Today in the Lectio Divina group in my parish in which I participate we have seen the Gospel for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.

Speaking on the Eucharist the Father says that before the liturgical reform, the Mass had been corrupted, that it was to heavily loaded toward its sacrificial meaning, it is not a sacrifice but a festivity. That's why penitential psalms were removed, among other things.

He said the Second Vatican Council had illuminated in this sense and the people can feel part of the celebration, that it taught us that we are all priests, not just the clergy. That before it was prohibited for persons to touch the bible and that today it is a grace for a layperson to have the bible in the hands. He said that before the people did not understand anything of what was the Eucharist, that for those who lived the change in the liturgy it had been like their lives were changed (in a positive sense). That before the homily didn't exist, there was a sermon, but not like part of the Eucharist, however from times immemorial the homily formed part of the liturgy.

He said that before nothing else was taught except the Eucharist as sacrifice, but I reminded him that in the Catechism of St. Pius X it was clear the 4 purposes for which the Mass is offered. He even spoke of an image that to him was heretical, though I don't know what it is.

90% of the lecture was talking about the passover rite of Israel, how Jesus did not break it, but perfected with Him as the Passover Lamb.

Well, I am telling you all this because it caught my attention, that the liturgy had been corrupted and that Vat II returned to its origins and in praxis it was a rupture (for better).

As data, the Father has over 12 years as part of the Neocatechumenal Way and 5 years in ministry.

The Protestant cuckoo in the Catholic nest - or what you see is most definitely not what you get.

 
SOME DOCTRINAL SPECIFICS

A depressing and pessimistic doctrine of man

Kiko and Carmen write in their guide, "Man is not saved by good works(...), Jesus Christ did not come to give us a model of life, an example (...).  The Holy Spirit doesn't lead us to perfection, to good works (...), Christianism doesn't require anything from us (...).  God forgives freely the sins of those who believe that Jesus is the Savior."  A more clear statements of Lutheran doctrine, as opposed to Catholic doctrine, it would be difficult to find.

I believe that one of the most obvious signs of the children of light is their irrepressible merriment. I know many dear priests in the traditional movement who appear most of the time as if they are struggling to suppress a giggle that just keeps tenaciously refusing to be contained. These men are such a contrast to the apologists for the Way, who look for much of the time as if they have cod liver oil swilling round their back teeth.

These catechists are fond of repeating that man (me and you) is "zero plus sin". But this view of man is not the Catholic view of man. It is a Protestant fundamentalist view of man, more precisely, it is a Lutheran view of man. The Catholic view of man is that we are made in the image of God and this bestows on us an inestimable value and dignity. While we are certainly damaged by original sin, and therefore have a propensity to actual sin, we remain essentially good. Grace perfects nature. It was Luther who preached that man was so utterly corrupted by the fall that he was "zero plus sin" and all God could do was draw a veil over him, rather like hiding a doggy-do under a silk handkerchief. This depraved and pessimistic view of man is light years from the Catholic view.

For several years I have struggled to understand why Kiko rejects the Church's doctrine of redemption. For example, in the Neocatechumenate Orientation Guide (Page 62) Kiko writes, "the [Vatican] Council has replaced theology and there is no more mention of the dogma of redemption".  Clearly this is heretical; in fact there are no less than fifty-one paragraphs dealing with the doctrine of redemption in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. But my problem was "why?" - what was the root error driving the Neocatechumenate leaders' rejection of such a basic Catholic doctrine?

According to Kiko, Christ's death on the cross was not a propitious sacrifice. That idea is, according to Kiko, a pagan notion imported into Catholicism after the Peace of Constantine. God is not offended by sin, in Kiko's theology, for that would imply that God could be damaged by human beings, which is absurd. Thus a sacrifice to appease the offence is meaningless. Christ died, according to Kiko, because God wanted to demonstrate that he loves us in spite of our sin and that the "death" of sin could be vanquished by a spiritual resurrection.

