Kristy Nabhan-Warren - The Cursillo Movement in America: Catholics, Protestants, and Fourth-Day Spirituality

The Cursillo Movement in America

Catholics, Protestants, and Fourth-Day Spirituality

Kristy Nabhan-Warren

The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill

2013 THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Set in Utopia and Gotham by Integrated Book Technology. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Part of this book has been reprinted in revised form from Blooming Where Were Planted: Mexican-Descent Catholics Living Out Cursillo de Cristiandad, U.S. Catholic Historian, Remembering the Past, Engaging the Present: Essays in Honor of Moises Sandoval, 28, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 99125.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nabhan-Warren, Kristy.
The Cursillo movement in America : Catholics, Protestants, and
Fourth-Day spirituality / Kristy Nabhan-Warren. First edition
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4696-0715-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-4696-0716-0 (pbk.)

1. Cursillo movement in the United States. 2. United States Church history20th century. I. Title.

BX2375.A3N33 2013
269.6dc23 2013008286

cloth 17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1
paper 17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1

To Steve, Cormac, Declan, and Josie
for your love, patience, and belief in me

PREFACE
New Beginnings

INTRODUCTION
Finding Christ and Community inAmerica: The Significance of Catholic and Protestant Cursillos and the Fourth-Day Movement

CHAPTER ONE
Los Orgenes Mallorquines:Eduardo Bonnn Aguil and the Birth of the Cursillo de Cristiandad Movement

CHAPTER TWO
Coming to America: The Early History ofU.S. Cursillos de Cristiandad

CHAPTER THREE
A Focus on Christian Experience: TheProtestant Cursillos (Tres Dias, Walk to Emmaus, Via de Cristo) and the National EpiscopalCursillo

CHAPTER FOUR
Blooming Where Were Planted: U.S.Catholics and Protestants Talk about Living Their Cursillo

CHAPTER FIVE
Teens Encounter Christ: Pioneer in YoungAdult Weekend Experiences

CHAPTER SIX
Feeding Bodies andSouls: Kairos Prison Ministry International

CHAPTER SEVEN
Maverick yet Mainstream: Christ RenewsHis Parish and Great Banquet

EPILOGUE
Cursillo Weekends, Fourth-Day Spirituality, and the Future

APPENDIX ONE
Cursillo Chronology

APPENDIX TWO
Glossary

Eduardo Bonnn with his mother and siblings, ca. 1918,

Eduardo Bonnn as a soldier,

Cursillistas at the first weekend Cursillo, Cala Figuera, Mallorca, ca. 1944,

Eduardo Bonnn,

Robert Franks and Eduardo Bonnn, Palma de Mallorca, 1998,

Tracy Schmidlin and Jerry Lemcke, Via de Cristo Ultreya, Orlando, Florida, 2010,

East Chicago cursillista Adelina Torres, 2008,

The TEC Hippy Jesus, 1968 TEC rally, Battle Creek, Michigan,

1968 TEC rally, Battle Creek, Michigan,

Dorothy Gereke and Father Matt Fedewa,

TEC boys weekend, ca. 1966,

Hauling food and supplies for a KI weekend, Rockville, Indiana, 2010,

Heather Rankle and Judy Woolverton say they became good friends in Houstons Tres Dias community and turn to each other for support and guidance. Tres Dias weekends in Texas are more elaborate than elsewhere because well, you know how everything is bigger in Texas! exclaims Heather, an attractive, enthusiastic blonde in her forties with a ton of energy. Both women talk about their experiences as both pilgrims and team members. Christs suffering and sacrifice are emphasized in their weekend courses, and when the pastor reads the story of Jesus crucifixion, as a team member Judy has hit a pole with a hammer to make the sound effects of Jesus hands and feet being nailed to the cross. It really gets to people, you know, and we focus on all of the sensessight, sound, taste, and hearingin our weekends because we want people to get involved with their whole selves, Heather says. The Via de la Rosa, Jesus final walk before his death, is reenacted during their Tres Dias weekend, and it really hits home with the women who make the course, according to Heather and Judy.

Heather says she was not brought up in the church and that her parents were just teenagers themselves when they raised her. The lack of God in her childhood home was a generational curse, she believes. After she took a wrong turn in high school, her life began spiraling downward, out of control. By the time she turned eighteen, she had been pregnant twice, and before she turned twenty-one, she had overdosed on cocaine twice. The second overdose led Heather to a drug rehabilitation center, and while she says she cleaned up [her] life for a while after rehab, she still felt empty inside. And yet Heather did manage to graduate from high school, take some college courses, and get a good job. She says she knows that it was Gods handiwork that she stayed alive and out of jail, because when she met the man she thought she would marry, her life began another downward spiral and she was again addicted to drugs and unhappy times.

In those early days as a new on-fire Christian, Heather was like a sponge trying to soak up everything she could. She had never felt so good in her life and wanted to do everything she could to keep it that way. She found herself wanting to learn more, and she would wake up in the morning two hours early to read, pray, and just sit still and listen for His guidance. According to Heather, the more I read and obeyed, the more things in my life started to improve. I quit all my bad habits, drugs, cussing, and the hardest of allcigarettes. The Lord took all those desires away and replaced them with a desire to know Him and work for His kingdom to do His good will.

Heather moved back in with her parents, started going to an awesome church and began seeing an awesome Christian counselor. She says she never felt so much love and freedom in her entire life. It was during these first few months as a new Christian that Heather was invited by her aunt to go to a Walk to Emmaus retreat in Baton Rouge. Heather says that for me if it was a place I could learn more about Jesus, I was all in. She did tell me they had a waiting list so she wasnt sure if I would get in this time. But it must have been my time to go because she called me a few weeks prior to the weekend and said she didnt know how but my name got to the top of the list. That was God at work.

Soon after her Emmaus experience, Heather found herself in her hairdressers shop. Her life was now radically different from the day her hairdresser first witnessed to her. Heather was now a committed, practicing Christian, clean and sober, and in a relationship with a really, really good man named Richie. Her hairdresser again put God into my life by mentioning the local Christian movement Tres Dias. She shared the information with Richie. God puts certain people in your life for a reason. We had been going out for a while and I thought that this might be the one, you know? Richie agreed to make his Tres Dias weekend before Heather made hers because it is really important for the man to make his first because he is the head of the relationship, as it says in the Bible.

When we first met at the northern Illinois Tres Dias gathering, Heather beamed when she talked about then-boyfriend, now-husband Richie, who returned from his Tres Dias weekend totally pumped, on fire for Jesus, in love with the Lord. Especially memorable was Richies marriage proposal to her soon after his Tres Dias weekend. Heather made her Tres Dias weekend shortly after, and says it was the best experience of her life. If God can love someone like me who has made many bad choices in my life and can make me new again, clean, then He can love anyone. Her Tres Dias weekend was an amazing experience during which she felt Christs love in ways I had never felt before. Making her Tres Dias weekend showed Heather that she was worthy of Christs love and that she had a lot to offer the world. After her weekend encounter was over, Heather wasted no time finding a reunion group that gathers every week for prayer and conversation over lunch. The group continually renews her and gives her the strength she needs.