I am honestly surprised how we Christians and especially Catholics have a way of bashing at each other. It was really sad reading the material on your website and I say this without any anger but out of love for our Christian faith.

I am a person who has been in the neocathcecumenal way for over 18 years and if there is anything that changed me from the 'I am God' syndrome I sufferred from and the belief that I do not need God in my life it was the prompting of God and the Word that I received through the NCW. I was always proud and rebellious, I was unfaithful to my wife more than once and at one time when I stopped going to the NCW for three years I ended up doing the same things and it was difficult to get up from the depths of material depravasion I was falling into. Again I was prompted by an inner feeling to go to the NCW again and through the loving unjudgemental support of the cathecists I started going back and God provided me the exact words I needed to hear to challenge my obsession with self-fulfillment and selfishness. So please do not say that the NCW is all rotten because it is not.... it is the way that God has constantly used to call me to Him, I who am a sinner I admit but at the same time try to be open to God's proddings.

I can honestly tell you that you do not get brainwashed in the NCW unless you want to become so. I always was my own person and when I wanted to stop, I just stopped and although my group used to phone to tell me when the next meeting is for the first few weeks after we left they NEVER EVER tried to persuade me to come. You might say, how come you had spent years in the NCW andyou ended up doing the same things for three years. Good question ....and a simple answer. I was still proud of myself and had not fully accepted God. And like it is said in the bible when one devil leaves you he will try to get three more and come back to you unless you are sound in your beliefs. My problem was that I fell back to my old ways not because the NCW does not work but because I was not doing what I should have done.....I was not praying the Lauds, I was not going for the weekly meetings and I was going back to my old ways....until the devil presented his biggest challenge for me.... and I fell back in a life of corruption that was going to destroy may family and my children. I even became involved in the New Age thinking and personal development stuff that was leading me back to the occult. Thank God a lot of people were praying for me and I finally ended up going back to the NCW....at first I was very rebellious even when I went back but slowly through the Word provided by the bible that kept coming up during our NCW meetings I realized that God wanted me to find peace by letting go of my superiority and pride and letting him take control of my life..... and when I say HIM I mean God not the NCW.. The NCW for me is just a means of hearing the word of God and letting it work in your life. I am now living a life where I am praying a lot everyday, even saying the rosary (I would never have imagined I would do such a thing before!!!) and I do it without effort and enjoy it.

It is also not correct to say that NCW brainwashes people..... those who like me have a personal experience of salvation to recount because they discovered God through the NCW and had their families saved will naturally be energized and enthusiastic about the NCW. I also tell my friends about it when I see them stuck in life but I do so simply out of love because I found that God spoke to me through it, not because I have some crush or special love for the NCW itself. If the pope said 'stop going to NCW' I would do so immediately with no problems, although I believe that even if some changes may be done as requested by the pope in the future, I do not think that the NCW will be stopped.... but if the Pope said we should not continue it I would stop going without any problems.

Also the things stated about the NCW on your website recounted by the person who used to go there have been given a twisted negativity which I find unfair. I lived through many of those passages mentioned and look at them as a time of liberation and a gift of God.

As regards the money given no one ever made me give 10% of the money...it is just suggested that you do. Actually I rarely do although it is something I wish to do and no one checks on anyone so again that is an exagerration. As regards the children I am happy to say that God has given me the grace that without much effort, 3 of my 4 children are now in the NCW and being 15 and 17 years olds you can imagine how happy I am in a world that is so desacralized and materialistic. You cannot imagine what a gift it is for me to know that my children will have at least a solid Christian foundation in a world that is hating religion with its post-modern and relativistic views that are intollerant of us Christians.

I am sorry for this long message but as a brother in Christ I felt I had to tell you that the NCW is I believe a fruit of the Holy Spirit and a lot of good is coming out of it. Of course we are weak persons like everyone and we are no better than any others, actually I feel that I am in the NCW because I am a worse sinner than most people around me and God has disciplined me by giving me a difficult way to follow so I absolutely do not feel any better than others because I am in the NCW....far from it.

