Let’s look closely at Carmen Hernández’s preaching on
Penance. (The quotes are from the Orientations for the
Catechist Teams published in Madrid in 1972.)
“What I will say it is not a speech for the people, but a
sketch that may serve as an inspiration to face the
innumerable problems that may arise when dealing with the
people. It will prevent complications, since the questionary
on Penance may cause many discussions with the people.”
Carmen’s starting sentence takes for granted that her public
will feel flattered for the confidence shown: Let’s feel at
home, initiated to the secrets of Neocathecumenate.
Listeners are already separated and distinguished from the
vile populace, who doesn’t have the right to know everything.
The same sentence has also a didactic goal: It suggests to
the future “teachers”—the catechists—how to work.
“We don’t say anything about all this things to the
people: We simply rethink the communitarian value of sin,
its social nature, the power of the Church, etc.”
Why this secret? Because she’s aware of the fact that the
doctrine she teaches is contrary to everything the Catholic
Church ever taught and Catholics generally know. Secret in
Neocatechumenal preaching is due to the awareness of its
initiators to preach a doctrine that is not Catholic.
“There was quite only a mortal sin for the primitive
Church: apostasy, that is, the rejection of the Way or the
escape from it, because people, when they are walking
through the Way, are weak and fall, but they won’t abandon
the Way. [...] That’s why the primitive Church didn’t demand
self-examination at the end of the day—it was introduced by
the Jesuits only later—but in the morning, when the believer
awakes, because to convert is to stand before God when you
start walking.”
(Every reflection on the behavior of believers and their
responsibleness is avoided: That means that no accent is
stressed on responsibility.)
Note that the Christians of the primitive Churched risked to
die in the arena if they didn’t surrendered to apostasy.
Therefore, it is natural that this was their great trial,
their great temptation: That to become apostates. This was
their greatest risk, greater than any other sin: Whence the
importance of the problem. But this doesn’t mean that the
Christians in the catacombs consideration—for example—adultery
a light sin.
Carmen asserts that the primitive Church had a conception of
the sin completely different from the modern one, therefore
the conception of the Sacrament of Penance was different,
too...
“We must explain that, after Constantine, the Church
turned into the Church of the mass, losing the sense of
community. There’s not a community walking in a process of
constant conversion under the impulse of the Holy Spirit
anymore. People who individually commit a sin, individually
are absolved and then receive Communion. But we don’t see
the conversion of a whole community that recognizes itself
sinner.”
Then, she draws an opposition between two Churches: The
sacramental (before Constantine) and the juridical one
(after Constantine), that, institutionalizing itself,
becomes juridic and starts considering sin a violation of
low that requires a legal punishment.
Do you know anything more false than that? Even if a certain
juridical attitude pervaded the past century, we’re far away
from this conception of sin that—as the Church always taught
us—means primarily to oppose to God, to walk away from His
project over us and cause mainly our ruin, besides the
social implications it has. On the contrary, according to
Carmen sin always has only a communitarian value.
“That’s why the primitive Church didn’t demand
self-examination at the end of the day—it was introduced by
the Jesuits only later—but in the morning, when the believer
awakes, because to convert is to stand before God when you
start walking.”
It’s blatantly evident that, eliminating self-examination at
the end of the day you eliminate the sense of responsibility
and the examination of what you have concretely done—for
good or for bad—, standing before the Lord and accepting
your own reality.
At the beginning of the day you can make good propositions
while the examination has to do with your actual situation,
not to leave it as it is, but to try to change it with the
help of the Sanctifying Grace, that has no right of
citizenship in the NCW.
“People ask if it is possible to offend only God. We pose
this question because we have a vertical, individualistic
conception of sin: We are those who offend, particularly God,
as if sin were an offense to God, or we could steal God’s
Glory. Let’s suppose that we can harm God. The first thing
we must consider is that it’s not possible to harm God: He
cannot be offended stealing His Glory to Him: That would
mean that He is vulnerable, so that He wouldn’t be really
God.”
As an unqualified theologist, Carmen doesn’t even
distinguish God’s intrinsic Glory—that is invulnerable,
infinite and immutable—from God’s extrinsic Glory—that can
be greater or lesser, and can be diminished by human sins.
