Cognitive Restructuring and the Neocatechumenal Way

No one can leave the Neocatechumenal Way with his conscience intact. For there is no acceptable reason to leave that organisation.

When I was in the Neocatechumenate, we learnt to pity those who left, for they had turned their back on the Way of salvation into which God had called them. We tried to mollify this conviction by blaming others, of course: those who left must have come under “bad influences”. Early on during my time in the Way, one young lady left the Community, suddenly. The word went around that her boyfriend was to blame: he “didn’t approve” of new religious movements. After I left the Way, I heard through the grapevine that my decision to leave had been blamed on my wife. It is easier, apparently, to blame the bad influence of outsiders than to acknowledge that members may have valid reasons to be unhappy.

My Neocatechumenal presbyter (in the Neocatechumenate priests are called presbyters, not priests), preached in a homily that those who left were “those who joined for the wrong reasons”. He said: “Some of you will doubtless leave, because you will realise that what this Way offers is not what you were after… Those who joined for the right reasons will remain.” To leave, therefore, was not just a change of direction: it was either a betrayal, or an admission of long-standing hypocrisy.

Those who left, I was told, always fared ill in the outside world. Many lost their Christian faith. Many returned to the evil ways they had led before joining the Way: drink, drugs, licentiousness. Those who left were never remembered in our corporate prayers.

Those who left silently were quietly forgotten. But those who left and dared to criticise were loudly vilified. The Neocatechumenate never attempts to deal with the substance of criticisms. Instead, a flurry of ad hominem rumours fly around, sullying the testimony of the critics. One young lady who dared to tell her story to the press was deemed to have always been mentally unstable, and “had a problem with money”. One young man who did likewise “had always refused to accept the teaching of the Church” – the ultimate condemnation. Gordon Urquhart, who wrote a book criticising the Way, “was, after all, a homosexual with a failed marriage”. The Clifton Diocese investigation into the Neocatechumenate was “a put-up job…, biased from the start”.

If the critics start to gain any kind of ascendancy, as in the case of the Clifton enquiry, then they are termed “persecuters”, and are met with official silence (“like Christ”), but also with a whole load of behind-the-scenes rumours, gossip, and character assassination (unlike Christ, I would suggest). This is a serious disincentive to ex-members (“Judases”) to tell their stories. My former catechists know more about some of my historic sins and failings than most people in the world – and they are bound by no vow of confidentiality. Some rumours which will circulate in response to this account may be true; others will be lies. That no one will know which is which does not matter to the Neocatechumenate: what matters is that the impression of infallibility with which the Neocatechumenate imbues itself must be preserved, and that those who threaten it must have their credibility crushed.

So, in order to pre-empt the inevitable ad hominem response from the Neocatechumenate, I present here for your delectation some rumours about me. Some of them are true, some are lies, some are meaningless: but to the Neocatechumenate, that matters little:

            “N. has problems with sex.”
            “N. has problems with money.”
            “N. could never accept the authority of the Church.”
            “N.’s marriage is in trouble.”
            “N. was brought up by paranoid parents.”
            “N. is a paranoid parent.”
            etc.

The sad thing is that there is much to commend the Neocatechumenal Way for. I remain grateful to them for so much. But for them, approbation cannot be mixed with criticism. They claimed to be “Jesus Christ for me” – and Jesus Christ cannot be disagreed with.

To be truthful, I am uneasy with many of the criticisms which are levelled at the Neocatechumenate from those who have never been in the Way. From the “left”, the complaints that they disapprove of contraception, divorce, pre-marital sex, homosexual practice etc. merely prove that they are faithful to the magisterium of the Church. From the “right”, complaints about strumming guitars, drinking too much wine, and dancing around the altar are just trivial.

Accusations of heresy are perhaps a little closer to the mark. In their zeal to proclaim the Eucharist as a celebratory communal meal, the Neocatechumenals pay scant, or no, attention to its sacrificial aspect. They place a great emphasis on the salvific effect of embracing one’s own cross, but downplay the objective power of the Cross of Christ. They preach a very low view of human nature, and quite intemperately talk down the importance of good works (“‘Cafod’ Christianity”). But does theological imbalance really constitute out-and-out heresy?

