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Constructive social change in the Church today should be fostered through the intelligent use of movements. Liturgical movement, Christian Family Movement, Cursillo movement, civil rights movement, ecumenical movement, peace movement, Pentecostal movement, et cetera, et cetera. The Church is filled with movements, some growing, some declining, some new, some old. There is a great deal of activity in the Church today. Many people trying to further many causes and make many changes. The great variety of activity (and of movements) is a sign of life. The various efforts being made to change the Church are one indication that the Church is not dead. But changes and movements are not an unmixed blessing. They may be a source of new life and of improvements in the Church, but they are also a source of problems and have been damaging to the life of the Church. If the adherents of each of the movements in the Church were asked to draw up a list of the benefits that the movement brought and the critics were asked to draw up a list of the disadvantages they brought, each group could come up with a list, and each could make a good case for his list. Movements may be good, but they are not automatically good, and their effects are rarely wholly good. It is a perennial temptation for men to choose stability rather than change. Stability is easier. In stable circumstances, a man knows what he will have to cope with. If, for instance, food always costs the same, it would be easier for people to manage money. Every week, they could make the same amount of money and handle it the same way, and they would be able to eat. There are, of course, some people who prefer change to stability, or, more precisely, who prefer more change than others do. But today, whether we prefer change or stability is an academic issue. Society is undergoing social change at an ever more rapid rate. It is no longer possible to try to have a stable society in the sense in which even our parents knew it. In order to survive, we need to come to terms with change. Many families today have people who came over from "the old country" when they were young. They did not learn English very well because they did not have to. They came to neighborhoods in which everyone knew their language. But times have changed. There are few of those old neighborhoods left. And the older people who never learned English are out of communication with most of those around them. They are completely dependent on other people's good pleasure in order even to survive. A Church which did not keep pace with the changes in society might find itself in an even worse situation. The subject of the place of movements in the Church is a slightly different one from what we have been considering. The need to form special Christian communities - the basic structure of whatever communities are formed, the importance of spiritual renewal for the vitality of those communities, and the type of leadership which is needed for those communities all form a tightly knit whole. It would be very difficult to treat one of those subjects without treating the others. But the question of social change is so pressing for the life of the Church today that the question of movements needs some consideration. The kind of renewal and restructuring we have been considering will not be possible without the help of movements. Other instruments are going to be needed besides movements (institutional changes, development of methods, etc.). But some sort of movement(s) will be necessary to move the Church in the direction we have been discussing. Moreover, the use of movements fits in closely with the approach we have been considering. So far in this book, we have developed the position that what is needed for an effective renewal of the Church is more than institutional changes. The primary need is to learn to make use of environmental forces and to create environments in the Church. Using movements is one way of using environmental forces, and the place of movements in the life of the Church can be most easily understood in the context of the principles we have been enunciating. We need a policy toward movements. By "policy" is not meant a new set of canons, nor a set of diocesan regulations. Rather, what is meant is more general wisdom and understanding (which may or may not be embodied in canons or regulations). Movements can be one of the most valuable forces in the life of the Church if they are understood and guided wisely. In order to see how constructive social change in the life of the Church today can be fostered through the intelligent use of movements, we have to grasp the following points: 1) that movements are forces (trends) of social change; 2) that movements can be made use of to change the life of the Church in a beneficial way; and 3) that movements must be integrated into the life of the Church so that the social change they lead to is constructive. MOVEMENTS AS SOCIAL CHANGE There are, for our purposes, three kinds of change in human society: organic processes, growth, and social change. Organic processes are the kind of changes which any human group (or organism of any sort) needs to go through just to stay the same. One example of organic processes can be found in the human body. Our bodies are constantly changing: blood is moving, nerves are sending signals, glands are secreting hormones. In fact, every seven years, we are told, our body is completely renewed. If these changes do not occur, we can not stay the same. If our blood, for instance, stops changing its place in the body, we would be dead in a matter of minutes. The same sort of changes are found in human groupings. In a corporation, personnel are replaced, messages travel, materials are moved. These changes happen constantly. If they did not, the corporation can not stay the same. It would soon come to an end. Such changes can be called organic processes. Organic processes are the constant changes which allow any social grouping to stay the same, to maintain its size and pattern. A second kind of change is growth (or decline). This type of change is simply a change in size which sometimes