Christian Life Community and the Spirit of "Fratelli Tutti". On Fraternity and Social Friendship

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Theology - Practical Theology, grade: 1.0, Kwame Nkrumah University, language: English, abstract: This paper was presented to the St Ignatius Christian Life Community CLC], one of the thousands of CLC cell-groups in all five continents. The St Ignatius CLC is the oldest such group in Zambia. The current members of the group go back over 30 years of belonging to the community. While preparing to deliver this paper via Zoom on 29 November 2020, it occured to me that for members of Christian Life Community who wish to understand "The Spirit of Fratelli Tutti," they need not look further than the ethos and spirituality of CLC. I challenged members of CLC to ask themselves: how can CLC help us to live out the Spirit of Fratelli Tutti? I reminded the participants that the number of Papal Encyclicals since the modern era is staggering. From the papacy of Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758), to the papacy of Pope Francis, it is estimated that 299 encyclicals have been churned in the modern era but it looks like most of them ended on shelves in presbyteries around the world and did not reach the ordinary Christian in the pew. There may have been many reasons for that such as the pyramidal structure of the Church which saw the Church through the lens of the clergy. I feared that this may be the way of Fratelli Tutti if we did not do anything about it. That is why this Zoom conference was important and in many ways. It was something of a first - it was organised by lay people and delivered by a lay person. I challenged participants to go back to their families, neighbourhoods, parishes, Small Christian Communities, country, continent and even planet to ask, "What does Fratelli Tutti mean for my family, neighbourhood, parish, Small Christian Community, country, continent and even planet?"