I suggest that the flaws of the Neocatechumenate are far more subtle, far less obvious, and consequently far more insidious than that. For its flaws are intimately bound up with its virtues: in a sense, they are opposite sides of the same coin. The Neocatechumenate will of course never admit to this. For them, the corporate body is “Jesus Christ for you” – in other words, beyond criticism. Therefore there is no such thing as corporate guilt. Therefore there is no such thing as corporate humility.

In the interest of truth, however, I will start by extolling the virtues of the Neocatechumenal Way. And they are many.

How good it is to be with the brothers

There is, up to a point, a deep honesty which runs through the Neocatechumenate. Many people come to the Way out of a sense of frustration with the superficiality and hypocrisy of more conventional manifestations of the Catholic faith. Many have grown up with all the trappings of cradle Catholicism, and yet have found that this has not reflected the truth of their own lives. They might have found themselves drowning under the psychological weight of their own sins and failings: divorce, infidelity, fornication, masturbation, homosexuality, eating disorders – and they might have found the Church timid and equivocal in response. Yet the Neocatechumenate did not shy away from any of these matters. The unexpurgated teaching of the Church was preached, both in the Community and to individuals, and the assurance of Christ’s unconditional love for the sinner was proclaimed again and again. “Follow this Way,” we were told, “and I promise you that God will save you from yourself and bring you to an adult faith.” Following the words of Ezekiel, He would remove our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. This is the Good News, which the Church everywhere should preach fearlessly and forever. The Neocatechumenate genuinely did.

Yet, there was little triumphalism in the way this message was preached. As the catechumen has to descend into the tomb so that the “old man” may die, so we had to descend honestly into the depths of our own sinfulness, recognising and embracing our “crosses”, that the reality of Christ’s resurrection might be made manifest in our lives. The basis upon which this journey had to be made was the tripod of the Community, the Word and the Liturgy.

The Community became the locus of everything. A new community was formed, often each year, following an initial public Catechesis. From then on, that community would “walk” together, celebrating the sacraments together, meeting on Saturday nights for the vigil Eucharist, and preparing and celebrating a souped-up weekly Liturgy of the Word during the week. Weekend “convivences” (no, I’d never heard the word before either: my antipodean chief catechist pronounced it a bit like “commavonks”) came with regularity, as did Liturgies of Reconciliation. Following the Psalm, we sang, “How good it is to be with the brothers” – and it was. And with the shared spiritual life developed a sort of mutual honesty. Sins were confessed (and not just in Confession), hearts were unburdened, and we rejoiced in the gift of living life together before Christ without (we thought) masks.

The Word of God became our weekly, indeed daily, bread. We read it, prayed it, and learnt to place our lives under its gaze. The Liturgy of the Word which began every mass was not just a prelude to the Eucharist, but a glorious event in its own right, a great “feast of the Word” which we learnt to relish. Each Liturgy of the Word incorporated “echoes”, where we would share with the Community what the Word had revealed to us in our personal lives, both the triumphs and the sufferings. There was no doubt: God was speaking to us through His Word, to help us on our journey of faith.

The Liturgy provided the context for this. Neocatechumenal liturgies are nothing if not impressive. Long, drawn-out, full of “admonitions” (introductions to the readings) and “echoes” (shared reflections on what the readings said to us), and accompanied by rich and beautiful music: singing, guitars, drums, all set to the Neocatechumenate’s distinctive flamenco-style compositions, almost exclusively composed or arranged by the movement’s founder, Kiko Argüello. We learnt to love the liturgical signs, and these were all larger than life: a huge cruciform sunken font, flowers galore, copious icons (also painted by Kiko, usually based on Byzantine designs) and, best of all, a massive Eucharistic table, from which were served large rounds of homemade unleavened bread and vast chalices of wine from which communicants were instructed to drink deeply.

The significance of all of this was brought home to us by large amounts of catechesis. We were taught, as few in the Catholic Church are taught, the scriptural, patristic and ecclesiastical basis of everything we did. Whether it was Scripture, or the liturgy, or the church calendar, we knew, understood and loved these things, and we believed our way of doing them to be the best, most beautiful, and most authentic manifestations of what the post-Vatican II Catholic Church had to offer. Eventually, we felt sure, once the “new evangelisation” had done its work, the renewed Church would look just like us.

