Pope advises lay Catholic movements not to manipulate young members
VATICAN CITY — Apparently responding to criticisms of the recruiting and educational practices of some lay Catholic movements, Pope Francis told such movements to respect the freedom of young members and not take advantage of their immaturity.
Pope Francis blesses with a crucifix during an audience in Paul VI hall at the Vatican Nov. 22. (CNS photo | Paul Haring)
The pope also called on the movements to avoid “rivalries and backbiting” and cooperate for the common good while respecting the authority of bishops.
Pope Francis made his remarks Nov. 22, in a meeting with participants in the third World Congress of Ecclesial Movements and New Communities.
Owing to “grave difficulties” in families and educational institutions all over the world, young people today “experience serious identity problems and have difficulty making proper choices,” the pope said.
“As a result, they tend to let themselves be conditioned and to delegate important decisions about their own lives to others,” he said. “We need to resist the temptation of usurping individual freedom, of directing them without allowing for their growth in genuine maturity. Moral or spiritual progress which manipulates a person’s immaturity is only an apparent success, and one destined to fail.”
Pope Francis stressed that movements should cooperate with each other and with the heads of local churches.
“If, on the other hand, the world sees divisions, rivalries and backbiting, regardless of the cause, how can we evangelize?” he said. “New movements and communities are called to coordinate their efforts in caring for those wounded by a globalized mentality which places consumption at the center, neglecting God and those values which are essential to life.”
The pope said that “real communion cannot exist in movements or in new communities unless these are integrated within the greater communion of our holy mother, the hierarchical church.”
He also warned against excessive attachment to the distinctive practices that typically characterize such movements, noting the “temptation to become comfortable, to become hardened in set ways of doing things, which, while reassuring, are nonetheless sterile.”
“Even if a certain institutionalization of the charism is necessary for its survival, we ought not delude ourselves into thinking that external structures can guarantee the working of the Holy Spirit,” Pope Francis said. “Closed to the newness of the Spirit, such rigid forms and methods will eventually stifle the very charism which gave them life. We need always to return to the sources of our charism, and thus to rediscover the driving force needed to respond to today’s challenges.”
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