Model towns for God
(First published in The Tablet, July, 2002 - This article is still very relevant to Focolare's activities today)
GORDON URQUHART
The new lay movements are a phenomenon in the Catholic Church. Only last week the Neocatechumenate was granted a special status. But some of their ventures as they expand are problematic, according to a former Focolare youth organiser.
LAST year the inhabitants of Bruyèresle-Chatel, a small village 20 miles to the south of Paris, had a shock. They discovered that their local château with its large estate, known as Arny, had been sold by the communications company Alcatel for £1.2m to the Focolare movement, which was planning to build one of its “model towns” – a Mariapolis – on the site. At no point had the 3,500 citizens of Bruyères been consulted: the sale and development plans had been negotiated in secret by the mayor. Indeed, the project only came to light in the course of local elections in which the mayor and council were replaced. The villagers were suddenly faced with a development which seemed at odds with their republican sensibilities, would be of no benefit to the local community, and which threatened to change the nature of the village entirely. The fact that the deal had been signed without public consultation, even though the mayor’s office published a regular bulletin, was enough to arouse local suspicions.
The ensuing dispute between the inhabitants of Bruyères and the Focolarini mushroomed, drawing in members of the National Assembly and even government ministers, and came to a climax with a public enquiry which called a halt to all further development on the site. The incident foreshadows the kind of clash which could well become frequent as a result of a new direction taken by these Catholic movements in recent years. In Britain, organisations like Focolare, Communion and Liberation, and the Neocatechumenate are frequently referred to as “small groups”, but, while this might once have been a fair description, it hardly fits the character of these vast and fast-growing institutions today, and it certainly is not the way they see themselves. Small is no longer beautiful, as far as they – or indeed the Holy See – are concerned: when Pope John Paul II held a massive gathering of movements in Rome in 1998, the Vatican press agency Fides drew attention to the fact that their total membership was 200 million. More crucially, however, it is becoming evident that, with these vast forces at their disposal, the aim of the movements is not merely to revitalise the structures of the Church, but also to reform contemporary society. In this they are encouraged by the Vatican, which sees them as a means of influencing such key areas as politics, economics and the media, all central to Rome’s vision of how civil society should be developing. Fired by the sense of mission of their membership and backed by considerable wealth, the movements are launching grandiose schemes – often far larger than the “model town” in France – across the world.
Thus Communion and Liberation, having scaled down its involvement in Italian politics from a peak in the early Nineties, has focused on developing an international raft of businesses and social services, known as the Company of Works (CoW). With more than 200,000 partners, an annual turnover of more than £2,000m and offices in 20 countries, the organisation’s slogan is “more society, less state”. In Milan, where the CoW is particularly strong, there have been protests that, in certain sectors of the workplace, the organisation has a stranglehold. Its president, Giorgio Vittadini, has hotly refuted accusations that the CoW has any special influence with Roberto Formigoni, president of the region of Lombardy in which Milan is situated; Formigoni was a founder member of Communion and Liberation.
Since the mid Nineties, Focolare, too, has emphasised its contribution to the secular field. It also has launched its own international “conglomerate” of businesses, the Economy of Communion (EoC), similar to Communion and Liberation’s multinational. The EoC encompasses more than 760 businesses worldwide, which benefit from a profit-sharing scheme, as does the movement. In 1996, Focolare established an international political wing, the Movement for Unity, which has become very active in several countries, involving politicians at the highest level. At a meeting held in Innsbruck last November for 700 European mayors and members of local authorities, the founder of Focolare, Chiara Lubich, shared a platform with Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, and Thomas Klestil, the Austrian President.
Even the Neocatechumenate (NC), which has always emphasised its non-engagement with society, has launched its first major undertaking, acquiring a large tract of land on the Mount of the Beatitudes on which it is building an enormous concrete edifice, perhaps not entirely in keeping with modern sensibilities on conservation, for the training of NC priests.
Friction is likely to result from this latest expansion of the movements because their structure and values run counter to those of the secular world in which they intend to stake their claim. The French controversy is an object lesson in the problems which can arise. Focolare bought the estate at Bruyères under a government scheme which obliges property developers to install services and supervise a balanced use of a piece of land for the good of the local community, selling off parts of it for accommodation and business purposes. Focolare has pledged itself to do this but with the condition that businesses and individuals who will be part of the Mariapolis must sign a charter – still to be drawn up – which will be “a common bond for all the inhabitants of the Mariapolis”. Through an entity they have established, the control of the development rests entirely in the hands of the Focolare hierarchy. Given the impact that the development will have on the district, fears have been aroused among the locals of “theocratic” control.
Alarmed at the prospect of their village being overwhelmed by the changes, a group of villagers lobbied local councillors and members of parliament. One of their concerns, for example, was to what extent employment laws, such as the minimum wage or regulations on working hours, would be observed. As the Focolare proposals involved a change of use of the land, a public inquiry was obligatory, and this gave the local people an opportunity to lodge their objections. The chairman of the inquiry noted in his final report that 24,000 square metres of the land were reserved for Focolare’s use, while only 1,000 square metres would be made available for other living accommodation. What was being given priority, he asked, in this management project – “the general interest or a takeover by a group of a philosophical nature using almost the entirety of the Arny estate for the satisfaction of its adherents and a proselytising operation”? He concluded: “The apportioning of the respective areas gives the answer.” In September the municipal council of Bruyères voted unanimously against Focolare establishing a centre within the development. This is unlikely to be the last word on the matter, however, and Focolare is still buying up properties in the area.
There is nothing new in the attempt by Christian groups to create utopias, self-contained “intentional communities” like those set up by the Amish, the Shakers or the founders of the great monasteries. It is also true that for centuries religious orders have run their own schools, hospitals and social institutions. But these movements are seeking something quite different. Their utopias – though self-contained in spirit and structure – are aiming to function fully and even compete within secular society, to the extent of disguising themselves as part of that society, with no outward distinction of habit or mode of living. Yet the fundamental difference between the public works of the movements and their secular counterparts is underlined by a remark made recently by one of the leaders of Focolare’s EoC, repeating words of Chiara Lubich: the EoC “is not purely the work of human beings, but the work of God”. The age-old struggle between what is God’s and what is Caesar’s is surely being presented here in a new – and potentially problematical – form.
No comments:
Post a Comment