The year culminated, of course, in Easter – which we called the Passover of Christ. The Triduum liturgies were treated with unsurpassed reverence and joy. We fasted from the ninth hour on Good Friday until Easter dawn. The Vigil lasted all night, a great celebration of the passage from darkness to light. We followed the pillar of fire and the pillar of smoke through the streets into the darkened church. We hung on every word of the Exsultet: “This IS the night in which Christ has destroyed death, and from the dead He rises victorious.” This also was the night in which Christ might come again – and we knew it was true. Nine readings and many psalms later, having baptised all the new Community babies and passed the faith onto the children (singing our own version of Mah Nishtanah, as the Jews do at Passover), and having heard the resurrection Gospel proclaimed in song over our lives, and having celebrated a glorious Eucharist, we danced around the altar singing: “Christ our Passover is risen for us. Alleluia.”

The Neocatechumenate is not, however, just an endless cycle of spiritual celebration: it styles itself as a “post-baptismal catechumenate”, a way to bring to mature fruition the faith of which a seed was planted in baptism but which may have been neglected through lack of adult catechesis or proper spiritual formation. As such, every Neocatechumenal community passes through several stages in its spiritual progress, many of them marked out by catechumenal Scrutinies similar to those used in the early church and in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. Unlike most incarnations of the RCIA, however, the Neocatechumenate treats the whole matter of repentance and faith formation very seriously indeed – and with a Tertullianesque rigour. The RCIA guidelines tell us, for example, that the Scrutinies are “rites for self-searching and repentance..., are meant to uncover, then heal all that is weak, defective, or sinful in the hearts of the elect…; celebrated in order to deliver the elect from the power of sin and Satan...; complete the conversion of the elect and deepen their resolve to hold fast to Christ and to carry out their decision to love God above all.” The Neocatechumenate is honest enough to recognise that there is no way such transformation can really be expected to take place during the course of a few weeks or even months – and so the Way lasts years; its goal, some twelve to twenty years down the line, is that one should become “truly Christian”.

So where did it all go wrong? Not, I suggest, with heresy. Everything the Neocatechumenate preaches out loud in public is orthodox Catholic Christianity. They preach with arrogance and absolutism, to be sure – and with a lack of balance, and a scorn for alternative ways of putting things, which some may consider as verging on the heretical. But the main problem lies in those things which the Neocatechumenate doesn’t say in public, rather than the things it does say. And many of these things result in a culture of deception, manipulation and spiritual abuse which leaves many people hurt, confused, and desperate.

Corporate hubris

I would suggest that the root of most the Neocatechumenate’s problems lies in its inability to cope in a healthy manner with its own very real virtues. The Neocatechumenate has lost its way through hubris, and this hubris contaminates almost everything it does.

It all started so innocently. When I found myself part of a church community so full of beauty and zeal, it was impossible not to feel just a bit pleased with myself. Part of that pleasure may have been a genuine gratitude to God for putting me there in the first place; part of it might have been that sneaky feeling that God had put me there as a reward for “getting it”, i.e. for understanding and welcoming His kerygma with all its challenges. The Neocatechumenate never let anyone get away with the latter conception for long. No, we were reminded, like Israel, that we were a “stiff-necked people” and that God was likely to have chosen us because we were the greatest sinners of all. One Neocatechumenal presbyter said to me, “The best way to learn humility is to be humiliated” – and that became a standard modus operandi of the Way.