On page 17 of the of catechists' typed notes for their 1988 National Convention in England one finds this piece of primitive Lutheranism, "Jesus Christ has given his life for the sinners. He has loved the sinners and this is a great revelation because this means that when I commit a sin or when I commit thousands of sins I know that Jesus Christ does not reject me at all since my sins cannot separate me from God. Your sins do not have the power to separate you from God." [My emphasis]

It was easy to understand why they rejected other fundamental Catholic doctrines. It was easy to understand why they rejected the doctrine of Christ's sacrifice on the cross; if there is no redemption, Christ's sacrifice would obviously be pointless. It is easy to understand why they reject the sacrifice of the Mass; Kiko writes, "The notion of sacrifice entered in the Eucharist by condescension for the pagan mentality (...).  At the beginning of the Church, in the theology of the Mass, there was no sacrifice of Jesus, no sacrifice of the Cross, (...).".  No sacrifice on the cross, no sacrifice of the Mass. But why reject the Church's teaching on redemption in the first place?

My eureka moment came in the Autumn of 2002 while attending a series of so-called catechesis given by apologists for the Way in my local parish. As an ex-Protestant my ear may be better tuned than some cradle Catholics to spot these thought patterns. This depressing pessimistic view of man ("zero plus sin") was the starting point for Luther's neurotic creed. If you believe that man is so utterly damaged by original sin that he is beyond all possibility and hope of reform, and that the very best therefore that God can do is "impute" holiness to him by throwing a veil over him, then of course you must reject the Catholic doctrine of redemption; you can't redeem that which is essentially ontologically unredeemable, i.e. "zero plus sin"!

Whilst reflecting on this depressing litany of man as "zero plus sin", I just happened to be watching a docuмentary on EWTN, the American Catholic television station, about a group of American Catholic surgeons who annually give up their holidays to work free in a children's hospital in Peru. In the course of the programme one was introduced to a little three year old boy who had been horribly disfigured by a cooking fire in his village.  He had no ears or nose and his mouth was just a formless hole in his face. His mother had walked for three days through snow from her mountain village to bring him to the children's hospital.  When she arrived at the hospital, the surgeons found that they had not one but two patients, for they had to amputate both the mother's feet, so badly damaged were they by frostbite!  This mother had sacrificed both her legs to save her child!  And I am supposed to believe that this untutored Indian woman is "zero plus sin"!  Even the suggestion is near blasphemy.  We are a race of kings exiled by sin, or tarnished gods temporally banished from Eden..but never never "zero plus sin".  Man, even at the one cell zygote stage, is something so infinitely precious one should fall to one's knees before him!

False Tradition.

According to Kiko, the history of the true Church founded by Christ came to an end with the Pax Constantinia and does not resume its course until the 20th century with the Second Vatican Council, having remained frozen for about 1600 years.

The Neocatechumenate insist its intention is to return to a way of being Church that's similar to the first Christian communities. There is a half truth here because undoubtedly in the early Church people would have met in small groups, secretly and behind closed doors.  But this was not because such a mode of carrying on was intrinsic to Christianity; it was the result of the intermittent persecution the Church suffered during the first three hundred years.  Once the persecution ended, the Church quickly evolved into a more open structure.

The Church has condemned on more than one occasion the primitive concept of tradition which harps back in a simplistic way to what the early Christians did or didn't do. Sacred tradition is not something one needs to go digging for with a JCB and a bevy of professional archaeologists and historians in tow. Sacred Tradition is a living thing which is passed on from one generation of Catholics to the next and unfolds, develops and grows over the centuries under the guidance of the Magisterium and the breath of the Spirit. The Church today may be likened to a large and beautiful oak tree; it is quite ridiculous to bewail the fact that it no longer resembles the original acorn.

