A MSC Mission for Europe

Ton Zwart MSC (The Netherlands), Con O'Connell MSC (Ireland) and Mark Van Beeumen MSC (Belgium): members of the MSC Cordate Community

The modern environment demands of us an honest openness to dialogue with the different cultures and "areopagi" of today (cf. Acts 17:16-34), to new ways of thinking and relating in the tradition of our way of the Heart.   MSC General Chapter 2005

Welcome to the website of the Cordate Community of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC), an international Catholic Religious Congregation.

This is a European MSC pilot project seeking to develop a Christian ministry of presence, as members of an international religious community, in the heart of the English city of Birmingham. 

The community is based in the Aston area of the city, described in most literature as a multi-ethnic, multi-faith and deprived neighbourhood.  In Birmingham it has a reputation for being a neighbourhood of high unemployment, high crime, and significant problems with drugs, gangs, guns and knives.  But it is also a neighbourhood of great friendliness, a fantastic mix of faiths and cultures, and a place of opportunity for bridge-building, dialogue and befriending.  In the heart of this neighbourhood the Cordate Community brings together MSCs from three of our eight different European Provinces in a common project of all the MSCs in Europe.  Read more about the project here...

Cordate means heart-shaped and expresses our desire to model, incarnate and share the inclusive love and compassion of Christ who loved with a human heart.  Read more here.

We hope you will enjoy browsing the pages of this site to find out more about the mission, and return often to keep up to date with our progress. 

This website is updated regularly.  Please feel free to e-mail us with your comments.

Site Highlights
Latest News All the latest news from the Cordate Community.	The Cordate Blog Ton's regular blog reflecting on aspects of our life in Aston
Purpose of the Mission Developing a ministry of Presence.	Building Community The journey of a small religious community.
Why Aston in Birmingham? The process we followed to our choice of Birmingham.	The Aston Neighbourhood Information about Birmingham and Aston
Resources for Further Reading A collection of book reviews and downloadable articles.	Spirituality of the Heart Seminar Access all the resources from our spirituality seminar.
More News stories from the recent past
Lots of things In the afternoon of February 14 we attended the meeting of the Cathedral Deanery. Papers that were up for discussion included a piece prepared by Ton about a vision for the deanery in view of the planning process that is presently going on in the Archdiocese of Birmingham. In the evening of the same day Mark and Con attended an assembly of the UK Citizens, which, being strong in London, is trying once more to get a foothold in Birmingham. The attendance was highly encouraging. On February  18 the religious of the Archdiocese met at St Mary’s, Harborne. The place was just big enough to contain us all. Archbishop Longley gave a talk about what is going on in the diocese touching on many different topics, one of which was the planning process for the future of the Archdiocese. He announced a pastoral letter about it.	Visits Our church is changing because of new people coming in from all continents. On February 19 Ton attended his first baptism of a child of Eritrean parents. He got to know them via his English classes. After the baptism he was taken to an Eritrean restaurant for a delicious meal.   In the evening of March 2 the Sacred Heart Club was reopened.The former management had been in arrears and this led to the closure of the club. Our parish priest, fr Peter Jones, consulted the parish community whether a reopening  was a viable untertaking.  The advice was positive, mostly because of the experience and trustworthiness of the new management. The first night was a great success. I’ve never seen so many Irish people in Aston.

Featured News

St Patricks Parade

Birmingham has quite a big Irish community which would not allow St Patrick’s day to go by unnoticed. The feastday of St Patrick is on March 17 but the parade in the City Centre was already held on March 11. For Ton it was the first time to experience the Irish community in full glory.

What was remarkable was that the recently reopened Sacred Heart Club had its own float advertising its Irish character under the new management and hoping to attract customers from all over Birmingham. It may need it in order to survive.

Cordate Community

We had no less than three meetings in the month of March. We started with a theological reflection. Our world is changing and so are we. It cannot be that our religious views and our image of God stay just the same inspite of what is happening. What we tried to do in our reflection was to make sense of it all, however tentatively and gropingly.

The second meeting was rather brief. It did not involve much more than looking ahead towards the months to come and harmonising our individual schedules.

The third meeting was the longest. We held it in the cottage of Princethorpe, well-known to Mark and Ton for the two years they lived there prior to their moving into Birmingham. The purpose of the meeting was to look at the Enneagram and to see where each one of us fits in. After all we had a change in our community by Con replacing Carl. We were happy to have Fr Teddy O’Brien with us to guide us in this process of self-discovery and community-building.

School Assemblies

Con has been most busy in the third week of March with school assemblies, this quite apart from the Lenten reflections he held every Monday in the undercroft of the Catholic Church for a small number of faithful parishioners. Together with other members of Aston Churches Together he went to primary schools in Aston and Nechells and played Pilate in a play about the Passion narrative. They had six performances in all and it went very well, with the children most attentive. The majority of the children were Muslim and the purpose was to make them more aware of what Christians celebrate during Holy Week and Easter.