I believe Christianity is moving towards a time when we will be rediculed for our beliefs, when Christians will be considered a threat to an 'open-minded' society that says it is liberal but which is intollerant to christians and ready to destroy them.

So I think we should not judge each other as Christian... on the contrary we should work together for the glory of God and our Lord. Let us put Jesus as our Lord and use humbly any means the Holy Spirit provides us to come to God. I believe the NCW is one of them because my personal story attests to it. Jesus said you will test the spirits and people by the fruit that they bear. I can attest that the NCW bore the fruit of saving my marriage twice, making me closer to my children, helping me to give my children a Christian background and helping me to become aware of my pride and egoistic behaviour... these I believe are good fruit of the Holy Spirit and so I feel at peace in the NCW.

I am sorry I wrote for so long but I do this out of love for our Lord Jesus Christ and out of love for the Catholic Church and brotherhood between Christians.

May God bless us all and let us love each other

Reggie Aquilina, Malta

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And this is our reply:

Well, "Catholics bashing each other" is actually one of the approximate names of the best demonstration that there still *exists* some catholicism. The only "peaceful" catholic world is the saltless one, where fathers are not against sons, and daughters not against mothers.

While everyone may agree you healed from the "I am God" syndrome while doing the NCW, you cannot deny that it happened while tampering with faith and liturgy. In a meeting in Porto San Giorgio in 1999, Kiko Argüello, founder of the NCW, explicitly admitted the presence of "wrong or somewhat unorthodox" expressions in his teaching, but they never changed - and no one, not even Bishops and Cardinals, is able to verify if the "secret" approved teachings are actually used by the so-called "catechists". And NCW Masses are -at best- full of liturgical abuses (examples: ending "dance", neverending "resonances", Communion "while seating", nine-branched "menorah" on the hyper-flowerized "table" used to avoid Altars...), abuses explicitly and repeatedly condemned by the Holy Father and even by the NCW Statute itself.

On September 30, 2011 (Madrid, salòn La Pizarra), Kiko publicly recalled a recent meeting with card. Cañizares Llovera. Kiko told to card. Cañizares: "look: we communicate while seating". January 20, 2012: Benedict XVI tells again to NCW members to "faithfully follow the Liturgical Books".

Who is wrong? Benedict XVI or Kiko?

Who is actually "bashing"?

Any vaguely religious community could help anyone to fight against the "I am God" syndrome: even the Watchtower Society could. But being Catholic is more than any Devout Behaviour.

If I was a devil, I would gladly welcome any spiritual "Way" censoring at least one or two aspects of the Catholicism. Imagine a faithful and charitable life, with a bad liturgy. Or an excellent liturgy with zero charity. Or a wonderful liturgy and charity with bad teachings. Or an intensely spiritual way, with liturgical abuses and a number of wrong teachings. Or, simply, some poisoned honey in your tea.

Your description of your past life and sins does not even remotely change the fact that to normal people like you, an "poisoned honey" is worse than "a self-declared poison".

Your description of your current religious joys and activities does not take into account NCW disobedience to the Holy Father, to Liturgical books (mandatory for *every* Catholic), even to its own Statute (article 13, note 49).

While you say that until the Pope says "stop going to NCW" you will go, those liturgical abuses and those wrong teachings (and all the direct consequences: "arcane" teachings, weird fund collection, undeniable psychological pressure on most brothers...) are still there. Benedict XVI and John Paul II told many times "stop liturgical abuses" and NCW people did not. Kiko still brags about "Communion while seating". How can we believe you when you talk about waiting a Pope saying "stop going to NCW"?

"Fruit of the Holy Spirit" surely describes the will to pray, the will to accept children as gifts from God, and so on. But it cannot describe liturgical abuses, "kikolatry", disobedience to the Holy Father and hypocrisy. Yes, hypocrisy: on a Sunday morning NCW people exhibited a giant "Tu es Petrus" banner. Yes, "Tu es Petrus", a few hours apart from liturgical abuses.