No Ordinary Joy
Celine, a student of journalism at the University of Paris, declines an invitation to have dinner and drinks with some friends. As she explains with a somewhat mischievous smile, tonight she has a "rendezvous with Jesus." Every Wednesday after her classes, she goes to a little church near the Seine to meet with other members of a charismatic prayer group. "I've been going for three years now, to give thanks to God for the life He has given me and for His presence, which is with me every day," she says.
As night falls on the city, those who pass by Celine's church seem quite surprised to hear the buoyant melodies, the beat of tom-toms, and clapping, as music rises from their neighborhood church. About 50 young people sing psalms, share spontaneous prayers, or read from random Scripture passages. Even their physical posture is a bit unusual — palms raised toward the sky, arms constantly waving. One might think a band of evangelical Christians had somehow taken over the parish hall. Or is it just a little party of overzealous eccentrics?
In fact, it's neither. Small groups like this are part of the charismatic renewal that is today one of the strongest forces for the Catholic Church in France — and one of the primary engines of the new evangelization. For the 2000 World Youth Day celebration, no fewer than 7,000 people traveled to Rome with the Emmanuel Community, the oldest of the groups in the charismatic movement. In May 1998, the pope himself described France's charismatic renewal as a "providential response" to the special challenges of contemporary society. How did so young and innovative a movement become such an important player in the life of the Church in France? To answer that question, one must consider the troubled times in which the movement was born.
The Road To Renewal
It can be difficult for young Catholics in France to imagine the commotion occasioned by Vatican II. From time to time, one still hears older Catholics complain, "They've changed my Mass!" Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, the archbishop of Paris, tells the story of arriving at a new parish on the very day when the council's liturgical reforms were to be implemented. Although he offered a careful explanation of the changes, he still had to face an onslaught of furious parishioners in the sacristy after Mass. Quite a few of them really believed that the new cure — "surely an eccentric" — had invented the new vernacular Mass for fun.
Even more than the liturgical reform, it was the overall message of Vatican II — along with the various interpretations of it — that inspired heated debate within the universal Church. The council's social teachings in particular became the subject of bitter controversies. The "worker priest" experiment, which was suspended by Rome in 1954 and then relaunched at the close of Vatican II, was among the most divisive issues to confront the French Church in the years just before and after the council. Working full-time jobs as factory laborers, worker priests immersed themselves in the life of the underclass, even taking part in union activity. Some argued that the spiritual lives and sacramental function of worker priests suffered because of their political engagements.
Such charges set off a series of explosive reactions within the French Church. Leftist clergymen were accused of elevating Marx's Das Kapital to a place alongside the works of the Church fathers. Temoignage Chretien (Christian Witness), a magazine founded by Jesuits, had played an important role in the Resistance movement during the German occupation of France in World War II. In the course of a few decades, however, it had transformed itself into an organ of militant left-wing politics. Gaudium et Spes — the council's pastoral declaration on the Church in the modern world — was read by progressive theologians like Rev. Joseph Comblin as the foundation of a "theology of revolution" (the tide of Father Comblin's most famous work). All of these were signs of a Church looking for its place in the world.
As the universal Church questioned itself about its engagement with modern society, the issue of revealed truth was hotly debated: What was the status of this truth? And what was its relationship to the Good? Such questions naturally arose when certain theologians rushed to interpret Dignitatis Humanis (Vatican II's declaration on religious liberty) as an open door for every kind of relativism. "God is dead in Jesus Christ!" declared the French theologian Rev. Jean Cardonnal, suggesting that the "conservative concept of God" was from now on a thing of the past. Freed from the "burden" of revelation, Catholicism could now flourish as a political agenda. The temptation of relativism went hand-in-hand with a militant political program.
Partly as a result of this ideological contamination, the ranks of the Church thinned out. Seminaries and religious orders saw their numbers fall quickly. Some left the religious life in the name of modernist ideas, believing that their vows had lost their meaning in a world that had been demythologized; others deserted a Church they believed had gone mad during Vatican II — among them, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, who accused the council of just about every conceivable error and progressively adopted an attitude of disobedience to Rome.
This slow, silent attrition continues today. French law prohibits the government from collecting information about the religious affiliations and practices of its citizens, but most estimates put weekly Mass attendance at well under 10 percent. According to one poll, christenings have fallen from 95 percent to 58 percent in the last 15 years; in the same period, the number of people married in the Church went from 85 percent to 50 percent. Today, only 46 percent of the population say they believe in God. Thirty years ago, it was 81 percent.