That’s why Saint Ignatius chose for the Society of Jesus the
motto “Ad maiorem gloriam Dei”, stating that it must fight
for the “Greater glory of God”. After all, we can notice how
the sin somehow bans from the realities of individual and
collective history the “Presence” of the Lord; it is
sufficient to observe the void and the many human and social
tragedies in a world where the sense of sin is lost. Sadly,
the sense of sin as an individual responsibility was lost
because many people failed to answer God’s constant call to
conversion and to the project He has for anybody of us. This
doesn’t exclude a communitarian and social context nor our
responsibility towards our neighbor, provided that all is
based on the ME-and-YOU relationship that all creatures have
with their Lord; this relationship may enrich itself in a
communitarian context (the word ek-klesía designates the
Church of those who gather in community in the Lord) so that
it may act then in the interpersonal relations and in the
individual and collective choices, but—first of all—it is a
full, profound, individual relationship, not a symbiotic
union with the group. The Lord created and wants to
establish a relationship with individuals, not with puppets.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus is a living heart who rejoices for
the good deeds we do and is saddened by the sins. In this
sense, sin is an offense, certainly it is! Besides offending
the Supreme Good, it shatters the communion between man and
God, so—without turns of phrase—it also offends human
dignity since man is the temple of the living God. It’s a
double offense, then. Of course, sin also has a social
repercussion, but this is another level that doesn’t
replaces but adds itself to the individual one.
The very same Jesus, in the Gospel, says: “There will be
more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting than over
ninety-nine upright people who have no need of repentance.”
Therefore, it there will be rejoicing, there will also be
sadness if we don’t walk on the right path. We should
consider then the fact that every sin is a nail knocked into
the Cross of Jesus, where the Saviour didn’t rejoice, but
cried in agony, and suffered because of so much indifference.
How couldn’t He suffer still because of the sins we still
commit?
Let’s remember Saint Francis’ cry through the forest of La
Verna: “Love isn’t loved.” He shouted at the top of his
voice, and probably he suffered, too, after having
experienced that love in his life.
Evolution of the forms of the Sacrament
“Through the centuries, the celebration of the Sacrament of
Penance has developed in different forms, but it has always
kept the same basic structure: it necessarily entails not
only the action of the minister – only a Bishop or priest,
who judges and absolves, tends and heals in the name of
Christ – but also the actions of the penitent: contrition,
confession and satisfaction.” [John Paul II’s Motu Proprio
Misericordia Dei]
Note that the Pope affirms that an evolution of in the
expressive forms of the celebration of the Sacrament has
developed, but the Church “has always kept the same basic
structure” of the Sacrament, that includes:
- The action of a minister who judges and absolves.
- The actions of the penitent, that include contrition,
confession and satisfaction.
According to the Pope, the Church preserved this
structure because nothing must change in it; instead, Carmen
says that it is the conception that people has about the
sacrament what has evolved, and that is quite different from
what the Pope says.
It is exactly this evolutionary conception of faith, dogmas
and sacraments that makes of Neocatechumenate a modernist
heretical movement.
About Penance, it is known that Neocatechumenals essentially
stress the communitarian, public confession of sins, rather
than the confession given to a priest. Furthermore, in the
communitarian (not sacramental) confession, that is done
during the ‘Scrutinies’, it is the catechist, not the
presbyter, who questions and gives spiritual guidance to the
members of the Way. We saw that Carmen affirms that “sin has
only a social dimension; therefore, repentance will also
have to do with society.” According to her, it is not God
who is offended, but the Community, therefore it is the
Community that will forgive and absolve. This would not
important, though, since “we have already been forgiven by
Jesus.” According to the founders of the NCW, the real
dimension of sin is the social one, never the individual
one; furthermore, according to Kiko, man would be forced to
sin: “his nature could never permit him to do the good.
Every effort to emend himself would therefore be vain.” Not
to speak about the radically pessimistic conception of the
founders of the NCW about the ability of man to avoid evil
and freely choose his own life; according to Kiko and
Carmen, conversion consists just in the (public)
acknowledgement of the faults committed and in the total
trust in the salvific power of the Resurrected Christ,
rather than in the repentance of having offended God and the
proposition to emend ourselves, which actually is the
fufillment of the Redemption operated by Christ.” As a
consequence, it would be senseless to insist on Penance
because sanctity is allegedly impossible. The influence of
the Lutheran ‘fiducial faith’ is evident: The ‘works of
Faith’ are not those who arise from the hearth redeemed by
the Lord, to which the life of faith inside the Church
gradually gives the same Grace it receives by the Sacraments,
but those of people who “crede fortiter”—that is, who
believes more intensely. In the case of the NCW, salvation
is guaranteed by the affiliation to the Way, whose members
remain inexorably sinners, without feeling nor living the
responsibility of the ‘answer’ and the effort of the ‘transformation’,
that is an effect of Redemption.
