The Global Church Era · 1930s-present · Global
Catholic Lay Renewal Traditions (Catholic Worker; Focolare; Charismatic Renewal; L'Arche)
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About This Movement
Four Catholic movements, all begun by lay people, all still running. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin founded the Catholic Worker in 1933: a newspaper, houses of hospitality, and a refusal of war that cost them readers. Chiara Lubich began Focolare in 1943. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal began on a retreat weekend at Duquesne University in February 1967 and reached parishes across the world within a decade; Cardinal Suenens's Malines Documents, from 1974, worked out how it and the wider church would live together. Jean Vanier founded L'Arche in 1964, communities in which people with and without intellectual disabilities share a household. The map treats these as four distinct movements rather than one tradition, because that is what they are — and it does not tell L'Arche's story without the abuse committed by its founder, documented in the inquiry L'Arche International commissioned and published in 2020 and in the independent study commission's report of 2023.
Sources
- Catholic Worker: Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness (1952), Loaves and Fishes (1963); The Catholic Worker paper (1933-); Maurin's Easy Essays (primary) — The movement's own voice, in its founders' and its own newspaper's words.
- Focolare: Chiara Lubich's writings; the movement's General Statutes (church-approved, dated revisions) (primary)
- Catholic Charismatic Renewal: Duquesne weekend testimonies (Feb 1967); Ranaghan & Ranaghan, Catholic Pentecostals (1969); the Malines Documents (1974-, Suenens) (primary) — The movement's first book, and its own effort at theological self-regulation in the Malines Documents.
- L'Arche: Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (1979), founding record (1964); AND L'Arche International's 2020 inquiry findings + the 2023 independent Study Commission report on Vanier's abuse (primary) — The movement's own published inquiry documents into Vanier's abuse - one of the clearest examples of an institution publicly reckoning with its founder's wrongdoing.
- Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread (1982); scholarly literature on each movement (thinner for Focolare and the Charismatic Renewal, and partly written by insiders) (secondary) — The 2023 L'Arche commission report is itself scholarly-grade work.
- CHC vol. 9 (Part I movements coverage) (reference)