Pope John Paul II’s judgment of the “new movements in the Church,” which occurs in an encyclical (Redemptoris Missio) devoted to the Church’s missionary task, is but the most authoritative among a whole host of similar judgments, pronounced more en passant, that one
could gather from other contexts.
It is not enough, however, simply to record this judgment. It is crucial to point out that there is a theology undergirding the Pope’s conviction that the movements are “one of the most important fruits of the springtime of the Church foretold by the Second Vatican Council.”2
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1. John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 72.
2. “Message to the World Congress of Ecclesial Movements,” 29 May 1998.