As a couple we will soon celebrate 50 years since our personal encounter with Jesus Christ in Cursillo, baptism of the Holy Spirit in the Charismatic Renewal, and a new birth in our Catholic faith. Since then I know the lay renewal movements as the most intense, fruitful and promising developments in our Church. Paradoxically, however, the very dynamics that give them such depth and passion also open a vulnerability to anti-Catholic, divisive tendencies.
The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic. Renewal movements burn with desire for holiness and zeal to return to the Apostolic origins. But in doing so, they risk damage to the Church unified and "catholic", understood as universal, inclusive of all the good. The very centripetal forces that inflame communal zeal can tend to separate in cult-like fashion. These movements are emphatically NOT cults. They are holy renewal movements, but prone to imbalance precisely due to their intensity. Let us consider characteristics of cults as they manifest in six renewal movements.
Characteristics of Cults
1. Inordinate allegiance/obedience to a charismatic leader who is unaccountable to anyone and exercises excessive control.
2. "Us versus Them" attitude to all outside of the community. The exterior world is evil. Safety and salvation are found only within the community. It is "Christ against Culture" (to quote Richard Niebuhr) to an extreme. Suspicion towards "the outsider" and vulnerability to a persecution complex.
3. Total control of all spheres of life. The personal schedule becomes monopolized by communal activities. No time or energy is left for other activities or hobbies.
4. Separation from family, friendships, career, politics, and culture in favor of total immersion in the community.
5. Energies work to recruit new members into the group. Dynamics are all centripetal rather than centrifugal. Little contribution to the broader society or Church.
6. Questioning and dissent are not acceptable. The decisions and teaching of authority are authoritative, not open to debate.
7. Leaving the group is associated with feelings of fear, guilt and shame.
True cults have additional bad traits including manipulation by lies, sex abuse, accumulation of money by illicit means, and violation of conscience. These are not useful for our purposes here. However it is very troubling to learn of the widespread sexual misbehavior, abuse of authority, financial wrong-doing and lack of accountability in respected, conservative renewal and religious communities.
Confessions of a Charismatic
Our involvement with a prayer group (but not the deeper commitment of a covenant community) of the People of Hope in Jersey City, over half a dozen year (1973-79), was reflective of broader trends.
1. Catholic Pentecostalism, happily, had no single leader. Immediately in 1967 a remarkable group of leaders worked fruitfully together out of Ann Arbor and South Bend. They understood themselves to be following the Holy Spirit, however imperfectly, (and I agree.) They incorporated elements of American Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism into Catholicism in a direction brazenly contradictory of the mainstream, fashionable post-Council renewal. However, these "charismatic" (in the generic sense) Charismatic leaders were granted an unusual degree of authority, in teaching and governance, especially within covenant communities. A strange evangelical practice of "headship" was encouraged. Dissonant with Catholicism, traditional or contemporary, and insanely counter-cultural, it empathized the authority of the father in the family and a system by which everyone was in obedience to a designated "head." Specific, authoritative direction was given about career, courting and marriage and finances. These blatantly cultish practices led to crises in many communities. My impression is that they have been resolved in groups that self-identify as Catholic like the People of Hope in New Jersey.
2. The baptism in the Holy Spirit, including exercise of gifts like tongues, prophesy, deliverance of evil spirits and healings, is inebriating. It is a recovery of the Pentecostal dynamics of the early Church and the saints. It tended to demote mainstream, sober, bread-and-butter Catholicism to second-class status. This was a divisive trend that was countered strongly by leadership within and without the movement. But the attitude to the broader society was not overly negative, suspicious or defensive. It was optimistic, embracive, confident and assertive. Even a newfound triumphalism in an urgency to share the Gospel with a world desperately hungry for it. It did not flee the world but charged into it and still does.
3-4. While covenant communities elicit strong commitment, there is not total control. Participants maintain ordinary family and parish life, careers, and cultural engagements. My observation is that charismatic spirituality is entirely compatible with bourgeois life as professional, affluent, and careerist. Generally it is not strongly countercultural like the Catholic Worker or the Neocatechumenate. It is not at war with the broader culture or Church.
5. Energy-wise there is a balance of the centripetal and centrifugal: many Catholics attended prayer meetings and conferences and benefited from the menu of praise, healing, renewal, and music. The boundaries of the movement were porous and open. While the movement has receded, its influence on the broader Church endures.
6. Despite an authoritative tone to teaching by leadership, there was an intellectual, theological vitality to the movement. The lay leaders were fluent in theology and engaged outstanding academics in the discussion. There was immediately a large literature about it. Discussion and argument were vigorous.
7. Movement in and out of prayer groups and conferences is fluid although covenant communities are firm in identity and boundaries. Fear and guilt are not strong motivators.
This movement demonstrated modest cult-like qualities but was largely open to the Church and world. Perhaps that is a reason why it no longer exists as the vibrant, expansive phenomena it was through the 70s and 80s. It is diminished in mainstream white America, remaining stable in a small number of covenant communities. It is powerful in Africa. It is not strongly countercultural. Amy Coney Barret is witness: it does not get more mainstream than the Supreme Court of the U.S.A.