During this period of confusion and apparent decline, it seemed to many that only a return to a spirituality like that of the early Church would be able to bear new fruit. This is one way to interpret the birth of a small charismatic prayer group one evening in May 1972. The first Catholic group of its kind, it originally consisted of four young people brought together by a 58-year-old Catholic film critic in Paris. Ironically, the first meetings took place in a small apartment just a few yards from the cafe where Sartre's existentialism was born. The film critic, Pierre Goursat, had just come back from a trip to the United States where he had seen the beginning of a charismatic movement in the American Church. With the encouragement of his spiritual father, Goursat organized a meditation on the charisms as they are evoked in the Acts of the Apostles, followed by a period of spontaneous prayer. The project was no more defined than that, Goursat's very aim being to leave the group free to the invitations of the Holy Spirit. Little by little, the gifts of the Spirit began to appear. Some people sang in tongues, which others interpreted; all were astonished and overwhelmed by what they had seen and felt.
One year later, the group had grown from five to 500 members. According to Martine, one of the five original members, they felt as if they were "reliving the Pentecost."
Where The Spirit Is
Surprised by this unhoped-for growth, the original group spawned several smaller groups in Paris before moving into other cities in France. They called themselves the Emmanuel Community. With this name, Goursat wanted to indicate that the prayer groups were not meant to be social clubs turned in on themselves; they were called to become gifts of God to the world, to become new "Emmanuels" (God with us). In 1976, the Church gave the community official status. During the first few years of its existence, its members were married or single laypeople living in the world. Then religious vocations began to manifest themselves: First, there were just brothers and sisters of Emmanuel, but later, the community — which had its first headquarters on a barge in the Seine — decided, with the agreement of the bishops, to form its own priests.
If many young people see their faith come alive in the Emmanuel prayer groups, the community is also a source of renewal for older Christians. Andre, who recently became a grandfather, describes it as a "new youth." "I was a Sunday Christian," he says. "For me the faith was the Mass, a few holy days, and not getting into trouble during the rest of the week. In the prayer groups, I came to understand that a God who had given me His life — well, I could at least give Him mine. Now, even when I'm playing with my granddaughter, in a way it's for Jesus."
Emmanuel is not the only new community to have grown out of the charismatic renewal in France. The same period saw the birth of the Community of the Beatitudes. Brother Ephraim, the founder of the community, had struggled through all the contradictions and questions of his generation: Raised in a Protestant family, he had studied to become an artist before joining the community of Lanza Del Vasto, a Utopian group that practices a kind of syncretic spirituality loosely tied to Eastern mysticism. After his conversion to Catholicism, Brother Ephraim started the Beatitudes community, which evolved through a series of forms between 1973 and 1981. Members live away from cities and towns in community houses that give material and spiritual support to those in need. Following a routine deeply rooted in prayer — especially eucharistic adoration — the lay and religious members of these houses are united by the same desire to live in the spirit of the beatitudes. The community now has houses in 25 dioceses in France and in 28 other dioceses around the world.
One sign of the community's charismatic identity is its insistence on spiritual healing — it organizes several retreats on this theme every year. This dimension of its charism is at the heart of the experience of Therese, a divorcee in her 50s. "I learned to accept that in times of trial, God is not primarily Someone who tests and judges me, but Someone who supports me, who gives me life — even when I'm close to collapsing," says Therese, her gracious expression lighting up a face marked by suffering. "To praise — that means to say thank you to God for having made me just as I am, to thank Him for being my Creator."
Significantly, both Brother Ephraim and Goursat founded their communities as laymen. Brother Ephraim is married. Goursat, who several times refused to be ordained as a priest, envisaged the lay life as a veritable vocation. Here one sees another of the features that characterize these communities, a feature that corresponds to one of the key intuitions of Vatican II: Both the Emmanuel and Beatitudes communities testify to the calling of all Christians — lay or religious — to holiness. To accept this calling, one must be willing to surrender himself to God in even the most ordinary circumstances. It is an idea that comes up again and again as Celine describes her spiritual journey: "For me, the charismatic renewal is above all — as the name itself suggests — a renewal. I understood that my faith was condemned to fade away if it was nothing but the preservation of a tradition. I had received the faith as a kind of inheritance from my family — and that is by itself a tremendous grace — but this community allowed me to make that faith my own, to make it the heart of all my personal commitments. The community helped me to live this commitment in my family, in my studies, in the little choices, and in the big ones."
