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July 10, 2002
Vatican approves set of statutes for Neocatechumenal Way
Way recognized as 'an itinerary of Catholic formation'
By John Norton
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican has approved a set of statutes for the Neocatechumenal Way after five years of discussions with the movement's leaders and consultations with bishops around the world.
U.S. Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, head of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, handed the decree of approval to the movement's leaders in an hourlong ceremony June 28 at the council.
"This is certainly an event of noteworthy Church significance," the council said in a statement.
"The founders of the Way, together with their collaborators, have worked untiringly with the Pontifical Council for the Laity to accomplish the goal indicated by the Holy Father," it said.
About 50 leading members of the Way, including Spanish founders Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez, attended the ceremony, which opened and closed with religious songs accompanied by Arguello on guitar.
In remarks during the ceremony, Arguello thanked laity council officials for the statutes' approval, which he said he hoped would "help dissipate misunderstandings and prejudices that are often the fruit of lack of knowledge of the Way."
The statutes, approved provisionally for five years, contain 35 articles grouped under six titles and run nearly 23 pages. They recognize the Way as "an itinerary of Catholic formation" in the service of bishops, not as a movement, lay association or religious congregation.
The statutes specify that the Way's work is to be carried out "under the direction of the diocesan bishop" in conjunction with local group leaders according to the "Catechetical Directory of the Neocatechumenal Way." They identify the Way's activities as: "post-baptismal catechumenate," or Christian initiation for those who are already baptized; ongoing formation in the faith; ordinary baptism preparation; and catechesis.
Arguello said the Way sought to revive the "serious catechumenate" of the first three centuries of the Church under Roman persecution.
"These (early Christian) communities converted the Roman empire; today, faced with globalization, atheism and the apostasy of Europe, here is (Pope) John Paul II saying there needs to be a return to the primitive model" through the approval of the Way's statutes, he said.
Giuseppe Gennarini, an Italian who does public relations for the Way in North America, told Catholic News Service after the ceremony that it was unprecedented for the Vatican to formally approve a plan of Christian initiation for those who are already baptized, a process he said takes about 10 years to complete in the Neocatechumenal Way.
"This is a very significant step," he said.
The mood of the statutes' approval ceremony was relaxed and celebratory and was punctuated throughout with outbursts of laughter at quips and side-of-the-mouth remarks by Hernandez, the group's feisty female co-founder. Wearing a black cotton T-shirt marked in gold with Chinese characters, she repeatedly ignored a laity council official's attempts to cut short her 20-minute improvised speech, complaining jokingly, "They never let women talk."
In the council's corridors afterward, chain-smoking slim cigarettes, she broke into an Italian television interview with Arguello to teasingly heckle the TV reporter for asking questions about the group's controversial reputation.
The council statement said the new norms had the aim of "regulating the practice of the Neocatechumenal Way and its harmonious insertion into the fabric of the Church, also offering an aid to all the pastors of the church in their fatherly and vigilant accompaniment of the Neocatechumenal communities."
In some dioceses, bishops and pastors have complained that the Neocatechumenal Way's program of formation has divided parishes by seeming to create a parallel and competing parish community.
The statutes specify that "the pastor is at the center of the actuation of the Neocatechumenal Way," and that the Way will aim at "promoting in its (followers) a mature sense of belonging to the parish and kindling relations of deep communion and collaboration with all the faithful and other components of the parish community."
The Way was founded in Spain in 1964 and now has spread to more than 100 countries. Gennarini said that in the United States it is active in about 60 dioceses and counted more than 500 communities of 30-50 members each.
He said the group had been banned in two U.S. Church jurisdictions: the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and the Diocese of Palm Beach, Fla. He expressed hope that recent leadership changes in the two dioceses would lead to a lifting of the ban.
The council said it consulted with individual bishops and bishops' conferences around the world "to evaluate the experience of the Way at the parish, diocesan and national levels." It also said many patriarchs, cardinals and bishops had written to Pope John Paul asking that the movement's statutes be approved.
In a 1997 audience, the pope encouraged the heads of the movement to work with the laity council on the statutes, which he called a "very important step" and a means to obtaining "a further guarantee of the authenticity of your charism."
He reaffirmed the council's authority to approve the movement's statutes in a 2001 letter to Cardinal Stafford.
The council said the approval of the statutes "opens a new stage in the life of the Way, in which the Pontifical Council for the Laity will not fail to accompany it with the same solicitude in the future that it has adopted until now."
Three U.S. prelates were on hand after the ceremony for refreshments at the council. They were Washington Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, who as archbishop of Newark, N.J., opened an archdiocesan missionary seminary with ties to the Neocatechumenal Way; current Newark Archbishop John J. Myers; and Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, who also has an archdiocesan seminary linked to the Way.
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