leads to a change in structure. A basic Christian community, for instance, might grow steadily over a period of years. Then it might split and two communities might be formed. Or they could decline, or remain stable in size. Growth does not necessarily imply a change in the patterning of life in a social grouping. The third kind of change is social change. Social change is a change in the structures and patterns of life of a social grouping. Social change could affect part of a grouping or the whole grouping. It could be superficial or fundamental. It could be constructive or destructive (or neutral). In the Church, the institution of the diaconate, a large number of people accepting birth control, the decline of novenas, the formation of floating parishes, the starting of parish councils, all are instances of social change. Each involves a transformation of the life patterns of the Church. Often social change is necessary for the health of a social grouping. Sometimes social change is necessary in order to give greater vitality to a social group which is not functioning as well as it should. Liturgical renewal could be looked at from this point of view. One of the main reasons why many people promoted liturgical renewal throughout the Church was to provide greater vitality for the life of the Christian people. Sometimes social change is necessary to make the life of the social grouping more adequate to the changing situation in which it has to live. The Christian Family Movement was begun because there was a need to make Christian couples aware of the implications for their lives in a technological society. Couples were organized to take part in what was called the social apostolate. Usually, any social change will involve both the attempt to revitalize a social grouping and the attempt to adapt it more effectively to the living situation. Neither can be done very successfully without also doing the other. The Vatican Council was called primarily to renew the Catholic Church and to make it more effective in its mission. But one of the major concerns throughout the Council was the aggiornamento, the updating of the Church. Each fed the other and needed the other. In a rapidly changing world, social change has to be considered a regular part of the life of any social group that wishes to survive. Modern business corporations in the last couple of decades have developed offices of research and development (planning) in order to keep their organizations abreast of the changing technological and economic situation in which the business has to function. They are trying to institutionalize social change. Every group has to find ways of doing this, even if it does not have to set up special departments to do it. The group which is closed to social change in today's world is unlikely to survive, not to mention make headway. Social change can come in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most common way is through diffusion of information and values. Most changes in consumer patterns, for instance, come through diffusion of information and values by word of mouth and advertising. Institutional sponsorship is another source of social change. The American government can decide that new ecological practices and values are necessary. And by some legislation and administrative action, it can change social patterns throughout the country. The influence of models and successful programs (usually spread by diffusion of information) is another source. A group of hippies began a commune and their influence lead to other communes. Finally, social change can come through movements. Movements are often one of the most successful responses to the need for social change. A movement is a special environment which develops because of people's advocacy of some kind of social change. It is a type of voluntary interaction among people which exists because of those people's commitment to a change in the way the life of society or some part of society is patterned. In other words, there are two things which define a movement - it is an environment, and it is formed because of the acceptance of some ideal of change. A good example of a movement is the liturgical movement. The liturgical movement began as different people developed a sense that something important was missing in the life of the Church, namely, an appreciation of public worship. This new awareness began with a very small group of people. As is the case with most new patterns of social life, the new awareness spread from person to person. A bond was created among these people because of the new interest. They would have regular contact, informal at first, about their new interest. As the liturgical movement spread and more and more people began to develop the interest, various organs of interaction emerged: magazines, books, meetings, study sessions, eventually even courses, permanent commissions, and conferences. The result was a larger and larger group of people who began to appreciate the values of the liturgical movement until the point where it was accepted by the Church as a whole and, for all practical purposes, the liturgical movement ceased to be a specific movement within Catholicism. A movement is not the same as an organization. In an organization (an institution) all the members work together in functional interdependence to produce something or to make some kind of change. In a movement, the people do not work together in functional interdependence. Rather, they are a group of people who are committed to fostering a certain kind of change. Sometimes, it may be difficult to distinguish between an organization and a movement, because some voluntary organizations seem very similar to movements. The Legion of Mary, for instance, has many of the characteristics of a movement. The members belong to the Legion because they hold certain ideals and want to see certain changes. They often have a commitment to the group of people they are with, a commitment that goes beyond their actually working together in the Legion. It has, in other words, a certain "spirit." But the Legion is not, strictly speaking, a movement, because it primarily exists as a group of people who