New Ecclesial Movements

CUF
From the Nov/Dec 2006 Issue of Lay Witness Magazine

Issue: What are the new ecclesial movements, and what have been the popes’ assessments of them?

Response:The new movements that have been approved by the Church represent, according to Pope John Paul II, a providential response to charisms given by the Holy Spirit at this time in the Church’s history. While exhorting the movements to submit to the Church’s pastors, Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict have offered overwhelmingly positive assessments of them.

Discussion: In his 1987 apostolic exhortation on the lay faithful, Pope John Paul II described “the flourishing of groups, associations and spiritual movements” as one of the signs of “how the Holy Spirit continues to renew the youth of the Church and how he has inspired new aspirations towards holiness and the participation of so many lay faithful” in the decades following the Second Vatican Council.[1]

The work of the Holy Spirit in renewing the youth of the Church is nothing new, for “the Holy Spirit, while bestowing diverse ministries in Church communion, enriches it still further with particular gifts or promptings of grace, called charisms. These can take a great variety of forms, both as a manifestation of the absolute freedom of the Spirit who abundantly supplies them, and as a response to the varied needs of the Church in history.”[2]

In the third century, the Holy Spirit moved St. Anthony and others to live the eremitic life (that is, the life of hermits) in the Egyptian desert. In the ensuing centuries, the Holy Spirit led others in the East and the West to form monasteries. In the 13th century, the Holy Spirit moved St. Dominic and St. Francis to form mendicant orders. The 16th–18th centuries saw the founding or reforming of religious orders as a result of the diverse charisms bestowed on St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Francis de Sales, St. Alphonsus Liguori, and others.[3] In our own time, so striking is the rise of ecclesial movements that

we can speak of a new era of group endeavors of the lay faithful. In fact, “alongside the traditional forming of associations, and at times coming from their very roots, movements and new sodalities have sprouted, with a specific feature and purpose, so great is the richness and the versatility of resources that the Holy Spirit nourishes in the ecclesial community, and so great is the capacity of initiative and the generosity of our lay people.”[4]

Church history, however, is replete with examples of movements that in time departed from the Catholic faith.[5] The Church’s pastors are responsible for evaluating new movements, and Pope John Paul offers five “criteria of ecclesiality” by which to evaluate them:

“The primacy given to the call of every Christian to holiness”
“The responsibility of professing the Catholic faith”
“The witness to a strong and authentic communion in filial relationship to the Pope . . . and with the local Bishop . . . and in ‘mutual esteem for all forms of the Church’s apostolate’”
“Conformity to and participation in the Church’s apostolic goals”
“A commitment to a presence in human society”[6]

Pope John Paul II and the Movements: 1998

In 1998 and again in 2006, hundreds of thousands of members of the new movements gathered in Rome for the first and second World Congresses of Ecclesial Movements and New Communities. These congresses allowed Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI to offer their assessments of the movements.

Pope John Paul II saw the movements as the fruit of a renewed Pentecost begun at the Second Vatican Council and as a “providential response” of the Holy Spirit to the needs of our secularized time.

With the Second Vatican Council, the Comforter recently gave the Church . . . a renewed Pentecost, instilling a new and unforeseen dynamism.

Whenever the Spirit intervenes, he leaves people astonished. He brings about events of amazing newness; he radically changes persons and history. This was the unforgettable experience of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council during which, under the guidance of the same Spirit, the Church rediscovered the charismatic dimension as one of her constitutive elements. . . .

By their nature, charisms are communicative and give rise to that “spiritual affinity between persons” . . . and that friendship in Christ which is the origin of “movements.” The passage from the original charism to the movement happens through the mysterious attraction that the founder holds for all those who become involved in his spiritual experience. . . .

In our world . . . there is great need for living Christian communities! And here are the movements and the new ecclesial communities: They are the response, given by the Holy Spirit, to this critical challenge at the end of the millennium. You are this providential response.[7]

In the midst of this overwhelmingly positive assessment, Pope John Paul II emphasized the importance of submitting to ecclesiastical authority:

How is it possible to safeguard and guarantee a charism’s authenticity? It is essential in this regard that every movement submit to the discernment of the competent ecclesiastical authority. For this reason no charism can dispense with reference and submission to the Pastors of the Church. The Council
wrote in clear words: “Those who have charge over the Church should judge the genuineness and proper use of these gifts, through their office not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to what is good (cf. 1 Thes. 5:12; 19–21).” . . . This is the necessary guarantee that you are taking the right road!

