The Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Andre Vingt-Trois, has written a glowing foreword to a French book about the Alpha course in which he highlights six elements of the course which he considers particularly worthy of ‘analysis’.

The six elements he identifies are:

(i) The course’s role as a ‘beautiful example of ecumenical exercise’.

(ii) Its ability to reach the ‘re-starters’ – those who were baptised but fell away from the faith.

(iii) Its success at mixing ‘conviviality and teaching’.

(iv) Its ability to ‘reach out to those who are strangers to the Christian faith’.

(v) The need for local churches to ‘integrate the people who come out of Alpha into parish life’.

(vi) The extent to which Alpha ‘links with other parochial activities’.

He concluded: ‘Christ didn’t gather his disciples only to improve their condition as fishermen on the lake of Tiberias or their practice of the commandments. He called them to go offshore, to move into deep waters, to become witnesses of the good news that concerns everyone.

‘A faith that is not offered or shared is a faith that dries up and loses its interest, even for believers. And the Alpha course is one of the most wonderful ways for everyone to go offshore.’

Cardinal Vingt-Trois has been a supporter of Alpha since soon after his appointment as Archbishop of Paris when he opened a national Alpha conference in Paris in January 2006, which was attended by around 500 church leaders.

Around one fifth of all the Roman Catholic parishes in Paris now run the Alpha course and it is growing all over France.

The cardinal spoke briefly to Alpha pioneer Nicky Gumbel over lunch at a Catholic Congress on Evangelisation in Budapest last year.
Here is the full translation of his foreword:

1. A beautiful example of ecumenical exercise
In this week of prayer for Christians unity, the first element of reflection I would like to suggest concerns the development of the Alpha Course. Initiated in an Anglican parish, it has gradually expanded to the point of reaching the Catholic communities.

It has become an instrument of work and action which allows Catholics, Protestant and Orthodox to share together in a certain amount of convictions and projects, even though each one – obviously – puts them in action within loyalty to its own Church.

No one ever thought that the Alpha Course would be a kind of “genetic manipulation laboratory” that would lead to the rise of a new trans-confessional Church.

Consequently, we are engaged into an experience of brotherly sharing across the span of Christian Churches. We, Catholics, received an encouragement, a help, and a support, to be further faithful to our own mission.

It is a beautiful example of practical ecumenism which doesn't require big justification, as long as each one is well aware of what he is doing; one doesn't proclaim the Gospel in the same way in the Catholic tradition and in the Protestant communities, but it is the same Gospel and the same Spirit.

Here already is a reason for thanksgiving. I have heard so much how division between Christian renders the testimony of the Gospel impossible! Since we are, for once, in a position of contributing to the Testimony while working together amongst Christians of various churches, we must make public this stage of our fraternity.

2. Alpha reaches the “re-starters”
The second aspect I would like to underline concerns the staring point of the Alpha Course. It corresponds very precisely to the situation many Catholic parishes are facing.

Nowadays, there are a lot of men and women who relate to an ecclesiastical tradition by a vast variety of angles. They live a very erratic belonging to their church, to the Christian faith and to the Gospel, mainly due to an adventurous existence and the paths that they followed, to such extend that, for the past fifteen years in the Catholic pastoral, one speaks of “re-starters”.

People who have either been baptized and have known a certain Christian initiation in childhood, or people who had a substantial Christian practice, but who, by due to certain events happening in their life, have wondered away, not only from the practice of their Christian communities, but, even more deeply, from the concerns of the faith.

They are people for whom God's Word has progressively become insignificant in their eyes or in their heart; not that they despise it, but it simply doesn't make sense to them anymore. It is a Word which doesn't speak to them anymore, and it is not a question of translation.

At this point, it is necessary to deflate the windbag that God's Word would be inaudible because too complicated. When it is said: “Do well to those who do you wrong”, there is nothing complicated there; what is difficult is not to say it but to do it! Everybody understands very well what it means.

The freedom of God reaches the hearts in a way we cannot control or program. There are people who find in themselves, not answers, but questions. These questions are not necessarily religious, but they are fundamental to human existence.

They are confronted by life at birth, by love, by death or by events less final, such as issues of human relationships, or work or lodging. Then a questioning arises and they start to look for a beginning of answers.

In a globally secularized society, in an almost generalized indifference, we witness the emergence of human anxiety, in its deepest sense, not merely the concern of, “what is going to happen to us?” or “Where are we going?”

Tough these kinds of concerns have not abandoned the heart of men. And through a sensible word, a calm gesture, a hand reaching out, a dialogue, a particular attention, one says to himself, “Maybe the Gospel could bring some of the answers I am looking for; it might be worth it for me to start up again...” These are the ones we call the “re-starters”.

