"Cult Fiction," Part 5: Slick Sales Tricks

 Here now at the midway point of our 9-part look at Graham Moorhouse's excellent analysis of the Neocatechumenal Way, we examine five well-rehearsed "sales tricks" employed by the Way and its apologists to help sell their liturgical shenanigans and soften the everyman to accept them. Before we look at each one in turn, let's get the quick rundown:

1. Promote the post-conciliar myth of the DIY liturgies of the early Christians.
2. Just lie about Vatican II; after all, everyone else does. Most people won't have read the documents anyway, so you can say what you like and get away with it.
3. Distort history.
4. Mock the traditional liturgy of the Church.
5. Employ a mental sleight of hand/false choice. [I rephrased this last one, as Moorhouse's title for it was repetitive and doesn't give you a good preview of what's to come.]

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For #1, Moorhouse recounts a widely circulated (and thus widely believed) myth that the Mass of the early Church was

an unstructured spontaneous event, a festive meal which took place round the kitchen table with everyone encouraged to chip in their two penny worth, somewhat like a special birthday party with Jesus as an important guest. (Cult Fiction, p. 10)

"According to this fabrication," he goes on to say, "the formalized liturgies of the Church were written centuries later."

To illustrate how ridiculous this is, Moorhouse recounts a story from Rosalind Moss (now Mother Miriam), who, upon attending her first Catholic Mass after being raised Jewish, commented that it reminded her more of a synagogue service. [You can listen to more of Mother's story here.] Moorhouse then asks:

Are we really supposed to believe that the early Church had no formal liturgy, it was just partying spontaneously in the Spirit, and many centuries later when the Church got around to writing formal liturgies, the Church just happened by sheer chance to write liturgies so similar to those of our Jewish forefathers in faith that two thousand years later a young Jewess, coming out of a Catholic church in the USA, could exclaim... "it was a synagogue service!" (Cult Fiction, p. 10)

A reasonable person should surely be incredulous at such a claim. For further instructional reading, we recommend Scott Hahn's The Lamb's Supper (as well as The Fourth Cup); Brant Pitre's Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist; and Edward Sri's A Biblical Walk Through the Mass.

Moorhouse concludes by commenting that despite the Way's apparent love for Scripture, they conveniently ignore much of the contents of the Book of Revelation, which contains:

robed priests, congregations chanting "holy holy holy," virgins, candlesticks, the smoke of incense, the invocation of angels and saints, heavenly choirs, musical instruments... and a lamb, a lamb slain on an altar, on an altar please note. (Cult Fiction, p. 10)

Is it more likely, asks Moorhouse, that St. John was having visions of liturgies centuries in the future which contained these elements, or was he instead alluding to contemporary liturgies with which his readers would have had at least a degree of familiarity?

Yeah, I think so, too.

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One of the biggest lies that the Way propagates (and they are far from the only ones) is that Vatican II ushered in a new Mass. In actual fact, says Moorhouse:

Vatican II mandated that Latin Rite Catholics should retain Latin as the language of their liturgy and that the faithful should be taught the Latin responses; it further mandated that Gregorian chant should remain the music of the Church. (Cult Fiction, p. 10)

Indeed, that can all be found in the Council's Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. For instance:

Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites...

In Masses which are celebrated with the people, a suitable place may be allotted to their mother tongue... Nevertheless steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them. (SC 36; 54.)

and:

The treasure of sacred music is to be preserved and fostered with great care...

The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. (SC 114; 116)

Let's take these short excerpts from one of Vatican II's cornerstone documents and compare it to this excerpt from the Way's Catechetical Guide:

The answer to this situation of the Church has been the Second Vatican Council. In the face of these processes of desacralization, dechristianization and crisis of faith, the Holy Spirit did not remain indifferent but replied with the Council...

But now comes the most important thing: how to bring what the Council has done to the parish? How to apply the renewal of the Council to the concrete parish? By means of a neocatechumenal Christian community, by opening a neocatechumenal way. (p. 61)

Got that? The Holy Spirit, essentially asleep and indifferent since the 4th century, decided the crisis in the Church was too much and He couldn't remain indifferent any longer, so He woke up and gave the Church Vatican II. And more important than that, the Church needed a Way to practically apply Vatican II, so the Holy Spirit gave the Church Kiko and the Neocatechumenal Way. The Way is the Holy Spirit's specially chosen pratical application of the Council. But tell me, when do Neocatechumenal communities respond in Latin during their Eucharistic celebrations? Which music has pride of place in the Way - Gregorian chant, or Kikian compositions?

Moorhouse's other main point in this section is to point out that the Eastern rites of the Church did not tinker with their liturgies to nearly the fundamental degree that the Latin rite did after Vatican II. As noted scholar Peter Kwasniewski points out in this article about the Maronite rite, this is true to a degree, but not entirely accurate.

Moorhouse also connects this point to a note that Sacrosanctum Concilium even had for one of its "principal experts" (or periti) an Eastern Catholic, further indicating the "traditional" mindset behind the document's authorship. The Eastern Catholic so named is Abbot Boniface. Here is an excerpt from a 2002 interview with Abbot Boniface - you may decide for yourself if the abbot probably agrees more with Moorhouse or the "Spirit of the Council" crowd.

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The third trick, "distort history," involves the lie that the Church has been shrinking since World War II. In fact, Moorhouse says, the Church (specifically in Britain, where he lives) was growing rapidly after World War II, and didn't begin its implosion until after Vatican II - "just when," Moorhouse says, "many of the liturgical novelties so favored by the Way began to be foisted upon us."

Moorhouse provides a data chart on page 11, which we will refer you to look at for yourself. In this chart, he shows that between 1945 (the end of the War) and 1965 (the end of the Council), Mass attendance in Britain increased 78%, and baptisms increased a staggering 95%. Between 1945 and 1967, when the Novus Ordo was promulgated, the number of British priests increased 26%. Then, when looking at the years between 1965 and 2002, Mass attendance fell by 57%, baptisms fell by 53%, and priestly vocations fell by 22%. He does not provide a source for any of these numbers, merely stating that the information has been "extrapolated from secondary data." However, we on this very blog site have run our own numbers for similar data sets (though not reaching that far back into the past) and arrived at similar conclusions - namely, that the Neocatechumenal Way does not reverse the Catholic exodus one iota.

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The fourth tactic is to mock the Church's traditional liturgy.

