How Are New Ecclesial Movements Changing the Church? – Commonweal

Priests incardinated within new ecclesial movements would not be subject to local ordinaries, that is, diocesan bishops. For the Vatican this would mean acknowledging something about how these movements have evolved from around the time of Vatican II. Originally, they were supposed to have helped renew the laity. But with the substantial reduction in the number of diocesan priests and the shrinking of religious orders worldwide over the last three decades, they instead now seem to be a source of new priests. While this could help alleviate the shortage of clergy in the short term, it might also introduce a new set of problems.

The issue is not ideological, as there is a great diversity among these fraternities: seminarians and priests from SantEgidio, for example, are more conciliar and ecumenical than those from Communion and Liberation or the Neo-Catechumenal Way. Rather, its structural: in order to replace or replenish diocesan seminaries and diocesan parishes that are short on clergy, the territorial Churchthe bishops, including the bishop of Romeare making allowances for priestly vocations coming from non-territorial organizations: the movements.

This raises four interesting considerations. The first is Church politics: the movements are not, in the eyes of Francis, the special elites for the new evangelization as they were under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Francis has been clearly critical of any sectarian tendencies he detects. But even he realizes that these movements are producing new, desperately needed priests in a Catholic Church that still needs the clergy to function. In this sense, the move, if approved, would signal that the Church finds it much easier to change the relationship between the territorial and personal dimension in the Church than to ordain married men to the priesthood (viri probati) or ordain women deacons.

Then theres the ecclesiological consideration. Reversing the relationship between the territorial or geographical dimension of Church aggregations (parish, diocese) to the personal dimension (membership in a group not defined by geographical location) would overturn a system that dates from the early centuries of Christianity (dioceses were the successors of the provinces of the Roman Empire) and that was solidified in the second millennium, especially by the Council of Trent (1545-1563). It would also pose a challenge to the ecclesial concept of the local church that is in dialogue and tension with the universal the Church.

The third consideration is theological. The whole idea of enculturation of the Christian message is connected to the ecclesiology of the local church. It remains to be seen what kind of formation (and where) priests from new movements would receive, or whether they would be priests for the entire Church (including Franciss peripheries) or only for their movement. This issue was raised by John Paul II in the apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis (1992), the apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente (1994), and the apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata (1996). The relationship between some movements and the local churches has in many cases been less than collaborative; for example, local bishops have long complained to Rome about the modus operandi of the Neo-Catechumenal Way in their own dioceses and even on a national level.

Finally, theres a historical consideration. In 1513, prior to the council of Trent and the Reformation, the Venetian Camaldolese monks Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Querini presented to Pope Leo X Libellus ad Leonem X, the most important set of reform proposals in the immediate pre-Reformation period. Giustiniani and Querini proposed, among other things, a radical reduction in the number of religious orders (with just three typologies of rules for religious life: Augustinian, Benedictine, and mendicant) and a more centralized, reformist church under the leadership of the pope and the bishops. But what happened after Trent was exactly the opposite: a proliferation of new religious orders (Capuchines, Barnabites, Jesuits, etc.).

Something similar has unfolded since Vatican II, which envisioned a Catholic Church under the leadership of the bishops and the pope, and less autonomy for religious orders and personal, non-territorial Church structures. Instead, theres been a crisis in the episcopacy bishops now function more as CEOs than as pastors; they are called on to act collegially with the pope and synodally with their flock; and they face a fixed retirement age seventy-fiveand a shift in how it is expected to work alongside a successful papacy. This comes along with the spread of ecclesial groups and movements tied to intentional communities that claimand obtainautonomy from local ordinaries. It all would seem to be yet another example of how the living body of the Church undoes the best-intentioned and most well-thought-out reform projects of enlightened theologians.

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How Are New Ecclesial Movements Changing the Church? - Commonweal