“Do not quench the Spirit.
Do not despise prophetic utterances.
Test everything; retain what is good.”
(1Thessalonians 5, 19-21)

Dear brothers and sisters, cursillistas all over the world:

This is the eighth letter I have the chance and joy to write you. In fact, I took over this task aiming at implementing part of the present OMCC project, which is to contribute however possible to build unity in diversity. Therefore I try to propose and analyse – in light of God’s Word, of the Church’s documents and of the Fundamental Ideas – criteria which could lead us, with safety and guarantee of authenticity, to achieve the CM’s goals, trying to deepen the reflection about its charisma, and to help the reflection of the CM leaders around the world about the best ways for us to announce Jesus Christ and his Kingdom of salvation, in the context of history and of post-modernity.

With this purpose I have already started, in my previous letters, to deal with the CM charisma which is both a source of light that enlightens the CM’s identity and, moreover, an extremely contemporary focus for the presence of Church in History.

Dear brothers and sisters, I now present to your reflection some reference points, inspired in the proposals made by a distinguished Brazilian theologian, Maria Clara Bingemer. Closing her presentation in a Church Movements Encounter sponsored by CNBB, the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops, she focused “some core points of the charisma theology that could bring stimulating challenges to the movements, in order that they could care more about their own ecclesial vocation and mission”. Let us summarise those points.

1. The Spirit tends to the human person, to the community, to the institution, to the reality. The Spirit is not a strength that pushes upwards and withdraws the human being from his reality; the Spirit, otherwise, brings the human being to the reality – sometimes a hard and rigid reality – of his ecclesial community  and of the institutional tissue of the Church.

2. The charismas of the Spirit are free, given in sheer generosity, and are destined to the “corporality” of the human being , of the Church, of the world. They cannot be taken as any person’s or institution’s monopoly.

3. The authenticity of the charismas can be discerned and proved as long as they construct the communion, enrich the Church, build an ‘including’ and not ‘excluding’ unit, send in mission, and keep, inside and outside themselves, the healthy tension that characterises the whole Christian living and acting, which is the movement that makes us confer ourselves the same consideration we confer others.

4. The historicity of the charismas visibility responds to a historical circumstance and takes the aspect and shape that such circumstance raises and provokes.”

Maria Clara then continues: “From those core points, some challenges arise for the movements to take their place in the Church, be well inserted in the community and evade the temptation of building a parallel Church.” In a few words, these challenges are:

1. The autophagia of inward-looking movements, which only form their own members and enhance their own staff, but is alienated from the Church’s urgencies.

2. The transnationality, dangerous and tempting escaping valve from the actual problems of the local Church, which takes their members far away from the day-to-day life, in the name of a supra-historic reality that is false, invented, inconsistent.

3. The delirious and monothematic charismatism, detached from the committed and committing Christocentrism, from the rough questionings of the Church and from the inevitable and concrete edges of the reality and of the social-historic mediations.

4. The obsession with their own identity, which opposes to the realisation of a particularly important note in the Church and in today’s life of faith: the dialogue, the openness to the other’s differences, the communication with the different, which can disclose to us preciousness we are unable to find in our own milieu.

5. An experience of God that be purely emotional, detached from its biblical and evangelical roots.

6. The dialogue of the faith with all forms of culture, evading the temptation of creating a ‘Christian culture’ distant from the routes walked by the questions, anguishes and joys of men and women of today.

7. The need to take into account the big challenges and master-guidelines of the Church in its different instances: local, national, continental, universal.

“If they are able to respond suitably to these challenges, the Movements will really be a blessing for the Church and will open the way for a future in which the laypeople’s charismas will contribute for the ecclesial community in the world to speak of peace and justice, in a way that can be understood by the human being of today.”

Dear brothers and sisters, conveying the above considerations to all of you – National or Diocesan Secretariats as well as cursillistas – I suggest those who possibly want to comment or exchange ideas about the contents of my letters, to do so with the liberty of the children of God. This is the only way we can efficaciously contribute to an updated Movement, prepared to comply with the challenges of the post-modern culture, as well as with its objectives and charisma, that is, to be an efficacious herald of Jesus Gospel and the Kingdom of God.

My fraternal and friendly greetings, in the heart of Lord Jesus, through the hands of our Mother and Mother of the Church, Maria.

Father José Gilberto Beraldo
Ecclesiastic Counsellor