14: A Community of Communities

Episode 14: Sam explains how his life is shaped both by wanting to share his faith and to help others. 

The value of community shines though as he talks about being involved in local politics, working especially on climate change and health inequalities,  engaging with faith leaders, and being part of a parish. 

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Music: Greenleaves from Audionautix.com

Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today. Pope Francis has used the image of a caravan. A diverse group of people travelling together. On a sometimes chaotic journey together. That's an image that has helped to shape this podcast. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed, and maybe challenged at times. I am too in these conversations. 

Thanks so much for joining me, Sam, on this conversation today. 

Hello, Theresa, and thank you for inviting me.

You're somebody who's been in a different role than we've had on the pod before. So this is gonna be a really interesting conversation, I hope. 

I'm Sam Corcoran. I'm a Labour and Cooperative Party Councillor in Sandbach in Cheshire. And I was leader of Cheshire East Council from May 2019 to July 2024. And the two things I've been passionate about in campaigning, attacking climate change and reducing health inequalities. 

I wonder if you could just start by telling us, you know, have you have you been a Catholic your whole life? Did you become a Catholic later in life? What happened for you? 

Yes, I have been a Catholic my whole life. My father was Catholic. My mother was brought up as a Quaker. So I was brought up as a Catholic. But, you know, when I went to see my grandparents, I attended Quaker meetings.

 That's interesting. I wonder if that's had some influence on the things that concern you now. What do you think? 

Well, it's very interesting that the National Justice and Peace Conference was both Catholic and Quaker amongst the speakers. And I do think it influences me in terms of what you want to do. I'm also struck by the, the Community of St John, which was in so many ways the closest to the original teachings of Jesus of unmediated religion, which is what the Quakers aim to do. But of course, the Community of Saint John died out. And if you don't have the structures, that tends to be what happens.

I'm gonna have to go and look up the Community of Saint John after the conversation, but okay. And so what are the things now that if you look back over your life, can you see a kind of faith journey that you've made? Can you see God working at points and have there been times that have wavered a bit?

 Yes, certainly. I can remember as a teenager, challenging everything as most teenagers do. And when I was staying at Quarr Abbey, where my uncle is a Benedictine monk, being asked by somebody, why do you believe in God? And I went away and thought about this. And at one point I thought, well, let's just imagine for a moment that God doesn't exist. And I found I couldn't do that. It was, which was quite a shock to me. It was just, well, that's absurd to think that God doesn't exist. So that was a revelation as a teenager. Then I became president of the Oxford University Newman Society at university. And then after I got married, my wife's a doctor, a GP, and we went to work in Kenya for 2 years with the Volunteer Missionary Movement. So again, being a missionary cemented my faith. 

Gosh, I think there's plenty of signs of God working in your life there. And I think you're right to feel so, don't know if confident is the word, to have a belief in God as something that you can't shake from teenage years, you know, is, that's a really strong foundation, isn't it, for your life then? And are there choices that you've made about what you've done in your life that come from values you have as a Catholic or as a Christian?

Certainly. I mentioned about working in Kenya with the Volunteer Missionary Movement. As you want to share your faith, you also want to help others. And that's shaped me in terms of entering politics of helping others on a very practical level, not just helping an individual, but looking at the systems that result in people needing help and what can you do to address those systems? So that's been my motivation for getting involved with politics.

I think there's something that's attractive about politics for Christian people. I think in that, I imagine you can make a really big difference to a lot of people by changing something in the system. That as an individual person, you know, working in your parish and helping in a food bank. You can help people certainly, but the impact you can have is going to be smaller in some ways. It looks attractive that becoming involved in politics, you can make lives better for lots of people. Is that the reality? Is that what it feels like? 

You certainly can make a big difference in politics, but it's much less on a personal level. So often, you don't even know the people you're helping. And one of the big things I've campaigned on is climate change. I'm sure that's the right thing to do. But I can't identify individuals who have benefited from the actions that I've taken as a politician on that. And Cheshire East Council, where I was until recently the leader of the council, they have one of the most generous council tax support schemes. So those who are most in need paid no council tax at all. Those people, I would not know who they are. And quite rightly, I wouldn't know who they are. But I know that that policy will have helped a significant number of people who needed help.

 Okay. And so there's a sense there then that you don't get an immediate reward of seeing a smile on someone's face when you've helped them, you know? So how do you stay motivated then?

It is difficult. And particularly, it's not just that you don't get the smile on people's faces. You get an awful lot of abuse because people naturally tend to be much, readier to complain than to thank. So if you do anything, where one person wins and one person loses out, then it's likely to be the person who's lost out that will contact you rather than the person who's benefited. And it does require a deep faith to keep going if you believe that what you are doing is right. I think looking back, one thing that I should do better is to have a support network work around yourself. And that might be a point to your listeners also. If you see a politician doing something right, then praise them. 

Thank you. That is a useful thing. So lots of people that have been on the pod have found parish communities to be a place where their faith can be nurtured. Is that something that's worked for you or has that been more difficult because of the way you're working or or where you live? 

