Editor's note: This is the first of a series on lay movements in the church.

Four decades after the Second Vatican Council, the lay movements that have thrived from its focus on the active participation and responsibility of every Catholic seem to be reaching a level of maturity.

Many of the movements are viewed with suspicion by some members of the church, and some movements still exhibit defensiveness, but the overwhelming support of Pope John Paul II and supervision by the Pontifical Council for the Laity are bringing balance to the situation.

Belonging to a lay movement, Bible study or prayer group may help someone be a better Catholic, but the groups have not replaced parishes as the structure through which Catholics belong to the church, Vatican officials said.

"You become a Catholic thanks to baptism, you are part of the church thanks to the anointing of the Holy Spirit and you grow in the faith nourished by the Eucharist," said Guzman Carriquiry, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

Catholics should find all those ingredients for living their faith in their parish, but many have been helped by lay movements and associations, he said.

Community focus

In late November, the council published a directory listing 123 international lay associations, movements and communities approved by the church.

During its November plenary meeting, the council focused on "the true meaning of the parish" and how to ensure a parish is a "community of communities." It included a round-table discussion on the role of movements and associations in the life of a parish.

Msgr. Luigi Giussani, founder of the lay movement Communion and Liberation, sent a message to the meeting saying every parish must be a movement in the sense of being a community in which the experience of having encountered Christ "becomes the totalizing horizon of thought and action, of self-understanding and of passionate love for the mystery and destiny of our brothers and sisters."

Unless they are "in movement," he said, Christians "leave behind churches that are like tombs, parishes that are only administrative offices and communities that have only a psychological or sociological value."

At the same time, Vatican officials, council members and leaders of lay groups acknowledged that the movements' enthusiasm and pride sometimes create problems.

Some of the movements have been accused of causing deep divisions within parishes, of appearing to claim that they have the only path to true Christianity and of exercising too much control over the lives of their members.

Adriano Roccucci, secretary-general of the Rome-based Community of Sant'Egidio, said, "A risk for the movements is that they say the only way to be a good Catholic is to be one of them, to think their movement is 'the Answer' --- with a capital A."

Paolo Ciani, a spokesman for the community, said that in the early years "trying to establish an identity can have the effect of seeming boastful. As the movement matures, the identity is more solid, and the need to point out your distinctiveness lessens."

Carriquiry said the enthusiasm is natural: "If I believe that that path was given to me by God, I feel overwhelmed with happiness and even pride."

Christian living

As for the control exercised by the groups, he said the first thing is to remember that Christianity is meant to influence every area of a Christian's life, including choices regarding family life, work, social engagement, and political and economic decisions.

Community members offer each other support in living the faith in the very concrete and practical situations of their lives, he said.

Part of the laity council's role of supporting and encouraging the movements, Carriquiry said, is offering guidance when questions and controversies arise.

About the only things the 123 groups listed in the new Vatican directory have in common are being Catholic, being predominantly lay and being recognized as Catholic by the laity council.

The Legion of Mary, Marriage Encounter, the Focolare movement, Communion and Liberation, the Community of Sant'Egidio, the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal all have entries in the book.

Some of the groups gather Catholic members of a profession together for an annual meeting, while others encourage members to live together in a community, sharing their resources and dedicating their lives to serving others.

Some follow the spirituality and example of a specific religious order, while others have spawned priestly fraternities and religious orders of their own.

Some of the groups have a well-defined membership and structure, while others are a loose network with a very fluid "open-door" policy for participation.

The variety of structures and membership definitions means that many of the groups do not know exactly how many members they have; therefore, the Vatican does not, either.

Membership

Carriquiry said it would seem the charismatic renewal is the largest movement in the church; he said the Brazilian bishops estimate that 6 million Catholics in Brazil regularly attend a weekly charismatic prayer meeting.

The Focolare movement, which is more structured and coordinated, has about 116,000 members and more than 2 million "adherents" and friends who regularly participate in Focolare programs and projects.

One of the best-known groups of Catholic laity, Opus Dei, is not listed in the directory.

Although it began as a lay movement, Opus Dei is a personal prelature --- a unique structure, similar to a diocese and led by a bishop. Opus Dei has some 85,000 members, of whom 1,850 are priests.

Msgr. Joaquin Llobell, an Opus Dei priest and professor of canon law at Holy Cross University in Rome, said the special status helps Opus Dei live and function as its founder, St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, wanted.

Opus Dei's focus is not on having members act as a group, like a movement would, but on "helping people recognize that lay people are called to holiness through their work in the world," whether it is principally a profession or raising a family, he said.

With the notable exceptions of Opus Dei, which began in Spain in the 1920s, and the Focolare movement, which began in Italy in the 1940s, most of the groups sprang up in the 1960s and 1970s under the twin influences of the Second Vatican Council and cultural upheaval.

Traditional ways of being Catholic and traditional moral values were changing or being challenged.

The movements were there for people "seeking a community that supports and nourishes their faith and help them live their whole lives as Catholics," Carriquiry said. "You should be able to find that in a parish, and many times you do, but sometimes you don't."

"It's not like the Vatican created these movements; they arose spontaneously by (the) Holy Spirit," he said.

Kiko Arguello, founder of the Neocatechumenal Way, told Catholic News Service: "I think as time goes on you won't find any real Christian living his or her faith alone. You need the support and love of a community."

The Neocatechumenal Way, which does not describe itself as a lay movement, but as an "itinerary of Christian formation," is parish-based, but has been accused of dividing parish communities.

"We do not oblige everyone in the parish to join," Arguello said, "but we do make it clear that everyone needs to grow in the faith and that it is difficult, if not impossible, to do that alone in our increasingly secularized world."

---CNS

Next: Lay movements move past earlier criticisms and into the mainstream.