If the charismatic renewal is characterized by a spirituality of praise based on personal experience — as well as by a renewal in forms of liturgy and community — it's also the movement within the French Church that insists most urgently on the importance of evangelization. For these communities, evangelization is a matter of letting the Word shine forth, not shutting it up in small clubs of polite company. This is what motivates members of Emmanuel to organize regular missions of evangelization. They gather in front of churches to sing and share their faith with passers-by, inviting them inside to adore God in the Eucharist or to speak with a priest. Marie, who works for a job-placement agency, participates regularly in these missions. "To evangelize, to witness — whether it be in the community or in my professional life — is to say that God is my joy," she says. "Joy can't be selfishly preserved; it is diffusive of itself. It's like being in love and wanting to tell everyone all the time about the person you love." As Cedric, another regular participant in these missions, says, "To talk about one's faith does sometimes mean transmitting it. But it always means reinforcing it in oneself. When I talk about God to people around me, I remember that it's for myself, too. Just to speak about one's faith is already an act of faith."
By insisting so much on the importance of evangelization, the new communities are responding in their own way to the questions raised by the postconciliar crisis. Aware that there's something scandalous in considering oneself the "possessor" of the Truth, in drawing this possession into oneself with a feeling of superiority, some had turned to relativism or Marxist activism; they denied the very existence of Truth and opted for a purely political agenda. Charismatics responded to the same question by proposing a vision of the Truth as something that discloses itself only by being shared — that is, by an effort of evangelization.
Catholic Communities
Historically, the charismatic movement had its source in Protestantism — more precisely, in the pietism of 17th-century Germany. Its more recent manifestations can be traced back to the Pentecostal movement born in Kansas at the beginning of the 20th century. The communal prayers of this group were accompanied by the charismatic gifts described in the Acts of the Apostles, gifts like healing and prophecy. It wasn't until 1967 that the movement found its way into the Catholic Church during a retreat organized by Duquesne University. Hence the origins of the charismatic movement might seem to pose a serious problem to Catholics: Is the renewal itself not intrinsically tied to its non-Catholic source? With its insistence on personal experience and evangelization, doesn't the Catholic charismatic renewal represent an infiltration of a Protestant attitude within the Church, a kind of Pentacostalism tricked out in Catholic garb? In any event, isn't it bound to remain a bit outside the Catholic mainstream?
The story of Brother Dominique seems to contradict this view. Dressed in the white habit of an Olivetan Benedictine novice, Brother Dominique is a child of the charismatic renewal. It was in one of the newer communities, Le Chemin Neuf (the New Path), that his contemplative vocation was born. "Of course, I might have discovered it some other way, but it was during the charismatic prayer groups that the Lord revealed to me what prayer is," he says. "More than a duty, more than a set of requests, prayer is a song of love. I also saw that God is not far away but very close, intimate."
For Brother Dominique, the journey from the charismatic community to the Order of St. Benedict was a smooth one. "There are, of course, differences of style, of form, as one passes from upbeat modern melodies to the sublime sobriety of Gregorian chant, but there is something ludicrous about opposing the one to the other," he says. "Generally speaking, I'm a little suspicious of these overly subtle distinctions that are set up between these different spiritualities: Catholic spirituality is really one thing, even if it takes on several forms. The charismatic renewal, the Benedictines, it's all the same holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. It would be better not to draw boundaries where they don't exist."
Maelle, a 22-year-old university student, tells a similar story. She says that her experience with Verbe de Vie (Word of Life), another charismatic community, both deepened her Christian faith and broadened her life as a Catholic. Maelle lived with her family in a Verbe de Vie house from the time she was eight till she left home to pursue her studies at the age of 18. "I'm sure that the fact of having Christian parents living in a Verbe de Vie community nourished my faith and gave me a taste for participation in the life of a regular parish. One of the advantages of Verbe de Vie is the beauty of its liturgies, so I am particularly drawn to chant and to sacred music at my parish." As its name suggests, Verbe de Vie has a special commitment to the proclamation of God's Word. It takes its cue from 1 John 1:1-3: "What we've heard, seen, contemplated, touched of the Word of Life, we announce to you." Verbe de Vie invites laypeople to spend a year studying Scripture and theology at one of its community houses; it also hosts shorter retreats and workshops throughout the year.
In the last several years, the charismatic renewal has been better integrated within the structure of the Church. Beatitudes, for example, has been given an important apostolic responsibility as caretaker of the sanctuary dedicated to St. Therese in Lisieux. Sister Sylvie Buisset, one member of the team charged with this apostolate, has put the texts of St. Therese to music, making them accessible to people who might be reluctant to read the saint's writings.
