Cultivating Unity

Cultivating Unity is a pastoral initiative of NOCERCC, the National Organization for Continuing Education of Roman Catholic Clergy, in partnership with CARA, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, to foster the unity of priests and bishops, in response to The Basic Plan for the Ongoing Formation of Priests, promulgated by the Catholic bishops of the United States in 2000.

Cultivating Unity is intended to be a transformational process engaging the entire diocesan presbyterate with its bishop in frank and faith-centered dialogue leading to a common rededication to priestly ministry.

The Cultivating Unity process ordinarily includes two major components:

Research:

·    A survey of priests;

·    An interview of the bishop;

·    Listening sessions with priests;

Convocation:

·    A carefully-structured and attentively-facilitated convocation, centered in common prayer and faith sharing, with bishop and priests;

·    Resources available to assist the local church in following up on action items arising from the Cultivating Unity process.

In considering the ongoing formation of the entire presbyterate, Part III of the bishops’ Basic Plan echoes the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and of Pope John Paul II in Pastores Dabo Vobis, the 1992 apostolic exhortation issued following the 1990 Synod of Bishops dedicated to “the formation of priests in the circumstances of the present day”:

The ongoing formation of a presbyterate is the deliberate cultivation of the unity of the priests and their bishop, a unity that responds to God's grace and the mission entrusted to them.

The ongoing formation of a presbyterate's unity makes the very presbyterate a more transparent sacramental sign.  “This unity among priests . . . makes [them] witnesses of Jesus Christ, who prayed…‘that they may all be one’” [Pastores Dabo Vobis, no. 74]…And the very purpose of that unity is a sacramental one,…to draw others into faith: "that the world may believe that you sent me" [John 17:21].

It is clear that the ongoing formation of presbyterates is significant for the vitality of the Church's mission.  It is also clear that the formation of presbyterates centers on cultivating their unity.

[In Pastores Dabo Vobis Pope John Paul II] summarizes teaching from Vatican II and offers this simple yet challenging statement: “The ordained ministry has a radical ‘communitarian form' and can only be carried out as ‘a collective work’” [no. 17].  This truly is the teaching of the Second Vatican Council abundantly evident in Presbyterorum Ordinis, which so emphasizes the communitarian-collective dimension of priestly ministry that it quite deliberately avoids any reference to "priest" in the singular form. From start to finish, the decree only speaks of “priests.”