This is the way how Carmen—more evidently still—destroys the
Sacrament of Penance:
“With the Council of Trent and by the XVI to the XX
century, all stands still. Confessionals appear, but this
little houses are very recent. The need for confessionals
arises when the form of private, medicinal and devotional
confession introduced by the monks is generalized. ... It is
Saint Charles Borromeus who places confessionals everywhere,
specifying even the details of the grille. ... Now you will
understand that many of the things Luther said were well
founded.”
“But in Trent the essence, the efficacy is stressed, and the
sacramental value of the sign is lost. As things stands,
it’s all the same to receive communion with the bread or
with the host that doesn’t seams bread anymore but a leaf of
paper; it’s all the same that just one instead of everybody
drinks the wine, since essentially the sacrament is
performed.”
“Therefore, the efficacy of the sacrament of Penance to
forgive sins ant the absolution are absolutized. The
confession acquires a magical meaning so that the absolution
alone is sufficient to forgive sins. The absolution forgives
your sins and you don’t worry anymore.”
“That’s how we lived confession: Stressing the absolute
efficacy of the sacrament we lose sight of the sacramental
value that makes us apt to receive forgiveness, which
remains in the background while the foreground is occupied
by the simple confession of sins and by the absolution.
Confession turns into something magical or private: This is
still true today. We inherited a legalist conception of sin
that doesn’t care about our inner attitude: It only cares
about the external and detailed confession of every kind of
sins. It’s an individualistic, completely ‘private’ vision
of sin. The Church disappears since it is one man who
forgives your sins. Now you can understand why this practice
is crumbling. That is why we call it ‘confession’. Nobody
mentions the penitential or the sacramental process. The
practice of confession is crumbling because today humankind
is walking towards social and communitarian—rather than
legalistic and individualistic—visions of sin. That’s why
people feels free to receive communion without confession.”
“Many would prefer general absolutions to personal
confession because the latter is obnoxious. … You have not
to believe that this would be something new, because Pious
XII already accepted to give general absolutions, during the
war, to all the soldiers. The greatest liturgists say it’s
good that this custom didn’t spread because it would have
completely destroyed Penance, turning it in something
magical. The value of the rite lays not in absolution—since
we are already forgiven in Jesus Christ—but in making the
believer able to receive the forgiveness, which is what the
NCW wants and is the penitential process of the Primitive
Church.”
“You feel forgiven in the deepness of your heart when you
feel in communion with your brothers. That’s why the hug of
peace is important … What we do is to recover step by step
these values of the sacrament of Penance, although we still
do the private confession that is still in use.”
“You‘re a slave of Evil: You’re a slave of the Devil and
obey to his concupiscence and his orders.”
“This is the reality of man: He wants to do good, but he
can’t. Marxism would say that he can’t because he’s
alienated by the structures … Psychology … because of his
complexes. That doesn’t convince me. Christianity says
another thing: God revealed the reality of man in this way:
MAN CANNOT DO GOOD BECAUSE HE SEPARATED HIMSELF FROM GOD,
BECAUSE HE SINNED AND REMAINED RADICALLY IMPOTENT AND
INCAPABLE, AT THE MERCY OF THE DEMONS. HE TURNED INTO A
SLAVE OF THE DEVIL. THE DEVIL IS HIS LORD. (That’s why
demanding suggestions and sermons are useless. Man cannot do
good.)”
“It’s totally useless to tell the people that they must
love. Nobody can love anybody … Who can lose his life for
his enemy? … It’s absurd. And who’s responsible for this?
Nobody. That’s why words are useless. It’s useless to say:
‘Sacrifice yourselves.’ If somebody tries to do it, he turns
into a pharisee, because he will do it for his personal
satisfaction.” [Sometimes that could be true, but these
are degenerations and the Church teaches how to avoid them.
Though, Carmen absolutize them in order to justify her
devious teachings.]
“One observes himself and realize to be a lazy person who
considers a burden even to attend Mass on Sunday and who
feel sad noticing he’s unable to change. At least he will
try to do some good deed in order to deserve Paradise. He
cannot do more because he’s deeply corrupted. He’s a carnal
creature, he cannot avoid to steal, quarrel, be jealous,
envy, etc. He cannot do otherwise and he’s not guilty of it.”