There is much similarity between the Way's false concept of tradition and that of the Protestant reformers - and indeed of much goofy post-Conciliar thought. The line of thinking goes something like this: the Holy Spirit was in the early Church, but somehow disappeared from the scene at some time. The Church then became corrupt or at least spiritually dead for centuries. However, fortuitously the Holy Spirit turned up again on my birthday, or at Vatican II, or on some other momentous occasion involving me, or with which I am personally empathetic, and now all can be restored to it original purity.  "Original Purity" of course being a loose concept that I reserve the right to define as suits my personal taste.

Actually this teaching that the Church went astray after the Peace of Constantine comes out of the Baptist sect.  Some Baptist apologists argue that theirs is not a church which was formed at the Reformation, but that they are a sort of remnant of Bible-believing Christians left over from the first four centuries, before the Peace of Constantine.  This sort of historical gobbledygook is their imaginative response to the Catholic claim that a church founded sixteen centuries after the death of Christ by the Protestant reformers can hardly claim to be the church founded by Christ.

To refute this nonsense, one need merely point out that for the first four centuries there was no New Testament, the collection of twenty-seven books as we know it, for these "Bible-believing" Christians to base their faith upon.  The list of twenty-seven separate books which were to be finally included in the New Testament was drawn up by the Church after the Peace of Constantine - as also was the formulation of the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Divinity of Christ - not bad for a "corrupt" Church!

The Way's Doctrine of Idolatry

The Way has a very developed, or rather a conveniently stretched, doctrine of idolatry. One of the things kept under wraps from enquirers is the very heavy time commitment demanded of members: two/three to four evenings a week, and often Sundays and weekends in addition! Thus for example, if you have a large family and find your commitment to your children and family makes it difficult to give up the time mandated by membership of the Way, or you decide to spare your children attendance at some of their long-winded services, you will be accused of making your children an "idol". If you object to standing around for a hour or two waiting for one of their long-winded services to start, you will be told by the leaders that time is clearly for you an "idol".

Ex-members suggest that the Way is the real "idol" of those who follow the Way. A true story related to me by an ex-member in Bristol will illustrate this aspect. A young man, who was not a baptized Christian, joined her community. After a couple of years involvement with the Way he met a good Catholic girl from the parish (who was not a member of the Way) and they planned to marry. When the Way discovered that he planned to marry a Catholic who was not a member of the Way, they refused to baptise him! The man had to leave the Way and seek baptism in his parish to marry his practising Catholic girlfriend!

The break up of marriages is a recurring theme in complaints against the Way. Because the Way mandates such a heavy commitment of time and energy this inescapably puts stress on many marriages, especially where one partner is involved with the Way and the other not. Any attempt to reduce one's time commitment to the Way to ease the strain on one's marriage will be met by the objection that you are making your marriage an "idol" by allowing it to come between you and God - whose will is always equated with the Way. One does not need much imagination to realize the devastating effect that this doctrine will have on some marriages.

In this doctrine of idolatry, the Way is preaching the direct opposite of, for example, Opus Dei and their founder St Josemaria Escriva, who teach that it is in their very commitment to children, family, spouses and their careers that the laity are sanctified - not by masses of feverish ecclesial activity.

Liturgy

Their liturgy reaches its culmination at the Passover Vigil, which is an all night affair. Young and old are baptised during the Vigil and baptism is always by total immersion. It is important to understand that this vigil is normally celebrated separately from the parish! So in parishes in which the Way are present there will be two Easter Vigils, an open one for the parish and a closed one for the Way! Where this (not surprisingly) has caused problems, as in St Nicholas of Tolentino's parish in Bristol, the parish vigil was dropped and parishioners were left with no option but to attend the Neocatechumenate's all-night vigil! An ex-member has related to me how the vigil finished with a community breakfast at 6am in a large local hotel, for which everyone was required to pay £25! My informants had asked to be excused the breakfast because of family commitments, but were instructed by the leaders of the Way that their place was at the community breakfast. The discipline exercised by the leaders over the members is another facet which defines the Way.

