A Modest 5-point Proposal to Kiko and Companions (4 of 5)

1. Stop referring to your program as "THE Way."  Instead you can say "our way" or "the neo-way" or "our path." Be humble: your itinerary is not THE way. It is a way. It is one way within the one Church. Jesus is The Way. And the Catholic Church is The way to full communion with Jesus.

2. Celebrate your Eucharists every other Saturday instead of every week. On the alternate weeks attend an ordinary parish Sunday mass. With this you strengthen your bond with the broader Church. You properly defer to the parish Novus Ordo mass as the normative Eucharist of the one-holy-catholic-apostolic Church.

3. Once monthly cancel your celebration of the Word and participate in some alternative (preferably) Catholic spiritual event: daily mass, novena, retreat, holy hour, men or women's support group, 12-step program such as AA or Alanon or SA (Sexaholics Anonymous). This will overcome a certain narrowness into a more catholic Catholicism.

4. Celebrate Easter Vigil and Holy Saturday Eucharist with the entire parish. You might extend and enrich your celebration into the night with readings, echoes, songs that further develop these memories of our salvation.

5. Have each maturing community, at an appropriate time (after passing a scrutiny?), accept together a small corporal or spiritual project of Mercy. This could be: visiting the sick, or in prison or in nursing homes; catechizing; assisting a Catholic school; giving retreats; mentoring youngsters; supporting single mothers; distributing food or meals to the poor; helping those who clutter and horde to regain order and peace; and countless others.

These practices will purify, strengthen and deepen your Way. They will countervail the pronounced "cult-like" propensities of your program. They will restrain your inordinate centripetal dynamism and enhance your centrifugal energies. They will deepen your Catholicism and enrich the broader Church and community.

I offer this proposal with fraternal affection, admiration and some jealousy: yours is the most dynamic, militant, and promising of all the lay renewal movements in the Church and I wish I could have remained myself as a journeyer in your way.