KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
May 6, 2019
By Heidi Schlumpf
About a mile west of Wrigley Field, in Chicago’s trendy Roscoe Village neighborhood, sits a three-story, yellow-brick building, where those who can’t afford the nearby million-dollar, single-family homes can get a three-bedroom condo for half that. The building’s first-floor commercial occupants are a spiritual giftshop and bookstore run by volunteers and open only on the weekends, and Call to Action, the 40-year-old Catholic church reform organization.
Call to Action purchased the spacious, newly renovated office space — as an investment, some said — just before the recession of 2008. Before that, CTA rented decidedly less swanky digs in the basement of a parish in a predominantly Latino neighborhood.
Now, facing twin challenges of anaging membership and dwindling financial resources and after several changes in leadership, CTA is putting its Roscoe Village office up for sale and has laid off two long-time staff members, “due to declining revenues and increased operating costs,” CTA’s Vision Council announced in a recent email letter.
“These decisions were made in consideration of our anti-racism and anti-oppression principles, with a desire to be the most responsible stewards of our limited resources, in collaboration with those most directly impacted, and after much prayer, conversation and discernment,” the Feb. 20 email said.
Current CTA Executive Director Zachary Johnson, who works from Minnesota where smaller office space has been arranged, told NCR that the Roscoe Village building was too big and “assumed the size of an organization that we’re clearly not.”
Instead, Johnson wants to use Call to Action’s resources to invest in younger leaders for the organization, through an innovative new program called Re/Generation. But those younger leaders may recreate the longtime Vatican II group into something quite different from the organization they have inherited.
Johnson, 30, is hoping his strategy will take Call to Action into the next 40 or 50 years.
“We’re building for a longer-term future,” he said. “I take church reform seriously, and if we’re going to be serious, we’ve got to think in longer, bigger terms.”
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