In June 2015, a pro-family rally was held in the Piazza San Giovanni in Rome that gathered, depending on which source you believe, anywhere between a quarter of a million to a million attendees. One of the event's prominent speakers was Kiko Argüello. A couple days later, the noted Roman journalist and historian Roberto de Mattei published an article in the Catholic publication Corrispondenza Romana. What follows is what we believe to be the particularly apt final section of that article. (The English translation of de Mattei's full article, from which this is extracted, is provided by Francesca Romana and can be found at Rorate Caeli).
The perhaps troublesome, but undisputed protagonist of the event on June 20th was Kiko Argüello, historic founder of the Neocatechumenal Way. Kiko imposed the times and the modes of the assembly, he sustained its very high costs, he mobilized his movement which made up two thirds of those present in the square, and above all, he dominated the speakers platform, imprinting his seal on the demonstration with a never-ending, closing catechesis.
The demonstration was against [the ideology of] gender, but on behalf of what? None of the speakers made any reference to the Divine and Natural law, the violation of which constitutes a much graver fault than the wrongs suffered by children who are deprived of a mummy and daddy. Only Kiko Argüello dared give a religious content to the event, grasping in his hand, like a shepherd of the Church, his big astylar cross. In his intervention, which can be heard on YouTube [editor's note: the linked video in the original article has been taken down], he claimed to explain: "what it means to be a Christian today" and did so, indicating the Neocatechumenal Way as the path to an adult faith: a faith purified of dogmatic and doctrinal formulas and reduced to a pure "kerygma," the announcement of an event of which Kiko himself is interpreter and prophet. The disconnected nature of his exposition, lacking in logic (artist's brushstrokes as he defined it) is part of his "theology of history," summarized in the final "song of the Apocalypse" to which the crowd, under the rain, joined its voice.
Kiko Argüello has never answered the many questions that have been put to him for decades about his conception of the Church, the Sacrament of Holy Orders and the Holy Eucharist. The price to pay for his defense of marriage and the family cannot be the abandonment and obscuring of truths which belong to the deposit of the Faith, like the existence of the one redeeming truth, which the Catholic Church [alone] holds, or the fact that the Mass is not a festive banquet, but the bloodless renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross. Furthermore, the alternative to the abstention of the bishops cannot be the reinterpretation of Christianity on the part of a charismatic and anti-institutional movement.
The faith is integral and total or it is not. To be heretics it is not necessary to deny all the dogmas, but it is enough to deny tenaciously only one, even if it is the minimum of the faith or Catholic morality. Whoever rejects even one dogma, rejects them all, and must be considered heretical, as they believe or disbelieve, not because of the revealing authority of God, but on the basis of their own reason: what he calls faith is in reality his opinion and he has no authority to expect that his own personal opinion must be followed by others.
The enthusiasm for the assembly of June 20th will pass, but enormous religious and moral problems are gathering on the horizon. To face them, it is not the piazza that is important, but the faith; it is not the strength of numbers or of the media, but the integrity of doctrine; it is not the ability to form a coalition, but the coherence of choices. Only this can move Heaven and without the intervention of He Who can do anything, every battle is lost.
In addition to his revealing insight into the personality cult of Kiko, and his and the Way's financial and influential pull, de Mattei hits the nail on the head with regard to doctrinal integrity. All the pro-life, pro-family rhetoric and massive demonstrations in the world don't make up for deficiencies of faith. Has the Way's doctrinal situation, or their immense love for public spectacle in spite of that situation, changed in the last 7 years?
This blog should be answer enough to that question.
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