They are active in their parish. In a word, SCC members are active, participating Catholics. The mutual support which members feel is a great attraction. There is a strange irony in the dynamic of individualism in our culture that also creates a hunger for the very community that individualism renders difficult, because community requires commitment. In most communities the central activity is some form of a Liturgy of the Word.
Scripture is a strong gatherer.
Like most American Catholics, when SCC members experience tension between church teaching and conscience or personal experience, they tend to tilt towards conscience and experience. That felt tension does not lessen the church commitment of SCC members. In his encyclical Fides et Ratio , Pope John Paul II makes it abundantly clear that there is no reason for faith to be afraid of reason. SCCs may bend over backwards too far in the other direction, and weaken the legitimate functions of leadership. For reasons, many of which are cultural, we attend much more easily to a community s inner life than to faith's public life.