However, humiliation does not lead to genuine humility if there is an acceptable escape valve for personal hubris – and that acceptable escape valve was the Community. We knew, as individuals, that we were, as Kiko puts it, “zero plus sin”. But en masse we were the top of the pile! Our liturgy was renewed, our catechesis faithful, our homilies hard-hitting, our methods of formation sharp as a double-edged sword. We declared ourselves “truly blessed” to be called to the Way. As our guitars strummed, our hands clapped, our young people “stood up” to offer themselves for the priesthood or the consecrated life, our married couples produced baby after beautiful baby, and we all threw vast quantities of our personal wealth into the collection bin-bag, we knew that no one could top us. We routinely derided other Catholic paths as wishy-washy, conventionalised and “middle-class”. Our presbyter, in one of his homilies on the feast of the patron saint of the parish, told his (mainly non-Neocatechumenal) parishioners: “If St. ---- were alive today, there is one thing he would say to all of you, and that is to come to the adult Catechesis happening in this parish now” – i.e. to join the Neocatechumenate.

Whilst our individual low self-opinions were thus counterbalanced by our corporate pride, the parallel charity was not extended to outsiders. We knew that they were, both corporately and individually, “very middle-class”: they had “nothing like the Way”. The idea that amidst the “uncatechised” (as we saw them) mass of other Catholics there might be genuine saints from whom we could learn something was never allowed to impinge upon our ardent desire that others might come to see the value of the Way. They were, almost inevitably, “confirmation class Catholics”, and adherents of “natural religion” (the ultimate insult for a Neocatechumenal). “They have not met Jesus Christ,” we said with utter confidence.

It went frequently beyond such generalisations, of course, but only behind closed doors. At our Community’s “Shema” convivence, one of the catechists said in a catechesis to the whole assembly: “Don’t give me any of this nonsense about this Way being just one of many ways in the Church. Of course there are many ways in the Church, and of course there are many ways to come to faith… But I tell you this: God has put you in this Way, and it is in this Way He means to bring you to faith.” At the same convivence, another catechist preached: “I hope you will be ready for the Second Scrutiny when it comes, because to be outside the Second Scrutiny is to be outside the Community, and to be outside the Community is to be outside the Church, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth!” In one private meeting, one my catechists declared to me solemnly, “N., God has brought you into this Way to bring you to faith, He will continue to bring you to faith through this Way, and He cannot bring you to faith except through this Way.”

And so, when I met and fell in love with a wonderful young lady from outside the Community – Catholic, prayerful, Bible-reading, orthodox, devout, catechised by Opus Dei, and baptised as an adult in St. Peter’s in Rome by Pope Saint John Paul II, no less – and we got engaged, that’s when the problems began. The expectation, of course, was that then A. would attend the Catechesis and join the Way. That she didn’t choose to do so occasioned a grilling from my catechists. They knew nothing of my fiancée’s faith or formation, but they were clear: “This Catechesis will be even better!” I, N., must bring her to the Catechesis.

Cognitive restructuring

If you are an innocent in the ways of corporate mind-control, you may be wondering how I had managed to get to the point where I would even entertain such bullying. The common answer might be that I was brain-washed – but this does not really do justice to how the Neocatechumenate operates. People often have an image of brain-washing gained from Cold War movies, involving repetitive mental assault and sensory deprivation, undermining your sense of judgment and rendering you unable to think for yourself, so that you end up believing anything you are told. No, the sort of mind control operated by the Neocatechumenate is far more subtle and effective: it did not destroy my intelligence, but harnessed it. Keiser & Keiser (The Anatomy of Illusion) call this process “cognitive restructuring”. Here are some of the ways it works:

As my time in the Way progressed, I noticed how the catechists would periodically issue mutually contradictory instructions or statements, without explanation. For example, at our First Scrutiny, we were told to “go and sell your possessions and give the money to the poor,” and promised that we would never be asked what we had done in response to this instruction. However, some eighteen months later, at the “Shema” convivence, the catechists interrogated several of us in front of the Community on precisely that matter – the inevitable assessment being that none of those interrogated had “done enough”. I remember privately discussing this contradiction with some others in the Community; eventually we decided to let the matter pass and trust the judgment of the catechists.

As another example, consider what the catechists said to me when I was subjected to the grilling about A. Their reaction to my engagement to A. was in total contradiction to everything they had preached in the past about marriage, the Eucharist, the Church, and the Way. They had many times said that the best preparation for a couple approaching marriage is to attend the Eucharist together; yet they objected to my attending mass with A. They had many times said that “God calls whom He calls” to the Catechesis; yet they were not willing to leave God to decide for Himself whether or not A. belonged in the Way. They had endlessly preached that we “must embrace our cross”; but when the spectre arose of my being married to someone outside the Community, I was warned that “to be married to someone outside the Community is a great suffering” – which must be avoided, cross or no cross.

