A Mission is Born
It’s been more than three decades since CCO’s founders set out to put into words the charism of their new movement. They composed a mission statement to guide their work:
Catholic Christian Outreach is a university student movement dedicated to evangelization.
We challenge young adults to live in the fullness of the Catholic faith with a strong emphasis on becoming leaders in the renewal of the world.
Now, CCO leaders have created an updated articulation of that statement. The refreshed mission statement reflects the fullness of what CCO has come to mean for the thousands of young Catholics who make up the movement today –– and for the many thousands more who support and benefit from its work. But this refreshed mission statement also reflects the roots, the origin, of the CCO movement.
Founders André and Angèle’s faith came alive at university. But when they looked to their peers, they weren’t able to share the joy of the Catholic faith that they experienced. The Church was increasingly irrelevant to the youth, and the youth often seemed irrelevant to parish life in the Church. CCO was born out of a desire to spur conversion in university students, and to help young people recognize their own potential for faith leadership and evangelization.
But at the time young Christians in North America were more likely to experience a faith encounter in Protestant churches than in the Catholic Church. CCO’s founders saw that young Catholics had a clear desire to live out their faith because they were abandoning their Catholic parishes for leadership positions in Protestant groups. Evangelical Protestant organizations had become so ubiquitous that even the word “Christian” came to connote Protestantism.
It wasn’t that the Catholic Church didn’t have anything to say to young people. In fact, in late 1988 Pope John Paul II spoke clearly on the vocation and mission of the lay faithful in his Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici. In that document, the Holy Father painted a picture of youth engaged in the work of the Church:
“Youth must not simply be considered as an object of pastoral concern for the Church: in fact, young people are and ought to be encouraged to be active on behalf of the Church as leading characters in evangelization and participants in the renewal of society.”
So the Church had a revolutionary message for young people, but the word wasn’t getting out. And this was the climate into which CCO was born.
André and Angèle took the message of the Church and applied the evangelical principles that had been met with so much success through the Protestant groups already thriving on college campuses. The adapted model can be simply explained in three parts –– Proclaim, Equip, and Commission. By this, they meant:
- delivering a clear and simple kerygma message that invites a decision –– Proclaim;
- leading people into the fundamentals of living as a disciple of Jesus and –– Equip;
- preparing them to reach others now and in the future –– Commission.
This last step has always been a crucial point for the movement. CCO was always meant to be a movement rather than a “youth group” –– its work was always meant to look outward.
This kind of movement might seem simple by today’s standards. Nearly 50 years have passed since the documents of the Second Vatican Council expounded on the critical role of the laity. Pope John Paul II, who spoke so clearly to the youth of the Church, is now a saint. And the synodal Church discusses the needs of youth prominently. But all of these ideas were very new in the summer of 1988.
So one might reflect on the mission statement of 30 years ago and completely miss its radical foundations.
First, the word “evangelization” itself was a bold choice. In that time, Pope John Paul II’s “new evangelization” wasn’t widely understood. That word had to be reclaimed from Protestant groups to be used in a Catholic context.
Secondly, the phrase “fullness of the Catholic faith” set this group apart from others that might choose to focus on the aspects of Catholic teaching that were fashionable or easy to accept. Misunderstandings and misinterpretations of Church teachings had necessitated the creation of the Catechism of Catholic Church which would not be promulgated until 1992. Before that time, a commitment to the “fullness of the Catholic faith” was a radical statement of loyalty to Church teachings.
Finally, the emphasis on young people as faith leaders was revolutionary. Though their active role in the Church was championed by the Holy Father himself, it was not yet a reality.
In this light, the founding mission statement was ahead of its time. It looked to the future of the Church with hope that new modes of formation, commitment to the Catholic faith and the fervor of the young Church would bring Christ to the people of the next millennium.
And the statement served CCO well, expanding the movement beyond the campus, serving young people as their faith matured and they went out into the world.
CCO leaders reflected on all of this in the crafting of the refreshed mission statement. They knew it must be formed with the same bold and principled spirit that this first statement was created. With this updated mission statement, CCO preserves the bold vision of its founding and incorporates all that it has come to mean for the Catholic Church in Canada and the whole world over the past three decades.
CCO 2024 Refreshed Mission Statement:
CCO is a Catholic movement raising up Christ-centred, Spirit-filled leaders to evangelize the world one person at a time.
CCO’s mission, rooted on university campuses, includes alumni, parishes, dioceses, and other key church and global partners.
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