It is the most fascinating, powerful, promising, baffling, provocative, creative-yet-traditional, and little understood phenomenon of the post-Council Church.
Little Understood
By its nature it is opaque and elusive of interpretation.
To the outsider it is mysterious and unknown. It operates quietly, in confidence and quasi-secrecy. It attracts rather than promotes. It is hidden from public view. It has no public relations. (Although Kiko and his lieutenants, sincerely loyal to the pope/hierarchy, have also been shrewd in cultivating the esteem of the three pontiffs to date.) There is no literature to describe and explain it. Their teachings are not published. It attracts, largely, people who are in crisis and distress. Many of them are poor, underemployed and without higher education. It is not widely attractive to the affluent, successful, educated, the solid citizen, or the stable parishioner. It is mostly viewed with suspicion by the clergy as some kind of cult. It operates a spiritual program under a parish but distinct from normal parochial activities. The demands of their program are severe so that little energy is left for the leaders in the group to contribute to the ordinary parish programs. The dynamics of the agenda are centripetal, inward directed, so they can appear to be distant and cool. The movement is loyal to pope, bishop and pastor, but in general views the broader Church as weak in the face of a hostile, dystopian society. They maintain a high degree of separation from the broader Church.
To the insider, it is opaque in a different way. This "way" is above all a dynamic of trust and surrender. An act of faith, for sure; of reason, not so much. A powerful charism is at work in the catechesis, the series of steps and "adventures," and the formation of an intimate community. It is not an intellectual environment in which discussion and argument are encouraged. This is not primarily due to the fact that the demographics do not favor the educated. Rather, the nature of the catechesis is authoritative and elicits trust and surrender, rather than consideration. Even a genuine intellectual, for example a professional theologian (I know one very well!), to flourish in this way will exercise a certain suspension of critical thought. The direction is trust, acceptance, docility, surrender...to Christ in the Holy Spirit, within the Church, to be sure...but also to the catechists and the program. I would compare it to a competitive athlete who joins an Olympic team: he will defer to the coach, even if he disagrees, because the dissonance of dissent would only undermine team morale. This trust, this suspension of criticism, is in itself mostly a wholesome, sanctifying, and especially humbling (so necessary for an intellectual!) practice, but perhaps not entirely.
So, those outside the group are distant and suspicious; those inside are fully engaged and mostly incapable and indisposed to detached evaluation. Arguello himself, and Gennarini (his US apostle) are brilliant intellects who know what they are doing. But beyond a small inner circle, I doubt there is sophisticated understanding, theologically and anthropologically, of the movement.
My Privileged Position
I boast: I am one of a very few who know this reality from a position of participation, love and critical detachment. I am sure there are others, but I don't know them.
My best friend, John Rapinich, walked with the very first community in the USA for the last decades of his life and kept me well informed. I went with my oldest son, when he was in crisis, to the catechesis in NYC. He left, I continued quite happily with the program for about 2 years. I was most impressed. But my life circumstances (demanding job, active parishioner, large family, distance) and the disinterest of my wife necessitated my withdrawal. I departed with some regret and much admiration. Since then my second son and his family are participant. I consider myself an admirer and friend of this way, but from a posture of (appreciative, not hostile) critical distance.
What is It?
A lay renewal movement? An intensified catechumenal itinerary of formation? An alternate ecclesiology or model of the Church? A new form of evangelical-lay spirituality? A new order in the Church?
It is ALL of the above. It is a lay renewal movement, although a distinctive one. John Paul II insisted upon this word "movement" over the objections of Carmen. He asserted: "It moves, does it not? It is alive! It is a movement!"
It self-defines, for the Vatican, in its statues as an "itinerary of formation." It is that. But much more. It is more intense than the mainstream parish process of catechesis by a factor of 1,000 at least. I learned just recently that the name "Neocatechumenate" was given by the Vatican itself as a way of categorizing it. It is an unsatisfactory category, in itself, for the dense reality.
In an earlier blog, I described the innovative ecclesiology implicit: the small community as foundational and replacing the parish as the prime unit of assembly. In this essay I will consider it as a new form of evangelical-lay life and possibly a new order within the Church.
New Form of Lay-Evangelical Life
It is startling, radical and novel in calling the family, the laity, to an evangelical commitment that the Church has always reserved for the "religious state" as single, celibate, unmarried. Will it work? Can the married laity wholesomely embrace such a level of dedication? This is a great question!