work together to get some job done. It can also be difficult to distinguish between organizations and movements because some movements are organized. The CFM and the Cursillo movement, for example, are relatively highly organized movements. Each has one organization which fosters with whole movement (not, of course, in anything like the highly organized way in which a business corporation or a political party would function). Moreover, there are organizations which further movements and so could be considered a part of the movement. The Liturgical Bulletin or the National Liturgical Conference were organizations which furthered the liturgical movement. But even in an organized movement like the CFM or the Cursillo movement all the members of the movement do not work together in functional interdependence to get a job done (The CFM is perhaps a borderline case. But in theory and usually in practice it is a movement, not an apostolic organization). It is more difficult to distinguish movements from communities than to distinguish movements from organizations. Both movements and communities are united (drawn together) by some common ideal or value. But the distinction lies in the concern for social change. Something can be termed a movement when it is primarily united in a desire to make a change in the present situation. But something is termed a community when it is primarily concerned about maintaining an on-going life, no matter what the present situation. One of the characteristics of movements is that they tend to become communities or to dissipate as movements and leave institutions to carry on the program. The Franciscan movement, for instance, was a movement of spiritual renewal in the medieval Church. At an early date it was organized and eventually became more a community which fostered a special spirit among those who joined than a movement for spiritual renewal. Methodism was a movement of spiritual renewal within the Church of England. After a while, it separated from the Church of England and became a church of its own, a community. Or the liturgical movement was a movement while it was a recognizable group of people drawn together by their desire for reform in the liturgy (or by their acceptance of the importance of the public worship of the Church). During the Vatican Council, the goals of the liturgical movement were accepted by the Church as a whole, and the movement dissipated, leaving national Liturgical Week, liturgical institutes, Worship magazine, etc. The more the concerns of the liturgical movement are accepted by other groups and institutions, the more it disappears as a unique movement. Movements differ in the kinds of change they seek to further. Some want to renew certain dimensions of the life of the Church. The liturgical movement, for instance, formed out of a concern to strengthen the public worship of the Church. The charismatic renewal formed out of a concern to deepen the experience of the presence and working of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. Some movements, however, are formed to change certain values in the lives of Christians. The peace movement began in a desire to eliminate the commitment of Christians to wars (or at least to all the wars sponsored by their own governments). The Christian Family Movement was begun to spread certain values of social action and family life. Moreover, some movements are formed to get Christians to do certain things. The Cursillo movement was founded (originally) to get Christians to work apostolically in the situations they lived in, that is, to work apostolically in an unorganized way. Movements also differ in the kinds of structures and activities connected with them. The liturgical movement, for instance, fostered a set of practices which could be made part of a Mass (dialogue, singing, the altar facing the people, the use of English, etc.). Wherever a number of these practices were accepted, there was a "liturgical" Mass. The Christian Family Movement has involved a type of study-action group meeting for formation and occasional weekend study sessions. In fact, the movement hardly existed apart from participating in those meetings. Something similar is true of the Cursillo movement which (where it has followed its original design) was structured by the Cursillo weekend, the ultreya, and the group reunion. The charismatic renewal is a combination of a set of practices (praying with people to be baptized in the Spirit, praying with them for healing, speaking in tongues and prophecy, spontaneous worship, etc.), and an informally structured type of meeting (the prayer meeting and the Day of Renewal). Not all movements in the Church are Catholic movements. Some movements are movements in society as a whole which have many adherents in the Church. The peace movement is primarily a society-wide movement. There are many Christian peace groups, but the movement as a whole has been a secular movement (with religious roots) which has made significant changes in the Catholic Church. The human relations movement (the movement which centers around T-groups and "sensitivity training") is a secular movement which is beginning to have a significant impact in the Catholic Church and to form a special environment. Some movements are ecumenical movements, Christian movements that affect Christians in all kinds of Churches. The charismatic renewal would be an example of this, as would the liturgical movement, to a less significant degree. Movements are not the only kind of social change. But movements are one of the most effective sources of social change. In considering how to renew the Church, it would be a mistake (one sometimes made) to neglect the role of movements. MAKING USE OF MOVEMENTS A movement, as was said in the previous section, is a special environment which develops because people advocate some kind of social change. In other words, all movements involve an environment (a grouping, an interrelationship, a drawing together of people) and a value, the value which people want to see realized. In addition, as has been pointed out above, movements also bring with them structures and practices which have been developed to foster