Rubbish the Church's traditional liturgy by saying things like, "In the past priests stood in the corner muttering incoherently with their backs to the people." This vision should be reinforced by a bit of absurd miming. Such ignorant caricatures...ought to be offensive to all right-minded Catholics. (Cult Fiction, p. 11)

I cannot speak to how priests in decades or centuries past may have celebrated Holy Mass. Undoubtedly priests would sometimes get lazy and complacent and simply and robotically "go through the motions" of saying Mass - and priests today can be just as guilty of this (and if you're one of those who already has issues with the Novus Ordo, just wait until you get a lazy Novus Ordo). However, to mock traditional liturgy as a whole simply because the priest faced ad orientem or because there are certain parts of the traditional Mass that are said inaudibly is indeed the height of ignorance.

I've heard some terrible homilies in my day. I still get a good laugh (and a good cringe) remembering the priest who, in a desperate attempt to sound "with it" modernized Jesus' words to Peter in the garden to be "Come on, just hang out and chill with me for a while." (I think even the insipid Message Bible does better than that). But only once has a homily made me so angry and agitated that I seriously contemplated getting up and walking out.

That happened on a Holy Thursday one year, when my old Neocat pastor proclaimed loudly and confidently (the only way he knows how) that the faithful were simply not allowed to participate in Mass before Vatican II. Imagine! St. Catherine of Siena was never allowed to be a lector, so she couldn't participate at Mass. St. Thomas More could never be an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, so his participation at Mass was stunted. Pope St. Pius X said parts of his Papal High Masses inaudibly, and he never faced his massive congregations at St. Peter's Basilica, so he was preventing them from participating. St. Thérèse never got to give her own mini homilies or belt "He Rose From Death" at the top of her lungs, so she was deprived of genuine Mass participation.

Just this past Sunday I attended a Latin Mass, and do you know what the homily was about? How the faithful can more deeply and reverently participate in the sacrifice of the Mass. Spoiler alert: the priest did not say "Ha ha, you can't. Too bad, so sad. Now let me and the altar servers unintelligibly recite the Creed because we're better than you."

Consider even my family's regular Novus Ordo parish: the Masses are ad orientem. The Mass parts are chanted in Latin. There are (almost) never extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion. There is a communion rail that, while optional, is still widely used by communicants. Many women freely choose to wear veils. I mean, honestly, how backward can you get?? But somehow we parishioners still manage to feel engaged and connected to our Blessed Lord every single Sunday.

Moorhouse concludes with an amusing exercise in imagination:

As for following Christ, Christ's lingua franca was Aramaic, but in the temple he worshipped in Hebrew, as his fellow Jews do to this very day. I have often mischievously wondered whether Our Blessed Lord received snide asides after the last supper about "mumbling in a foreign language" from his Aramaic speaking apostles. (Cult Fiction, p. 12)

While so much more could (and should) be said on the Church's lost patrimony of traditional disciplines, I leave you with this short article from Catholic Answers about the Latin language, and a recommendation to read this excellent book by Fr. Uwe Michael Lang about the direction of liturgical prayer.

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Moorhouse describes the final technique, that of a "false choice" or a "mental sleight of hand," this way:

The human mind is so constructed that presented with two choices, it will accept the lesser evil or more good. Thus a salesman will say to you, "May I see you at 2 o'clock or 5 o'clock?" Your mind thinks, "I have to pick the children up at 5 o'clock, so I'll make it 2 o'clock." Only a minority spot the fact that the real choice they had, i.e. to see him or not to see him, had been removed by this sleight of hand...

Now let's observe the sleight of hand used to make [the Way's proposition] acceptable. First we are presented, with the aid of a little drawing [see p. 48 of the Catechetical Guide], of a pre-Christian pagan offering sacrifices on an altar to appease the anger of wrathful gods. The drawing helps to reinforce this spurious option. We are then presented with option number two, the horizontal folksy ninety minute "bean feast" of the Neocatechumenate, which we are told (agan mendaciously) was the fruit of Vatican II. Now what Catholic, given a choice between a pagan offering sacrifice to wrathful gods and a Vatican II-sanctioned celebration, would not choose the latter? (Cult Fiction, p. 12)

But, of course, as he goes on to say, this is not the real choice. Non-Neocatechumenal Catholic worship is not pagan, and the insistent presentation of "regular" Catholicism as something out of the Dark Ages is insidiously dishonest. Many in evangelical Protestant circles are unfortunately guilty of the same deeply ignorant notions, as well, but at least, to their credit, they make no attempt to pass themselves off as the exact same Church they endlessly disparage in the same breath.

I think Moorhouse says it beautifully, so I'll let him explain, again at length, the actual situation:

What we do is re-present to God, together with Our Lady and all the angels and saints and heavenly choirs, the perfect and wonderful sacrifice of his only Son on the Cross. I do this in love and wonder and gratitude to our God who is all goodness, all truth, all justice, all mercy, all beauty and all being! And because my Lord is so awesomely wonderful I chose to offer him the best, the best music, the best architecture, the best altar, the best sacred vessels, the best vestments and the best liturgy and, for good measure, I throw in my unworthy self. (Cult Fiction, p. 12)

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All of these "sales techniques" are ultimately based on the supposed (and counted on) ignorance of the interlocutor. If you know nothing about the early Church, or Vatican II, or historical trends and statistics, or the traditional liturgy of the Church, or what Catholic worship really is, then congratulations, you are the Way's target demographic. Now, granted, not everyone is going to be experts on these topics, and the vast majority of people probably don't have a conversant knowledge of liturgics or historical Mass attendance trends just resting in their back pocket. Even I, with a Masters degree in theology, still need to regularly read and research!

That being said, even a little knowledge and a little research can go a long way in dismantling the Way's claims. Simply asking a few questions - which the catechists will refuse (or be unable) to answer - can lead to the necessary discernment that you are being sold a bill of goods.

It is one of the Church's spiritual works of mercy to instruct the ignorant. That is what works like Cult Fiction, or blogs like this one or the Osservatorio or the Thoughtful Catholic, and many other fine resources out there aim to do. In employing techniques like the ones enumerated above, the Way is clearly not interested in instructing the ignorant, but rather on preying on them.

In the next installment, we look at Moorhouse's treatment on the methodology of the Way, looking specifically at the convivences, the scrutinies, and the practice of tithing.

For further reading in this series, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9.