Legionnaires of Christ and Regnum Christi
1. Maciel was the classic malevolent "noble leader." We now know he required vows of secrecy/loyalty and indulged himself in almost unthinkable sexual and financial wrongdoing. He was idolized by his following.
2. They created their own "regnum" or kingdom, separated from the world, and largely from the Church. In dogma, morals and liturgy they are flawlessly Roman Catholic. But they maintained their own separated institutions.
3-4. Control of personal life seems to be excessive but far from total. Both clerical and lay branches copied standard Catholic patterns. Ordinary family, friendship, parish and cultural life are maintained.
5. Energies are mostly centripetal as they recruit others into their domain but extend themselves outward, generously without return, to a lesser degree.
6. Criticism of authority, especially that of the Founder, and free discussion were not allowed.
7. Fear and guilt were strong motivators as the world was viewed in a dark light.
This has to be the very most cult-like organization or movement in the Church in recent memory.
The Latin Mass
This traditionalist movement has minor cult-like aspects. There is no leader; no control over personal life. Ordinary connections with family, friends, career and culture are maintained. Fear and guilt are not used to manipulate.
Participants are largely educated, affluent, prosperous and well-integrated into society. They are generous financially with the Church and the poor. They tend to be, politically and culturally, standard right-wing conservatives, not adversarial to careerism, global capitalism, or bourgeois Christianity. They are not counter-cultural like the Catholic Worker or the Neocatechumenate.
At their best they retrieve much that was precious and then discarded by the post-Council Church: reverence in worship, moral rigor, doctrinal clarity in the Thomistic mode, and a distinctive Catholic ethos.
At their worst (as on the internet) they can go beyond respectful criticism of the Council, the ordinary form of the Eucharist and the current pontiff into outright rejection and even moral contempt. In that they set themselves up against the actual, current, hierarchical Church (however flawed) and set themselves up as an alternative "Catholic" cult of suspicion, isolation, resentment and nostalgia.
My concern is that Pope Francis in his own suspicious, repressive hostility will push them further away from the Church. Far better is Pope Benedict's magnanimous, gracious liberality.
Franciscan Friars of the Renewal
This is young religious order rather than a lay renewal, but I address it because of my longstanding admiration and affection. As a fierce, conservative, countercultural force, they are not flawless. There is a defensiveness and an uncharitable, judgmental disparagement of Catholic progressivism. From their founders (notably Fr. Benedict Groeschel and Fr. Glen Sudano) they inherited a tough, N.Y.C. sarcasm. Their way is NOT for everyone. But they are definitely not cult-like, for many reasons.
First, their leader, Fr. Benedict, was one of several founders. Despite his rich gifts and histrionic trait, he was humble, self-effacing and free of the hubris of "The Charismatic Founder."
Second, they are not suspicious or afraid of the world as evil; they are aggressive, confident in a macho, evangelical zeal to save it. They are not running away, but charging ahead. They wage Culture War, fiercely; they reach out to youth; they serve the very, very poor. In this their energy flows outward, expansively, generously.
Thirdly, they recruit selectively and judiciously, requiring quality of vocation rather than quantity. As a classical Catholic order, of course, there is control over daily life in accord with the rule of life, but with all the protections of tradition. The order is accountable to the Church. Privacy of conscience and the "inner forum" is respected. To the degree possible, normal family and friendship life is encouraged. Our own family has been warmly welcomed into the Friary on many occasions.
Fourthly, a lively intellectualism is received from the founders, particularly Fr. Groeschel. While blatantly Catholic and countercultural, there is a sophisticated, urbane, hipster, bohemian and even cocky style about them. They associate broadly with vital and authentic developments in the Church.
Lastly, fear and guilt, while not absent (we are dealing with human beings here), are not deliberately used to recruit or retain friars.
The CFRs are entirely Catholic and catholic; receptive of and generous to the Church and the world. They are the Non-Cult.
Communion and Liberation
This movement is also in the Not-a-Cult- Club. They are its polar opposite. If anything, an argument might be made that they are overly optimistic, hospitable, and weak in boundaries.
Their charismatic founder, Monsignor Luigi Giussani, embodied himself and infused the movement with freedom, liberality, graciousness, release from fear-guilt-shame, and a boundless desire for the Good-True-Beautiful.
Founded in Italy, they exude the Renaissance cultural confidence of Michelangelo and Raphael. They are not afraid of anyone. They are not fighting anyone. They are exulting, like Giussani, in the richness of Catholic Tradition and the Joy of art, culture and social life.
Their boundaries are porous and open: people coming and going into welcoming gatherings of various sorts. They exert no control over personal life, assuming that family, parish, career and cultural life are all resonant with value and meaning. No suspicion or defensiveness. No effort to recruit or retain: they work (like the 12 steps) by attraction rather than promotion. Energy flows in and out with organic fluidity.
There is liveliness in discussion, debate and criticism. The writings of Giussani are inspiring, open-ended and provocative, entirely free of coercion or force. There is an openness, not without critique, to the prevailing liberal culture. Highly educated, sophisticated, and erudite, they are arguably less receptive of counter-elite, populist, rightest views. Free of guilt, fear or shame, the ambience fairly glistens with curiosity, enthusiasm, and appreciation. This is The Non-Cult!