Their weekly Masses are also celebrated behind closed doors separately from the parish. These closed private Masses are radically different from parish Masses. Altars are strictly taboo. A table decorated with flowers is set in the middle of the church with the brothers and sisters of the newly-formed community and their catechists encircled round it. The Mass typically will last ninety minutes and takes place on a Saturday evening. There is a certain amount of what may be called liturgical dancing, circling the table and such like. There is little kneeling. Indeed in some cases the Way has been responsible for the kneelers being stripped out of churches. This, paradoxically for an organization so anxious to maintain the facade of orthodoxy, contrast starkly with the Church's normal liturgical law which mandates that even bishops kneel in their cathedrals during the consecration when they are present at Masses at which they are not a celebrant. The bread for the Mass is baked by the members themselves and resembles an ordinary loaf. In the breaking and sharing of our Lord's body, crumbs and fragments are inevitably scattered all over the church and trodden underfoot. This of course would and should scandalize any genuine Catholic.

Before the priest's homily, anyone "can share with his fellow brothers and sisters what the Lord has communicated to him in the readings and how his life has changed because of the Way" - Note: not "changed" because of one's baptism, one's Catholicism or one's commitment to Christ, but specifically because of the Way. Further, during the Prayer of the Faithful, everyone is encouraged to pray out loud, freely, expressing whatever feelings he or she has.

Their Mass superficially is basically a turbo-charged version of the folk/charismatic model - very much of the folksy, horizontal, happy-clappy, post-conciliar genre, with which we are all now so familiar in the West, and which very clearly is far from being everyone's liturgical cup of tea. One can hardly argue that a preference for a rite that is somewhat more dignified and classical is a sign that one has not made a radical commitment to Christ. Saint Pio and Saint Josemaria Escriva both refused to celebrate the Novus Ordo, the latter famously describing his stance as "holy obstinacy". Are we really supposed to deduce from these two recently canonized saints' preference for the traditional rites of the Church that they had failed to make a radical commitment to Christ?

The Neocatechumenate's "Mass" contains serious omissions from the normal public liturgy of the Church. For example, on Kiko's orders the creed is not recited - one can make one's own guess at the reasoning behind this order. The Orate, Fratres is omitted on Kiko's orders, because it mentions sacrifice and Kiko denies the Mass is a sacrifice. The Agnus Dei has similarly been suppressed by him because of the reference to taking "away the sins of the world."  Kiko denies that Christ takes away sin because of his belief that man is for ever and always ontologically "zero plus sin". The Lavobo (washing of hands) and Domine, non sum dignus.et sanabitur anima mea are both omitted on Kiko's orders. This is again because of Kiko's Lutheran theology. The Lavabo is a symbol of God purifying us, but God cannot purify us because in Luther's theology we are unredeemable. The Domine,i non sum dignus.et sanabitur anima mea is omitted again because this prayer suggests that Christ can sanctify us, when in Kiko's theology we are and always will be "zero plus sin" and there is nothing that we or grace or God can do about it.

It is claimed by the Neocatechumenate leaders (and I have yet to see anything to dispute their claim) that these omissions and general mucking about with the liturgy of the Mass, have been approved by officials of the Liturgical Congregation in Rome.  If this is true then it is indeed a grave scandal.

One may legitimately question whether the Neocatechumenate "Mass" is actually a valid Mass. The Church teaches that for the Mass to be valid it is necessary for the priest to intend to do what the Church does. However, the Church intends to offer a propitious sacrifice, but Kiko and Carmen explicitly deny the Mass is a propitious sacrifice, so how can their priests intend to do what the Church does? One may note in passing that the reason the Church holds that Anglican orders are invalid is precisely because their rite intentionally omitted the notion of a propitious sacrifice.