“The Spirit that Jesus will send is not a Spirit of good
deeds and loyalty to the dead Christ.” [She doesn’t
recognize that the good deeds are the “works of faith” that
spring from a Redeemed heart, as is explained below.]
“Those who sin live in death. Not because they’re evil,
because they wanna do evil. Natural religiousness believes
that life is a test, that you may sin or not. That’s false:
Man sins because he can’t do otherwise, because he’s a slave
of sin.”
These statements destroy the true sense of sin in those who
accept them. It’s incredible to think that such individuals
lurk into the Church and that the Hierarchy doesn’t stop
them.
Neocatechumenals use to say—in order to claim their
trustworthiness and to defend themselves from the accuses of
heresy—that “Kiko didn’t invent anything, he just took those
elements of the millenary history of the Church that he
considered to be the best, as every religious order does,
after all.”
That’s false: Apart from the fact that he doesn’t belong to
a religious order, Kiko didn’t take what the millenary
history of the Church offered to him: Indeed, he rewrote it,
harshly criticizing it. (This can be easily understood by
reading the “Orientations”, that are often quoted, or the
catechesis.)
Neocatechumenals say that the sacrament of Penance was
instituted only in the XIII century, which is truth, but
doesn’t justify destructive criticisms, because it is rooted
in the institution of the Church, in the faculty of “tying
and untying” established by the Lord, in the “diakonia of
Reconciliation” that Saint Paul mentions in 2 Cor 5:17-21);
furthermore, they state that the sacrament of Penance is
only a reconciliation with the Church, so that no absolution
would be needed: It would be sufficient for the believers to
feel in peace and in communion with their brothers; the
sacramental confession would be then doomed, since it is the
community that absolves: This is the true meaning of the
“sign of peace” and the “foot washing” they celebrate on
Holy Thursday, without a priest! Indeed, the Sacrament
operates the reconciliation with God (the reconciliation
with the others and the events it’s the consequence); that
is made possible by the priests who acts in persona Christi.
These are the teachings of the Church.
Actually, Kiko narrates the history of Penance since a
particular moment then firmly repudiates private confession,
even mocking it and defining the confessionals with irony
“wooden logs”. “Don’t laugh because this happened also to
me, confessing every poppycock.” (He refers to venial
sins.) “They reached the point where they confessed their
sins just for their personal sanctification, which is still
done today.” In the catechesis there’s a point in which
Kiko makes simple people take the bait by saying: “…
people think that even the confessional was invented by
Jesus Christ.”
Confession as it is conceived is not good. Kiko says again:
“When you confess your sins you come back home untroubled.
Private confession marked us in this way. However, the
Catechism of the Catholic Church lists the spiritual effects
of confession saying that it confers peace, quietness of
conscience and spiritual consolation. If the sinner didn’t
offend God, contrition, personal pain, doesn’t have any
sense at all.” “It‘s so curious the idea—that is still alive—that
you have to confess before the Communion. That’s how we have
lived Penance: for the efficacy of the sacrament!”
“Actually, the Church is not really present: It’s just a man
who forgives your sins.”
Then, Kiko denies not only the purpose of the sacrament of
Penance, but also the role of the ordained minister, that is
conferred to him by the person of Christ. In the NCW past,
present and future sins are forgiven from the beginning.
However, this concept is not catholic.
Essentially, Kiko refuses private confession, devotional
confession, spiritual direction and Penance as an medium of
sanctification: According to him, these would be all
nonsenses that have to be abandoned. It’s sufficient to
receive this gratuitous forgiveness: “Don’t say anything
about this to the people!”, it’s what he says and repeats
when he talks about the selling of assets, that he puts as a
condition to continue following the Way to the higher levels,
in order to access Salvation. Kiko is aware to follow a
wrong path, so he recommends not to mention to anybody these
facts, “because you would arise a lot of troubles.”
One of the most frequent ways in which the NCW celebrates
the ‘confession’ of sins and weaknesses is coram populo: It
is a way to mark every step to a higher level and it’s
unquestionably a mimicking of the true sacrament of Penance.
Starting from what we pointed out, we can undoubtedly
observe that even a cheap psychologist respects the “times”
of a patient to let him open his heart and his soul (let’s
call it subconscious or that problematic, conscious part of
mind). Everybody nurtures a great discretion when he must
‘bare’ himself: It is difficult to do it even when we are
willing to put ourselves seriously heart by heart with the
Lord.