The impossibility of ever asking meaningful questions and getting meaningful answers in the context of the Neocatechumenate ensured that the gravity of these sorts of contradictions never came to light. The result was that we were expected to do the mental gymnastics necessary to cope with the resulting cognitive dissonance. And the only way to embrace two opposites simultaneously is to pretend that there is really no opposition, but that we had somehow misunderstood. The end result of this was unquestioning obedience to a group of people rather than to a set of precepts. They expected our obedience because they had said it. We were to be faithful to them rather than to what they had said. Like St. Francis planting cabbages upside-down – a story often quoted to us – they wanted nothing less than blind obedience.

This meant, effectively, that the catechists could say more or less anything without being held to account for it. Some of their grand statements were so meaningless as to be almost comical: “Gandhi was not a Christian” is one I particularly remember, parroted to us in a Community convivence by our catechists, presumably because they had been told it by their catechists – a statement of the bleeding obvious dressed up as profound. Nobody I spoke to afterwards had any idea what the point of this statement was – but we nodded sagely, as if someday its theological profundity would reveal itself. “We are not Hindus” was another: I remember this one so clearly because the catechist who preached this nugget of information to us clearly didn’t know what its significance was either – and so he said it again, as if by mere repetition its true import would lodge itself in our minds.

Other grand catechetical declarations were not so innocent, because they were more specific, and more personal. I was solemnly told, in front of the whole Community, by my presbyter, presiding at my first Scrutiny liturgy, that I was “latently homosexual”. The statement is meaningless of course (what on earth does “latently homosexual” mean anyway?), and if it had any meaning at all it was wrong. This presbyter had put two and two together and made five. I knew he was wrong, but did not complain: perhaps, I wondered, there was some hidden profundity in his use of the word “latently”? I failed to put two and two together, and realise that a man who was prepared to make such a statement from a position of solemn public catechetical and ecclesiastical authority must be himself suffering from the same sort of cognitive restructuring as I – just slightly more advanced.

Neo-speak

A corollary of this sort of reality-bending catechesis is a very skilful undermining of the meaning and use of language. Language can be used to imply things without actually saying them. Call the altar the “table of the eucharist”, rather than the altar, and you have made a subtle statement about the significance of the Mass – without actually committing heresy. Call the Mass “a eucharistic celebration” rather than “the Eucharistic Sacrifice”, and you have added to that impression, again without actually saying so out loud. Call the priest a presbyter rather than a priest, and it reduces his role to that of a “president” rather than a celebrant – and, crucially, it means that he has no more pastoral authority in the Way than any other catechist. Call a layman’s sermon an “exhortation” rather than a homily, and you have effectively sanctioned preaching by lay catechists (trained by the Neocatechumenate rather than the wider Church) in the liturgy, without admitting it.

The Neocatechumenate was also masterful at inventing words and phrases which either meant nothing at all, or were used as substitutes for already perfectly good words. Many of these seemed to be very literal translations from Italian or Spanish. For example, we were frequently warned against idolising “the affections” (for full effect, imagine it pronounced with a thick Spanish accent): the fact that the phrase doesn’t exist in English meant that we did not really know what it meant – but that did not seem to bother anyone. Likewise, a reading from Scripture was never called a reading but a “Word”; “readings” were dead on the page, whilst the proclaimed Word of God was alive; other Christians had “readings”, but we had “Words”.

All this may seem harmlessly comical. But as soon as a word is taken to mean not what it really means, but what the catechists mean it to mean (which may change from one context to another), a person’s mind is entirely at the mercy of those who control the use of the language. And since questions from the floor which might have helped to clarify meanings were prohibited, we lived in a jungle of language, which we had not the theological tools to make real sense of – but merely to accept uncritically. Here are some more choice examples:

Most of us probably think we know what the word “happy” means, though we may have different ideas about how to achieve happiness. However, in the Neocatechumenate, “happy”, we were told again and again, really means “to be in the right place”. It was a brilliant redefinition, for of course the Neocatechumenate was the right place to be! If anyone claimed to be unhappy (or upset, or depressed, or hurt, or desperate), then there was no need to deal with the substance of the cause of that unhappiness. The answer was simple: “You are in the right place.” Here, in the Way, you are by definition happy – whatever you may feel.