"Cult Fiction," Part 4: Cruel Deceit

 

In this edition of "Cult Fiction 20 Years Later" (or "The Annotated Cult Fiction," if you prefer), we look at a very brief section entitled "Cruel Deceit of the Rank and File." Here, Graham Moorhouse accomplishes two things: he addresses a very real problem with the Neocatechumenal hierarchy, and he also addresses a much bigger problem in the Church at large. The point about the Neocat hierarchy (Kiko, Carmen, etc.) is well-known and there won't be too much else to say on it. As for the deeper problems, those far exceed the scope of this particular post, but we'll offer a small slice of commentary, anyway.

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The most evil aspect of the Neocatechumenate is their calculated deceit of their own rank and file who are for the most part clearly exemplary good people. (Cult Fiction, p. 9)

Is this the most evil characteristic about the Way? It is evil without question, but we know some blood-boiling stories that have nothing to do with "deception." Perhaps Moorhouse, at the time of his writing, had been mercifully spared those types of stories.

But yes, your average rank-and-file Neocat is a very decent and faithful person. They are looking to grow in their life of faith, and so when they see advertisements for a catechesis that offers answers to life's suffering and offers a close-knit community of like-minded believers, they're all too happy to sign up. They turn their lives and livelihoods over to their catechists because they sincerely believe that to do so is to serve God, which they rightly recognize as their highest good. No one wants to join a cult - it's only the lucky few who one day wake up and realize that's where they've ended up.

Most Neocats get pulled straight from the Sunday pew at the local Catholic parish and - by and large - they believe the same things the Catholic Church believes. If they knew beforehand and up front what awaited them down "the Way," they would shake the dust from their sandals and go a different way. This understanding is a big part of why this blog exists: so you don't have to be deceived; so you can have questions answered that the Kikatechists will only discourage, deflect, and ignore.

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Moorhouse goes on to call Kiko and Carmen "professional dissenters," and proceeds to lump them in this general category which he then spends the majority of the rest of this section describing. What he writes, again, is less of a commentary on the Way itself (though its tactics certainly fit the bill) and more of a commentary on a widespread phenomenon we see in the Church at large.

If you want to change the beliefs of Catholic[s], it is a waste of time doing it honestly and out in the open. This will merely bring the Magisterium of the Church down on your head. (Cult Fiction, p. 9)

I feel like this might have been a bit truer 20 years ago. St. John Paul II, naive as he perhaps could be at times to the subtle machinations of his underlings, had little patience for heterodoxy and confusion. Francis, however, seems to welcome and encourage it. The world and the Church, reflections of one another in many ways, grow less and less subtle all the time.

What you must do is change the orthopraxis that underpins and gives expression to the beliefs you want to change... For instance, if you do not believe in transubstantiation, encourage Catholics to receive the host in the hand standing.... The trick is never to reveal your hand, just be very patient and leave time to do your corrosive dirty work. (Cult Fiction, p. 9)

First, the larger point; then, the example.

So, so much could be said about the subterfuge and sabotage of Catholicism. From Fr. James Martin's serpentine tweets to Cardinal Bernardin's "Seamless Garment," from Bella Dodd to secret Communist memoirs...there are so many directions to go and so little time. We encourage the reader to read more deeply than beyond just this blog, and also know that Moorhouse's point about undermining doctrine and playing the long game is SPOT ON.

Now, as to the example. Moorhouse actually gives several, all of which relate to the Way in some form or another, but we'll focus our attention on communion in the hand.

It is certainly all too likely that Kiko and Carmen reject transubstantiation. As indicated in a past article, modernists like Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J. admit their rejection openly. The Dutch Catechism and its deficient theology, including on the Real Presence, formed decades of modern Catholics (including Kiko). When a certain pandemic hit the world in 2020, what was one of the first things to go? Communion on the tongue. The reason was ostensibly hygiene and preventing the spread of germs. But come on, now.

Martin Mosebach once poignantly wrote:

If people who have been kneeling for a thousand years suddenly get to their feet, they do not think, "We're doing this like the early Christians, who stood for the Consecration;" they are not aware of returning to some particularly authentic form of worship. They simply get up, brush the dust from their trouser-legs and say to themselves: "So it wasn't such a serious business after all." (The Heresy of Formlessless, p. 30)

You can argue all you want for "community banquets" and "festive meals" and "mature friendship with Christ" and whatever else, but at the end of the day, it's just going to end up as "just another no-big-deal." As Bishop Athanasius Schneider writes, "A commonplace gesture has no pedagogical effect that could help increase the sense of the sacred." If you're receiving Holy Communion in the hand standing (or in the Neocat fashion, seated and self-communicating for snack time), you're not inculcating any deeper, more sophisticated sense of reverence; you're just going through the same motions you do with anything else, and so will of course think about it like anything else. And that, dear friends, is the long game: that's been the goal all along.

Maybe Moorhouse was correct in his first analysis: that the cruel deceit of the rank and file really is the evilest characteristic of the Way. When the depths of deception undermine the very tenets of one's faith, unknowingly forcing them to follow a false Gospel that imperils their very soul, even the most horrific bodily abuse seems tame by comparison. The Neocatechumenal Way is not the Catholic faith, despite its outward similarities (not to mention its loud, strident claims that it is the only Catholic faith). That is the real deception.

In the next installment, we'll look at Moorhouse's breakdown of five slick sales tricks used by the Way to sell its distorted brand of liturgy.

To read other entries in this series, see: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9.

"Cult Fiction," Part 3: Liturgy

We continue our series of looking at Graham Moorhouse's work, "Cult Fiction: The Protestant Cuckoo in the Catholic Nest." It is appropriate that this article is being published during the Octave of Easter, for the first subject that Moorhouse discusses in his section on the Neocatechumenal liturgy is the celebration of the Easter Vigil.

It is important to remember that this vigil is normally celebrated separately from the parish! So in parishes in which the Way are present there will be two Easter Vigils, an open one for the parish and a closed one for the Way! (Cult Fiction, p. 6)

This is entirely true, and applies to all Masses, not just the Easter Vigil (but more on that momentarily). Moorhouse also relates that he knows of some parishes in which the parish Easter Vigil has been scrapped entirely in favor of the Way's Vigil. I have fortunately not heard of this happening in any of the Way's parishes in my diocese, though I do not doubt that it happens.