In the confusion that reigns in the world today, it is so easy to err, to give in to illusions. May this element of trusting obedience to the Bishops, the successors of the Apostles, in communion with the Successor of Peter never be lacking in the Christian formation provided by your movements! . . . [Bring] your experiences to the local Churches and parishes, while always remaining in communion with the Pastors and attentive to their direction.

Pope John Paul II acknowledged the tensions surrounding some of the new movements and saw them as entering a new stage in their history:

Their birth and spread has brought to the Church’s life an unexpected newness which is sometimes even disruptive. This has given rise to questions, uneasiness and tensions; at times it has led to presumptions and excesses on the one hand, and on the other, to numerous prejudices and reservations. It was a testing period for their fidelity, an important occasion for verifying the authenticity of their charisms.

Today a new stage is unfolding before you: that of ecclesial maturity. This does not mean that all problems have been solved. Rather, it is a challenge. A road to take. The Church expects from you the “mature” fruits of communion and commitment.

Pope Benedict XVI and the Movements: 2006

Eight years later, members of the ecclesial movements convened again in Rome. In addition to preaching a homily on the Holy Spirit to the members of the movements on the vigil of Pentecost, Pope Benedict XVI offered an assessment of the movements in a message to the Second World Congress of Ecclesial Movements and New Communities. Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor, offers a positive evaluation:

Down the ages Christianity has been communicated and disseminated thanks to the newness of life of persons and communities capable of bearing an incisive witness of love, unity and joy.

This force itself has set a vast number of people in “motion,” from generation to generation. Was it not perhaps the beauty born from faith on the saints’ faces that spurred so many men and women to follow in their footsteps?

Basically, this also applies to you: through the founders and initiators of your Movements and Communities you have glimpsed the Face of Christ shining with special brightness and set out on your way.

I therefore say to you, dear friends of the Movements: act so as to ensure that they are always schools of communion, groups journeying on in which one learns to live in the truth and love that Christ revealed and communicated to us through the witness of the Apostles, in the heart of the great family of his disciples . . .

Today, the Ecclesial Movements and New Communities are a luminous sign of the beauty of Christ and of the Church, his Bride. You belong to the living structure of the Church. She thanks you for your missionary commitment, for the formative action on behalf of Christian families that you are increasingly developing and for the promotion of vocations to the ministerial priesthood and consecrated life which you nurture among your members.[8]

Like his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI offered words to the movements on the importance of submission to ecclesiastical authority:

She [the Church] is also grateful to you for your readiness not only to accept the active directives of the Successor of Peter, but also of the Bishops of the various local Churches who, with the Pope, are custodians of truth and charity in unity. I trust in your prompt obedience.

Over and above the affirmation of the right to life itself, the edification of the Body of Christ among others must always prevail with indisputable priority.

Movements must approach each problem with sentiments of deep communion, in a spirit of loyalty to their legitimate Pastors.[9]

Prominent New Movements

In 2005, the Pontifical Council for the Laity published a directory of International Associations of the Faithful.[10] The directory includes both traditional international lay associations (like the International Christian Union of Business Executives) and new ecclesial movements.

Quoting Pope John Paul II, the directory’s preface observes that

there is no conflict or opposition in the Church between the institutional dimension and the charismatic dimension, of which the movements are a significant expression. Both are co-essential to the divine constitution of the Church founded by Jesus, because they both help to make the mystery of Christ and his saving grace present in the world.

The movements listed in this directory have received the “official recognition and explicit approval of the Holy See.” Excerpted below are portions of the directory’s descriptions of eight of the most prominent movements, the eight whose leaders or representatives took part in the panel discussions at the Second World Congress of Ecclesial Movements and New Communities in 2006.[11]

Chemin Neuf Community (CCN)
Established: 1973

Charism: “CCN is a Catholic community with an ecumenical vocation which is also open to the faithful from other Churches . . . The spirituality of CCN is imbued with the teachings of St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Teresa of Avila, and is based on the experience of Charismatic Renewal.”

Christian Life Movement (CLM)
Established: 1985

Charism: “The priority areas for [CLM] are evangelization of young people; commitment to solidarity with the poor, the sick and the elderly and abandoned children; the evangelization of culture; the protection of the family and the defence of life from conception to natural death; the mass media and the new communications technologies.”

