Bishops want Neocatechumenal Way to leave Japan for 5 years

December 17, 2010

The Japanese bishops have asked the Neocatechumenal Way to leave Japan for five years, Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki said on December 15. A group of Japanese prelates met with Pope Benedict and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone on December 13 to discuss their concerns about the lay movement.

Tensions between the Japanese hierarchy and the lay movement culminated in the 2008 closing of a seminary operated by the Neocatechumenal Way in Takamatsu. The seminary, which had helped make Japan a vocation-rich nation, reopened in Rome with a retired Japanese bishop as rector.

Japanese bishops have complained that the group’s activities are secretive and that its activities, including its manner of celebrating the sacred liturgy, harm the unity among the faithful. “They say they want to be obedient to the bishop in whose diocese we work, but they don’t do it, not completely, anyway, not sufficiently or in the proper way,” said Archbishop Takami, who has banned the movement from his diocese.

In 2005, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments ordered the movement to cease certain liturgical abuses. Three years later, Pope Benedict approved a new set of statutes for the movement.

 

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Further information:

• Japan's bishops want Neocatechumenal Way to leave for five years (CNA)
• Japanese bishops tell Pope their concerns about Neocatechumenal Way (CWN, 12/15)
• Cardinal Francis Arinze: Letter to Neocatechumenal Way (2005)
• The Old Form of the Neocatechumenal Mass Is Illicit (L’Espresso)