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| Calling on Catholics to be Active |
| Written by Roberta Tuttle | |||
| Monday, 02 April 2007 07:06 | |||
 Ned Coll BLOOMFIELD – After walking 5,700 miles over the past 18 years, mostly in silent prayer, activist Ned Coll is ready to start talking, too. “This is the year of speaking. I’m taking my message farther from Hartford and to a higher level,” he said during a visit to The Catholic Transcript. “I’m on a charge now.” If he sounds like the Ned Coll of decades ago, the community activist who took busloads of black kids to all-white beaches in an effort to force access, who ran for president in 1972, who was bombastic in his campaigns to publicize the plight of the poor, it’s because he is drawing on his years of experience to spread what he calls “God activism.” That doesn’t mean that at age 67, he’s abandoning the Revitalization Corps, the Hartford social action agency that he founded in June 1964 and still directs. It was his answer, he said, to President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to “... ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” He is as committed to it as ever. From that building in the city’s Blue Hills neighborhood, though, Mr. Coll has watched the city, the state and the country deteriorate, he says. He blames the electronic media and Madison Avenue, saying Satan is working through both. “People are so paralyzed by advertising, by materialism, by cynicism, I’m trying to rally people to wake up and go back to their roots, to go back to making ‘In God we trust’ their own motto.” Catholics especially, he said, need spiritual revitalization. “We’ve got to look upon ourselves as active, dynamic Catholics,” a community of the faithful that realizes its potential for activism. The Church also must begin to market the priesthood positively instead of pointing out the challenges priests face. In taking this latest path on his spiritual journey, Mr. Coll is coming full circle. As he talked about his recent efforts, he recalled his father, an Irish poet, who encouraged him to “do what the Spirit moves you to do”; his mother, who said the rosary daily; his years at Fairfield University and, afterward, as an advertising salesman; his attendance at President Kennedy’s funeral; and the skills he honed in public speaking and public relations for the benefit of the poor, the Revitalization Corps and his political aspirations. “I had to talk my way into Life magazine and into Parade,” he said. “Before I started the Corps, my best strength was public speaking.” He counted both among the “little clues along the way” that helped bring him to this point on his journey. It was the rosary, though, that identified the path he should be following now. “Every time I say it, it inspires me big-time. My views were never as clear as they are today.” Until lately, people saw him walking “in dribs and drabs,” as he put it, wearing an oversized rosary while carrying signs urging prayer in general and for vocations in particular. “What I wasn’t really on to, as I am now, is what Scripture says: ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown …’ Now I want a speaking tour.” Mr. Coll is encouraged that, after more than 17 years, his message seems to be spreading. “This is really taking off,” said Mr. Coll, quickly listing newspaper and television interviews that were scheduled in his immediate future, a rally on Madison Avenue that he’d like to organize and plans to evangelize in Ireland and France. Mr. Coll wants his speaking tour to include colleges, religious congregations, union halls, private homes, diocesan deaneries and such television shows as “Face the State” and “Meet the Press.” While he has no doubt that the Holy Spirit and Mary will support his efforts, he wouldn’t mind getting a little earthly support as well. He said he would accept with gratitude donations that are sent to him at the Revitalization Corps, P.O. Box 1625, Hartford CT 06101.
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