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Missionaries of the
Sacred Heart
Last Update:
04/02/2012
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• Up • Readings • Visits • Choosing a City • Tilburg Seminar •
Discerning where the project should be:
Aston in Birmingham
Drawing up criteria for choosing a city |
After three months of reading and
study, and after visiting a few interesting projects, we were ready in
January 2006 to
start naming criteria to help us narrow the search for a city. Our
visit to CASE in London helped enormously to
focus more clearly on this task.
Following the visit to CASE, and after having taken a few days for private
prayer and discernment, we came together to share our reflections and
draw up an agreed list of criteria. You can read these
below. These criteria
were subsequently ratified by the eight European Provincials.
We also started looking at sociological, statistical
and demographic data for various cities in England. In this way we
began to narrow down the list of cities which met our criteria.
Having drawn up a short-list of five cities we decided
to first of all pursue the city at the top of our list, Birmingham.
After meeting with the Archbishop of Birmingham on two
occasions (read more here), and receiving his
invitation to the Archdiocese, it was finally agreed on 8th April 2006
that the project would indeed be located in Birmingham, specifically in
the area on the north of the inner city known as Aston. You can
read more about the profiles of both Birmingham and Aston
here. |
Criteria for Selecting a City
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A large city
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Multi-cultural, multi-ethnic,
multi-religious
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A crossroads city characteristic of
contemporary trends in European cities
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A growing / changing city – future
oriented
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A secular city (de-Christianised area,
disconnected from ecclesial institutions) – unbelief, indifference,
etc – yet also demonstrating the emergence of new religions and spirituality.
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Deprivation
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Little presence of agencies, projects,
religious, charities, etc.
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Fragmentation, disconnected communities
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Migration (new-comers, refugees, economic
migrants, asylum seekers)
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Good church support – welcome of bishop,
parish, clergy, etc.
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Supportive networks for ourselves
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Presence of other MSC in the general area
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Good means of transportation
Other Criteria to bear in mind…
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Our desire to model a prophetic lifestyle
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Our desire to promote integration in a
European society of fragmentation
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Possibilities of developing ministerial
outlets beyond the parochial context
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Our desire to provide good supportive and
discerning space for people exploring religious community, and/or
ministry/vocation in the context of MSC Charism
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The fact that we are a pilot project for
possible future MSC Projects (European or Provincial)
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Our decision not to live in the commercial
district but a residential neighbourhood
Discernment with
the Archbishop of Birmingham
On Thursday 16th March
2006 the three of us visited Archbishop Nichols at Archbishop's House in
Birmingham. The purpose of the visit was to introduce ourselves and the
project and to begin to explore with him the possibility of establishing our new
community in the city of Birmingham. We had an excellent conversation with
the Archbishop and with Bishop David McGough, one of the Auxiliary Bishops in
Birmingham. Before opting for Birmingham, Archbishop Vincent invited us to take
some time to clarify our primary intention in undertaking the project and to
first consider the city of Stoke-on-Trent, a smaller city in North Staffordshire
with significant problems in terms of poverty and deprivation. We agreed
that we would take a serious look at Stoke and arranged for a visit of the city
with Bishop McGough the following Tuesday (21st March 2006). While Stoke
presented many interesting possibilities, and is undoubtedly a city of great
need, our visit and research led us to the conclusion that it did not
sufficiently fulfil our established criteria. The principal reasons are as
follows:
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Its population is only 240,000, it is
not a major English city
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96.3% of the population were born in the
UK
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94.8% are white, 2.6% are Pakistani,
0.5% are Indian - its is not a multi-ethnic city
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74.7% are Christian, 3.2% are Muslim and
21.4% claim no religion or did not answer the 2001 census question - it is
not a strong multi-religious city
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4% are unemployed – in the 1980’s and
90’s this was very bad following the collapse of local industries but by the
2nd Quarter of 2004 it had recovered to the West Midlands average
and the level of employment is now predicted to grow through to 2008.
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It is currently the 18th most
deprived Local Authority in the UK (Birmingham is 15th).
Numerous service-sector and logistics companies have recently established
themselves in Stoke and a KPMG report in 2004 declared Stoke the most
cost-effective place to set up business. The housing market is booming with
terraced houses currently rising in price by £500 per week.
On Saturday 8th April we returned to
Birmingham for a second meeting with Archbishop Vincent and shared with him our
thoughts on Stoke-on-Trent and our more precise intentions in undertaking this
project (click here). He was
very encouraging and understood fully our reservations about Stoke. When
we asked if we could establish the project in Birmingham he gladly agreed.