I do have a lovely parish and it's in Sandbach, a relatively small town of about 20,000 people. And it's got a good parish community. I mentioned before about the community of Saint John and how it died out. I'm taking that straight from the homilies of our parish priest who talks about the Community of St John from the gospel writer, the disciple of Jesus, linked to the Dead Sea Scrolls. And that community went out into the desert. They shared everything. They lived the life that it appears Jesus wanted people to live, but they died out. 

Now these are the Essenes. Is that right? 

Oh, I'd have to look that up, I'm afraid.

 Well, we both got some homework then. That's fine. And what about, has there been things that have been very challenging for you as Christian, and particularly in politics, but maybe in other areas of life? Are there things that you've felt very difficult to compromise on or get around as somebody who might have different values from people you're trying to engage with.

 Yes, it is. There are many things where, because people know that you're a Christian and you particularly have certain values, that if they want to get a particular thing done, they will criticise you for not having followed those values. So me campaigning on climate change, people instead of when they wanted to block housing applications, instead of saying, well, you're corrupt and you've taken a backhander, they will say, but this is a green field - and you say, you want to support tackling climate change, but you're having to cut down trees to build these houses. So you do get genuine conflicts. There is a need for more housing. We need to build more houses so that people have a decent place to live. And in many cases, if planning permission has already been granted, it's not really within the power of a local politician to stop it, or even a national politician without actually breaking the law. That I can find difficult where you're being criticised for something over which you have no or very little control and in which there are genuine competing demands.

A lot of these issues are much more complicated than people allow sometimes in the the way they engage with people in positions of authority about them. 

Yes. They are complicated. But it is competing demands. And there was a lovely phrase from the National Justice and Peace Conference from the Quakers, always allow that you may be wrong. You might not be right on this. And if we can debate on those, on that level where everybody accepts that they might be wrong, I think that would improve the level of debate. What you tend to get is people who come into it with closed minds. So, somebody who is trying to block a housing development out close to their house, they're not going to be convinced no matter what the arguments are about people who don't have houses and who need somewhere to live. They will be looking purely to put their arguments forward. And in some cases, just to hurt their opponents as much as possible. 

It sounds like you found politics quite a negative experience so far?

It can be. I've described this a lot of the time you're banging your head against a brick wall. But then when you achieve something, it's fantastic. I came into politics originally campaigning about parks and playgrounds. And that does link into both climate change and tackling health inequalities, because if you have access to green spaces, that improves your mental health. It boosts the image of the entire town, boosts mental well-being as well, and gets people out and exercising and the green spaces with trees growing, absorbing carbon. That's what I got involved with right when I first entered politics. It still gives me pleasure to walk through the local park and look at the playground and think, I did that. Or rather, even that's not quite true. That might not have happened if I hadn't been involved because it's always a team around getting something done. But there are things where I can look and say, I don't think that would have happened without me being involved. And that is immensely satisfying.

I'd just like to dig in a little bit to your own faith then. What are the things that support you in your faith? Are there scripture texts that you return to, like maybe the Gospel of John or prayers that have supported you or, or practices that are helpful to your faith? What are the things that keep your faith nourished when you're banging your head against a wall?

I think you've mentioned the parish and it is great to be able to go along to Sunday Mass and see the parish around you. See the support there. My family are a great support. In terms of the passages, I am a very driven person. I often think about the young man who asks Jesus, good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do? And that keeps coming back to me. It is clear what I can do and I think what I should be doing. I do believe that climate change is the greatest challenge facing our generation and seeing what's been said in Laudato’ Si how that links closely to your faith. And you can see that the people around the world who will lose most as a result of climate change are often the most disadvantaged. I'll never see them, but I can see that people in Bangladesh whose fields will be flooded by rising sea levels, they will lose out massively and we need to do something about it. So that does drive me on.

Okay. So a papal encyclical as well then, Laudato Si', you know, which has made a difference to lots of people, not just Catholic people, but around the world, groups outside the church. It's been a very powerful piece of work for Pope Francis, hasn't it? So you mentioned, being at Sunday Mass in your parish. Is there a kind of Mass that you prefer that that speaks most to you of  all the different kind of breadth of liturgy available to us as Catholics? What is it that you find helps you most to feel the presence of God?

I think I should definitely mention music here. I'm probably the least musical of my family, but my wife plays the organ at church. And so we vary which Mass we're going to depending on the organ rota, but usually it's the main 10:30 Mass on a Sunday morning. And it does help actually going to different Masses because I see the different communities within the parish community, depending on which Mass you're going to. And that is helpful. So there's something about the variety that actually supports you, you know, seeing lots of different people coming together at Mass. And the community aspect of that and knowing that you will be going to Mass every Sunday or sometimes every Saturday evening and seeing the communities there. I'm struck by a phrase that was used of the church, it’s a community of communities. That you can see it even in the small parish like Sandbach, where the parish is made up of 3 different communities, different people who go to the 3 different weekend Masses. And how they all come together to form the parish. And then the parishes come together to form the diocese and so on, throughout the world. 

