How do you formulate a statute for an organisation that has no formal set-up and is neither a congregation, nor a body, nor a movement? It was the basic problem Vatican canonists had to grapple with five years ago when the process of establishing a juridical status for the Neocatechumenal Way was taken in hand.
Today that process is over and the Way has its Statutes, formally handed to its initiators, Kiko Argüello and Carmen Hernandez, on June 29 by Cardinal James Stafford, Head of the Pontifical Commission for the Laity.
The Neocatechumenal Way had its beginnings in the shacks of Palomeras Altas on the outskirts of Madrid. Kiko, going through an existential crisis, went to live in the slum area taking with him only a Bible and a guitar. There he lived with criminals, prostitutes, thieves, beggars and what not, the veritable scum of the earth.
Reading the Bible in community, they started discovering a new life. That led to the formulation of a catechesis meant to initiate adult Christians into the realities of their baptism. It changed their lives as it is still doing to thousands of people all over the world. They found faith, and a God always ready to pardon, who sent His only Son to die for each and every one of them.
The seed grew, as did the mustard seed of the Gospel. From that small beginning in 1963 the Way is now present in 105 countries, including Malta; 16,700 communities are found in 5,500 parishes spread in 880 dioceses. More than 8,000 of these communities are in Europe, 7,300 in the Americas, 800 in Asia and Australia, and 600 in Africa.
In agreement with Kiko and Carmen, 46 cardinals and bishops have erected Redemptoris Mater seminaries currently providing a missionary formation to over 2,000 young men. In the past 12 years, over 730 priests have received their training in these seminaries. Some 4,000 young women have joined religious congregations, mainly cloistered ones.
The Neocatechumenal Way came to Malta in 1973. Since then Eusebio and Giuletta Astiasio have led a team of catechists that sees to the spreading of the communities and the formation of the brethren. To date there are 120 Communities in 20 parishes in Malta and Gozo. A number of Maltese itinerant catechists have been active in countries such as India, Pakistan, Georgia, Guam, Holland and Venezuela.
Ask any member and he or she will tell you that they have hardly any rules to go by. The communities meet twice a week to hear and reflect on the Word, and on Saturday evening to celebrate the Eucharist with some liturgical adaptations approved by the Vatican.
It was this loose structure that presented the obstacle to canonists. And it took five years to untie the knot, after consultations with various Vatican Congregations and bishops spread all around the world.
The end result was the acceptance of the Neocatechumenal Way as "an itinerary of Catholic formation, valid for our society and for our times", says the first article of the Statutes reproducing the definition given by Pope John Paul II himself in his Letter Ogniqualvolta of August 30, 1990.
Then it adds that the Way "is at the service of the Bishops as a form of diocesan implementation of Christian initiation and of ongoing education in the faith, in accordance with the indications of the Second Vatican Council and the Magisterium of the Church".
Commenting on the Statutes, Juan Ignacio Arieta, Professor of Canon Law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross and Judge of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal of the Holy See, says: "The principal task accomplished in these years of work on the Statutes has been that of reflecting, in an orderly way and in writing, using juridical terminology and with complete faithfulness, that concrete experience of Christian life which is the Neocatechumenal Way, in the manner in which it has developed throughout the five continents from the Sixties onwards.
"The Statutes are nothing other than the synthetic expression of a reality which already has a life in the Church and they have made present, yet again, the fact - something inevitable, and indeed often necessary in the life of the Church - that life precedes law. That is why the approval of these Statutes... represents above all the confirmation of an apostolic praxis lived and consolidated in recent years."
The articles, numbering 35 in all, describe the principal contents of the Catechesis of the Neocatechumenal Way, the means and times for their transmission, how these catechesis are organised in various stages and the relationship of the Way with the local Church authorities.
The corpus of the Statutes is accompanied by 129 notes referring, above all, to texts from Scripture, from the Fathers of the Church or from the Magisterium, all of which have been of fundamental importance to shaping the various aspects of this experience of Christian life.
Arieta says, "rather than describing a juridical entity already codified in the Law of the Church, these Statutes limit themselves to presenting the juridical expression of the reality lived in the Way, obviously in the context of what is stipulated and required by the Church's structure and canonical order".
It is pertinent to note that the Statutes present a programme of Christian formation that is offered to every diocesan bishop who, according to Canon Law, is the competent authority to the co-ordination of initiatives for catechesis in his diocese. That programme, however, bears the seal of the Holy See that has entrusted the leadership and co-ordination of the activity of the Way to an international responsible team.
This means a confirmation of the manner in which the Neocatechumenal Way has been directed over the past 40 years by Kiko Argüello, Carmen Hernandez and the team's presbyter Padre Mario Pezzi. At the same time the team is responsible to maintain its catechetical programme and its established methodology. And this applies also, all down the line, to the various teams of responsibles and catechists the world over.
Seventeen articles of the Statutes, grouped in four chapters, detail the catechetical content, the formative elements and the timeframe over which this formation is given. The Way's three-phase itinerary is therefore set out and its basic development by means of Word, Liturgy and Community is given official recognition.
It is common knowledge that the Neocatechumenal itinerary starts with a post-baptismal precatechumenate, a time of kenosis in order to learn to walk in humility. Then follows the post-baptismal catechumenate, concentrated on one's constant fight against temptation and the idols of the world through prayer and a deepening of the understanding of the Creed and the Our Father. The third phase is meant to rediscover the Christian's election, a time of enlightenment in which the Church teaches the neocatechumen to walk in praise and fulfil God's will.
The nature of the Redemptoris Mater seminaries is also defined, especially because these are opened at the express wishes of diocesan bishops who incardinate priests for the service of their respective dioceses. At the same time the seminaries are diocesan, missionary and international. Their unique characteristic is that, as an integral part of their formative process, seminarians participate in the Neocatechumenal Way.
The organisational aspects of the Way and the forms of service to the work of catechesis are then described. Particular emphasis is made on the formation of catechists and of itinerants who offer themselves to serve in far-off dioceses, dechristianised areas and places where it is necessary to implant the Church.
The final part of the Statutes treats the current composition of the international responsible team and its substitution by way of election following the death of the initiators.
At this point it is fitting to recall the Vatican Council's call to the whole Church to have the catechumenate divided into stages: "The catechumenate for adults is to be re-established, divided into various steps, to be implemented according to the judgment of the local Ordinary, in such an way that the time of the catechumenate, designed for suitable instruction, may be sanctified through sacred rites to be celebrated in successive moments" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 64).
The newly approved Statutes acknowledge that the Neocatechumenal Way embodies the wishes of the Conciliar Fathers for a return to the primitive schema of the Church, to the origins "to a true initiation to the mystery of salvation, an integral formation to Christian life" (Ad Gentes, 14,1).