Books
At 50, time to take stock of the Christian Family
Movement
DISTURBING THE PEACE:
A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY MOVEMENT, 1949-1974 By Jeffrey M.
Burns University of Notre Dame Press, 286 pages,
$25
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By ROBERT McCLORY
What happened?
That is the question thousands of former members of the Christian
Family Movement have asked one another over the past 30 years. What happened to
this energizing phenomenon that gave them perhaps their most vivid experience
of being Catholic in the world?
In 1964 the Christian Family Movement involved some 50,000 couples
in North America, 30,000 in Latin America and substantial numbers in Asia and
Africa. Then almost as suddenly as it had blossomed, the movement declined.
Steadily, inexorably, the energy went out of it just as the church was emerging
from its post-Vatican II honeymoon. In Disturbing the Peace, Jeffrey M.
Burns analyzes the confluence of historical changes that affected CFM and, in
the process, he gives a plausible explanation of what happened.
But Burns, an archivist for the San Francisco archdiocese, is more
concerned about what happened in a positive sense -- about what happened to the
couples who participated in the movement, the ordinary couples who became
social activists and disturbers of the peace.
Exhilarating effect
The effect was exhilarating, writes Burns.
Young, professional couples, whose lives had been dominated by an ethos
that extolled material culture found through CFM a tool with which
to transcend and transform not just the structures of family life but their
culture.
It is these positive benefits that are likely to dominate
conversations July 1-4, when great numbers of former Christian Family Movement
couples gather at Notre Dame University for the 50th anniversary of the
movement.
In the book, Burns traces the origins of the Christian Family
Movement from the see-judge-act technique for small groups developed by Canon
Joseph Cardijn in Belgium. Following its modest beginnings in the Midwest after
World War II, CFM became by 1949 a national institution.
Burns is not reluctant to name names, and hundreds appear in
Disturbing the Peace, as he credits scores of groups and individuals.
Four names are especially prominent: Holy Cross Fr. Louis Putz, Pat and Patty
Crowley, Msgr. Reynold Hillenbrand and Burnett (Burnie) Bauer.
Putz, a tireless advocate of the Cardijn method, helped launch the
first groups and remained an important adviser. The Crowleys became the Johnny
Appleseeds of the movement, trekking around the world, organizing and
encouraging. Their tempermental opposite was Hillenbrand, the national
chaplain, whom Burns characterizes as autocratic, ill at ease with women
and at times downright cranky. Yet Hillenbrand, who spoke with Moses-like
authority, provided the intellectual underpinnings of the movement for more
than 20 years.
Bauer, who has long insisted it was he, not the Crowleys, who
started the first CFM-type couples group, appears sporadically throughout the
saga as a contrarian voice disputing the organizational approach of the
Crowleys. Bauer has always insisted that the movement should have put its
emphasis first and foremost on improving the family life of its members, not on
changing the world.
Yet even in its earliest years, CFM groups were viewing the family
in relation to parish, local community, nation and world. CFM groups in the
1950s sponsored visitors to the United States, housed refugees from Cuba and
Indonesia, sponsored volunteer missionaries and went on mission vacations
themselves to Appalachia.
In the 1960s the priority turned to race as CFM members invited
black families into their homes, fought for fair housing laws and backed
neighborhood integration; groups from New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and
other cities participated in the famous Selma to Montgomery civil rights march
and in other demonstrations in the South.
The movement leaders took Vatican IIs call for improved
ecumenical relations seriously and literally. They invited Protestants into
their homes for living room dialogues, saw the movement take root in Episcopal
churches and even offered a Eucharistic service presided over by an
Episcopalian priest at one of the national conferences.
The Christian Family Movement was a major force in raising the
consciousness of its women members about their own roles in society, reports
Burns. At a 1967 meeting, veteran leader Madelyn Bonsignore told the women,
Christ seemed to think active, involved women were fine. ... So take
courage, you are firmly within the fold if you feel more useful at a city
council meeting than at a bridge event, though you may never get chosen
Catholic Mother of the Year.
Inevitably, such ideas led CFM members to question womens
role in the church itself, and gradually the solidarity between the lay members
and their clergy chaplains was sorely tested.
As Burns shows, many of CFMs most significant achievements
carried within themselves the seeds of controversy. Not every Catholic was open
to integration, ecumenism and political activism; not every Catholic relished
CFMs openly liberal stance. The movement appeared to many to be pushing
the envelope, interfering with the hierarchy in their usual, measured, cautious
oversight of the church.
And after 1964 the movement shrank: from a high of 50,000 couples
in the United States and Canada to 32,000 in 1967, to 16,000 in 1968, to 4,313
in 1974, to an all-time low of 1,100 couples in 1980.
Burns carefully separates the multitude of factors at work here:
In its ecumenical enthusiasm the Christian Family Movement got ahead of the
institutional church and lost the support of many bishops; in its unwavering
commitment to racial justice and alleged lack of attention to internal family
affairs it alienated some veteran members; in its disciplined and slow approach
to formation, CFM seemed too old-fashioned to many young, potential members who
wanted action now.
Burns also notes that the widespread emergence of women in the
work force had an especially debilitating effect on the movement because women,
who had always taken responsibility for the lions share of organizing and
implementing action, no longer had the time they previously devoted to these
tasks.
In addition, many avid CFM members, both male and female, were
drawn after Vatican II into activities directly related to the church -- into
parish councils and education and liturgy and a myriad of other lay ministries
that hadnt existed before. The old commitment to issues in the larger
world suffered.
Finally, Burns cites the malaise that affected Catholics,
particularly liberal Catholics in the early 1970s. CFM did not decline in a
vacuum. The church in the United States was in decline everywhere.
Shattered hopes
The decline was severely exacerbated by Pope Paul VIs
encyclical Humanae Vitae banning all forms of contraception. The
encyclical shattered the hopes of many that the Catholic church could
change, writes Burns, who stoutly denies that the Crowleys
well-known, personal dissent from the encyclical was itself a cause of CFM
decline.
Despite everything, the Christian Family Movement has survived,
albeit in truncated form (with about 2,000 families in the nation), according
to CFM co-director Kay Aitchison of Ames, Iowa, in a brief look at the past 25
years at the end of the book. The thrust today is toward family and parish
activities, with matters of political and ecclesial controversy relegated to
the background.
It is impossible to read about the Christian Family
Movements first sweeping 25 years without wondering: What would it take
to unleash again such a torrent of creative energy in church and society? And
where is this new locus of energy gestating -- awaiting the moment of birth?
What would it take?
Burns does not speculate. He merely quotes Patty Crowleys
simple explanation of how it all happened the first time: Great things occurred
within CFM because some CFM leader wanted them to take place. In
the movement there was the freedom to experiment, to try the untried, to
take a fling at something that may never have worked before. Over these years
we shudder to think of ... the ambitious projects that began and were never
finished. But some of them were. And they were finished because there was an
atmosphere in CFM that said, Lets go to it. Lets try
it.
For information about the Christian Family Movements July
1-4 golden jubilee celebration at Notre Dame, contact CFM, P.O. Box 272, Ames
IA 50010. Phone: (515) 232-7432.
Robert McClory writes from Chicago.
National Catholic Reporter, June 4,
1999
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