[The Way's] liturgy reaches its culmination at the Passover Vigil, which is an all night affair... An ex-member has related to me how the vigil finished with a community breakfast at 6am in a large local hotel, for which everyone was required to pay £25! My informants had asked to be excused the breakfast because of family commitments but were instructed by the leaders of the Way that their place was at the community breakfast. (Cult Fiction, p. 6-7)

The all-night aspect is a defining feature of the Way's iteration of the Easter Vigil. In stories I have heard directly, this "community breakfast" also has alcohol served at it, which many people are more than happy to imbibe. Thus, by the time all the festivities are over, people are so tired (and often drunk) that they feel the need to do nothing but sleep the remainder of the day--which, to remind you, is Easter Sunday. They do not partake of any other parish activities; they do not visit or have a traditional dinner with their families; they do not commemorate the day in any other meaningful way, because they were up all night and now must sleep. The Way has completely monopolized the time and energy (and money) of its followers on the Church's highest Holy Day!

Now, activities at night and sleeplessness are not remotely unheard of in Catholic tradition. My own parish's Easter Vigil started at 4:30 in the morning this year. St. John Vianney slept very little, both due to his immensely busy schedule and the fact that he was often tormented by demons. The 4th-century ascetic St. Macarius is said to have once gone twenty days without sleep. St. Jerome would supposedly throw himself on the floor to keep himself awake if he got too sleepy to continue his work.

However, as one doctor wrote for Sleep and Health Journal, "Sleep deprivation is an essential component of many brainwashing groups. From David Koresh to Adolf Hitler, long nocturnal rituals were the main techniques for mind control." And, another blogger adds, "The fact is narcissists and other toxic people really do try to ruin...sleep schedules in order to be able to control [people] better... even though sleep depravity [sic] isn't a direct manipulation tactic, it can leave us much more vulnerable [to] actual manipulation methods and controlling behavior."

Given the reputation of Kiko and his many brutish catechists, these latter observations certainly deserve our consideration as much as any we give to the thought of "pious religious observance."

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The next section details many of the peculiarities of the Neocatechumenal liturgy.

Their weekly Masses are also celebrated behind closed doors separately from the parish. These closed private Masses are radically different from parish Masses. (Cult Fiction, p. 7)

Indeed. In fact, not only are their Masses separate and closed off from the parish, but they are even separate and closed off from one another! Different small communities on different "stages" of the Way will not have Mass together, except at convivences or other major events. Some more advanced Neocat parishes have even constructed (or co-opted from existing parish property) official "catechumeniums." These are, according to the Way's official website, "dignified spaces where the communities [can] celebrate different liturgies." They often consist of numerous small rooms and a larger room and "serve to carry out the aesthetic and liturgical renewal of Vatican II." (My former parish, in fact, is currently in the process of building such a space, completely and falsely under the guise of building a new "parish center" to get all the unsuspecting normies to pay for it.)

As for the liturgy itself, the rubrics and statutes have supposedly undergone some heavy revision in the intervening years between now and when Moorhouse was writing. (I say "supposedly" because while these new statutes and other official Vatican publications are well-documented, the Way's proclivity to having its own way often precludes any "official" intervention). This, of course, does not mean that everything has changed, or that Moorhouse's observations are even remotely irrelevant.

Because Neocatechumenal liturgies are so private and closed-off, finding videos of them is understandably very difficult. However, back in April of 2020 (when churches around the world were in the process of shuttering their doors because of a certain virus), the Redemptoris Mater of Cape Town, South Africa live-streamed a full Mass for the public. My friend and co-blogger, a former Neocat, assures me (and all you readers) that apart from some minor aesthetic differences, it is a faithful representation of a typical contemporary Neocat liturgy, at least in her experience. It can be viewed in its entirety here. We will use this Mass as our primary example and comparison.

• "Altars are strictly taboo," Moorhouse writes. "A table decorated with flowers is set in the middle of the church with the brothers and sisters of the community and their catechists circled round it." Yes, clearly this is still the case, as is evident immediately in the video. A quick Google image search of Neocatechumenal Masses reveals the same thing. (Interestingly not present on the table in the video is the menorah, which you can see present in the photo above).

• "The Mass will typically last ninety minutes and takes place on a Saturday evening." Yes, Neocat Masses are always on Saturday evenings (the one in the video is no different). "The first Christians met on the night between Saturday and Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist," reports Kiko. "Later, after the Peace of Constantine [aka, when the Holy Spirit started His vacation], when Sunday became also a civic holiday, they began to celebrate the Eucharist on Sunday mornings too" (Catechetical Guide, p. 363). While the Mass in the video is indeed around ninety minutes in length, this is unusual only in the sense that a typical Sunday Novus Ordo Mass is only about sixty minutes. A Byzantine Divine Liturgy, however, can also easily run about ninety minutes, and the Traditional Latin High Mass for Palm Sunday can be as long as three hours; so timing is not always, as they often say, everything.

• "There is a certain amount of what may be called liturgical dancing, circling the table and such like." None of that to be seen in the video, but this clip from an Easter Vigil in El Salvador certainly fits the bill..

• "There is little kneeling." True. At no point in the video--including both during the consecration and after Holy Communion--can anyone be observed kneeling. Photographs of Neocatechumenal Masses also typically never show anyone on their knees (unless it's in front of Kiko...). Moorhouse goes on: "Indeed in some cases the Way has been responsible for the kneelers being stripped out of churches." While I have not heard of this specific renovation taking place in parishes near me, there certainly have been notorious others.

• "The bread for Mass is baked by the members themselves and resembles an ordinary loaf. In the breaking and sharing of our Lord's body, crumbs and fragments are inevitably scattered all over the church and trodden underfoot. This of course would and should scandalize any genuine Catholic." It is not so much the use of leavened bread itself which is a problem (those in the Eastern Churches use it, also), but how it is treated. Communion in the video begins at around 1:33:40 and continues for about the next five minutes. Observe the oddness for yourself. As for the scattered and trampled fragments and the scandal such practices cause, while the video does not show (or even suggest) them, there are numerous testimonies out there that all confirm this report. But I could go on about Eucharistic abuse all day...

• Moorhouse remarks that anyone can share reflections before the homily, and that additionally anyone can pray and express feelings openly during the Prayers of the Faithful. In the video (36:38), the priest--while seated--even says, "Before the homily, we have this gift of being able to share what the Lord has spoken to us." The passing of the microphone during the Prayers of the Faithful begins at about 1:10:55. What Moorhouse does not mention, which could easily be included here, is that each reading (including the Gospel) will also be preceded by a spontaneous and expository "exhortation" by a layperson. This practice seems to apply to all Neocatechumenal liturgies, as I experienced the same phenomenon during both the penitential liturgy (Night 10) and the "handing on the Scriptures" liturgy (Night 15) of the initial catechesis. In those cases, laypeople even gave little "mini homilies" after each reading, too!