I have already mentioned the phrase “come to faith”. What the word “faith” actually meant we were never told – but it was made crystal clear to us at the First Scrutiny that we didn’t have it. That was why we had to be obedient to the Way: that was how we would “come to faith” – whatever that meant. Thus were swept away two millennia of theological discussion about the meaning of Christian faith – from Paul and James, through Luther, Calvin and Trent, to the present. The idea that faith might be one of those things which could grow incrementally, and that its assessment was something which had to be approached with subtlety and sensitivity, was simply not entertained.

The enemy of all Christian discipleship was “idolatry”. In theory, anything which distracted us from Christian discipleship was an idol. But of course, it was the catechists who decided what was really an idol for any given person. If someone complained about being kept waiting for hours on end on a dark, cold winter’s night in the middle of nowhere waiting for the catechists to turn up to an appointment, well then they clearly idolised time. If someone asked questions about how all the money we threw into the black collection bin bag (10% of income at least is required from members beyond a certain stage) was being used, then they obviously idolised money: the Neocatechumenate publishes no accounts. If they wanted to spend more time together with their children rather than farm them out to Community babysitters so they could attend yet more catecheses or convivences, then their children were their idols – and they were, of course, “paranoid parents”.

Such abuse of language is a deft and very effective way to deflect any possibility of criticism at all. If someone thinks there is a problem, turn their criticism back on them and make it their problem. That way the catechists do not need to deal with any accusations of malfeasance, because all criticism is a result of other people’s idols, and the most effective way to deflect criticism is to encourage self-doubt in the critic, not to actually respond to the content of the criticism. And so, when I complained to my presbyter about the bullying treatment I was receiving at the hands of the catechists over the matter of A., his response was splendidly cunning: “N., you need to discern what God wants for you. Is He calling you to faith through this Way or through a different way?” In other words, we have done nothing wrong: the problem lies with you.

Disciplina arcani

All these methods of cognitive restructuring are buttressed by a carefully-calibrated system of information control. Personal and private information in the Neocatechumenate passes in one direction only – upwards. The “responsibles” in each community report every personal detail of their “brothers’” lives and behaviour to the catechists. The catechists sometimes ask members to tell them the hidden sins of any of their friends and relatives they have invited to the Catechesis – so that the catechists can shape their remarks to more effectively ensnare them. And of course the Scrutinies allow the catechists to grill members on anything they like – without any obligation to open up themselves. And I really do mean anything. I was fortunate enough to leave before my Second Scrutiny – and those who attend the Scrutinies are placed under a solemn ban of secrecy. But yet accounts leak out, of the most horrendous psychological manipulation: people accused of being homosexual and pressured to admit it in front of the entire community; people asked questions about the most intimate details of their marriage (even if their spouse is not in the Way, let alone in the room); and ancient sins dredged up for all to hear. The Second Scrutiny often lasts weeks, with members attending church for long hours each evening, listening to each other’s confessions, and being harangued by the catechists for being insufficiently complete or candid. Any demurral that sins sacramentally confessed and absolved long ago need not be confessed again is of course greeted with ridicule.

By contrast, the downward flow of information is tightly controlled. “Older” communities are forbidden to talk about anything sensitive to the “younger” – “lest you scare them off”. This regime of secrecy is often justified with reference to the disciplina arcani of the primitive Church. That there was such discipline in primitive Christianity is beyond doubt: it made sense in a pagan world where the core Christian beliefs and practices were either easily misunderstood or likely to cause you to end up in the circus; but even then it was generally limited to the mysteries of the sacraments. In the context of the Neocatechumenate, however, those above us used the term as an excuse to withhold information and to refuse to answer questions about the psychological abuse to come. And we used the term to justify our keeping secrets from those below us, or of course from outsiders. We used to joke, “If they knew what’s in store for them, they would never come!” Well, I thought that was very funny at the time; I did not realise how warped my own sense of morality had become. By accepting the abuse I was becoming an abuser myself.

