What is the Neocatechumenal Way?

Among the new movements that grew in the wake of the Vatican Council II, the Neocatechumenal Way stands out as an “itinerary of Christian formation” rooted in small community-based life.

The Neocatechumenal Way presents itself as “post-baptismal catechumenate” – a course of integral formation in Catholic doctrine and Christian life – primarily for those who have received the sacraments but little instruction in what the Church believes or how the Church expects believers to live in the world.

The movement began in the slums of Madrid in 1964, when a young Spanish artist of some renown named Francisco “Kiko” Argüello – after an intense and years-long spiritual crisis that took him through the drama of atheism – went to live among the poorest of the poor in the sprawling and impoverished Madrid suburb of Palomeras Altas.

There Argüello met Carmen Hernández – a graduate with a degree in chemistry by the age of 21, who had spent time with the Missionaries of Christ Jesus and earned a degree in theology – with whom he began to preach the gospel and teach the denizens of the shanty town.

RELATED: Bishop crashing a laity meeting in Las Cruces draws attention to Neocatechumenal Way

A few years later, Argüello and Hernández were joined by Father Mario Pezzi, an Italian priest who began his formation in a minor seminary of the Comboni missionaries starting at age 10 and was ordained a priest of the missionary society in 1969.

From 1970, Pezzi would be a key figure in the Neocatechumenal Way. In 1982, he officially joined the international leadership team. In 1992, Pezzi joined the diocesan clergy of Rome as an itinerant priest dedicated to serving through the Neocatechumenal Way, which he had helped bring to Italy.

The Holy See gave provisional approval to the statutes of the Neocatechumenal Way in 2002 and definitively approved the movement’s statutes in 2008.

Hernández died in 2016 and was succeeded in the international leadership team by María Ascensión Romero, another Spanish laywoman and missionary formed in the Way for many years.

Communities of the Neocatechumenal Way are small – usually about 50 people – and are led by lay catechists who present regularly revised versions of the early preaching efforts of the movement’s founders, principally Argüello.

Catechists lead prayer and instruction in “The Way” as members call it, and the small communities each hold their own Sunday liturgy when possible, though the communities usually celebrate their Sunday liturgies on Saturday evenings.

The Way has grown into an international movement with presence in nearly 140 countries, counting more than 20,000 communities in more than 6,000 parishes across nearly 1,400 dioceses.

The Neocatechumenal Way has inspired thousands of vocations to priesthood and religious life, as well, and has sponsored more than 100 Redemptoris Mater seminaries around the world, which have trained thousands of priests.

Senior church leaders from St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II to Pope Francis have praised the Neocatechumenal Way, and it was under Pope Benedict XVI that the movement received final approval, even though there was some tension over the Neocatechumenal Way’s liturgical practices during Benedict’s reign.

No group can grow as quickly or as widely as the Neocatechumenal Way without experiencing some tension and occasional missteps and misunderstanding, and the group has not been a perfect stranger to tension and controversy since it began.

To learn more about the Neocatechumenal Way, Crux Now spoke with theologian and church historian Dr. Shaun Blanchard, Senior Lecturer in Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia, who has taught Neocatechumenal seminarians and offers unique perspective on the movement.

What follows is Crux Now‘s conversation with Dr. Blanchard, lightly edited for clarity.

Crux Now: In your own words and from your experience, how would you describe the Neocatechumenal Way?

Shaun Blanchard: I would describe the Neocatechumenal Way as a “movement” in the Catholic Church, but I have had members of the Way correct me when I have done so.

They prefer to define the Way not as a group or movement (although sociologically speaking, it is obviously these things) but as a path or program of Christian formation.

The Neocatechumenal Way was founded by Kiko Argüello and Carmen Hernández as a way or path of Christian initiation for those who are already baptized. In 1960s Spain, this was the vast majority of the population.

How & where does the Neocatechumenal Way operate, and how are they organized?

My understanding is that the Neocatechumenal Way is all around the Catholic world, but with a particular strength in the Americas, Oceania, and the English-speaking world.

Like some other movements of renewal that drew energy from the Second Vatican Council – like Opus Dei and Liberation Theology (which likewise emerged from the Spanish/Latino world) – the backbone of the Neocatechumenal Way are lay families.

Committed lay families – often very large – are placed in friendly dioceses as the missionary HQ of new Neocatechumenal communities.

One of the fascinating things to me about the Way, as a Church historian and a Catholic academic who sometimes teaches members of the community, is that the founder is still living.

“Kiko,” as his followers and admirers affectionately refer to him, remains the touchstone for Neocatechumenal thought and community life (Carmen died in 2016, aged 85).

Why are they controversial?

A common criticism of the NCW is that they risk setting up a kind of parallel Church-within-a-Church, and one is either in or out.

Their liturgy, for example, was criticized for excluding parishioners not affiliated with the Neocatechumenate, and some find it eccentric.

Proponents of the movement’s liturgical practices argue it is a retrieval of the practices of the early Church. In their defense, it is approved by the Vatican, though at some point Rome stepped in to ensure they truly opened their liturgy up to any Catholic.

Additionally, they have been criticized for excessively rigorist practices, and for giving leaders in the community (especially laity) unhealthy amounts of control over the private lives of initiates or other members.

I should make clear that my personal experience with the Way has been overwhelmingly positive.

At the Fremantle campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia, I taught young women affiliated with the community and young men from the Neocatechumenal seminary (Redemptoris Mater) located just outside Perth, Western Australia.

The seminary rector, Father Michael Moore, is a beloved salt-of-the-earth Australian, and my understanding is that the leading/founding local families are healthy and vibrant. Each semester, NCW students were among my best students. Not all of them were bookish or advanced, but they all had a great attitude.

Some were exceptional, reading voraciously, citing works in multiple languages, and combining a pastoral heart with serious intellectual inquiry.

They are certainly strongly formed by the theology and practice of their group, and they have great devotion not just to theology and spirituality of Kiko and Carmen, but also to the art and music which had been directly handed down by the Way’s founders.

Nevertheless, I did not find them to be sectarian or disconnected from wider Catholic thought and practice.

They were all theologically balanced – they tended to be “conservative” regarding adherence to official church teaching (especially regarding sexuality), but also pastorally flexible and realistic.

They had a profound sense that evangelization was not about culture wars or brow-beating people with winning arguments, but about a transformative encounter with Jesus.

They were enthusiastic about the Second Vatican Council and excited to learn about ressourcement theologians. They had critical and balanced attitudes towards phenomena like Thomism and Liberation Theology, but preferred ressourcement theology.

The faculty at Notre Dame would also get a bit of a laugh about the fact that the NCW seminarians – mostly Latinos – would turn heads in highly secular but also health- conscious Australia by standing in university courtyards in their clerical dress, sometimes with hand-rolled cigarettes.

The Roman collars and the tobacco could raise the eyebrows of passers-by!