Their founders have clearly bought into the shallow post-Conciliar theology and Protestant view of the Mass which sees it as nothing more than a festive banquet modelled on the Last Supper, rather than a re-presentation of the divine sacrifice that was merely initiated at the last supper (a crucial distinction) and not consummated until Our Lord on the Cross cried out in a loud voice, "Father into your hands I commend my spirit." and yielded up his spirit for us.

There are over eighty paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaching that the Mass is a divine Sacrifice:

        Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1410. "It is Christ himself, the eternal high priest of the New Covenant who, acting through the ministry of the priests, offers the Eucharistic SACRIFICE. And it is the same Christ, really present under the species of bread and wine, who is the offering of the Eucharistic SACRIFICE. "

Compare this teaching of the Church with Kiko and Carmen's in their Neocatechumenate Orientation Guide. The Mass is only "the memorial of the Pasch of Jesus, of his passage from death to life", and again: "The notion of sacrifice is a condescension for the pagan mentality (.). At the beginning of the Church, in the theology of the Mass, there was no sacrifice of Jesus, no sacrifice of the Cross, no Calvary, but only a sacrifice of praise."

        I cite below two canons of the Council of Trent (22nd Session):

        (Canon 1) "If anyone say that in the Mass, a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God (.), let him be anathema"

        (Canon 3) "If anyone says that the sacrifice of the Mass is that only of praise and thanksgiving, or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the Cross but not a propitiatory one (.) let him be anathema"

Traditional Catholics will also want to ask the same question they have been asking for the last thirty years of the Novus Ordo, with only deafening silence for answer: is it really better that our liturgy should seek to drag Christ down into our pedestrian, workaday world, rather than seek to raise our hearts and minds up to the throne of the Most High, as the Eastern Rites do and our classical Roman Rite did until 1967?  Further: are we really the better off for having ditched holy intimacy for an unbecoming familiarity, or is this not rather part of that post-Conciliar move away from worshipping the Lord God Almighty to worshiping a god all-matey, made in our own image?

This stunted doctrine of the Mass, and their denial that the Mass is a sacrifice, is also the reason that Kiko forbids the use of altars, which are portrayed as some sort of pre-Christian left-over where wrathful gods were appeased by pagan sacrifices. Their Mass absolutely must be celebrated on a table set in the middle of the Church, a post-Conciliar fashion started by the Lutherans. The problem with hitching one's fortunes to fashion is that fashions go faster than they come, and this particular one is already very definitely on the wane.  Indeed, the tide has so turned that there are now a number of architectural firms making a good living specializing in turning the sort of modern soulless worship spaces favoured by the Way back into proper churches.

In passing one should note that the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes no less than twenty-seven favourable references to altars:

        Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1181. "A church, 'a house of prayer in which the Eucharist is celebrated and reserved, where the faithful assemble, and where is worshipped the presence of the Son of God our Saviour, offered for us on the sacrificial ALTAR for the help and consolation of the faithful

The Way also doesn't like the idea of priests, so insists on calling them "presbyters". This again is almost certainly because their founders and leaders deny the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice.  As any Protestant can tell you, if you don't have a sacrifice you don't need a priesthood - it is all terribly simple really.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has sixty-nine paragraphs on the ordained priesthood.

        Catechism of the Catholic Church: 563. "'Because it is joined with the episcopal order the office of priests shares in the authority by which Christ himself builds up and sanctifies and rules his Body. Hence the priesthood of priests, while presupposing the sacraments of initiation, is nevertheless conferred by its own particular sacrament. Through that sacrament priests by the anointing of the Holy Spirit are signed with a special character and so are configured to Christ the PRIEST in such a way that they are able to act in the person of Christ the head.'"

Transubstantiation

The reason the Way is not concerned about scattering crumbs and fragments of the consecrated bread and treading them underfoot is because Kiko and Carmen reject what the Church traditionally believes and teaches concerning transubstantiation. Kiko writes in his Neocatechumenate Orientation Guide (Page 317) "there is no Eucharist without the assembly (.). It is from the assembly that the Eucharist springs."  This is also of course another reason why their leaders do not believe in priests. If it's the assembly that brings about the Real Presence and the host is merely a symbol, who needs priests?