And facing this opportunity to start up again there can be a kind of wall a ditch, a barrier. The people concerned are not necessarily ready to take the initial step, which they see as institutional or very official, to go and speak with a “professional of religion”, not necessarily the priest, but more extensively the person who welcomes them into the church.

We often don't realise what it means for someone who has been 10, 15, 30 years, outside the Christian communal life to enter afresh the porch of a church and take the initiative to talk to someone in there. It is a considerable step.

Who are they going to talk to? To whom will they be able to reveal any of the numerous questions they carry in their heart? Who will be the John-the-Baptist who will able them to reach out to Christ? Who will be the disciple that will tell them, as to the blind at the city gates of Jericho, “Get up and walk, He is calling you!” (Mark 10:49).

Here rises the question of how the members of our Christian communities are indeed present to their world, not “their own little inner world”, but the world in which they live. How are we present to others?

Are we regular interlocutors for those around us, are we anchored enough in their lives, to the point that there is a sufficient level of confidence established between us for them to dare speak to us of the things that appear important to them?

Put another way, how are we sent by the Christ to carry the gospel in the midst of people? When we allow ourselves to be led by this dynamic of presence, of proximity and opening, we can see that it allows us sometimes to open a door, to begin a dialogue… It is precisely at this point that the Alpha Course helps to go farther.

3. Conviviality and teaching: a way to move forwards together
I would like to reflect also on the way the architects of the Alpha Course have progressively worked out a method, uniting a series of elements, that correspond to the expectations of people today. What are they?

There is a time of fellowship, of welcoming, an atmosphere that expresses the joy to meet up again, or to meet for the fist time. It is important because many of the people coming to the course, perhaps not necessarily against their wishes, come with a lot of shyness and perplexity.

And for them to access that joy of meeting together, it is necessary that we put a lot into it, because it is our responsibility to create this ambiance, this environment, this feeling of feast; this joy of togetherness.

Then, there is a time of teaching where one receives information. Among the participants to the Alpha Course, some are older Christians who have become rather “cold”, but there may still be some embers and if one blows over a little it ends up by gradually coming back.

There are also people who are totally uninformed about the whole thing. In order to help them participate, and speak, and listen, we need to give them keys of understanding, information about the Christian faith and the ecclesiastical practices.

Finally, through a time of communication, an opportunity is given to discover that, beyond the first shyness or the first difficulties, we are all more or less in the same boat in regard to the Gospel.

You may have higher knowledge or richer experiences, be stronger or more alive, but when you really put yourselves before the Word of the Gospel, you realise that you are no more advanced than those who don't have this wealth of experience.

The questioning of the gospel goes so deep into the heart of our lives that we are always, in a certain way, beginners in the process of growing up.

To illustrate this, one could say that, on a mile walk, the one who makes big strides and the one who makes smaller ones don't arrive at the same time. But on a march of 1000 miles, the length of strides doesn't change many things: we are all far from the goal.

The fundamental attitude is not that we ask ourselves, “How am I going bring to them where I want to lead them to?”, or “how am I going to make them stick after what I believe to be important?” but rather, “how am I going to make these people fell welcome?”, “how am I going to receive from their experience something that will make us all move forward together?”

In this last concern, my job consists merely in helping them to speak out what they can pass on.

4. Salvage Christians or reach out to those who are strangers to the Christian faith?
There is another point that I wanted to mention for your encouragement; that is if you need encouraging... We sometimes hear people say, “The Alpha Course, it is very good but it is not really a missionary operation because 80% of the people who are reached are already Christians”. What I have said previously shows that it is not enough to have the title to really be Christian.

More deeply, if we are in this situation, it is also because our Christian communities are not always determined to adopt a missionary attitude. Are we, then, to “specialise” the Alpha Course in the retraining or the resetting of Christians? Or do we believe that the Alpha Course can be a place and an experience of discovery of the faith for people who are not Christians? Depending of your answer to this question, you will not invite the same kind of people to the Course. What if we consider the Alpha Course as a kind of catechesis for re-starters; it is very useful, it is necessary, and it has to be done.

But if we want to reach out to the people outside, we must ask ourselves another question: “Can the Alpha Course really be a first contact with the Christian faith for people that are completely strangers to it?” If this is the case, it might be is necessary to reconsider our practice and our experience to integrate this concept.

Is our code of practice really open to people of that category or is it only intended to bring back the Christians who have fallen away? Depending on the perspective you choose, you will not give the same answer to the question, “Who do we invite?”