the movement. All three aspects of a movement (its dedication to a value, the environment it creates, and the structures and practices connected with it) are sources of contributions a movement can make. The most obvious use of movements, therefore, is to further the values in the Church which they were formed to further. Sometimes, movements form to revitalize the life of the Church, or some aspect of the life of the Church. One of the chief effects of the liturgical movement, the CFM, the Cursillo, and the charismatic renewal has been simply to bring the people touched by them to a deeper dedication to Christ and the Church. Since people's attitudes, values, beliefs, and behavior patterns are affected by their environments, when they are touched by or drawn into a movement which is dedicated to renewing the life of the Church, they become more dedicated Christians, and their increased dedication contributes to revitalizing the Church. Sometimes the impact of movements is toward reorienting the life of the Church, toward making the kind of adjustments which the Church needs in order to be more effective in the modern world. For instance, the Cursillo movement was designed to foster (among other things) a certain kind of evangelism (a natural, unorganized, "environmental" evangelism) in the Church. Nowadays the Church can no longer expect people to be evangelized simply through environment support (because we no longer have a predominant christian environment). Hence the Cursillo is working to adjust its approach to evangelization according to the needs of the Church and the recommendation of Vatican II (DLA 6, 13). The same thing is true of the charismatic renewal. The charismatic renewal fosters (among other things) a desire for worship. The more the developments of modern society make people less and less satisfied with performing formal worship out of duty, the more the Church needs movements which lead people to a spontaneous, freely chosen worship. In short, the main use of movements is to achieve the social changes which the movements are developed to further. Movements are effective in making these changes, because one of the best ways new values are accepted is through people who are committed to those values by their own choice and who want others to accept them. There are, in addition, other benefits which movements have brought which might be considered by-products of the movements, but which for pastoral purposes are very important. One of the prime by-products of movements, is that they do create new groupings of people (they are, after all, "environments," and having a movement is one way of getting an environment formed - drawing people together out of dedication to a cause). When a new grouping of people is needed, a movement can be a very effective instrument to get it started. We can consider, for instance, the example of a typical Catholic parish with a pastor who wants to renew the parish. One of the chief obstacles he runs into is parishioners who do not want to change. In many parishes around the country, movements have been used to great effect in dealing with this problem. Sometimes the change in parishioners' attitudes has "just happened" as movements like the CFM and the Cursillo had spread. In other cases, skillful pastors had spotted the potential of these movements and introduced them into their parishes for the purpose of finding groups of laymen they could work with to revitalize the parish. A good example is a parish in a Midwestern town. The pastor became alive to the need for Church renewal through the Vatican council. But he faced a parish with the traditional activities made up of people with traditional attitudes. Moreover, few of the laymen would have been considered dedicated Christians (although, of course, there were many "loyal" Catholics). By using the Cursillo movement, he created a new grouping in the parish who related to one another, to the parish, and to Christianity in a new way. Moreover, because of the religious change they had gone through as a result of the Cursillo, they were open to other kinds of changes. They were a nucleus which formed the basis for a thorough going renewal in the parish. Parishes like this are the exception rather than the rule, because pastors who understand the potential of movements are the exception rather than the rule. But there are enough parishes like this to show that movements can be very valuable in creating new groupings of people in the Church. This use of movements to create new groupings indicates the value of movements for dealing with one of the problems we considered before: the problem of forming basic Christian communities. When the result of a movement is to create a nucleus of people who are committed to one another and to Christianity in a new way, this group of people can become the source for the formation of a basic Christian community. It can form around them and, as it forms, their previous specialized interest can become the beginning of a more complete understanding of what a Christian community should be like (Members of movements tend to see only their "cause" at first but after the initial enthusiasm, they begin to see other needs as well). A second by-product of movements is that they do bring innovations which can be of use in the life of the Church. Sometimes these innovations are practices which can be learned from the movements. For instance, the prayer of the faithful was learned from the liturgical movement and is now a common practice in the whole Church. A certain kind of group dynamics was learned from the Cursillo movement and is now used broadly throughout the Church, outside the Cursillo movement. In other words, movements are sources of creativity. Sometimes these innovations are new structures. For instance, very early in the 12th century,the Franciscan movement was formed into the Franciscan order which proved to have an enduring value in the life of the Church. The Cursillo movement developed the ultreya and the group reunion which conceivably became standard structures in the Church, fostering a certain kind of evangelism among lay leaders. In other words, movements can develop some of the