Emmanuel, for its part, has had the joy of seeing two of its priests made bishops: Rev. Albert-Mane de Monleon, who was in charge of the community's seminarians, was installed as bishop of Meaux in 1998, and in 2000, Rev. Dominique Rey, who had been the pastor of one of the community's parishes in Paris, was ordained bishop of Toulon. These two ordinations have assumed a great symbolic importance: They are the sign of a new harmony between the charismatic renewal and the Church hierarchy. They are also a sign of what the pope has called a "new step" in the development of the charismatic renewal, that of "ecclesial maturity." The pope acknowledged that for a time there had been tensions between the new communities and the ecclesiastical authorities — tensions caused mainly by prejudice and misunderstanding. The formal innovations of the renewal had alarmed proponents of a more "classical" liturgy; their unusual posture and movements during prayer inspired a lot of parody and even some ridicule. Then there was the charge, leveled by some conservatives, that these communities were too independent of ecclesiastical authority. Today the bishops and the charismatic groups are deepening their mutual recognition; the bishops have even decided to assign one priest in each diocese to work with groups like Emmanuel and Beatitudes.
This new dynamic of integration is neither a happy accident nor simply a matter of ecclesiastical diplomacy: It is the full acknowledgment of the profoundly Catholic character of these communities. "For me, it's exactly the charismatic character of the Church that led me to Rome," explains Etienne, a computer programmer in his 30s who was raised a Protestant. "In the charismatic groups, I discovered that prayer was an active force — that the word becomes an act. I said to myself, 'If God thirsts to act in our lives, if the Christian God is a God who has taken on flesh, who continually desires to make Himself present to us, then there's something strange about thinking of communion as an abstract symbol.' From there, it went very quickly: I discovered eucharistic adoration in a charismatic community [Emmanuel]. Then someone spoke to me about the sacrament of reconciliation, and then the others. After that, I had to convert my intellect. I was delighted by the subtleties and coherence of Catholic doctrine. It's really the grace of the charismatic renewal that showed me the path to Rome."
Celine also associates the charismatic groups with a rediscovery of the sacraments. "One day during a meeting of my prayer group, one of the Emmanuel brothers used an image that comes back to me every time I go to confession: He said it's as if God and man were connected by a thread. Every time the thread is broken and God restores it by tying it back together through confession, the thread becomes shorter."
Many have criticized charismatic spirituality for being too focused on the affective life — concentrating too much on spiritual "experience" and not enough on the creed. In fact, the renewal's emphasis on the sacraments is related to a more general commitment to promoting the doctrines of the Church. "We laymen also need to convert our intellects," observes a student in one of Emmanuel's theological courses. The Emmanuel and Beatitudes communities offer evening courses designed to give students a general grounding in Church doctrine. Like Verbe de Vie, they also offer yearlong sabbatical programs of instruction and discernment. These programs are especially popular among young people who have just finished their studies and want "to build their life on the Rock" — in the words of Francoise, a young speech therapist who recently finished a year's sabbatical with Le Chemin Neuf.
The charismatic movement's concern for doctrine and insistence on evangelization have attracted criticism from liberals who see the movement as a kind of disguised traditionalism. In reality, the charismatic renewal in France doesn't fit very well into the progressive/traditionalist categories inherited from the 1970s. While the canonical rules may often seem audacious — in the Beatitudes and Verbe de Vie houses, for example, lay and religious members of the community live together under one roof — the new communities are also in the vanguard of efforts to revive forgotten disciplines and devotions. Many encourage regular fasting as a means of purification.
In the meantime, the specifically charismatic features of the renewal have spread well beyond the communities themselves; today, it's not unusual to find small charismatic prayer groups springing up in diocesan parishes.
Intrigued By Joy
Far away from the controversies that inflame the most extreme progressives and traditionalists, Ahmed walks calmly toward the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The young philosophy student says that it was in a charismatic prayer group that he "met the living Jesus Christ." Reacting against his Muslim upbringing, Ahmed had become an atheist. "I saw life as an absurd evasion, a perpetual fleeing," he says. "This idea fit very well with my melancholic temperament. Then at university I met a group of young people whose joy intrigued me. It was more profound than ordinary joys, and it seemed to unite them. After a few months, I wanted to know where this light came from. They told me about a charismatic community where they went regularly to make retreats."
He stops as a priest motions for him to join a group of young people who are entering the cathedral. Ahmed was baptized last year.
Guillaume Zorgbibe is a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Paris. Translation by Matthew Boudway.
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