The Mission of the Neocatechumenal Way in Times of Covid-19
Authors: Gacka Bogumił 
Published: January 2023

We know that there are many studies, many interpretations of the coronavirus, many scientists and politicians who are studying the coronavirus and its consequences in the aftermath of the pandemic. The Holy See has also set up a task force dedicated to this study:

“To embrace hope, to embrace the human family.” On 20th March, 2020, Pope Francis asked the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DSSUI) to create a Commission, in collaboration with other Dicasteries of the Roman Curia and other institutions, to express the Church's concern and love for the entire human family in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially through the analysis and reflection on the socio-economic and cultural challenges of the future and the proposal of guidelines to address them. 

In 2020 Anne Case, the Professor of Economics and Publics Affairs at Princeton University, and Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, the Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Presidential Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California, have published their highly important book Death of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Death of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism are rising dramatically in the Western European countries and in the United States of America. In 2018, there were 158,000 deaths of despair in the US, the same number as in 2017. Deaths of despair is called by Anne Case and Angus Deaton the despair epidemic. Long before the arrival of COVID-19, the lives of European and Americans had been disintegrating with deaths from suicide, drug overdose and alcoholic liver disease rising year on year. The despair epidemic and the COVID epidemic make a challenge for American and European capitalism. “COVID is a worldwide pandemic, affecting rich and poor countries, while deaths of despair, although not exclusively American, are much more serious in the US than in other rich countries.” Why is capitalism failing so many? What’s the economy got to do with it? Could the reason for this phenomenon be hidden in a fragmented approach to the human person? Could it be that Capitalism does not pay attention to the true reality of the human person, who is at once, in his or her existence a unity of physiological (material), mental, and spiritual reality not fragmented? The human person whom an economy and indeed any business seeks to serve, is not only the exteriority but also the interiority at once. The person remains the subject of both experiences given from interior and from exterior. A concentration on both kinds of experience which in fact constitute the integral experience of the human person is called for. The same discernment is given by economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton in their statement that “capitalism is an immensely powerful force for progress and for good, but it needs to serve people and not have people serve it.”

 The world is experiencing a catastrophe, thus according to Prof. Case and Prof. Deaton capitalism needs to be better monitored and regulated.

Why is lack of religiosity and the decline in churchgoing a problem?  One answer is that, over long enough periods of time, religiosity responses to the social and economic environment.  In poor countries around the world, especially in Asia and Africa, almost everyone identifies as very religious, but religiosity is lower in richer industrialized countries, particularly in Western Europe.  The argument  ̶  the secularization hypothesis  ̶  is that as education spreads, as incomes rise, and as the state takes over many functions of the church, people turn away from religion. Put crudely, people need religion more in more hostile environments. This would fit the American states, where those with lower incomes and less supportive state governments have a higher fraction of religious people. It would also explain why it is true that, while more religious people do better than less religious people on many outcomes  ̶  they are happier, less likely to commit crimes, less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and less likely to smoke  ̶  more religious places  ̶  including US states  ̶  do worse on the same outcomes. Religion helps people do better, and they espouse religion in part because their local environment is difficult. When religiosity falls over time, it is the people side of this story that applies, and people lose the benefits that religion brings.

The mission families are grateful to Kiko Argüello and Carmen Hernández for the Neocatechumenal Way they have brought, which is an inestimable gift. According to the iniciators of the Way true communion goes further than any notion of time, place and danger. The mission families experienced this communion with power during this time of pandemic isolation. The growing apostolic faith is the concrete answer to the problems of our life in this time of Covid-19.

The prophetic words of Pope Paul VI are realized particularly in the mission of the Catholic Church in times of Covid-19 within the Neocatechumenal Way. Saint Paul VI, in the audience to the Neocatechumenal Communities on 8th May, 1974, said: “We greet the group of priests and lay people who represent the movement of the Neocatechumenal Communities - here we see post-conciliar fruits! - gathered in Rome from many dioceses throughout Italy and other countries. […] How great is the joy, how great is the hope, which you give us with your presence and with your activity! […] To live and foster this re-awakening is what you call a kind of ‘post baptism’, which can renew in our contemporary Christian communities the effects of maturity and depth which were achieved in the early Church during the period of preparation for Baptism. You do this afterwards. `Before' or `after' is secondary, I would say. The fact is that you aim at the authenticity, fullness, coherence and sincerity of Christian life. And this is a very great merit which, I repeat, consoles us enormously.”