Those execrable choral pleading of guilty seem a form of
autoflagellation. Sometimes we may suspect that those who
are more weak by a psychological point of you could even
exaggerate their faults.
How can we reasonably think that this is not insane?
I still remember the hammering recommendations of the
catechists before the individual confessions: “Be clear and
synthetic, don’t waste time with chitter-chatter, confess
your sins defining them exactly and don’t be uselessly wordy!”
I still remember how do I felt void when I tried to approach
the presbyter—after this reprimand—while the assembly sang
out to cover my words, I still remember how paranoid was my
dialog with the priest, that couldn’t be considered a real
reconciliation with God and the brothers.
We couldn’t but recognize that what the catechists said was
contrary to the teachings of the Church, first of all
because confession is not a list of sins. To confess your
sins, you have to scrutinize yourself first and be able to
recognize what lies behind the recurrent error you commit.
(I call it an ‘error’ rather than a sin in order to soften
that somber atmosphere of guiltiness, but I don’t want to
belittle responsibility.) Then, we should also look to the
innermost depths of our soul with the eyes of God’s mercy:
The Lord said “I didn’t came to condemn, but to set you free!”
Obviously, our good will, the help of the Lord, prayer and
Eucharist are also necessary. However, every confession is a
further step towards the knowledge of our self in the light
of the Word and the glance of the Lord.
Then, when we talk more extensively, we’re not “wordy”: We
just pull out of our hearts the obstacles, the problems, the
anguishes in a rational and conscious way. That’s exactly
what helps us growing our faith and becoming better persons.
Confession is not a self-accusation (do we remember who the
Accuser is?), but the serene and conscious—though it is full
of contrition for out sins—discernment of our inner reality
that transforms our behavior and helps us finding the way to
overcome our difficulties and faults, together with our good
will, the suggestions we receive from the priest and the
indispensable help of Grace.
Maybe we often forget—and the NCW won’t teach it to us—that
confession is not just confessio vitae—that is, the
identification of our difficulties and faults but also of
the progresses we make with the help of Grace and of our
life of faith, essentially the assessment of our toil and of
the joy we experience being men and women who constantly
follow a path—but it is also confessio laudi—the recognition
of the marvels that God operates in our lives and the praise
to Him—and confessio fidei—that is, the proclamation of our
faith, our trust, our answer to the Lord.
The Church has never urged, promoted or permitted in any
form of celebration the public confession or witness. (We
don’t have any example of it even in the Church of the
origins or—as somebody improperly call it—in the Primitive
Church.)
When the Samaritan came back to her people after Jesus
gratuitously healed her by Sicar’s well, she cries her
experience of faith; however, she obtained her healing
before, in a single instant, in her individual, ‘secret’
experience with Him.
To belittle, twist, dilute, falsity (that is, to use
collaterally or even in substitution of the sacramental
confession a mystagogy both of confession as a public
witness of faith and as a group pedagogy for the assembly)
is not ‘catholic’.
In any case, we’re dealing with different realities.
Neocatechumenal baptism is given by the community at the end
of the Way, neocatechumenal eucharist is received by the
community, the pardon of sins is given by the
neocatechumenal community.
”¡NO HAY VIDA CRISTIANA SIN COMUNIDAD!”
Kiko may not eliminate the sacraments of the Roman Catholic
Apostolic Church yet, even if he deems them “magical”, not
to risk to be excluded from the Church itself. He may not
eliminate them… by the moment. He says that the very same
concept of Sacrament that the “Sunday morning Catholics”
have is wrong: It is “magical”, and it will disappear. He
thinks it’s just a matter of time: Sooner or later
Sacraments and Dogmas will fall and yield to a new church.
Neocatechumenals consider individual confession merely as a
formal procedure that the Pope forces them to accomplish,
while the true forgiveness is obtained with the confession
in front of the community.
Praxis defeats theory.
The psyche prevails on the spirit.
Neocatechumenals ‘feel’ they’re baptized, ‘feel’ forgiven,
‘feel’ in communion only through the community;
communitarian events give them ‘feelings’ that need a
perennial renovation, the exaltation and the ‘joy’ of the
elected ones. It’s a religious ‘sentiment’ rather than a
deep disposition of hearth, that is the ‘place’ of the
ultimate decisions: Reason and will are divested of
authority, used only when it is necessary to submit to the
guidelines of the catechists and the rules of the NCW. It’s
a very subtle relativism that cut itself out of the roots of
Tradition.
