In his great encyclical letter on mission Redemptoris Missio, the Holy Father says: «Within the Church, there are various types of services, functions, ministries and ways of promoting the Christian life. I call to mind, as a new development occurring in many Churches in recent times, the rapid growth of ecclesial movements filled with missionary dynamism. When these movements humbly seek to become part of the life of local churches and are welcomed by bishops and priests within diocesan and parish structures, they represent a true gift of God both for new evangelization and for missionary activity properly so-called. I therefore recommend that they be spread, and that they be used to give fresh energy, especially among young people, to the Christian life and to evangelization, within a pluralistic view of the ways in which Christians can associate and express themselves» [1].

For me personally it was a wonderful experience when, in the early 1970s, I first came into closer contact with movements such as the Neocatechumenal Way, Communion and Liberation and the Focolare Movement, and so experienced the energy and enthusiasm with which they lived their faith and the joy of their faith which impelled them to share with others the gift they had received. That was the period in which Karl Rahner and others were speaking of a winter in the Church; and, indeed, it did seem that, after the great flowering of the Council, spring had been reclaimed by frost, and that the new dynamism had succumbed to exhaustion. The dynamism now seemed to be somewhere else altogether, where people, —relying on their own strength and without resorting to God—, were trying to shape a better world for the future.

That a world without God could not be good, let alone better, was obvious to anyone who had eyes to see. But where was God? After so many debates and so much effort expended on seeking new structures, had not the Church in fact become tired and dispirited? Rahner's remarks about a winter in the Church were perfectly understandable; they expressed an experience we all shared.

But then something suddenly happened which no one had planned.  The Holy Spirit had,  so to say,  once again  made his voice heard. The faith was reawakened, especially in young people, who eagerly embraced it without any ifs and buts, without subterfuges and reservations, and experienced it in its totality as a precious, life-giving gift.

To be sure, many people felt that this interfered with their intellectual discussions or their models for redesigning a completely different Church in their own image. How could it be otherwise? Every irruption of the Holy Spirit always upsets human plans.

But there were, and are, far more serious difficulties. For these movements had their share of childhood diseases. The power of the Spirit could be felt in them, but the Spirit works through human beings and does not simply free them from their weaknesses. There were tendencies to exclusivity and one-sidedness, and hence the inability to involve themselves in the life of the local Church. Buoyed up by their youthful élan, they were convinced that the local Church had, as it were, to crank itself up to their level, to adapt itself to their form, and not vice versa; that it was not up to them to be dragged into a structure that was at times somewhat fuddy-duddy. Frictions arose, in which both sides were at fault in different ways. It became necessary to reflect on how the two realities could be related to each in the right way: on the one hand, the spiritual revival conditioned by new situations, and, on the other, the permanent structure of the Church's life, i.e. the parish and the diocese.

While the questions posed here were, to a large extent, very practical ones that should not be unduly inflated into the theoretical dimension, the phenomenon at issue was one that periodically recurs, in various forms, throughout the history of the Church. There is the enduring basic structure of the Church's life, which is expressed in the continuity of her institutional structure throughout history. And there are the ever new irruptions of the Holy Spirit, which continually revitalise and renew that structure. But this renewal hardly ever occurs entirely without pain and friction. So the fundamental question posed by these «movements» is one that cannot be ignored: namely, how can their theological place within the continuity of the Church's institutional structure be correctly identified?