c. 1998 Religion News Service
NEWARK, N.J. _ The Rev. Luis P. Gonzalez began his long journey of faith as a cynical teenager in Spain. His leanings were Marxist, and he considered the Roman Catholic Church of his parents to be authoritarian, old-fashioned and sexist.
His reconciliation with Catholicism came through what is called the Neo-Catechumenal Way, a fast-growing but controversial lay movement whose followers stress devotional worship in small groups. It carried Gonzalez to seminary in New Jersey and then into priesthood.
Increasingly popular in the Newark Archdiocese and responsible for a large jump in the number of seminary students here, the movement has raised concerns among some Catholics who view it as secretive and isolationist.
When Archbishop Theodore McCarrick ordained 17 new priests at a ceremony May 23 in the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark _ the largest class of new recruits in the United States _ he owed a measure of that success to the movement.
Six of the 17 candidates were members of the Neo-Catechumenal Way, which accounts for more than half the men studying to be priests in the archdiocese. Worldwide, the movement has organized more than 30 missionary seminaries at a time when the number of priests in the United States and Western Europe is declining steadily.
McCarrick is extremely proud of his numbers. But success has a price.
McCarrick and other archdiocesan officials acknowledge dissent from some diocesan priests about the movement and the influx of its priests. The small groups, which are initially open to anyone in a parish, meet separately for weekly Bible study, a lengthy Saturday night Mass and frequent retreats. They continue to meet for years.
Supporters say this group devotion helps members live their Christian faith on a daily basis, a condition they refer to as “walking their baptism.” Critics say it smacks of cultism and, depending on the group dynamic, can be emotionally harmful to certain members.
The archdiocese remains supportive of the communities and considers the seminary candidates, who mostly come from overseas communities, to be a strong addition.
“Sometimes we hear criticisms that the (Neo-Catechumenal) community is very conservative or closed in on itself,” McCarrick said. “Some of this is true. You cannot have a movement without encountering extremes from time to time. But the men in the seminary try, as I do, to be in the middle.
“They are of this archdiocese,” he said.
Searching in the late 1980s for an American diocese to establish a seminary, the movement approached McCarrick after being rejected elsewhere. He initially balked at the expense, but a benefactor stepped forward with the $4 million needed to turn a defunct Catholic orphanage into Redemptoris Mater Archdiocesan Missionary Seminary, where Gonzalez is assistant to the rector.
It was wildly successful. Another donation and some help from the archdiocese paid for a recently completed $5 million expansion to house the 68 men now living there.
Catholic theologians around the country, even experts on new religious movements, know little about the Neo-Catechumenal Way, which was founded in Spain in 1964 by an artist and ex-nun and stresses Catholic devotion and evangelization.
The group is loosely organized, but experts believe hundreds of thousands of Catholics belong to communities worldwide. There are 45 communities operating in the Newark Archdiocese with roughly 1,000 members.
Supporters compare the communities to prayer groups, rosary societies and other accepted movements of the church, such as charismatics. Critics invoke the apparition of Opus Dei, a secretive organization whose influential members press orthodox theology. Although Opus Dei has the pope’s support, critics refer to it as the “Holy Mafia” for its suspected power and secret membership lists.
At the focal point of the Neo-Catechumenal Way are meetings of between 30 and 50 parishioners _ men, women, the elderly and the young _ who are producing what some consider an unprecedented interest in the priesthood.
“Many, many people are coming back to the churches through the Way,” said the Rev. Kenneth Jones, pastor at St. Mary’s Church in Plainfield, N.J., and one of the first priests in the archdiocese to welcome the movement into his church. “Broken marriages are being healed. It’s beautiful to see so many people coming back to God.”
One newly ordained priest, Emmanuel Bornhauser, said he was drawn back to the church through the Way. Bornhauser lost his faith after his parents divorced, leaving him upset and angry with God, he said.
Not everyone is as enthusiastic about the movement.
“They have a reputation for being a conservative group, rigid and doctrinaire,” said the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a professor of theology at Notre Dame University noted for his criticism of some conservative aspects of Pope John Paul II’s papacy.
Members of the movement, both priests and lay people, granted interviews freely, downplaying any controversy. They stressed that the seminary comes under the jurisdiction of the archdiocese and its students take all their classes with the other students at Immaculate Conception Seminary on the campus of Seton Hall University.
“They take the same courses,” McCarrick said. “In the summer, they are assigned like all of our fathers to work in our parishes. By the time they are ordained, they know as many of our people as any other priest.”
Jones and others associated with the movement _ the name catechumenal refers to adult conversion _ say it’s an attempt to return Catholics to their roots, back to a time in the early centuries when membership meant serious study and worship.
Such intense devotion had its first setback in A.D. 325, when the Holy Roman Emperor Constantine the Great converted to Catholicism, suddenly turning the religion into a mass movement. Add to this the secularization of modern society, and many Catholics have become increasingly detached from their faith. Only about one-quarter of them are in church on any given Sunday.
“They are more devotional than the average Catholic,” the Rev. Richard Liddy, former rector of Immaculate Conception Seminary and director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Seton Hall, said of the Neo-Catechumenates. “Symbolic of that is the Easter vigil, when they stay the whole night in church like the early Christians. That kind of dedication can make other people nervous.”
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Jones acknowledged such criticisms and noted in some cases communities have been asked to move on by priests who found them divisive.
“We’re taught to love the way Jesus did on the cross,” Jones said, repeating a principle at the essence of the movement. “We know we cannot battle these (critics). If they humbly ask us, we try to explain what we are about, but most don’t. So we just love them. Anything new in the church goes through persecution for generations.”
Liddy pointed out that religious orders have historically suffered discrimination in their early years.
“Any group that is to be successful has to be pretty focused, have their boundaries and visions and stick to them,” Liddy said. “The trick is always to listen for people saying, `This is the only way.’ I don’t hear that from them. I hear, `This is something we’ve experienced that has helped us. It’s not the only way to be Catholic.”’
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