needed new structures to enable the life of the Church to thrive. There are, in short, a number of uses which movement can have in the life of the Church. They can be used to revitalize the Church or an aspect of the life of the Church. They can be used to adapt the Church better to the situation it finds itself in. They can be used to create new environments and groupings where these are needed; and they can be a valuable source of innovations in the life of the Church. But, as was said before, there are other means of social change besides movements. There is institutional sponsorship (as illustrated by the Vatican Council and the changes it produced), there are organizations, and organized efforts (like the Legion of Mary), and there is diffusion of values and information (changes in the financial structure of parishes). A question still remains about the distinctive contribution movements can make. When are movements more valuable than any other means of social change? Movements are distinctive as a means of social change because they are actual environments which have formed around a new set of values or concerns. For instance, the institution of parish councils was accepted largely because of the diffusion of information (first stage) and then through institutional sponsorship (second stage). There was never much of a group of people (an environment) who developed common bonds because of their interest in parish councils. We would not tend to speak of "the parish council movement." Movements, like the liturgical movement, or the Cursillo or the CFM, however, produced the changes in the Church by bringing a group of people together who had never been brought together before and forming a new environment. Because movements form special environments, then, they can be most effective as forces for change when a special environment is needed for the change to occur. Parish councils were accepted because there was a pre-existing environment (the environment of Church leaders) which was predisposed to accept them (by the Vatican Council). Parish councils were readily diffused without an environment, because they were the kind of thing which was acceptable to an environment which already existed. But the liturgical movement had to form an environment of its own to make any headway, because the environment of the Church, as a whole, at the time it began, was not ready to accept what it advocated. Therefore, if there was going to be any fostering of an appreciation of the liturgy, it would have to be done in a special environment. A movement, in other words, can effect a fundamental type of social change which would not have occurred without it. Because environments are effective in changing people's beliefs, attitudes, values, and behavior patterns, movement can be a force that can make more thorough going re-orientations than other means of social change. How effective they can be depends upon their strength as environments. As we see the need for social change in the Church and face the many problems involved, it would make more sense many times to think of starting a movement than a program or an organization. For instance, the Church today is facing a problem among university students in their commitment to Christ. More headway has been made in this area through Cursillos, Cursillo-derived weekend programs, and the charismatic renewal than by most other efforts because they have had the appeal and impact of movements. Newman programs, university parishes, and student organizations have not been able to have the same effect. What is true in the area of university students is true in other areas where the Church faces a problem of overcoming environmental resistance. If our concern is for the welfare of the Church, and if social change is needed in the Church, and if movements are one of the most effective sources of social change, then one of the most important pastoral tasks today is fostering movements in a way which produces constructive social change. Where movements which have a constructive purpose already exist, they should be encouraged and helped. But even more significantly, it is worth considering starting movements (or developing movements that already exist) to make headway in areas where the present environment in the Church or the world is resistant. A common attitude toward movements (as toward communities) is that they just happen. Sometimes you can snuff them out at the beginning. But once they are under way, the only thing left is to just put up with them. Such an attitude has a grain of truth in it. Movements can rarely be gotten control of or directed the way an organization or a program can (although the Communists and other groups have developed techniques of getting control of social movements or of feeding off them and have often been successful). Once they begin, they are usually unstoppable. But movements can often be started to produce an improvement in the life of the Church. Moreover, once they have begun, they can often be channeled in ways that can be much more constructive to the life of the Church than if they had been left alone. In addition, often new movements can be started which can correct the deficiencies of the older ones. The Cursillo movement is an interesting example of how movements can be begun to renew the Church. The Cursillo movement was deliberately begun in 1949 in Mallorca by a pastoral team of priests and laymen under the direction of a bishop. They set out to solve the problem of the alienation of the young from the Church and the problem of the lack of Christian commitment in Christian organizations. They developed a method which has since given rise to a powerful international movement. In other words, the cursillo movement was a movement which was started by Church leaders to make headway in an environment which was resistant to the Christian message and to overcome an imbalance in a previous movement in the Church (the Catholic Action movement). Movements, then, can be made use of in pastoral work. They could become one of the most effective instruments in the work of the Church. They are more than just facts which have to be dealt with. They can be resources. INTEGRATING