Florida Catholic | Communion and Liberation

Movement addresses ‘crisis of faith’

PRISCILLA GREEAR | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 02.22.08

Around the Diocese

Communion and Liberation groups currently are active in:

• Visitation Parish, North Miami; contact Elena Nuñez at evnunez@bellsouth.net.

• South Miami, meeting at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School; contact Eduardo and Martina Stadelmann at martina.stadelmann@gmx.net or 305-495-7597.

• Christopher Columbus High School, Miami; contact Paolo Cazzoletti at paoloc90@hotmail.com.

• St. Thomas Aquinas High School, Fort Lauderdale; contact tmaranges@hotmail.com or simone_brusa@hotmail.com.

• College students and professors, contact Luis Rivero at pater33@gmail.com.

• For more information, go to www.clonline.us or call Pepe Rodelgo-Bueno at
305-762-1079.

MIAMI | Catholic schools and convents are closing and the number of priests and church marriages is declining: Is that a crisis of vocations or a crisis of faith?

It’s the latter, says Chris Bacich, national director of Communion and Liberation, an international ecclesial movement now present in the archdiocese.

“The question doesn’t so much gnaw at us because of the disappearance of religious or priests, but because we begin to wonder: Do we belong to something fundamentally anachronistic?” Bacich told some 75 attendees at a Communion and Liberation gathering Feb. 2 at St. John Vianney College Seminary in Miami.

The gathering marked the third anniversary of the death of Msgr. Luigi Giussani, who founded the movement in Italy in 1954.

For Bacich, a history teacher at St. Joseph’s High School in Staten Island, N.Y., the problem in contemporary society is people’s fundamental lack of understanding of their highest calling, and it afflicts the whole church.

“Father Giussani helped me to understand it’s not a crisis of vocations. It’s a crisis of faith,” Bacich said. “Life is a search for the truth. When the truth appears in life, it demands that I follow it.”

When persons have an encounter with Christ, it awakens them to the promise of a fuller life, as happened when the Samaritan woman met Jesus at the well.

“The only real sign of faith is to follow it,” Bacich said. “My obedience is to say, ‘yes, Lord.’”

Bacich and Father Chris Marino, spiritual advisor for Communion and Liberation in Miami, reflected on this and other themes covered in the book, “Is It Possible to Live This Way?” which was written by Msgr. Giussani. Published posthumously, the book’s English translation will be released in April by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

“Who are you and what do you really desire for your life?” asked Father Marino, pastor of Visitation Parish in North Miami. “That should be a question that enters into every single encounter, every single situation we find ourselves in. We have to know the deepest recesses of our heart and be in touch with who we are.”

Father Marino said the movement has helped him become more attentive to Christ. He assured his listeners that if they seriously seek answers regarding their life’s purpose, Father Giussani’s writings will guide them, showing them how God is not abstract, but made flesh in the midst of every circumstance.

“Everything that happens is happening because Christ is calling me to an attentiveness and awareness that would not happen if I wasn’t looking,” said Father Marino.

“When we recognize that we were made by someone, for someone, the vocation to live our life is something beautiful, marvelous,” he added, noting that Pope Benedict XVI participates in Communion and Liberation gatherings at the apostolic palace.

After the talk, Communion and Liberation members took part in a memorial Mass celebrated by Archbishop John C. Favalora, who in 2005 invited members of the movement to establish a presence in Miami.

Communion and Liberation groups now exist in more than 110 U.S. cities and in 80 countries worldwide, and more are springing up around the archdiocese. Among those at the Miami gathering were seven Italian high school exchange students who are part of a Communion and Liberation group at Sacred Heart School in Milan.

Attendee Karen Card of North Miami Beach is in Visitation Parish’s Communion and Liberation group, studying one of Msgr. Giussani’s earliest books, “The Journey to Truth Is An Experience.”

“What I’m getting out of it is recognizing my faith and acknowledging that I’m not in this faith alone, and there is a group of people with me wanting to live the same kind of life I want to live,” Card said.

Pepe Rodelgo-Bueno, who works in the archdiocesan department of schools, was attending college in Spain in 1991 when he was invited to attend a Communion and Liberation meeting.

“What I saw is a different way of living,” he said.

Faith is not only about feeling good or living ethically, he added. Small groups are “a place to constantly be educated to know more about what is Christianity, about living in relationship with Christ who is real in you.”

Return to the Archdiocese of Miami Front Page

Movement addresses ‘crisis of faith’

Around the Diocese

Other Stories