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The Neocatechumenate's "Mass" contains serious omissions from the normal public liturgy of the Church... It is claimed by the Neocatechumenate leaders (and I have yet to see anything to dispute their claim) that these omissions and general mucking about with the liturgy of the Mass have been approved by officials of the Liturgical Congregation in Rome. (Cult Fiction, p. 7)

Here is where I think some changes have been made - at least superficially. This article from Sandro Magister, titled "The Old Form of the Neocatechumenal Mass Is Illicit," offers some interesting perspective.

Moorhouse says here, and elsewhere, that the creed is not recited during Neocat Mass. As of today, this is only partially true. They do not say the Nicene Creed, but rather the Apostles Creed. This is true in the video (1:05:57) and is also true from years of my own experience. The Neocat priests at my old parish insist on the Apostles Creed every Sunday for even the regular parish Masses--I didn't say the Nicene Creed at Mass for several years! Moorhouse comments elsewhere [p. 6] that there may be some doctrinal issues present in the Nicene Creed that Kiko and Company do not accept, thus the suppression. I generally accept this theory. (Remember, too, that the Nicene Creed was first formulated in 325, and Kiko's timeline of "legitimate" Church history essentially ends in 313 with Constantine's Edict of Milan and doesn't pick up again until Vatican II in the 1960s.) Perhaps the Apostles Creed was a concession to Rome to at least have a creed in the liturgy.

Regarding the other omissions, Moorhouse lists four, and gives his doctrinal guesses as to why they've been removed: (1) the Lavabo, (2) the Orate, Fratres, (3) the Agnus Dei, and (4) the Domine, non sum dignus. All four of these prayers are present in the Cape Town video (1:17:39, 1:18:35, 1:32:30, and 1:35:56, respectively). One of the Vatican's sticking points with the Way's new statutes was that it needed to use the Roman Missal. With the exception of some significant departures (like the exhortations and community homily), the Cape Town Mass does indeed largely follow the Missal (even with its Kiko-fied chanting).

Why might we still wish to take these changes with a grain of salt? Sandro Magister again is enlightening with this article from 2012. The entire article is worth reading and reflecting on, but I want to focus on a quote from a particular book that Magister highlights:

...Kiko and Carmen drew their own personal conception of the Catholic liturgy, which they put into practice in the Masses of their communities. There is a book by a Ligurian priest of the Way, Piergiovanni Devoto, that uses previously unpublished texts of Kiko and Carmen to make public this bizarre conception of theirs...

Here are some of the passages of the book, taken from pages 71-77...

"The Church has tolerated inauthentic forms for centuries. The 'Gloria,' which was part of the liturgy of the hours recited by the monks, entered into the mass when a single celebration was made of the two actions, and that the 'Credo' emerged with the appearance of heresies and apostasies. Even the 'Orate Fratres' is a culminating example of the prayers with which the mass was stuffed full..."

While Devoto's book is from 2004 (and thus more in line with the liturgy with which Moorhouse would have been familiar, prior to the Vatican interventions of later years), such a quote corroborates that omitting prayers like the Orate, Fratres from the Mass is indeed very much in line with Kiko and Carmen's "doctrinally restorationist" mindset when it comes to overhauling the Church's liturgy. As even the "approved" version of their catechetical guides show, their faulty theology--and by extension, their entire program of catechesis--has not changed an iota. Carmen took it to her grave, and Kiko will likely do the same. Don't think that by adding a few prayers back into the Mass, the Way has somehow sorted itself out.

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One may legitimately question whether the Neocatechumenate "Mass" is actually a valid Mass. The Church teaches that for the Mass to be valid it is necessary for the priest to intend to do what the Church does. However, the Church intends to offer a propitious sacrifice, but Kiko and Carmen explicitly deny the Mass is a propitious sacrifice, so how can their priests intend to do what the Church does? (Cult Fiction, p. 7)

This is indeed a very serious concern. In my own experience, I do not doubt that the Neocatechumenal priests who I have met and whose Masses I have attended have been sincere in their belief about the Eucharist. With no other pretext, I even asked one of them one time if the Mass was a sacrifice, and he unhesitatingly replied, "Yes, absolutely." Now, as we well know, the entire Neocat movement is plagued by duplicity and purposeful ambiguity, which is a true shame, because it prevents otherwise decent, humble, forthright people from being fully believed. For my part, though, I accept these priests' sincerity--at least in this specific regard.

I cannot, however, speak for every Neocat priest, and while this particular teaching may have been "softened" or "watered down" by Vatican editors, it did not go away. If all or almost all of your seminary training is done at the hands of Kiko and Carmen's "true believers," who know and embrace all the founders have said and taught, then it's really inevitable that regardless of your personal faith in the Eucharist, your professional training is going to be substandard, if not outright deficient. Seminary training in the last 60 years has been bad enough without adding more nonsense to the mix. And remember, priestly vocations are one of the Way's biggest selling points!

Regardless of any individual priest's personal beliefs about the Eucharist (which may never be knowable with certainty), knowing he belongs to a movement whose founders so openly embrace heretical ideas about the Blessed Sacrament should be a major red flag to the faithful.

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Drawing the comparison to questions many have been asking about the Novus Ordo since its initiation, Moorhouse asks:

Is it really better that our liturgy should seek to drag Christ down into our pedestrian, workaday world, rather than seek to raise our hearts and minds up to the throne of the Most High...? Further: are we really the better off for having ditched holy intimacy for an unbecoming familiarity, or is this not rather part of that post-Conciliar move away from worshipping the Lord God Almighty to worshipping a god all-matey, made in our own image? (Cult Fiction, p. 8)

Whether you attend the Novus Ordo, or the Traditional Latin Mass, or an Eastern Divine Liturgy, or an Ordinariate Mass, these are fair and important questions to ask.