This moral warping was only possible, of course, by exerting control over our relationships with the outside world. Valuing the views of spouses, friends, parents, or even other priests of the Catholic Church over the views of the catechists was not to be borne: it was, of course, “idolatry”. The Neocatechumenate takes up an awful lot of time, so it is very difficult to find the time to associate with other Christians. On the one hand, we were warned again and again about the dangers of “shopping around” (Neo-speak for occasionally going to church anywhere else). On the other hand, outsiders are not normally welcome at Neocatechumenal liturgies – except once or twice, after which they are invited to attend the Catechesis.

All the above adds up to a very effective way of maintaining an exceptional level of control over people. There is no acceptable criticism. Nothing is the fault of the Way; everything is your fault. There is no acceptable reason to leave, and no information available to enable you to assess whether to stay or leave. The catechists have massive intimate knowledge of the lives of members and ex-members – without any obligation to secrecy, or to reciprocate with similar honesty. No outsiders have the opportunity to see and assess what is going on. And besides, outsiders are not to be trusted… Put all this together, and you have a perfect storm – except that it never passes.

A different way

Of course it is not strictly true that there is no good reason to leave: this too can be subjected to redefinition if the catechists so decide. A. and I were in a double bind. A. was, by regulation, not welcome at Neocatechumenal liturgies except very occasionally with me. The Community made the presumption from the start that she was a “confirmation-class Catholic” who would only “come to faith” if she joined the Way. And, if I ever attended Mass with A. outside the Community, I was deemed by my catechists to be “shopping around” or “riding on A.’s back” – which, it was made clear, was not to be borne. Once my presbyter had voiced the “Is He calling you to faith through a different way?” gambit, we knew the game was up. What he really meant was, “N., either bring A. in, or get out.”

I had come to the Neocatechumenate five years previously, unbaptised, a recent convert to Christianity, seeking a way to baptism in Christ. The Neocatechumenate is not reluctant to proclaim how special it is to be baptised in the Way – by immersion, in a great cruciform sunken font, robed in white, in the middle of the all-night Easter Vigil. As so, every year I had made a point of formally requesting baptism, but each year was advised to “wait a while”. When A. and I had got engaged, my presbyter had at last said that I “must be baptised this Easter”, prior to receiving the sacrament of marriage. However, over the following few months, as it became clear that A. wasn’t going to join, the vocabulary had been downgraded from “preparations for your baptism” to “your request for baptism”. Eventually, a fortnight before Easter, it became: “I’m afraid we won't be able to baptise you at the Vigil after all. The rules of the Neocatechumenate require that if an adult is to be baptised in the context of the Way there are certain preparations he must go through. Unfortunately, the catechists hadn’t realised this soon enough, and there is now no time to do these preparations before Easter… – an entirely innocent mistake!”

If I had been able to handle this level of cognitive dissonance, then it could safely have been said that, in Orwell’s terms, I “loved Big Brother”. Instead, however, I left the Way.

Whose authority?

You may be surprised at that presbyter’s behaviour. So was I at the time, because I had not yet quite realised just how low the Neocatechumenate can make people stoop. Yes, he was a parish priest, notionally subject to his diocesan bishop, and in point of fact he was in many ways one of the finest and wisest priests I have ever met – but in the context of the Way he was obliged to be obedient to his catechists, the “National Team”, appointed by Kiko and his associates, not by any bishop of the Catholic Church. When he announced to A. and myself that the National Team (who had never met me) was refusing me baptism, we suggested that he might appeal to his bishop. The look on his face at this suggestion was one of panic: “Oh no, I don’t think there’s any point in going to the bishop; it would just delay the matter further and cause you more suffering.” The poor man was caught between a rock and a hard place. How much he had to lose, if he disobeyed his catechists! What a cross that would have been! Sometimes, to make omelettes, one has to break eggs. Is it not better – said Caiaphas – that one man die, than for the nation to be destroyed?

