From False Dawn:

Should American bishops open the door as requested, they may be letting a large and aggressive camel into the tent. As John Allen reported in 2003, "Spain is something of a laboratory for a redefinition of parish and diocesan structures. One staggering statistic from [Opus Dei priest] de la Hoz: Of Spanish Catholics who attend Mass at least once a month (roughly 18 percent of Spain’s 37 million Catholics, or around 6.6 million people), more than 40 percent come from the movements. In other words, almost half of the practicing Catholics in Spain, some 3 million, belong to a movement. As this number continues to rise, I wondered, what will the impact be on parish life? Extrapolating from what Gordon and Munoz said, it seems one scenario is that the parish will not disappear, but it will play a very different role. Instead of being the center of Catholic life, the crucible in which one’s spirituality is forged, it will function as a meeting place for the movements.

The parish would become a sort of ecclesiastical piazza, in which adherents of the Neocatechumenate, Opus Dei, Regnum Cristi [sic], Catholic Action, Communion and Liberation, etc., meet to share experiences, to work on joint projects, and at least sometimes to worship together, before moving back down their different avenues. Under this scenario, the pastor becomes a facilitator rather than a shepherd in the traditional sense, someone whose task is to bring the movements into conversation and collaboration. The parish becomes the guarantor of communion, but the focus of Christian living will be inside the movements.

A related question is what happens to bishops. When the primary identity of Catholics is defined in geographic terms, i.e., as a member of such-and-such as parish, the diocesan bishop is the key authority. But once Catholics understand themselves in terms of a charism or spirituality, one that crosses geographic boundaries, they become analogous to members of a religious order in the sense that they take their cues more from leadership of the group rather than bishops. Already one sees this process at work in Spain, where Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez, co-founders of the Neocatechumenate, are higher-profile and more powerful figures than most Spanish bishops. Though Pope John Paul II has encouraged the movements, to what extent the institutional Church is prepared for the long-term implications of a shift from geography to charism as the locus of Catholic identity is an open question. Spain seems the place where this will be worked out first, and hence it bears watching."

Opus Dei is not the only new religious movement within the Catholic Church with cultist overtones. Other organizations have become prominent with the aid of new teachings from a charismatic founder, a new organizational form, new spirituality, and zealous recruits. These include:

These movements profess loyalty to the Pope and to the teachings of the Catholic Church. A scholarly observer of new religious movements says, "Each, from its own point of view, is promoting true spirituality, religious orthodoxy, and conservative morality." In 2002, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) said, "Even now we witness this ‘new evangelization’ through many ecclesial lay movements such as Opus Dei, the Neocatechumenate, Focolare, Regnum Christi, Communion and Liberation."

Reporter Gordon Urquhart says, "If it was John Paul who gave these groups authority through his enthusiastic backing, Cardinal Ratzinger was the architect of their permanent place in the Church, both by justifying them theologically and by ensuring that they received Vatican approval." In 2000, Cardinal Stafford, a conservative, hailed the movements as "among the most beautiful fruits of the [Second Vatican] Council." On the eve of Pentecost 2004, Pope John Paul II said, "The ecclesial movements and new communities are a providential answer, inspired by the Holy Spirit given the present need of new evangelization."

Upon the rock of these movements, the Catholic authorities propose to build a new Church for the Third Millennium.

The new ecclesial movements "are in practice largely autonomous from the local Churches." An article published in 2004 by La Civiltà Cattolica – a paper whose contents are reviewed by the Vatican’s secretariat of state before going to press – warns of three dangers: "The first danger: ‘The tendency to make absolute their own Christian experience, holding it to be the only valid one, for which reason the ‘true’ Christians would be those who are part of their own movement.’ The second: ‘The tendency to close themselves off; that is, to follow their own pastoral plans and methods of formation for the members of the movement, to carry out their own apostolic activities, refusing to collaborate with other ecclesial organizations, or seeking to occupy all the territory themselves, leaving scarce resources for the activities of other associations.’ The third: ‘The tendency to cut themselves off from the local Church, making reference in their apostolic activity more to the methods of the movement and the directives of its leaders than to the directives and pastoral programs of the dioceses and parishes. From this arises the sometimes bitter tensions that can be created between the ecclesial movements and the bishops and pastors.’"

In 2003, Vatican reporter John Allen forecast the emerging structure of the Catholic Church, based on what he learned from two Opus Dei leaders in Spain: "the parish will not disappear, but it will play a very different role. Instead of being the center of Catholic life, the crucible in which one’s spirituality is forged, it will function as a meeting place for the movements. The parish would become a sort of ecclesiastical piazza, in which adherents of the Neocatechumenate, Opus Dei, Regnum Christi, Catholic Action, Communion and Liberation, etc., meet to share experiences, to work on joint projects, and at least sometimes to worship together, before moving back down their different avenues." As an Italian Catholic journalist noted in 2003, the new ecclesial movements "refer directly to the pope as their one connection to the Church. To different degrees they bear the distinctive features of a sect. The risk is that they will transform the Catholic Church into a body of memberships in juxtaposed groups that don’t communicate with each other: each movement with its own liturgy, its own discipline, its own system of authority and beliefs." Catholic parishes and dioceses would cease to embody the unity of the faithful. They would instead become recruiting grounds for competing authoritarian, politicized sects.

A former member of Focolare warned, "It is ironic that the most pernicious and inhuman idea of the twentieth century, the deification of the collective, has found its last refuge and most passionate proponents in the very Catholics who fought communism so fiercely." It should be a red flag that most of these "new ecclesial movements" have spawned groups of bruised and disillusioned survivors (organizations such as the Opus Dei Awareness Network and REGAIN), and that these new ecclesial movements have a place on standard anti-cult web sites – an "honor" not shared by traditional Catholic religious orders such as Benedictines, Dominicans, and Franciscans.

As Opus Dei and the other new ecclesial movements grow, the Catholic Church is likely to change in ways more radical than Call to Action, We Are Church, and other leftist dissenters would have ever dreamed.

The Catholic King Syndrome

The Catholic King Syndrome - Part II

In 1969, a 42-year-old Catholic theologian uttered what seems to be a 'prophecy' (on its way to its complete fulfillment) on a German radio station on a day when violent rioting broke out between Catholic nationalists and the Protestant population in Northern Island.

That day, barricades were constructed at the borders between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, and the area was rocked by intense rioting. In this broadcast, the priest envisaged a post-imperial papacy, shorn of wealth and pretenses of earthly power. Then he added these remarkable words:

What you read above will be what institutionalized Christianity will look like once God cuts  Imperial Christianity down to size  (after fulfillment of the "applicable conditions" required for the Gates of Hell not to prevail. (2))

It seems that "somewhere on his way to the Chair of Peter" Ratzinger forgot what he so accurately prophesied. Power blinds.

On page 85 of his Jesus of Nazareth - The Infancy Narratives we read:

Before anyone gets "misty eyed" and nostalgic about Ratzinger, do not forget that even satan must serve God!

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