In The Spirit of the Liturgy - which we heartily recommend to all readers - Cardinal Ratzinger reminds us:

Worship, that is, the right kind of cult, of relationship with God, is essential for the right kind of human existence in the world. It is so precisely because it reaches beyond everyday life. Worship gives us a share in heaven's mode of existence, in the world of God, and allows light to fall from that divine world into ours... Liturgy implies a real relationship with Another, who reveals himself to us and gives our existence a new direction. (p. 21-22)

Of the kind of liturgy Moorhouse describes, using the example of the Hebrews and the golden calf, Ratzinger goes on to say:

Worship is no longer going up to God, but drawing God down into one's own world. He must be there when he is needed, and he must be the kind of God that is needed. Man is using God, and in reality, even if it is not outwardly discernible, he is placing himself above God... Worship becomes a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation. Instead of being worship of God, it becomes a circle closed in on itself: eating, drinking, and making merry. The narrative of the golden calf is an image of this self-seeking worship. It is a kind of banal self-gratification. The narrative of the golden calf is a warning about any kind of self-initiated and self-seeking worship. UItimately, it is no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one's own resources. Then liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse it becomes an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise. All that is left in the end is frustration, a feeling of emptiness. (p. 23)

Watch the video of the Salvadoran Easter Vigil dance again, or think of the mass exodus of people--especially young people--from the Church at large, and all the lame, horizontal Masses they attended for decades (or maybe even the lame, horizontal Masses you still attend), and see if these words of the future pope ring any truer.

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Moorhouse concludes his short but meaty section on Liturgy with a few references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, used as counterpoints to some of the Way's doctrinal oddities that affect the liturgy. Here, we will focus on only one, since he draws a side-by-side comparison of teachings found in the Church's Catechism and in Kiko's.

Moorhouse's citation is once again striking, but frustratingly imprecise. We will here cite the Way's approved Catechetical Guide, addressing what we believe to be the same basic point:

This Passover is my Passover, Jesus says, my passage from death to life. He leaves us the Passover celebration as a memorial of what he came to do: pass from this world to the Father. He leaves us a sacrament; a memorial, which is a feast, a Eucharist, an exultation for what the Father has done in Christ for us...

Now however, there is a certain regression to a mentality that Israel had had but that had been left behind even in the Old Testament... To go back now to the sacrificial and sacerdotal ideas of paganism is like going back to erect the scaffolding again after the building has been finished. This is why, when in the middle ages people began to argue about sacrifice, some of them would argue about things that had a very different meaning in the primitive Eucharist...

The Eucharist is Passover, the passage from death to resurrection. This is why to say that the Eucharist is a sacrifice is true but incomplete... The Eucharist is above all a sacrifice of praise...

Moreover what many people see in the Mass is only that Jesus Christ sacrifices himself, they see only the sacrifice of the cross of Jesus Christ and not his resurrection. They don't see the Passover, the passage from death to resurrection. And even today if you were to ask people about this, many would say that all they see in the Mass is Calvary. Little by little the Mass is covered over. (p. 329, 347-349)

Moorhouse compares this to Paragraph 1410 of the Catechism, as well as to two canons (I and III from Session 22) from the Council of Trent. I will include what I believe to be the most pertinent of those here:

If anyone says that the sacrifice of the Mass is that only of praise and thanksgiving, or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the Cross but not a propitiatory one... let him be anathema. (Canon III, Session 22, Council of Trent)

To Moorhouse's points, I will also add this excellent quote by St. Leonard of Port Maurice, from his work The Hidden Treasure:

In what does the chief excellence of the Mass consist? In this, namely, that it is essentially the same, nay the very same sacrifice that was offered on the cross of Calvary, with this sole difference, however, that the sacrifice of the cross was bloody, and was offered once, and did, on that one tremendous moment, satisfy fully for all the sins of the world; while the sacrifice of the altar is an unbloody sacrifice, which can be repeated throughout all times, and was instituted in order to apply to each of us that universal atonement which Christ made for us on Calvary. (I.III)

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If you made it all the way to the end in this one, thanks for sticking with us! In Part 4 (a much shorter section), we look at Moorhouse's analysis of the Way's "cruel deceit of the rank and file."

To read other articles in this series, check out: Part 1, Part 2, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9.

"Cult Fiction," Part 2: On Doctrine

 

Twenty years ago, Graham Moorhouse published "Cult Fiction: The Protestant Cuckoo in the Catholic Nest." This short work, the full PDF of which is linked on our home page under "Other Helpful Sites," was absolutely pivotal in my education about the Neocatechumenal Way. It was the disturbing similarity between Moorhouse's years-old and continents-away experience and my own which made me realize the truth of it all. It has since become one of the first things I recommend people read when inquiring about the Way.

In Part 1, we covered the first few introductory pages. In this second part, we cover the section that Moorhouse titles "Some Doctrinal Specifics." We cover doctrine quite a bit on this site (see here and here for just two examples), so this shouldn't be covering much new ground for well-versed readers.

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In the first paragraph, Moorhouse says: "A more clear statement of Lutheran doctrine, as opposed to Catholic doctrine, it would be difficult to find." He precedes this statement with more (uncited) Kiko quotes. Let's try to place them.

• "Man is not saved by good works." While this does not appear to be a direct quote, we do see several examples in the Catechetical Guide of "good works" being spoken of disparagingly. For example, from the approved English edition: "...people have mistaken ideas about Christianity. We need to give them a true Word, a living Christianity, stripped of the moralism we carry around with us: everything is based on our strength, on our efforts, our good works..." (p. 381). Good works (or rather, our sheer lack thereof) also appear conflated with the "heart of stone" which God desires to remove from you: "...God is powerful enough to change your heart that is barren of good works into a heart of flesh able to give your life for your enemy..." (p. 397); "...God is the one who can draw life from the dead womb which is you, who are barren of good works."
• "Jesus Christ did not come to give us a model of life, an example." This is almost a direct quote. Again from the approved edition: "Many people think that Jesus Christ came only to give us a more perfect law than the earlier one and, with his life and his death (especially his sufferings) to give us an example so that we can do the same. For these people, Jesus Christ is only an ideal, a model of life, an example. This is not the case" (p. 119).
• "The Holy Spirit doesn't lead us to perfection." No mention of the Holy Spirit here, but this quote is illustrative: "For there is a kind of Christianity...in which what is most important is to be in a state of grace and to try not to lose this grace, to persevere, but all of this is understood in a static sense... This type of Christianity, in which one presents himself as perfect and sublime, turns people off. In fact, it is the opposite of Christianity, because Christians are not perfect...they know that they really are sinners... Deep down what are we all? Sinners and wretches" (p. 201).
• "Christianism doesn't require anything from us." While I couldn't find any quotes in the Catechetical Guide itself, I can offer this revealing quote from one of the catechists I listened to on Night 4 of the initial catechesis: "You don't have to stop cheating on your wife. Your encounter with Christ will do it for you. He doesn't require you to change."
• "God forgives freely the sins of those who believe that Jesus is the Savior." Almost a direct quote: "So, what great news can we announce? God forgives our sins and with his Holy Spirit makes us saints, children of God! And this gratis for anyone who recognizes and believes that Jesus is the One sent by the Father as his Savior" (p. 218).

