evangelism is not standing on a street corner haranguing people. It's being open to the working of the Holy Spirit.  And this is what we have seen arise out of this in a very natural, unforced, beautiful way. 

It's deeply inspiring and something about the way you're working and starting with what the Lord's Will is for the parish and being open to the working of the Holy Spirit is reminding me of the synodal process, I'm sure for listeners too. That sounds like you don't need to wait for some new development in the local church around how to be a synodal church. It sounds like you've already run with that, found a way to do that. Is that what it feels like to you? 

My poor bishop regularly gets emails from me when I have read a document out of the Vatican that talks about the - there was one from 2020 about the conversion of the parish church into an article for mission. And I wrote to him and said, Look, Bishop Marcus, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, is exactly what Called and Gifted does. And then Pope Francis's vision for what the synodal process would do. The beauty for me is that this has grown from the ground up. Bishop Marcus will always say to me, Yes, Michael, but there are other processes around. Yours isn't the only thing. And I agree with him. There are some wonderful things happening in the church. Some of them are quite top down. The priest doing things to the parish, where all I've done is introduce people to this process and they, the Holy Spirit through them, has grown from the ground up. 

Fantastic. I think listeners will be interested to hear about this thriving parish. Just to set us in the current times then, this is Advent when listeners are perhaps listening to this episode. So tell us a bit about what Advent looks like in this very active parish then. 

So we just finished running a series of seminars called Life in the Spirit. At the end of that, people wanted to continue and do something else. So we've set up a group doing a Lectio Divina really, every Thursday evening in the parish, just looking at the readings for Advent and spending time together. Praying and reflecting on those readings, which is lovely.  

One of the other quite exciting things for me, which is parallel to the Called and Gifted process, I'm very involved with a national charity called Together for the Common Good, which is an ecumenical charity promoting Catholic social teaching run by the amazing Jenny Sinclair.  And we ran a common good journey with a small group of people deliberately. The Parish Mission Committee, I told them I didn't want them to be involved. I wanted it to be people who wouldn't normally turn up to Bible studies and prayer meetings. The aim being to look outwards and see how we as a parish engaged with our locality.  One exciting thing that sprang out of that, the whole point of it is not doing things to people but doing things with people. And we were rung up by a large local care home. The question was, Will you come in and do a communion service? And I thought, I'm not sure you actually understand what you're asking. And in the end, I said, I'll come in and do an ecumenical worship. This was just before Easter. Fiona, with her charism of helps, came alongside and assisted me in that. We went in before Easter, we went in in the summer, and just before Christmas, we're going in again to do a Christmas-themed one.  Our new pastoral assistant, I've tasked her with developing those links. So we are trying very hard to be outward facing as well as looking for growth within the church. 

That's fabulous. Fiona, as we're coming to the end of this conversation, it's been really interesting to hear about this very active, alive parish. And I'm wondering what it's like for you as someone who's been in the parish all your life. Now, does it feel different being part of this parish since these new developments have been happening and you've been part of them? 

I think with every parish they go through phases of growth and development and then there's periods of calm, maybe just bedding in the last period of growth or whatever and I think we have had periods like this before. We went into a period of that sort of bedding in if you like and this is another where we're being challenged again and the parish is coming together and being active. In a way, it feels different because of COVID, because COVID sort of threw everything completely out. And so this feels like we're having to reach for every step as opposed to just carrying on as we had done before. But it certainly is an exciting place to be, and I'm really glad to be part of it. 

Thank you. And then I wonder if - I sometimes ask about whether there's a piece of scripture that matters to my guest or a prayer. Is there a prayer that the parish has together or a piece of scripture that is important to the parish in this journey just now? 

I would say that Fiona has already referred to something that we use a lot and refer to a lot and that's the prayer of St. John Henry Newman about, God has a definite purpose for me. This is nothing new. This teaching about lay involvement - there in the Acts of the Apostles, but that message that it isn't just about priests and deacons and nuns and friars and whatever. This is about all of us.  As Fiona said, we may never know it, this side of heaven, but we can offer ourselves to God. So yeah, that would be the prayer. I don't know if you agree, Fiona? 

That was exactly what I was going to say. 

It's very interesting to me that a number of guests over the weeks and months of this podcast have actually referred to that prayer. I think there's something about it for lay people that we can really relate to. 

That's why he's a Doctor of the Church. 

Indeed. Just before we leave this parish today, listeners, Fiona wanted to tell us just a little bit more about the work of the Junior Parish Mission Committee. And I think it's lovely to hear more about what the children have been doing to bring life to this parish as we approach Christmas. 

So they started off making a cross-shaped structure that takes pieces of paper and so that is in church and anybody can write who they would like prayers for. And the idea is that you roll the prayer up, you put it in one of these glass jars, and then other people take them and use them to pray and then bring them back when they've prayed, which has been lovely. The latest thing, which has been really successful, is they have made a board, which they call God's Garden. It's flowers and trees and all sorts of things. But in front of all the flowers and trees are openings for cards to go in. And all of the flowers are labelled with things like faith, courage, hope, trust, prayer. There are cards inside each one. You take what you need and there's a Bible-saying relevant to that on each of the cards. And that has been so well received within the parish that we're having to refill it more often than we initially anticipated. And they have raised money for local charities.  That's been really, really helpful.

I'm reminded listening to you Fiona that quite often guests talk about, you know, if they're talking about their whole life, having been a cradle Catholic, that their faith as a child was very straightforward and they were really deeply believing  in Jesus, wanting to do their best. Of course, if we harness that as a parish and allow the children to draw us in, it can help everybody's faith be alive and direct and pure in the way it is for children. So those are lovely examples. That's beautiful. So this has been a really good conversation. It's given me and listeners lots to think about. And I think you've really brought to life the journey that your parish is on. And it's a lovely thing to hear about, especially at this time when we're thinking about trying to be open to the work of the Holy Spirit through the synodal process and in other ways and still rebuilding the church after Covid. I think that's important for lots of parishes still, lots there for people to get their teeth into. And I think you've also talked about many resources that are available. And as always, there'll be links in the episode notes so you can follow up. But thank you Father Michael and Fiona for giving some time today.  

Thanks.

Thank you so much.  

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time.  I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday and you can follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it.  You can also follow us on social media @kindsofCatholic and remember if you connect with us on Substack you can comment on episodes and share your thoughts and be part of the dialogue there.  Until the next time.