Apostolic Movements in the Catholic Church

Several apostolic movements coin the fife of the Catholic church in Austria - f.e. Cursillo, Neokatechumenat, