Alpha in a
Catholic Context

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Are Alpha and Catholicism compatible?

Alpha is a series of group conversations that freely explore the basics of the Christian faith in an open, friendly environment. Everyone’s welcome.

Many Catholic parishes have seen Alpha have a transformative effect on their community, by both welcoming people who have never heard the gospel message before and reawakening the faith in those who have.

Hear Father Stephen answer some key questions on Alpha in a Catholic context.

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Get in touch with our Alpha in a Catholic Context lead.

In this webinar we explore what Alpha is, how people have seen Alpha impacting their parishes and unpacking the age-old misconception ‘Alpha isn’t Catholic enough!’. We are joined by:

Canon David Boyd (Parish Priest at St John Bosco & St Bernadette’s in Erskine, Paisley)
Fr Stephen Langridge (Parish priest at St Elizabeth of Portugal in Richmond, London)
Allegra Mutanda (Director of Evangelisation & Leadership at St Peter & the Winchester Martyrs in Winchester)

Hear from others.

Watch the Webinar

Pippa’s Story

Stories

Hyères’ Story


  • We talk to Fr Joseph Owusu-Ansah about how to use Alpha to form disciples and begin the journey of church renewal in a struggling parish.

    Hey Fr Joe, can you tell us a bit about your parish?

    In the summer of 2020, I arrived in my parish, the Parish of the Holy Family, Thanet, which is not too far from Canterbury and Dover.

    I inherited a parish that wasn’t growing. There’s been a history of nothing happening. It’s very elderly, the average age of the parish is seventy. There was about 150 Mass attendance before I came, and when I arrived, because of COVID, there were about 45 people coming.

    And you have started running Alpha there?

    Right now, I am using Alpha as a way to invite the ordinary person in the pew to come alongside me to fulfil the vision that God has put on my heart for the parish. I want to go on a journey with these people, to fall in love with Christ, to deepen our relationship with Christ so that we will want to give. That’s how I have used it.

    So, I invited virtually everyone in the parish whom I thought was 55 years and below to come with me on a journey. There were ten of us and during the Easter season, we did Alpha. I want them to deepen their love for Jesus so that they will come along with me and work with me towards the vision because I cannot do it alone. I want them to fall in love with Jesus and seek to deepen their relationship with Him.

    What effect have you seen Alpha have on the people in your church?

    I’ll give you a particular instance. There was a woman I invited on this journey. She’s at Mass every Saturday evening and she said, ‘Father, if this is about getting me to do anything in the Church then forget it.’ Someone who is at Mass every Saturday evening, you can see that she’s engrossed in the Mass - fantastic, but then ‘I won’t do anything.’ 

    I said, ‘just come along’. During Alpha, I started seeing a shift. After we did the Alpha session on the Bible she said, ‘I actually feel bad that I’ve not been outreaching about the Bible to people. I’ve not really talked to people about the Bible in the past.’

    In the evaluation for that Alpha, she said, ‘how can we not share this.’ Someone who said, ‘if it’s about doing anything for the Church, forget it’! 

    Through Alpha, there’s been able to be a shift with people who came to Mass, even in the midst of the pandemic. Maybe they were content with coming to Mass, but now there’s been a shift that they want to share the message.

  • We ask Fr Matt Roche-Saunders, a Catholic priest based in Aberystwyth, can Alpha work in the Catholic Church? He’s done the research. 

    So you wrote your dissertation on Alpha - what drove you to do that and what was your journey with it?

    I knew good people who I trusted who had decided not to use Alpha because they said it wasn’t Catholic. I knew good people who I trusted who had decided the exact opposite. I thought, ‘these people are good, they’ve obviously come to these different conclusions by some decision, I want to know how they got there.

    But I wanted to do it properly, to go through everything Alpha has to say and ask ‘can this sit with our Catholic faith?’ That was the impetus. And is this a tool we can trust? Can we trust it to do what we’re hoping it will do for our people? 

    My conclusion was, if we understand Alpha as Alpha understands itself, then it’s an excellent tool for evangelisation in the Catholic Church.

    If we expect Alpha to be doing something it doesn’t set out to do, i.e. to be a course on catechesis, to cover every box, to be a Catholic course, well it didn’t intend to be that so it can’t be that, so of course, it’s going to fall down. 


  • We catch up with Fr Keith and Catherine to ask them about their experience of running Alpha at St. Mary's Catholic Cathedral, Aberdeen.

    How has Alpha helped you to create that sense of belonging and community at the Cathedral? 

    Fr Keith: For me, it serves so many functions: the encounter with Christ, the personal relationship side which is critical, the forming of friendships and so developing that sense of community and sense of belonging - the meal being so, so important for that. And then forming leaders, taking people up to become part of the team. So for me, it’s not just a plug in and play course; it’s multifaceted and really does hit a lot of the key areas that we need to work on as a parish.

    Catherine: Someone asked me the question once, ‘well, why can’t we just do Alpha in a weekend?’ They really wanted to get Alpha done and tick that box for whatever reason. There’s a reason it’s done over 11 weeks and it’s because each week you grow in community in friendship and that just deepens as each week goes on.

    ‘Patience and perseverance and investing in people I think is crucial to the success of it.’