MOVEMENTS Movements, however, are not automatically resources. They can also cause problems. If movements are to become a constructive force in the life of the Church today, ways must be learned of avoiding or easing the problems which they cause. They must, in other words, be intelligently integrated into the life of the Church. One reason movements cause problems is simply that they are forces for change. Any force for social change (institutional changes, programs, models) causes some of the same problems movements do. All agents of change trigger opposition and conflict, just because they are advocating something new and there will always be a variety of reasons why human beings resist change (from disagreement over values to simple inertia). Moreover, all efforts at change cause confusion and disorientation, because people need time and help to understand and adjust to something new. But there are special problems which seem to come with movements. The fact that movement involve a special environment (groupings of people) with a specialized interest tends to cause the added problems of division, imbalance, and sectarianism. They cause division (not simply in the sense of differences of opinion but in the sense of group against group) because they uphold values which many in the community are unwilling to go along with, and because the presence of one group actively supporting something creates the tendency for an opposing group to form. They cause imbalance because they create environments which are specialized (centered around a certain value to the neglect of others). They cause sectarianism because sometimes the special groupings created isolate themselves from the rest of the Church and at times even leave the Church. There is a great deal which can be done to avoid or obviate the problems caused by the presence of movement in the Church. First of all, many of the difficulties caused by the movements (and by any other means of social change) can be eased by the climate that surrounds them. If, for instance, the climate is one of lack of communication, whether the lack of communication is caused by the secretiveness of those involved in the movement or by the lack of openness of those who are not, there is room for a great deal of division, confusion and conflict to arise from rumor and ignorance. Lack of communication breeds prejudice. Fostering a climate of communication will overcome many of the problems movements give rise to. Or, if the climate is one of rigidity, the tendency will be to form parties. Rigidity can exist on either side. Movements tend to become doctrinaire, parties of true believers. But those who are not in movements tend to form traditionalist parties, equally unbending. Where there is no absolute difference on values involved (which is usually the case with movements in the Church), attitudes of flexibility and experimentation can overcome tendencies to rigidity. If there is a feeling of openness to different approaches and a willingness to try an approach and see how it works, the disagreements can be put on an experimental basis (one open to factual verification, which disputes about absolute values are not). Or, if the climate is one of suspicion rather than trust, there will be a tendency toward fear on both sides. Fear breeds fear. Trust brings forth trust. When either the members of movements or others threaten the others' right to exist or call into question their motives, the natural response is fear. Many problems can be dealt with once there is enough trust for people to feel relaxed and secure in dealing with them. Secondly, many of the difficulties caused by movements could be solved by the existence of adequately functioning basic Christian communities. One of the greatest sources of attraction movements have today is that they form communities. People who never felt a sense of involvement or personal relationship anywhere in the Church find it in movements. Consequently, they join movements because of the attractiveness of the communal life they find in the movement, not because they can see the value of what the movement is trying to foster. Moreover, another result of the lack of adequately functioning basic Christian communities is the tendency of specialized communities to form in an imbalanced way. There are communities which exist solely for the sake of social action in which it would be scandalous to talk about prayer and vice versa. As the parish system becomes more and more inadequate, more and more specialized communities are being formed. And these communities are less and less in communication with other Christian groupings. The formation of basic Christian communities which are open to change and to movements, but which would provide a basic community life, would do a great deal to stabilize the life of the Church today. The existence of adequate community life would mean that movements would not tend to produce groupings which are isolated or imbalanced. The very fact of the membership of the movements belonging to communities would counteract such tendencies. Basic Christian communities can be open to the influence of movements. And members of communities are in more of a position to consider movements on their merits and to avoid creating imbalanced special environments isolated from others. Finally, many of the difficulties caused by movements could be solved by pastoral coordination. Since movements have institutions connected with them, there will often be conflicts and difficulties simply because the institutions overlap in purpose and there are no ways of coordinating them for maximum positive effect. They end up being in competition with one another and with parish institutions in ways that are unnecessary. About the years 1963 to 1965, as the Cursillo movement rapidly spread through the country, it had a structure which was worked out to be coordinated with the structure of Catholic Action in Spain. In the United States there was nothing like Catholic Action in Spain. But there was CFM, which is a formation movement in many ways similar to the Cursillo movement and there were a variety of parish-based apostolic organizations (like the