It is at points like this that the Neocatechumenate sometimes gets into trouble. When bishops discover priests (or popes discover bishops) disobeying them, undermining them, or lying to them, then they start to worry. And they start to wonder why: are these people heretics? or schismatics? What is going on here? Of course they will never find out, because generally speaking, being well-meaning men, they do not understand the dynamics of spiritual abuse – of how truth can be systematically obscured behind a fog of manipulation and double-speak. And who will help them? What diocese has the time or the man-power to send learned observers in to watch all these Catecheses and Scrutinies, to see first-hand how vulnerable devout Christians can be taught to behave so inhumanely to their “brothers”?

Woe betide the bishop or priest – or layman – who dares to pit himself against the Neocatechumenal Way. For, as far as the Way is concerned, he has fallen for the wiles of the Evil One. The Neocatechumenate will shout and pound its fists (quite literally) in self-defence, extol its own virtues and impugn the dignity and character of its critics. But it will never deal with the substance of any criticism. For, by definition, there is no corporate guilt: if anyone else has a problem with the Way, it is his problem. The only response is to declare oneself “persecuted” and to retreat into official silence, whilst letting the rumours and character assassinations do their work.

Of the 30-odd members of my Community, only two or three demonstrated the courage to admit to me that they thought that that our catechists had behaved ill. Of the rest, one said to me in all sincerity, “The catechists have great discernment: maybe they are right, and A. really should join the Community – or else your marriage will contain great suffering.” Another, clearly disquieted, struggled with the implications, repeating over and again, “But they are Jesus Christ for you. They are Jesus Christ for you!” Cognitive restructuring is hard work, after all.

Living precariously

I left the Way terrified, of course. Did the threatened “weeping and gnashing of teeth” await me? Well, a non-Neocatechumenal priest whom I had known for many years baptised me at a beautiful Easter Vigil, and presided at our marriage a few weeks later. We have had five children: one we lost in a miscarriage; the others are now 27, 24, 20 & 15. We have been truly blessed. Much of that blessing, of course, I trace back to the things I learnt in the Neocatechumenate. But by guiding me out of the Way, God has taught me one thing which he could never have taught me in the Way, and that is that He is merciful and generous in the most unexpected ways and in the most unexpected places. The Neocatechumenate speaks a great deal about living “precariously” (often pronounced with a thick Spanish accent – “precaariusli”), yet there is no real precariousness in a situation where all the answers to all life’s questions are mediated exclusively through one narrow worldview and one set of people. Our Lord has told us that the Spirit blows where it will – and the Neocatechumenate can never really understand that.

One other thing which I never really understood whilst I was in the Way was how much God loves me. This seems a strange thing to say, because of course the Neocatechumenate spent much time and energy telling us how much God loves us, despite the heinousness of our sins: love “in the dimension of the Cross”. And we could see God’s love expressed in the love of the “brothers”: we were always there for each other, in good times and bad, encouraging each other, exhorting each other, praying for each other, attending each other’s baptisms and weddings, even keeping vigil at each other’s death beds. But of course, what we didn’t realise at the time was that all that was conditional – upon continued membership of the Way. Towards the end of my time in the Neocatechumenate, when I was thinking about leaving, one of the “brothers” was getting married. If you are in the Neocatechumenate, everyone in the Community attends your wedding: it is, by design and by definition, a Neocatechumenal wedding. But this poor chap didn’t know whether to send me an invitation or not: was I in or out? So, God bless him, he rang my home to find out whether I was still going to be in the Community by the date of his wedding: if yes, he would invite me; if no, he wouldn’t bother. For him, and for the vast majority of my erstwhile “brothers”, love for me was conditional upon my continued membership of their group.

That’s fine. But since leaving the Way, I have discovered that there is a Love that isn’t like that: that there is such a thing as unconditional Love, a Love who follows me around everywhere, who runs out to meet me, who expresses Himself through people who relate to me as He relates to me, as a person of intrinsic worth to Him. If I go up to the heavens, He is there; if I make my bed in the depths, He is there. There may yet be weeping and gnashing of teeth, but I need not fear – for even there His hand will guide me, His right hand will hold me fast.