The leaders of the Way believe that once the celebration is finished, Christ is no longer present. Consequently, they are opposed to the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, genuflecting, eucharistic adoration, daily communicating and tabernacles etc. Carmen Hernandez famously stated to a priest that if Christ wanted to be among us in this manner, he would have come as a stone, not bread that goes mouldy.

It is not clear where Kiko and Carmen are getting these heretical ideas. One suspects that it is more likely to be such theologian as Karl Rahner or Edward Schillebeeckx O.P. than the Protestant reformers. Or possibly lesser luminaries such as the Americans, Tad Guzie S.J. or Monika K. Hellwig, or from ex-priest Anthony Wilhelm's book, Christ Among Us.

So there you have it. All those canonised saints, all those thousands of holy monks and religious women, all those millions of faithful Catholics, who have spent hours on their knees every week for centuries adoring the Blessed Sacrament.  They are all heretics adoring cookies! So much for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It will come as a bitter disappointment to many to discover that in spite of the orthodox public facade maintained by the Way, they are just as much cafeteria Catholics as the rest of our post-Conciliar dissidents.

        Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1183. "The tabernacle is to be situated 'in churches in a most worthy place with the greatest honour.' [Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei: AAS (1965) 771.] The dignity, placing, and security of the Eucharistic tabernacle should foster adoration before the Lord really present in the Blessed Sacrament of the ALTAR. [Cf. SC 128.]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church

Having personally sat through fourteen (some twenty-one hours) of the lectures of their catechists, I can personally testify that conspicuous by its complete absence was one single reference to the Catechism of the Catholic Church! This is odd for an organization seeking to present a facade of orthodoxy because the Holy Father has repeatedly decreed that all future catechesis should be based upon it. To reject the Catechism of the Catholic Church honestly and up front would of course draw down upon them heavy ecclesiastic censure, so they appear to deal with this problem, at least as far as their external catechesis is concerned, by simply ignoring it - as far as the Neocatechumenate Way is concerned the Catechism of the Catholic Church seems never to have happened, it simply doesn't exist.

A current member has since written to assure me that the Catechism is now widely referred to within the movement and that the new constitution being forced on the movement by Rome has many references to the Catechism.  If this is true, it must be welcomed.  Yet as late as 2002, over a decade after the Catechism was published, their was not one single reference to it in their lectures directed at outsiders.  Even the occasional reference to it would of course still fall far short of the Holy Father's wish that future catechesis should be based upon it.

There is also a question mark over Kiko's understanding of the resurrection. He writes in his Neocatechumenate Orientation Guide, "The memorial Jesus left us in His resurrected SPIRIT from the dead (.). How did the Apostles see Jesus Christ resurrected? In themselves, made a vivifying spirit." The doctrine of the resurrection of His BODY is conspicuous by its absence. This could possibly explain Kiko's motive in ordering the suppression of the creed in his liturgy.

According to the theologian, Fr Enrico Zoffoli, the Catechism of the Catholic Church rejects Kiko's teachings on sin, atonement, redemption, the Church, confession, the Mass, the priesthood, altars and the Christian life. Throw in his clear rejection of the faith of the Church concerning the Real Presence and it becomes clear that the heavy veil of silence drawn over the Catechism of the Catholic Church by the Neocatechumenate Way is far from a mere oversight or accident.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is Kiko's and Carmen's Achilles' heel. Bishops and priests would only need to mandate that they used it as the basis of their so-called catechesis, both in and outside their movement, and enforce that mandate strictly for them to either change beyond recognition or implode like a popped balloon.

