An Examination of Neocatechumenal Conscience

 For members of the Neocatechumenal Way or those discerning:

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, whatever led you to this site, I’m grateful and I appreciate the time you are taking to read through this.  

As a fellow Catholic that fails on a daily basis, I can fully appreciate how you came to be a member and why you may feel the need to defend it so vigorously.  I also understand if you are here because you are feeling torn: you don’t want to lose your community of people or the things you’ve become accustomed to, but you are experiencing difficulty, frustration, and an overall sense that you need to get out. This is not a way of invalidating your path to God; He will reach you by any means necessary - just ask any convert to Catholicism.  This is a place for validating what you may have felt all along or are coming to realize about the Way; or if you are still a fully committed member, perhaps you can humble yourself and accept that there is a lot that you need to recognize and learn from, change and rid yourself of the hatred and anger you have toward your fellow Catholics not in the Way.

Here are a few possible paths by which you have found yourself to be a member of the Way:

1. You were born into it. Your parents and/or family are a part of it and you’ve been taken along for the ride, whether you like it or not.
2. You had a new priest or pastor come along and invite you to these talks and now you find yourself in a community.
3. A friend, fellow parishioner, or loved one invited you and you went for a variety of reasons (love or appeasement; you were at a low point and needed help; you wanted to grow in your faith, etc.).
4. You were the rare bird that saw the banner, received an invitation at your door, or heard someone playing music and shouting from a microphone in the park or busy plaza and you decided to check it out. 

There’s no denying whatever spoke to you or what brought you to the place of sitting through the catechesis and the following retreat to land you in a “community” doesn’t serve its purpose in your life. Many people I’ve encountered who were born into the Way vigorously defend it, stating that if their parents hadn’t been in the Way, they would not have existed.  Many people will say their marriage was saved or, had it not been for the Way, they wouldn’t have gotten off their sinful and destructive path.  Those are honorable things!  But is everything corrected?  Have you given up those sins, or simply accepted that is the way you are and God loves you anyway?  Perhaps what you hoped for hasn’t changed, but now at least you have people with whom to commiserate.  But ask yourself these things, almost by way of an examination of conscience:

1. Do you know for certain you wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for the Way?
2. Have other people been born into a different faith (like Protestantism) and had a good foundation built eventually grown and learned and found themselves Catholic? 
3. Do you justify what you see or know isn’t compatible with Catholicism because of the “good fruits” seen in the Way? Don’t other denominations bear good fruits, and so by that logic make them no less legitimate?
4. Does the Way bring you grace? Do you even know what it means to receive or have grace?
5. Have you said “If it weren’t for the Way (coming to the talks, being in community, etc.) I would be (insert sinful attribute)” instead of attributing it to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?
6. Have you marched through the streets or danced in a plaza or shouted through a megaphone for Jesus and His Church, or for the Way? Have you bared your sins without regard for your audience and how they may negatively affect them? If you aren’t sure, look at the banners: do they say anything about Catholicism?  Do they even bear the name of Jesus? Have you created a positive commotion directed toward God, or attention to yourself and the group? 
7. What were your intentions for coming to the talks and agreeing to continue after the retreat? Was it for someone else like your spouse or your pastor? Not wanting to say no? Selfish reasons like the ability to share and talk about yourself? Or was it to be a better disciple and worship God?
8. Do you find there is adequate time for silent contemplation to allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you? Or do you find yourself sitting for hours (many hours) listening to someone else claiming to have “a word” for you from the Holy Spirit? 
9. Where were you in life?  Were you grieving a loss? In a loveless or abusive relationship? Were your children struggling in some way? Were you grappling with depression or loneliness?  In other words, were you vulnerable?  Have these problems been resolved?
10. Have you contemplated leaving? Quite a lot? What have been your reasons? Are those reasons resolved, or have you found a way to just live with them?  Have you been “promoted” or been given a responsibility that makes it harder to leave, and did that stroke your ego, or was it because you don’t want to let people down?
11. Have you felt worse about yourself? Even suicidal? Do you leave a scrutiny, Eucharist, or convivence feeling uplifted and full of love? Or do you leave feeling tired, angry, resentful, doubtful, beaten and berated, or down on yourself?
12. Have you shared something personal and had it used against you in a negative or shameful way?
13. Are you able to ask questions and have them answered, or are you constantly kept in the dark and told that things will be "revealed in time"? Have you been put down, berated, or found yourself ganged up on by multiple members, as though you started a fight for bringing up things you found confusing or contradictory?
14. Do you talk more about yourself and your sins, or of God and His love and your redemption?
15. Do you regularly attend Sunday Mass with your parish and its activities, or is it mostly Saturday (exclusive) Eucharist that isn’t really known to the average parishioner?
16. Do you spend a lot of time away from your children and/or spouse and family for activities pertaining to the Way? Do you have any guilt about leaving your older children to tend to your other younger children, or leaving them with people in the community or babysitters while you tend to responsibilities in the Way? Honestly ask yourself if your children are happy and thriving, or just getting by and you’re telling yourself it’s a sacrifice.  Is that sacrifice for God or the Way?  If God gave you these children, would He want you to be spending so much time away from them like this? Do they see a parent who is joyfully, or at least peacefully living in the light of Christ, or do they see you tired, short-tempered, judgemental, with little left to give?
17. Does your catechist or priest regularly disparage money, giving you a hard time about earning it or attending your job, but at the same time regularly ask for contributions from that money you've been criticized for earning? How many times have they passed the "trash bag" around saying "it’s still not enough," and yet there is no accountability? Does your parish even receive any of these funds collected? How do you know?
18. Have you been encouraged or coerced into speaking publicly, or telling people in your community or in front of a parish congregation about things you weren’t really comfortable with?
19. Have you been combative, dismissive, unkind, unloving, even vindictive toward those who have left the Way, or openly had a disagreement with them and reconciled your words and actions as though these people were not your Catholic brethren and merely dust beneath your feet?  
20. Have you caused anyone to leave their parish--or worse, the Catholic faith or their belief in God?

It would be fair to assess that some of these questions could apply to just about any faith group and any Catholic.  However, if you’ve even lightly scrolled through the internet, you can find countless stories from all over the globe that are identical, no matter the ethnicity, culture, language, or geography.  The “playbook,” or Catechetical Directory, of the Neocatechumenal Way is the same no matter where you go.  If you still feel that your experience with the Way has been enormously positive, are you at least willing to accept that all these examples are actually true--the negative and detrimental experiences of many, many people who have had limited to deep involvement with the Neocatechumenal Way? These are just examples of the human errors that the Neocatechumenal Way has been perpetuating. Are you willing also to look at the theological errors it presents?