The Neo-Catechumenate
1. They do not get more charismatic than Kiko Arguello! Hardly a cult founder, he is in the great Catholic tradition of gifted saints like Benedict, Francis, Dominic and Ignatius. He is entirely a son of the Church, deferential to Church authority and miraculously receptive of the treasures of Scripture and Tradition.
2. Their view of the world, and in a more complicated way the Church, is entirely negative. In this they resemble a cult: "us against them." The world is dark, dangerous and demonic. The Church is weak against the powers of the world, the flesh and the devil. Outside of their fold, other than a monastery or convent, there is no reliable safety or salvation. There is fear of "the world." Their view contrasts with the positivism of the Council and its aftermath.
3-4. The time and energy required is not totalitarian, as in a cult, but tends to be totalizing, leaving little available for outside, normal life with friends, extended family, career, culture and hobbies. This leads to an inevitable, if unintended, degree of separation.
5. The energy is entire centripetal, building intensive communities of faith against a hostile world and eventually replacing the traditional parish model.
6. The catechesis of Kiko is received as authoritative, not to be questioned. Largely, but not entirely, this attracts low-brow, blue collar, working class folk. Questioning, argumentation, and study are not strong values. A tone of defensiveness prevails as they correctly read the hostility of the world but also of secular clergy.
7. Fear is a constant as the world outside is (not unreasonably) seen as so dangerous and toxic.
This group is paradoxical: passionately Catholic in belief, practice, morals, prayer; but in a dystopian world and a weakened Church, they fortify themselves by a rigorous, demanding rule. It is not a cult, but understandably has strong cult-like tendencies.
Big Table Catholicism: Thick, Fierce, Diverse, Unified, Serene, Engaged, Confident, Synergistic
Surveying these six movements, we find: Communion and Liberation and the Friars, are energetically Catholic in a catholic fashion and deep in the heart of the institutional Church. The Latin Mass and Charismatic groups have separatist tendencies that are contravened by unitive and embracive dynamics. Lastly, the Legionnaires and the Neocatechumenate show strong isolating propensities; the former due largely to its founder, the later to a negative view of society and Church.
One way to approach this is to ask: About the world and the Church, who is correct: Giussani in his positivity or Kiko in his negativity? My theologian son is a determined disciple of Kiko; my psychologist daughter an enthusiastic protege of Giussani. Do I set them against each other? Do I judge one right and the other wrong? No! It is not a simple binary. The Council was in the optimism club, but its singular defect (argues Tracey Rowlands persuasively) was a lack of realism and preparedness for the assault just then being launched from hell.
Temperamentally I am with Giussani, but in sober realism I judge Kiko to be right about our now dystopian world. In our time it is understandable that strong renewal movements turn inward to strengthen their members in their charism, form and way of life. The world today is five times worse than it was fifty years ago; the Church is also. Both are ten times worse than they were sixty-five years ago during the Council. In our time the world and Church have suffered an invasion by the demonic. The poison of our age requires a potent antidote. Any pattern intended to revive Catholic life is vulnerable to dilution, diminution and decadence if it is not rigorous and demanding. We Catholics face a dilemma. The strong antidote tends to separatism. But the weaker medicine tends to cave to the pressures of the world.
The Church needs all these different movements. I would exhort Kiko to protect the strength and expansiveness of his communities and yet strengthen unity with the broader Church and be receptive of the workings of God's grace in the world. I would encourage Communion and Liberation to blend that wondrous openness with a shrewd vigilance. In today's Gospel at mass, Jesus castigates the crowds who neither dance to his flute nor mourn to the dirge of John the Baptist. Clearly, we need to do both.
Indeed, we all...each in his own way...have to do three things at once:
1. Withdraw from the dystopia to protect our young and build strong, small, local families, parishes, schools and communities of worship. This is the "Benedict option" of the early hermits into the desert and the monks departing a Roman Empire in decline.
2. Maintain our unity with each other, under the hierarchy, despite the tensions, in mutual tenderness and reverence.
3. Renouncing timidity, engage the culture confidently, serenely, assertively in outreach to the poor, confrontation of the false-evil-ugly, and receptivity of all that is true-good-beautiful.
As a catholic Catholic I am happiest to see the synergies of distinct groups working together. A local Catholic school, Koinonia, founded by charismatics, is now attracting traditionalists, homeschoolers and ordinary parishioners. The annual Archdiocese of Newark men's conference is hosted by the Friars, the Knights of Malta, charismatics, and tons of priest hearing confession. Franciscan University of Steubenville has become a cornucopia of Catholic richness: charismatics, pro-lifers, homeschoolers, traditionalists, solid academics, Eucharistic adoration, and even a "new Catholic populist right."
As my best friend, ex-beatnik, mentor, wanderer, coffee-store-owner, pilgrim, artist, charismatic, Neo-cat, bibliophile, autodidact, little-big-brother John Rapinich loved to say, of the Church: "It's a big table!"
No comments:
Post a Comment