Introduction to Alpha in a Catholic Context
The Alpha course is a local parish tool for evangelisation that is being used by hundreds of Catholic parishes in 60 countries around the world. Alpha, which grew out of a local Anglican parish community, is now running in 33,000 churches of every denomination around the world.
In particular Alpha is attracting many young people who are asking the question ‘Is there more to life than this?’ This quest has led nearly ten million people to come on an Alpha course in 168 countries around the world.
The Alpha course has received the support of many Catholic Bishops, priests and lay people around the world who are seeking to respond to the call to a new evangelisation.
‘The purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men. And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is.’
Pope Benedict XVI
'Evangelising is in fact the grace and vocation to the proper Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelise.'
Pope Paul VI
Evangelii Nuntiandi
'I sense the moment has come to commit all of the Church's energies to a new evangelisation and mission to all nations. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.'
Pope John Paul II
Redemptoris Missio
'John Paul II encouraged us as Christians, at the beginning of the new millennium, in the face of widespread apathy and Godforsakenness
among men, not to relent in the task of the new evangelisation.
The Alpha course sees itself as committed to exactly this task.'
Walter Cardinal Kasper
President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity
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