Cruel deceit of the rank and file

The most evil aspect of the Neocatechumenate is their calculated deceit of their own rank and file who are for the most part clearly exemplary good people. The ordinary member will never be told by the leaders that the reason that they are required to call their priest "presbyters" is because they do not believe in priests. The ordinary rank and file are never told that the reason they are not permitted to use altars is because Kiko denies the Mass is a sacrifice. When ordinary members express concern about the fragments of the consecrated host scattered about, they will be discouraged by their catechist from clearing them up, but they will not be told that the reason they are being so discouraged is because their leaders deny the doctrine of transubstantiation and believe the host to be a mere symbol of the presence of Christ. When they celebrate their festive banquet in place of the Mass, they will not be told that it is because Kiko and Carmen reject the Church's whole theology of the Mass, redemption, sacrifice, the lot.

Kiko and Carmen have clearly learned much from the modus operandi of the professional dissenters, radical feminists and militant sodomites ensconced in most of the chanceries of the English speaking world who have been gnawing away for years at the fabric of the Church, like termites from the inside. If you want to change the beliefs of Catholic, it is a waste of time doing it honestly and out in the open. This will merely bring the Magisterium of the Church down on your head. What you must do is change the orthopraxis that underpins and gives expression to the beliefs you want to change. This will not always be easy: you will need to invent an entirely spurious reason to support the change. Try and keep it above the heads of the ordinary faithful by using seemingly learned complex theological insights and as many long words as possible, and throw in something about the "Spirit of Vatican II". You will always be able to find "useful idiots" at the parish level only too eager to implement your changes; it gives them a sense of purpose and importance. These tame parish progressives can easily be kept blissfully unaware of the defective theology and even anti-Catholic agendas which lie behind your insidious chipping away at the orthopraxis and traditions of their forefathers.

For instance, if you do not believe in transubstantiation, encourage Catholics to receive the host in the hand standing. If you don't believe in the ordained priesthood, strip out the altar rails and encourage laymen to flood the sanctuary for all sorts of spurious reasons, and then call the priest the "President" - or better still, "Bob". If you don't believe in Eucharistic adoration, come up with some complicated liturgical theory as to why the tabernacle should be removed from the main altar to the closet, while at the same time paying lip service to eucharistic adoration to put the faithful off your scent. If you don't believe the Mass is a sacrifice, encourage charismatic festive banquet-style celebrations. The trick is never to reveal your hand, just be very patient and leave time to do your corrosive dirty work.

An example of Kiko and Carmen deceit of their followers was bought home to be sharply recently in conversation with an ex-member. I happened to mention in passing that Kiko, in his Neocatechumenate Orientation Guide, states that the history of the true Church founded by Christ come to an end with the Pax Constantinia and does not resume until the Second Vatican Council. The lady in question, drew in a sharp breath and exclaimed, "Does he! We were never told that - but I did often wonder why we had so many long-winded lectures on the Pax Constantini." She had been a member for four years!

TRICKS USED BY THE WAY TO SELL THEIR "LITURGY" TO THE ORDINARY FAITHFUL

The Teddy Bears' Picnic-style "Mass" of the Way is so radically different from the traditional liturgy of the Church that their apologists have to devote a great deal of skill and time to softening up ordinary Catholics to accept it. They basically use five well- rehearsed tricks. We shall consider each of these tricks in turn.

Trick No: 1 (Promote the post-Conciliar myth of the DIY liturgies of the early Christians)

One of the post-Conciliar myths heavily promoted by the Way in order to soften you up to accept their turbo-charged charismatic style of liturgy, is the myth that the Mass of the early Christians was an unstructured spontaneous event, a festive meal which took place round the kitchen table with every one encouraged to chip in their two penny worth, somewhat like a special birthday party with Jesus as an important guest. They are not of course the only movement in the modern Church with a vested interest in promoting this myth; the Charismatics also promote it.  According to this myth, the formalised liturgies of the Church were written centuries later. This myth has become wildly accepted for no better reason than that it is so often repeated. However, the objective truth is that there is not one scrap of historical evidence to substantiate this myth.

http://www.cathud.com/links/pages_mr/neocatechumenate.htm