Lay movements and communities have given countless Catholics a chance to rediscover and deepen their faith. But a clear separation is needed between the spiritual and mission aspects of the organisations.

In 1998 St. John Paul II recognized the importance of lay movements. He said they were "one of the most significant fruits of that springtime in the church which was foretold by the Second Vatican Council."

But not all the fruit was good. Several movements and communities have faced Vatican-imposed reforms and even dissolution.

The Catholic Church has a limited number of options for intervening when it comes to lay movements and communities. While a pope can remove cardinals, priests and bishops, laypeople can be punished only by excommunication.

Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, is a professor of psychology and president of the Centre for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He told Catholic News Service Nov. 4 that before deciding to dissolve a movement or community, certain criteria should be met to indicate reform is possible.

A key issue, he said, is a willingness to have a clear separation of "spiritual guidance and external power" when it comes to decision-making.

"A spiritual director should never have the power to direct the movement or a decision for a person," he said. "There needs to be a separation between who decides the mission aspect ['forum externum'] and who knows about the spiritual side ['forum internum'].

This is a very important point which some of those movements and some of those religious congregations have not been taking seriously."

Another condition, Zollner said, is that there must be a set period of time for lay movement reform. And that a person not affiliated with the movement must determine whether the conditions of the reform have been met.

The movement itself "can't be the one to testify that they have changed because then you blow your own trumpet and people will question that," he said, "and rightfully so."

Sources

National Catholic Reporter

If an organisation is led by a charismatic leader who is followed uncritically and commands or demands control over members, the members are at risk of cases of physical, sexual and psychological abuse, Father Hans Zollner SJ says.

The Vatican office that grants official recognition to international Catholic lay movements and organizations ordered them to develop a set of detailed child-protection guidelines and norms for handling allegations of the abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.

As international lay organizations include hundreds of thousands of Catholics, the guidelines are important, Zollner says.

By last December, "90-something percent [of the organisations had] sent in their guidelines," Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life, says.

The Dicastery has a juridical section led by a canon lawyer.

It is reviewing the guidelines from the organizations required to file them. The staff of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is helping with the process.

So far, several large international Catholic groups have published their Vatican-approved guidelines online.

These include Communion and Liberation, Focolare and Chemin Neuf.

The guidelines promise safe-environment training for members, contain detailed rules for activities with minors and clearly outline the responsibility of a person who is told about or suspects a case of abuse.

In most cases, this includes reporting allegations to local police.

Victims always are also free to report allegations to their local police and local bishops, Farrell said.

Members of one of the groups who want to work in a parish or diocesan programme must also meet local requirements for safeguarding training and background checks.

All laity-heavy Catholic movements and organisations that want official recognition as "international associations of the faithful" will have to include safeguarding and reporting guidelines when they apply for Vatican recognition, Farrell said.

In recent years - under Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, several small, newer communities — both religious orders and mixed groups of lay and religious — have been disbanded or placed under Vatican-mandated outside control because of sexual, physical or psychological abuse of members.

Farrell said in retrospect many of these groups "were approved at too young an age". They lacked maturity, experience in governance and oversight.

Today, for both lay and religious communities, the Vatican would "examine much more carefully the constitutions and the bylaws," he said.

In addition, "they would have to have all these policies in place" for preventing abuse.

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Image: Catholics & Cultures