Mission Spirit of the Church is Focus
of Television Special
WASHINGTON (September 2, 1997) -- Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston will participate in a television special exploring how Catholics in the United States have experienced their faith in practice by reaching out to their brothers and sisters in Latin America.
Sharing Faith Across the Hemisphere will air on the Odyssey cable network, Sunday, September 21 at 5:00 p.m. (ET). Through taped segments and a panel discussion, viewers will see and hear the Church's ancient characteristic of mission explored in its modern expression.
Father James J. Ronan, Executive Director of the Bishops' Secretariat for the Church in Latin American will host the program. Joining Cardinal Law on the panel will be Monica and Tom Stopka, lay missionaries recently returned from work in Honduras, and School Sister of Notre Dame Ann Carol Kaufenberg, co-director of the Chicago Archdiocese's Catholic Mission Office, who has worked in Guatemala.
"To go forth, to move beyond, to be concerned about others, these are signs of a growing faith community," says Father Ronan. "And the number of individuals and parishes in the U.S. who have stretched out their hands to those in Latin America and realized a deeper faith is a story that hasn't been told."
"To understand the missionary dimension of the Church is to feel the excitement of the apostles," he concluded.
Sharing Faith Across the Hemisphere is produced by Golden Dome Productions in cooperation with the Latin America Secretariat at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference, and WGBH-TV, Boston.
The Bishop's Committee on the Church in Latin America, and its Washington-based Secretariat, oversee an annual collection in Catholic parishes in the United States. While most of the annual collection is used to fund grants to dioceses, seminaries, Catholic universities and other entities in the countries of Latin America, some monies are used to raise awareness in the United States of the special relationship between the Church here and the Church in South and Central America. The television special is part of a number of activities being coordinated by the Committee and the Secretariat leading up to the Synod of Bishops for America called by Pope John Paul II for November 16 to December 12 in Rome. A book published by the Committee, Sharing Faith Across the Hemisphere, has been called "necessary reading" in preparation for the Synod, and a video by the same title is being used in parishes and schools in the United States to show how many Catholics can put faith into action.
Sharing Faith Across the Hemisphere, both the book and the video (with accompanying discussion guide), is available for purchase in English and Spanish from the NCCB/USCC's Office for Publishing and Promotion Services. To order, call toll-free 1-800-235-8722.