Yeah. That's a really nice image. Thank you. In local politics, often we hear about faith communities and leaders of faith communities being engaged in local politics or being  in dialogue with local politicians. Is that something that you have been involved in? Is that something that you've found helpful? Does it actually make a difference? 

Yes, I think it does. When I was the leader of the Council, I did set up quarterly meetings with the Anglican Bishop and the Catholic Bishop. Those were helpful because one of the things I tried to tackle was health inequalities, where there is a 12 year life expectancy difference between the most affluent and the least affluent areas within Cheshire East. The ways to tackle that, surprisingly, it's not much to do with the NHS. It's much more to do with housing, decent jobs, the diet, access to green spaces, lifestyles, do you get out and do you live an active lifestyle? Mental health and physical health are inextricably linked. You can see that building the communities has a huge impact on health inequalities. And that's something that the churches are very interested in as well. And we were also able to talk about issues like, asylum seekers and how to integrate people into the communities. 

And some of those would be people from different faiths. I don't know East Cheshire. Are there communities there of people from different faiths and leaders of those communities? 

There are, but not so much as in many other places. So we have within Crewe, there's quite a strong Polish community that's been there since the 2nd World War. We also now have quite a large East Timorese community, they tend to come in with vibrant faith. And again, that's great to talk to the faith leaders over that, but it also works in the Communities team within Cheshire East Council, finding out differences of how people perceive things. And I've mentioned about the NHS not having much impact on health inequalities or not as much as many other things that the council can influence. But it is a great institution and trying to persuade some of the East Timorese community that it's free. Just register with your GP to get across that message that you have access to free healthcare. It was quite interesting that that was alien to them.

And it is interesting when some divisive opinions would be that that's why people come here and actually you're meeting a whole community who don't even know that's available to them.

That's right. And getting them to register with the GP because that then feeds into an awful lot of other things where they can be signposted towards good advice. 

And that sounds like really valuable work. I wonder if we can just go back a little bit. You mentioned being at Oxford. Was there a Catholic society there? Was that something you were part of back in those days? 

Yes, it was. And I still remember the Catholic chaplain there. There was Father Rod Strange, and there was a father Lestrange as well. So they had 2 chaplains. And I did engage with the Catholic chaplaincy. The Catholic society was called the Newman Society. So I have read up about Cardinal Newman. And one phrase from him that I still live with is he says, I believe that God has a specific task that he has assigned to me that he has assigned to no other. But then goes on to say, I may not know it in this life, but I will know it in the next. I find that quite comforting when you're not quite sure whether you're doing the right thing. I do believe that God has assigned a task to me that he has assigned to no other. But at times, I may not know what it is. 

That is lovely. I had a guest on the pod recently who's a huge fan of Cardinal Newman. And one of the things she said was that he writes as though he he hopes to be understood. He has these very clear, a very clear, way of speaking about our experiences and our, what today we might call a faith journey. I don't know if he would even use that expression back then. But, yeah, it's good to find somebody else who's also been inspired by Cardinal Newman. Are you someone who's been on pilgrimages? I'm thinking about you advocating for an active lifestyle. Are you someone that would walk or cycle to a particular place with a group?

 I haven't been on any formal pilgrimages like walking to Compostela, Santiago de Compostela. But I do cycle a lot around town. That's partly because of tackling climate change. It's better for the environment to cycle rather than drive, But it's also because it's fun. And it's good for my health. I was told a lovely statistic that for every minute you spend cycling, it expands your lifespan by a minute. If you're cycling to work, it actually takes you no time at all when looked at across the span of your life.

And my husband cycles to work and has done for many years. I'm thinking he's gonna outlive me by a long way then. 

And also the cycling, it puts together the climate change and the health inequalities, the 2 things I'm passionate about. That it is good for your health. It's good for your mental health as well. And also, you meet more people. If you're stuck in a car and you pass somebody, you've barely got a chance to wave at them. If you're on a bicycle, you can stop, you can talk to them, You can certainly wave to them and say hello as you pass.

It sounds to me, Sam, as though your faith is actually very practical. You mentioned about the young man asking Jesus, what must I do? And I think you you're very much a doer in your Christian faith. Would that be fair?

Yes. I think that is fair. Almost to a, well, to a fault. And that sometimes I think you need to just stop and just be as a Christian. And that does link back to the Cardinal Newman quote. I may not know what task God has assigned to me in this life, but I should be assured that it is there. And it may be that my task is simply to support somebody else. 

Yes. Well, you're doing so many things. One of them must be the right thing, right?

That's a very encouraging thought. Yes. Just get on.

It's been really interesting to talk to you today, Sam. Thanks so much for making some time to do that. It's been interesting to hear about local politics and to hear about the actions that you take and the actions that we can support you in as Catholic people living our faith. So thanks very much for sharing that all with us. 

Thank you very much.

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic This Time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms to be sure of not missing an episode. And follow our X/Twitter and Facebook accounts @KindsofCatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there. You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, Although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.