Thursday, May 4, 2017

THEY WILL NOT PASS HERE

Posted by LaPaz, Jungle Watch Correspondant from Spain.

Today I have just found an article by Sandro Magister, published in L'Espresso, June 1996, titled In the name of Kiko. The Neocatechumenal charge, and I want to share with you some paragraphs where Magister mentioned some cardinals who did not allow the Neocatechumenal Way's expansion in their respective jurisdictions. The original article in Italian is here.

"But they will not pass here

Cardinals and bishops bombarding neo-catechumenal communities

In Rome, the Pope's diocese, the neocatechumenals triumph. But in Milan, where Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini commands, they can not stand. In Florence, Cardinal Silvano Piovanelli told them "stop". Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini put them in line in Turin. And in Palermo, as the last act of government before his retirement, Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo promulgated an edict against them.

The four cardinals, obviously, do not think of neocatechumenals as enthusiastic John Paul II is. Martini described their neocatechumenate as an "alternative and antagonistic" community with the Church. Saldarini has forbidden them to continue to be grouped by closed doors. Pappalardo forbade them also to celebrate the Easter vigil, which is isolated from the rest of the faithful. And in Milan, Turin and Palermo, they will no longer be able to penetrate the parishes except with the permission of the curia.

In Florence, Cardinal Piovanelli is even more explicit. In a document written a year ago he includes a list of criticisms: "They believe better than others", "they impose on everyone their experience as the only way to revive the Church", "they divide parish communities with Stiffness and closures, misunderstandings and suspicions".

Ten years ago, the bishop of Brescia, Bruno Foresti, was no less. In the neocatechumenals he saw "sect spirit", "psychological subjection", "affective and effective dependence on the leaders", "pessimistic vision of man", "almost magical background" in the reading of the Sacred Scriptures. He forbade "until new order" the birth of new neocatechumenal communities in his diocese. Since 1990 he has mitigated the ban, but without relaxing control.

Other bureaucrats who have put the brake in Italy are those from Novara, Trieste, Foligno. The Neocatechumenals call the hostile cardinals and bishops "Pharaohs" in their argot. And when in 1988 the bishop of Perugia, Caesar Pagani, died after bursting interviews with the leaders of this elected people, some of them saw God's punitive hand in it". (Sandro Magister, http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/7069.html?refresh_ce).

Remember Sandro Magister wrote this in 1996, when the Neocatechumenal Way still did not have a hundred Redemptoris Mater Seminaries around the world and Statutes were not yet approved. Its power was more limited, as well as Kiko's global tithe collection.

From my own experience in the NCW, I know Kiko's work is a long term job. He thinks of decades and waits. If a bishop protests, Kiko waits for his retirement. No hurry.

The same mentality is shared by his followers. The Neocatechumenal Way is a long trip for every person who starts. And not only for him/her, but even for his/her descendents and with the aspiration of being perpetuated by their descendants. The Neocatechumenal Way is such a factory of large generations of people who reproduce building new extense pyramids.

That is one of the reasons why is very difficult for some people to leave. If they leave, they will have to give up a way of life where friends, neocatechumenal brothers and sisters and family are interconnected in complex family lines. Kiko has founded a real "pueblo", in the image of a new people of Israel.



















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