So once again, a bit of cherry-picking on Moorhouse's part, but the core ideas he mentions are indeed all present. And all of the quotes I found are from the approved edition!

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I believe that one of the most obvious signs of the children of light is their irrepressible merriment. I know many dear priests in the traditional movement who appear most of the time as if they are struggling to suppress a giggle that just keeps tenaciously refusing to be contained. These men are such a contrast to the apologists of the Way, who look for much of the time as if they have cod liver oil swilling round their back teeth. (Cult Fiction, p. 3)

Well, I've never met any priests like that, although most habited nuns I've met most certainly match that description. More than anything though, the Neocats I've met definitely match Moorhouse's delightful imagery of a grade-A sourpuss. Christian joy does not emanate from these people, and I recognized his assessment immediately. They can't contain their testimonies not because they're so elated about the saving power of God, but because they want to brag to you about how deplorable their lives were (are?).

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The next few paragraphs deal with the Way's rejection of the Catholic doctrine of redemption, and subsequent others like Christ's sacrifice on the Cross and the sacrifice of the Mass. "Because we were not sufficiently catechized and had a very juridical theology," writes Kiko, "the Council responded by renewing theology. There was no more talk of the dogma of Redemption" (p. 67; in the approved edition [p. 61], this quote has been heavily watered down to read "the Second Vatican Council has renewed the theological approach to the dogma of Redemption...")

More interesting and apt than his analysis of the doctrines themselves, however, is Moorhouse's take on why Kiko rejects them, and why rejecting other doctrines naturally stems from the one:

As an ex-Protestant my ear may be better tuned than some cradle Catholics to spot these thought patterns. This depressing pessimistic view of man ("zero plus sin") was the starting point for Luther's neurotic creed. If you believe that man is so damaged by original sin that he is beyond all possibility and hope of reform, and that the very best therefore that God can do is "impute" holiness to him by throwing a veil over him, then of course you must reject the Catholic doctrine of redemption; you can't redeem that which is essentially ontologically unredeemable, i.e. "zero plus sin"! (Cult Fiction, p. 4)

Pessimistic misanthropy is not Catholic, plain and simple.

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The next section is all about the Way's "False Tradition" and their incredibly skewed timeline of Church history. I learned more about this later on, for example from The Thoughtful Catholic, but this served as a good introduction.

There is much similarity between the Way's false concept of tradition and that of the Protestant reformers... The line of thinking goes something like this: the Holy Spirit was in the early Church, but somehow disappeared from the scene at some time. The Church then became corrupt or at least spiritually dead for centuries. However, fortuitously the Holy Spirit turned up again on my birthday, or at Vatican II, or on some other momentous occasion involving me, or with which I am personally empathetic, and now all can be restored to it [sic] original purity. (Cult Fiction, p. 4-5)

My mind was immediately drawn to Joseph Smith and the Mormons after reading that description, but really any "reformer" (or even better, "restorer") will do. And hey, they do call Carmen the "restorer of the Church"!

Moorhouse also makes the point that it's very easy to refute false tradition narratives like the Way's because, for instance, the canon of Scripture as we know it was finalized after the Pax Constantina (when the Way believes the lapse began). How can you be Bible-believing Christians when your Bible was compiled by a corrupt, paganized Church the Holy Spirit had (at least temporarily) abandoned?

I even asked my old Neocat pastor why his stupid little timeline (ok, I didn't phrase it that way at the time) left out entire centuries of Church history, like the Synod of Hippo or the Council of Carthage, which worked on the canon of Scripture. "Oh, well even at Trent they were discussing Scripture, you see, you can't be so narrow-minded." Well, there's no Trent on that timeline either. "We certainly don't have time to talk about everything!" So cavalier and dismissive. And so obviously without a leg to stand on.

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The next section covers idolatry, again covered in more depth later by The Thoughtful Catholic. Of particular note here is Moorhouse's description of marriages:

The break up of marriages is a recurring theme in complaints against the Way. Because the Way mandates such a heavy commitment of time and energy this inescapably puts stress on many marriages, especially where one partner is involved with the Way and the other not. Any attempt to reduce one's time commitment to the Way to ease the strain on one's marriage will be met by the objection that you are making your marriage an "idol" by allowing it to come between you and God - whose will is always equated with the Way. (Cult Fiction, p. 5)

We know of marriages in our own lives and experiences that have been burdened in this way, and far more recently than twenty years ago.

Moorhouse contrasts this attitude with the example of St. Josemaría Escrivá and what he had to say about marriages, particularly within his own movement, Opus Dei. While Moorhouse does not provide any exact examples, we shall:

For the married members of Opus Dei, human love and marriage duties are part of their divine vocation... The purpose of marriage is to help married people sanctify themselves and others. For this reason, they receive a special grace in the sacrament which Jesus Christ instituted. Those who are called to the married state will, with the grace of God, find within their state everything they need to be holy, to identify themselves each day more with Jesus Christ, and to lead those with whom they live to God... Christian couples should be aware that...they are called to be apostles and that their first apostolate is in the home. They should understand that founding a family, educating their children, and exercising a Christian influence in society, are supernatural tasks. The effectiveness and the success of their life - their happiness - depends to a great extent on their awareness of their specific mission. But they mustn't forget that the secret of married happiness lies...in finding the hidden joy of coming home in the evening, in affectionate relations with their children, in the everyday work in which the whole family cooperates. (Conversations with St. Josemaría Escrivá, no. 91)

It's hard to imagine a deeper divide between "get to heaven by loving your wife and children" and "you won't get to heaven because you spend too much time with your wife and children."

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The penultimate section briefly covers the Way's rejection of transubstantiation and the Real Presence. For my money, former Kikatechist Mark Alessio has one of the best brief introductions to this topic, and hopefully one day I'll be able to do a deeper dive of my own, as there's much to unpack.

Moorhouse really does not get into specifics and only touches on superficial points. The most noteworthy is probably this infamous Carmen quote that got fully removed from the approved edition of the Catechetical Guide:

Bread and wine are not meant to be displayed, because they spoil. Bread and wine are meant to be eaten and drunk... If Jesus Christ had wanted the Eucharist to stay there [in the tabernacle], he would have made himself present in a stone that doesn't go bad. (p. 329, unedited version)

Christ is not really present in the tabernacle or the monstrance, you see. Eucharistic adoration is just stupid. Jesus came as bread, not a rock, so he clearly didn't mean to be worshipped like that. (Incidentally, when I mentioned this passage to my old Neocat pastor, he laughed quite jovially and denied ever hearing such a ridiculous notion, as Carmen was well-known to attend Eucharistic adoration every day. This man was trained pre-2012, and thus pre- "approved edition," so he knew darn well what I was talking about and he almost assuredly lied straight to my face.)