One of the first steps in the itinerary invites the participant to "give away his wealth." What this means is not entirely clear. It does not require the absolute, literal dispersal to the poor of all one's financial assets. But it is meant to be a real, significant dispossession. More than a minor, symbolic gesture. It is an act of liberation from dependence, for security and status, upon material wealth. It is flamboyantly anti-Bourgeois! It is the Gospel, pure and undiluted. It calls to mind the Batman movie scene when Keith Ledger's Joker confounds his gangland comrades as he burns millions of dollars and shrieks with delight. He demonstrated a supernatural, Luciferian indifference to money. The Neo-Cats ambition a similar freedom, for heaven not for hell.
The degree of time, energy, and attention approaches that of the monk. A catechist couple may typically have 8-10 children; mother in the home; father with a modest, blue-collar job; and spend 4-6 nights a week out engaged with their own community, catechizing another, or taxiing their children to their respective communities. It is a total commitment requiring detachment from social, career, cultural, ecclesial or political engagements.
What happens to the children when Mom and Dad are out-and-about with this work? Obviously the older children care for the younger as is standard for large families. But additionally each community becomes itself an extended family in which they care for each other. So, if one couple is active catechizing, even several communities, they are assisted by other members. This is NOT middle class American life. This is a profound communitarian experiment. Like the hippie commune or the Kibbutz, children are in a degree raised by the community, not the isolated, nuclear family. This is radical!
Every few years, in the presence of the Pope in Rome, a large number of families go on mission to the most desolate, God-forsaken places in the world: think Siberia, Haiti, the slums of India. They go as a community, with priest, to plant the Church where it does not exist. This is not a temporary mission. They go there to stay. With their children! This, from a bourgeois perspective, is child abuse, plain and simple. I think not. It is radical Christianity. They knowingly plant themselves in a hostile, even persecutorial ambience, but along with a strong community of support. Their children are, IMO (in mhy opinion) the most blessed!
The degree of immersion into the community and detachment from normal bourgeois life is stunning. It can only be perceived as cult-like by outsiders. But it is actually more like the life of classical Catholic religious communities, but now for families. A serious innovation.
A Short History of the Evangelical and Lay Life
In classical Catholic practice, we distinguish between the "states of life": marriage and family as lay, the religious life as vowed to poverty-chastity-obedience-community-apostolate, and the priesthood or clerical state. By this paradigm the family as such is never called to the total surrender of the evangelical or religious state. In ordinary Catholicism, as received in recent memory, the wellbeing of the nuclear/extended family...provision, protection, stability, education, security...is the priority of the spouses, with prayer and charitable engagement clearly subordinate.
It was not always so. The apostolic and primitive Church did not clearly distinguish these states. Immediately there flourished in the early Church the life of celibacy and virginity. It was spontaneous, not formal. Most of the apostles were married; most early priests were married. Becoming a Christian was a radical act by the entire family. It entailed willingness to die for the faith. Often a dispersal of one's wealth to the needy. A radical break with the family/tribal forms of society. A deep immersion in a "new family," the "body of Christ."
The first formal, organized expression of the radical, evangelical life was the hermit movement into the Egyptian deserts in the 4th century. Out of that emerged the monastic movement which found its supreme expression in St. Benedict and became the foundation of the entire medieval order. The mendicant Franciscan and Dominican orders maintained a close and closed community of prayer and fraternity as they replaced stability of place for a missionary migration around the world. As we approach the modern era, we see an explosion of new orders (Jesuits, St. Vincent de Paul's sisters) which emphasize active apostolates of education, mission and care for the needy. These maintained a cloistered religious life as the source for their activism. In mid-20th century, the 1940s, we have a new reality: Secular Institutes. These were single, celibates who vowed themselves evangelically to poverty-chastity-obedience-service but in a more lay fashion as they lived outside of cloistered-type communities, possibly in small households. They fashioned themselves as "lay" or fully involved in the secular spheres like education, social services, care and advocacy for the poor and suffering. Often highly educated and socially confident, they live the evangelical life in a quiet, modest fashion. However they are celibate and not married.
We see a clear trajectory of the evangelical life from the Egyptian hermitage, to the Benedictine monastery, to the travelling mendicants, to the active apostolic orders, to the secular-lay-celibate-evangelical state. The Neo-Cats take a huge step forward: the engagement of families as families in an evangelical style that is not celibate but spousal, but radical in poverty, obedience and an intensive communal life of prayer and fellowship.