We suggested to him that the area of the city covered by the Aston Ward (Aston,
Lozells and Birchfield) represented the best match to our criteria and that we
would like, if he was willing, to look for accommodation in this general area.
Recognising the great need in this neighbourhood, he readily agreed and warmly
welcomed us to the Archdiocese.
Why have we chosen Birmingham as our preferred city?
Birmingham: fitting
the criteria
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Birmingham is the second city of England, and the second
largest in terms of population after London.
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Birmingham has a city population of 984,600 (in 2001) and an
urban area population of 2,284,093.
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The area covered by the city is 267.8 square Km with a
population density of 3,649 people per square Km (the national average for
England is 377)
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The average age in Birmingham is 36 (compared with a national
average of 38.6)
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29.6% of the city's population are from an ethnic group other
than white (compared with 9.1% for the whole of the UK)
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The city-wide ethnic mix is as follows; white (70.4%), Asian
(12.1%), Black (6.1%), Mixed Race (3.2%), Chinese (0.5%), Other (0.6%).
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In the 2001 Census 59.1% described themselves as Christian,
14.3% as Muslim, 2.9% as Sikh, 2.0% as Hindu, 0.2% as Jewish, 0.3% as Other,
12.4% as of no religion and 8.4% not stated.
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The city-wide unemployment figure currently stands at 8.9%
(March 2006)
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Birmingham is the 15th most deprived local authority out of
354 nationally
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In the fourth quarter of 2005 1,930 Asylum Seekers were being
supported in Birmingham by the National Asylum Support Service
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The Archbishop has been very encouraging of our project and
is delighted that we are coming to work in the city.
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Birmingham is very close to two proximate MSC communities;
Tamworth in Staffordshire (19.8 miles, 31.9 Km) and Princethorpe in
Warwickshire (31.1 miles, 50.1 Km)
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Birmingham is excellently served with train and bus networks
and a major international airport.
Why Aston?
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Aston is situated on the north side of
Birmingham city centre with a neighbourhood population of 27,000
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It is a multi-ethnic neighbourhood with
a relatively even balance between Asian (49.8%), black (20.3%) and white
(23.5%) communities.
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It is a multi-faith neighbourhood –
predominantly Muslim (44.3%) and Christian (32.4%), with a minority Hindu
(2.6%) and Sikh (1.5%) population
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It is a seriously deprived area – the
second most deprived neighbourhood in Birmingham; (the most deprived area doesn’t
have the same ethnic mix as Aston). 88.2% of the population of Aston fall in the
Nation’s top 10% of people living with multiple deprivation. It’s Townsend
Score (which rates the relative deprivation of all the Wards in Birmingham)
is 6.1 – the second highest in Birmingham (The highest is 6.3).
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There is a very high level of
unemployment – at 22.5% the Aston neighbourhood has the highest unemployment
figures of any neighbourhood in Birmingham (the figure for the whole of
Birmingham is 8.9% and the figure for the UK as a whole in the last quarter
of 2005 was 5.0%).
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There is continuous ongoing migration
(Aston is one of the most used neighbourhoods for housing Asylum Seekers and
Refugees; at the same time the Afro-Caribbean community is beginning to
shrink while the Asian community is growing).
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The presence of inter-community conflict
and tension – caused by differences in ethnicity, religion and disputes over
allocation of funding.
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It is an area with significant problems
with drugs, gangs and gun and knife crime.
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It is served by one Catholic parish
(Parish of the Sacred Heart) and one Catholic Primary School (Sacred Heart
Primary School). There are a variety of other Christian churches in the
neighbourhood (Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, United Reformed Church,
Pentecostal Churches, Evangelical Churches and Assemblies of God Churches), and
at least twelve mosques.
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It has three local train stations in the
Ward area and is well served by buses in and out of the city centre.
Moving to Aston
The Irish Province of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart has
purchased a house on Ettington Road in the centre of
Aston which is now the home of the Cordate Community. As a community, and
a project of all eight European MSC Provinces, we rent the house from the Irish
Province. It is on a street
parallel to the Catholic Church and facing one of the Aston Mosques.
There were long delays with the build of the house, but we
finally got the keys on 26th September 2007 (a year later than planned!) and moved in immediately.
You can view a series of photos we took charting the progress
of the building of our new home here.
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