The “Theological Locus” of Ecclesial Movements (2/2)

On May 29, at the initiative of the Focolare Movement, 35 representatives of and members from various ecclesial movements gathered to speak publicly about their distinctive identities and mission.

Addressing the gathering in the Cathedral of the Resurrection, Jean Barbara, former president of Charis and now president of a network of communities grouped under the banner Sword of the Spirit (“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” Ephesians 6:17), presented Cardinal Josef Ratzinger’s understanding of ecclesial movements. He cited a little-known text written in 1998 by the future pope, then prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, at the request of John Paul II. Entitled The Theological Place of Ecclesial Movements, it describes the movements as a “theological locus” complementing the parish.

At the time, although the Church had long encouraged lay apostolic movements to play an active role in its mission, it had yet to articulate a theology of such movements. In his study, Cardinal Ratzinger observed that, after a “winter” marked by widespread Christian weariness, something had occurred in 1970 that no one had anticipated: throughout the Catholic Church, the experience of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit spread rapidly, reaching millions of believers. Prayer groups and new movements sprang up across the Church. Some even spoke of a “new Pentecost.”

By 1998, however, prayer groups and communities had already experienced their share of growing pains, the “Panzer Cardinal” observed. The Church therefore needed to define the relationship between these new movements and its permanent structures. Put another way, it had to determine their proper “theological locus.”

Various attempts had been made to resolve the issue. Some maintained that the Church was institutional while the movements were charismatic; that the Church was Christological while the movements were pneumatological; and finally, that the Church was hierarchical whereas the movements were prophetic.

Cardinal Ratzinger, however, argued that the institutional Church is every bit as charismatic, pneumatological and prophetic as the movements themselves, albeit in a different way. He addressed the issue from two distinct historical perspectives: by distinguishing between the Church’s local and universal dimensions – which some identify with its Petrine and Marian aspects, respectively – and by revisiting the role ecclesial movements have played throughout the Church’s history.

From the Church’s earliest days, Ratzinger argued, these two dimensions had coexisted. Referring to the apostolic and episcopal figures of St. Paul and St. James, the first bishop of Jerusalem, he showed that while they were closely interconnected, they remained clearly distinct. On the one hand were the Church’s local ministries, which gradually took on permanent institutional forms through the episcopate and the priesthood. On the other was the apostolic ministry, expressed through ecclesial movements. Ratzinger concluded that the Church’s universal dimension – what transcends local ministries – is every bit as indispensable as its local structures.

To support his argument, Ratzinger sketched an overview of the various apostolic movements throughout the Church’s history. He began with the emergence of the eremitical life in the fourth century under St. Anthony the Great, through the monastic movement with St. Basil, the missionary monasticism that flourished between the sixth and ninth centuries, contributing to evangelize the British Isles and the Germanic peoples, the mendicant orders of the thirteenth century, which played a decisive role in the Christianization of Europe, and the missionary movement of the nineteenth-century, which undertook the global mission in the Americas, Africa and Asia, as well as the predominantly female missionary congregations on continents only lightly touched by Christianity. In short, Ratzinger argued for a clear historical continuity linking the eremitical tradition, monasticism, the mendicant orders, missionary congregations and today’s ecclesial movements.

The Response of the Holy Spirit

On the basis of these two perspectives, Ratzinger observed that the Church is always in need of ministries and forms of missions not exclusively tied to the local Church; that apostolic movements necessarily emerge in ever new forms throughout history, as a response of the Holy Spirit to the Church’s changing circumstances; and finally that, when these movements are received by bishops and priests within diocesan and parish structures, they represent a true gift of God, both for the new evangelization and for missionary activity.

Concluding his presentation, Jean Babara stated: “Ecclesial movements exist and find their place in the Church because we stand within the historical continuity of the universal apostolic work of the Holy Spirit, from the monastic movement and the religious orders down to the present day. We are the successors of the monks… and of other religious orders, with a universal mission. Certainly, we are only a handful in number, but in the eyes of the Lord, it is not numbers that matter.”

At the end of the meeting, Bishop Antoine Bou Najem offered an emotional testimony to what he owes to the Focolare Movement. Recalling the preparatory retreat for his ordination that he attended in Loppiano, the movement’s center in Italy, he said: “It was in Loppiano that I understood, deeply shaped by the experience of community life, that the priesthood is a service before being an authority, a gift of self before being an office.”

For his part, Bishop Paolo Borgia spontaneously asked the faithful and ecclesial movements not to forget to include priests and bishops in their prayers. “Do not think they do not need it,” he said, stressing that the Church’s hierarchy also needs the support and prayers of the laity.

“The Greatest Battle”

The Indian cardinal Ivan Dias (1936-2017) recounts that, a few months before becoming Pope John Paul II, on November 9, 1976, Cardinal Karol Wojtyła said: “We are now facing the greatest battle humanity has ever seen. I do not think the Christian community has fully understood this. We are now facing the final struggle between the Church and the anti-Church, between the Gospel and the anti-Gospel.”

The former prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples went on to point to a powerful current of secularization, relativism and indifference that is putting the world under strain, stifling and extinguishing the faith of tens of millions of people.

Regarded as providential by John Paul II, the flourishing of ecclesial movements after the Second Vatican Council is one of the most striking and unexpected phenomena of contemporary Catholicism. In Lebanon and across the world, they are now part of the Church’s landscape. Rooted in prayer and the Eucharist, these movements are seen as one of the “weapons” ultimately meant to shake the foundations of the “anti-Church” and of relativism.