5. How to integrate the people who come out of Alpha into the parish’s life?
As the Alpha Course progressively increases, parishes see new Christians arriving, for which the integration into the life of the parish is not always easy.

In order to carefully consider this problematic, it is useful to rely upon our experience concerning the neophytes, the new Christians baptized and confirmed on the night of Easter. For one or two years, sometimes more, they have experienced a very communal progress, continually followed up and sustained by the catechumen.

Then, during the night of Easter, it is magnificent, and everybody is much moved. At best, the following Sunday, we have a little party, and after, “Pfffuit! Good journey and good riddance!” And what do they do? What happens to them? A temptation, to which we do not always escape, is when the group moving towards baptism, which we call catechumenal, suddenly says, “Well, let's continue together». It is a bit like saying, instead of an introduction to the church; it is opening a new one!

If one wants to develop another type of relationship, it is necessary for parishioners to already be present within the group and the course, right from the time of integration for the new Christian. Or another way to say this, it is necessary for the guest to already know someone of the parochial community.

To build the Christian community, it is necessary to establish relationships from a person to another. Those relationships cannot exist by decree! If one wants the preparation to sacraments to emerge into a better ecclesiastical practice, it is essential that in the mist of the preparation team, there are people who “do nothing specific”, people who are not organizers and not in training, but who are merely available interlocutors, available mates.

That doesn't necessarily work every time, but in this way, one can meet new people and get connected … This is the idea of having “helpers” in the Team of the Alpha small group, there must be people who are just there, without having to do anything special a part from being there for the Guests. That way, they are able to be a link with the rest of the community. Going to the Service on Sunday for a new Christian who has never been to church, or who haven’t been for the past 15 years, is a step which can feel very difficult and painful.

If he doesn't already know someone there who will recognize him, or who could even tell him, “I’ll come and pick you up to go to church, and afterward we’ll go for a coffee”, we will always be confronted to difficulties of integration.

6. The link of Alpha with other parochial activities
This brings me to my last point: not only do we need various initiatives for the proclamation of the gospel, but we also need to manage positively the relationship between these initiatives within the whole Christian community. One of the risks is the juxtaposition of groups of all kinds without being any relationship between them.

It allows the Sunday parishioner to sleep out even more quietly; he knows that others take care of doing what he doesn't do. He is happy because, as he likes saying that he goes to “living church”. Heaps of activities are offered, but he is not made for any of them… I mention this while talking about the Alpha Course but it is to be said about most church activities; it is therefore necessary to always think about the surface of contact; that is the potential of infectivity of these groups to an assembly which is not always sufficiently prepared to it all.

How do we facilitate the communication between all the groups and projects and with the parish assembly? We need to think about this, at least for the diocese of Paris, with the parishes that are running Alpha.

We looked at this question wth the leaders of these parishes because the ability of contact and infectivity depends, in part, upon the initiative of the vicar/pastor/church leader. He may just be a merely tolerant innkeeper who offers a minimum service: allocating a venue with keys, electricity, gas and water, but nothing else. It is already a lot not be in the street! One could take the Alpha Course in the square, but the dinner might not be the same…

The vicar/pastor/church leader could also say, “At the end of the day, this Alpha Course could be useful”. And on the top of giving you a venue, he could also send a few people your way, saying to them, “you will probably be interested by this kind of meetings!”

And this is already a step further. An additional step would be that he and others try to enquire with him, “what is this experience producing in its periphery and in our parish?” Would it be worth it to sit around a table and consider together what Alpha produces? Not only in the internal logic of the Alpha Course, which has its own grids of analysis and debriefing, but what does it change for us, in the style of the whole parish?

The vicar/pastor/church leader in his parish can just be an understanding innkeeper, or an encouraging innkeeper, or even an inspiring innkeeper. One would be satisfied that fifty or a hundred people in his parish are leading a particular activity. That’s beautiful!

It does them good, it makes them happy and they do a little publicity here and there amongst their friends. But it doesn't affect anything of what the others do. Or, it becomes obvious that, through this experience, a particular dynamic has begun.

Maybe then, he will be encouraged to look for an articulation that will make of the Alpha Course a little more than a simple guest seating on the parochial Internet site.

Maybe Alpha will be able to bring, beyond a set of evenings, something that reaches a definite progress in regards to the situation of the parish, the surrounding area, etc. It is infectivity which makeds things move forward. And this is exactly what happened in Paris where over twenty Catholic parishes run an Alpha Course.

Translated from the French by j.chevallier@yahoo.co.uk