They are clearly a return to the primitive Church of evangelical families, not just individuals or enclosed communities.
Cosmic Conflict
Implicit in the Neo-Cat worldview is that society has returned to a Rome-like hostility to the Gospel and the Church. Christendom has collapsed and we are again in the Church of Martyrs. We are in an apocalyptic time. The traditional social and even ecclesial structures of Christendom are approaching a terminal point of collapse. We are involved in a life-and-death struggle with diabolical powers released upon our world. Ours is a violent, hostile world: we need thick, deep, radical, fierce and fearless forms of Church life. Enough with lukewarm, lite, bougie, accommodating Catholicism!
Yesterday a friend sent me the weekly meditations of Fr. Richard Rohr. (He has been for years my nemesis: EVERYONE wants to send me his stuff!) His theme: we have a benevolent God and a benevolent universe. As he is an extremely intelligent man, I wondered: What is he smoking? What world is he living in? I myself, actually, have lived in a benevolent world, protected, serene and happy. But by the age of reason, seven, I became aware of the immense suffering and evil of the world. I have never gotten over that. I responded to my friend: "Thanks for this. It reminds me of my problem with Rohr. Benevolent universe? Tell that to the Ukrainians, the North Koreans, the Haitians, the Uyghurs and Christians in China, the persecuted in Nigeria and across the Islamic world! Rohr has no crucified Christ! No confession of sin! No Kingdom of Darkness! No spiritual combat! His is indeed a soft, sentimental, saccharine, effete and anemic Christianity.
Kiko is the opposite of Rohr! He is gearing up for battle: to the death. To follow Christ is to die...to prepare to die...possibly in ones own blood and pain. This is serious. This is militant, virile, fierce, ultimate. This is high-octane, red-blooded, straight-up and undiluted, shameless Catholicism! Clearly John Paul and Benedict both understood and shared their worldview. Francis likes them because they reach out so vigorously to the suffering, the margins, the poor.
A New Religious Order?
Clearly they do not want to be understood as a religious order. But I would suggest that is what they amount to. They are a distinctive, enclosed, very intense and militant expression of Catholic life. Theirs is a special vocation within the Church. They most emphatically are NOT "The Way." Their practice is not normal or normative for Catholics. Theirs is clearly a special, distinctive, and rare way. They are preparing for engagement in a cosmic battle that is already upon us. They are the storm troopers, the navy seals, the Spartan warriors, the Jedi knights of the Church.
They certainly don't want to be so classified and placed under the bureaucratic supervision of a Vatican commission. They want to be left alone to live their Nazareth-like life of humility, simplicity and praise. I want that for them as well.
They also have strong similarities to the Amish, the Catholic Worker, the Bruderhof, and Hasidic Judaism. Such are intense, thick religious communities with strong boundaries in opposition to a largely hostile, alien world. They keep care for each other's children. They keep their adolescents close, not sending them away for college. They largely abstain from politics, including that of the Church. They do not fight the Culture War in the public arena, but in their own quiet, humble life. They intend for their children to marry within the community.
They are strong medicine for the very strong in spirit who hunger for the ultimate, the pure, the Absolute. Who thirst for Truth, Beauty and Goodness...undiluted and uncompromised. Their challenge is to maintain this level of zeal, of hard Catholicism, along with a "catholic" openness to the Church and world beyond.
Conclusion
When I look at my world, I do not see Rohr's Pollyannaish Disneyworld. But I do see two realities. I see the Apocalypse Now around the world and pronouncedly in the decadent West. But I also see, in my own small world and that of my children/grandchildren, a living and breathing, not extinct Christendom: healthy families, vibrant schools and parishes, a rich culture of athletics, politics, and civil life. All is not dark! Our world is not entirely, but is very largely, Batman's Gotham!
Even as a wanna-be, didn't-make-the-cut Neo-Cat, I am rooting for them. May they flourish and thrive! God's grace is strong with them. They are humble, hidden, fervent, persistent. May they continue to bring the light of Christ to a world largely darkened by sin and disbelief.
May God's grace continue to sustain a living Christendom, in the broader Church and society, among us.
May Christianity and indeed the entire social order, be "salted" by the zeal and holiness of this way!
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