Emmanuel Community
Established: 1972

Charism: “The life of the Community and its members, who are worshippers living in the heart of the world, revolves around the Eucharist. This roots all their actions in contemplation and opens them up to the compassion of Christ and so leads them to place themselves at the service of the poor, the sick, the lonely and the marginalized; and at the service of evangelization, to announce the risen Christ to all people who are suffering because they do not know God and do not know that they are loved by God.”

Fraternity of Communion and Liberation (CL)
Established: 1954

Charism: “The essence of the CL charism is the proclamation that God became Man; in the affirmation that this man—Jesus of Nazareth, who died and rose again—is a present event, whose visible sign is communion, that is to say, the unity of a people led by a living person, the Bishop of Rome; in the awareness that it is only in God made man, and hence within the life of the Church, that man is more true and humanity is truly more human. In the educational proposal made by CL, the free acceptance by the individual of the Christian message is determined by the discovery that the needs of the human heart are met by the annunciation of a message that fulfills them.”

International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services (ICCRS)
Established: 1978

Charism: “ICCRS is the main coordination and service structure of Catholic Charismatic Renewal.” Its origins “go back to 1970 when an International Communications Office (ICO) began operating at Ann Arbor (Michigan) . . . to keep contact between the various prayer groups that had emerged from the personal experience of Pentecost, known as the ‘new outpouring of the Spirit’ or the ‘baptism of the Spirit.’”

International Federation of L’Arche Communities (L’Arche International)
Established: 1964

Charism: “The L’Arche Communities, each of which comprises one or more houses, and sometimes a workshop where the disabled can work at various tasks, are designed to restore their dignity, based on the conviction that a society can never be truly human unless its weakest members are permitted to find their own place in it.”

Sant’Egidio Community
Established: 1968

Charism: “The Community of Sant’Egidio is a community family rooted in different local churches. The term ‘community’ reflects, among other things, a need for fellowship which is particularly deeply felt because the members of the community live fully within the world, in the anonymous life of the large modern cities . . . The spiritual benchmarks of the Community have always been the first Christian community in the Acts of the Apostles, the Church’s preferential love for the poor, and the primacy of prayer.”

Work of Mary (Focolare Movement)
Established: 1943

Charism: “Its specific feature is the pursuit of the ideal of unity which gives it its spirit, its aims, its structure and its government. This is why it is committed to working for ever greater unity between the faithful of the Catholic Church; to establish communion and a common testimony with other Christian brothers and sisters in order to restore full unity; to achieve, through dialogue and common activities together with people of other religions, union in God among all believers, as the way of enabling them to come to know Christ; to engage in dialogue with people of goodwill and to work together with them for common purposes, to strengthen universal brotherhood throughout the whole world and to open up their hearts to Christ.”

[1] Pope John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici on the Vocation and Mission of the Church and the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World (1988), no. 2.

[2] Pope John Paul II, no. 24.

[3] See Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, Born of the Spirit: Renewal Movements in the Life of the Church (Greenlawn Press, 1995).

[4] Pope John Paul II, no. 29.

[5] Cf. Rev. Ronald A. Knox, Enthusiasm (1950).

[6] Pope John Paul II, no. 30.

[7] Pope John Paul II, Speech at the Meeting with Ecclesial Movements and New Communities (1998), available online at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1998/may/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19980530_riflessioni_en.html.

[8] Pope Benedict XVI, Message to the Second World Congress of Ecclesial Movements and New Communities (2006).

[9] Participation in the Church’s liturgical prayer, the pontiff concluded, would sustain the members of the movements in the years ahead: “May you be sustained by participating in the prayer of the Church, whose liturgy is the most exalted expression of the beauty of God’s glory, and in a certain way a glimpse of Heaven upon the earth.”

[10] Available online at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/laity/documents/rc_pc_laity_doc_20051114_associazioni_en.html.

[11] In addition, the leader of a ninth movement, the Neocatechumenal Way, took part in the panel discussions at world congress. In 2002, the Pontifical Council for the Laity offered a temporary five-year approval of the Neocatechumenal Way’s statutes. The pontifical council’s decree is available online at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/laity/documents/rc_pc_laity_doc_20020701_cammino-neocatecumenale_en.html.

Pope Benedict XVI addressed members of the Neocatechumenal Way in January 2006 and noted in his talk that the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments had issued a document on the importance of liturgical norms in the life of the movement. Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the congregation, discussed these norms in an interview with the news agency Zenit. The papal address and the interview with Cardinal Arinze are available online at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/january/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060112_neocatecumenali_en.html
and http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=84608.

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