Legion of Mary and St. Vincent de Paul). Because of the similarity of structure, the Cursillo movement and CFM were in many instances a drain on each other, since they competed for the time of the same lay leaders. There are a number of places in the country where the result of this was the weakening of lay involvement in the Church. Now, something similar is beginning to happen with the charismatic renewal, which is enough, like both the Cursillo movement and the CFM, to be another complicating factor in the situation. Some sort of coordination is needed and frequently this never occurs. The solution to the problem of climate and of coordination can be provided only by those who have positions of pastoral leadership in the Church. For instance, acceptance and understanding on the part of church leadership is of great importance to those who belong to a movement. It can make all the difference in their loyalty to the Church and their willingness to work for it. The lack of it can lead to alienation among those who could be the strongest supporters of the Church. What follows are two typical scenarios based on actual situations which involved at least four movements in the Church (the CFM, the Cursillo movement, the charismatic renewal, and the peace movement). In situation A, a new movement entered a parish. At the beginning, the members felt that in being part of the movement they were helping the Church (because the Church needed this). They enthusiastically took part in the movement and just as enthusiastically (and naively) began to spread it. They then received a certain amount of opposition. They found themselves avoided by the pastor. They heard remarks he had made about them. Since most of them were not seasoned veterans of parish activities, they did not know the channels and protocol. They began to feel alienated from the Church. They felt they had to make a choice between this new set of values with the community they had found and the institutions of the Church (the Church was now seen by them almost exclusively as an institution and not at all as a community). As some of their members opted for the pastor and the parish, the others became hardened more and more. If their community was strong enough, they went underground or left the Church as a group. When their community was too weak to withstand the pressure, the individuals "hung loose" from the institutional church or left it altogether. The legacy was hard feelings on all sides. In situation B also, a new movement entered a parish. The same sort of enthusiasm was generated both for the new movement and the Church. The same sort of reaction of fear, distrust, and opposition arose among other parishioners. The pastor, however, made a point of finding out what was going on. He came to the meetings of those who were part of the new movement in an attempt to understand the experience which was motivating these people. He read the literature of the movement in an effort to understand how this movement might fit into the life of the Church or the parish. Even before committing himself to a course of action, he began to talk to the members of the movement about excesses and about situations of difficulty they were causing that they might not have been aware of. He brought different groups together to talk about what was happening and what the reactions were. He directed the new group toward a place in the parish and, if he felt the group was making an important enough contribution, he encouraged them openly. When the movement dissipated, as it did, there was at least no legacy of hostility toward the Church. When it did dissipate, many of the members of the movement became workers and leaders in parish activities. Members of movements rarely have enough experience or vision to know how to integrate themselves into the life of the Church. The Church today is lucky that in a number of movements, which could be potentially the most disruptive, the leadership is in the hands of people who are committed to the overall good of the Church and not just to the set of values fostered by their movements. But it should be even more the role of the pastors within the Church to integrate movements into the Church than it is the role of the leaders of the movements. The pastoral office is the office which is concerned with the overall good of the whole Church (or parish or basic community). The leadership of the movements will most naturally be filled by the people who can most effectively advocate the cause which has given rise to the movement, and they will not be as sensitive or experienced in the problems of integration. In order that there be men in the pastoral offices in the Church who can provide the kind of direction which is needed, there has to be training for the pastoral office that will equip men both to foster the welfare of the whole Church and to be open to social change. They have to learn how to preside over the process of change in such a way that it builds up the Church and does not disintegrate it. They need to be pastors of their whole people, community formers. There is also a need for consultant services for different movements. Neither the ordinary pastor in a parish nor the ordinary leader of a local group in any of the movements is capable without help of understanding the best way for movements to fit into the life of the local church. Pastors would have to be experts on all movements; and the leaders would have to be experts on the whole parish. Consultant services are needed, first of all, within the movements for the leaders of the movements - services which can provide help for understanding the movement and its place in the Church. Consultant services are also needed locally (perhaps on a diocesan basis) so that the leaders of parishes and basic Christian communities can get the help they need to know how to make use of movements in the development of the parts of the Church for which they are responsible. |
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Building Christian Community - Strategy for Renewing the Church by Stephen B. Clark. ©Stephen B. Clark 1996 All Rights reserved. |
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