It is not clear where Kiko and Carmen are getting these heretical ideas. One suspects that it is more likely to be such theologian[s] as Karl Rahner or Edward Schillebeeckx O.P. than the Protestant reformers. Or possibily lesser luminaries such as the Americans, Tad Guzie S.J. or Monika K. Hellwig, or from ex-priest Anthony Wilhelm's book, Christ Among Us. (Cult Fiction, p. 5-6)

Pedro Farnés is the modernist liturgist and theologian most closely associated with the Way. His disciple, Carmen, absorbed much of his thought into her own later teachings.

Without going down the mid-20th-century theology rabbit hole too deeply, Karl Rahner, S.J. is indeed often cited as one of the Way's major influences (along with Farnés and the Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer). He even gets a very brief tangential mention by name in the Catechetical Guide, on page 379 of the approved edition. Of his Eucharistic theology, the Homiletic and Pastoral Review wrote: "It is also at least unclear in Rahner's thinking whether the Eucharist is the Real Presence of Christ, or merely a symbol or event of his presence active in the Church." This same ambiguity is abundant in the Way's teaching.

Schillebeeckx, of course, is famous for the idea of transignification, which says that the bread and wine take on the "real significance" of Christ's Body and Blood, and do not actually physically become Christ's Body and Blood. This idea was flatly rejected by Pope St. Paul VI in his 1965 encyclical, Mysterium Fidei (para. 11). Of course, transignification is not an outright rejection of the Real Presence, and you'll still see its brand of theological gymnastics on display today, such as in this piece from archmodernist Thomas Reese, S.J., where he plainly states, "I believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I just don't believe in transubstantiation."

Regarding the other three names, Moorhouse is right in calling them "lesser luminaries," as they're not ones that frequently come up in conversation. I honestly cannot speak to Kiko and Carmen's familiarity or lack thereof with these individuals. But, just for kicks, let's take a quick sampling at some of their thoughts on the Eucharist:

Guzie's notion of the Eucharist is best described as warmed-over Calvinism... For Guzie, the Eucharistic symbolism is thus a general statement about death, an ideal tied to no particular event or even ritual, but ever emergent in man's ongoing self-interpretation: all meals, if one will have it so, are Eucharists. (Donald Keefe, S.J., commenting on Tad Guzie's 1974 work, Jesus and the Eucharist)

Many of [Hellwig's] assertions are couched in studied ambiguity, but even under the guise of continued questioning and speculation, her views cannot fail to disturb Catholics... She states baldly, "What Jesus taught was in no way a code of behavior..." Giving vent to the more radical forms of liberation theology, she expresses far more concern for "the transubstantiation of the world about us" than for the Church's effort to maintain orthodox belief in the Eucharist via the doctrine of transubstantation. (James Likoudis, commenting on and quoting from Monika Hellwig's 1992 work, What Are the Theologians Saying Now?)

When we say that the bread and wine "become Christ," we are not saying that bread and wine are Christ... What we mean is that the bread and wine are a sign of Christ present, here and now, in a special way - not in a mere physical way, as if condensed into a wafer. (Anthony Wilhelm, from his 1967 work, Christ Among Us)

[For further reading, Regis Scanlon, O.F.M. Cap., even sums up Guzie, Hellwig, and Wilhelm in one cozy little paragraph (including the above Wilhelm quote) in this article on Eucharistic misconceptions.]

Obviously, all of the aforementioned individuals have problematic (or at best ambiguous) views about the Eucharist, and Moorhouse is superbly right in drawing their names to our attention, regardless of any explicit connections they may or may not have to the foundational theology of the Way.

So there you have it. All those canonised saints, all those thousands of holy monks and religious women, all those millions of faithful Catholics, who have spent hours on their knees every week for centuries adoring the Blessed Sacrament. They are all heretics adoring cookies! So much for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. (Cult Fiction, p. 6)

Poignant sarcasm at its finest.

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The final brief section is on the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Having personally sat through fourteen (some twenty-one hours) of the lectures of their catechists, I can personally testify that conspicuous by its complete absence was one single reference to the Catechism of the Catholic Church! (Cult Fiction, p. 6)

Oh, come now, Mr. Moorhouse. I sat through all those hours of catechesis, too, and I can testify there most certainly was one reference to the Catechism!

A current member has since written to assure me that the Catechism is now widely referred to within the movement and that the new constitution being forced on the movement by Rome has many references to the Catechism... Yet as late as 2002, over a decade after the Catechism was published, there was not one single reference to it in their lectures directed at outsiders. Even the occasional reference to it would of course still fall far short of the Holy Father's wish that future catechesis should be based upon it. (Cult Fiction, p. 6)

Are there many CCC references in the Way's approved catechetical guide? Yes, there are. That source was correct about that. Is it widely referred to within the movement? I seriously doubt it.

As I jested above, I did hear more references to the Catechism in the sessions I attended than Moorhouse did. But I don't remember hearing the first one until 12 sessions in (out of 15), and any more after that were passing mentions so rare and insignificant I don't even remember them. As Moorhouse says, even these few are not good enough. Even if the approved Catechetical Guide is now liberally sprinkled with CCC cross-references and footnotes, remember: nobody but the catechists see those! They can ignore every single reference the Vatican dropped in there, and absolutely no one will be the wiser. And after experiencing both, I can assure you this is exactly what happens.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is Kiko and Carmen's Achilles' heel. Bishops and priests would only need to mandate that they use it as the basis of their so-called catechesis, both in and outside their movement, and enforce that mandate strictly for them to either change beyond recognition or implode like a popped balloon. (Cult Fiction, p. 6)

Not a bad idea, but how exactly would such a thing be strictly enforced? What priests or bishops have the time and energy to devote to such a project - especially when there are Latin Masses to suppress? Even if such an attempt was made, the Neos are famously duplicitous, promising obedience and feigning deference with the full intention of going back into their "private Mass hidey-hole" and doing whatever the absolute hell they want anyway. So, I find this solution overly simplistic, despite its earnestness.

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In Part 3, we'll look at the Liturgy.

For further reading in this series, see also Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9.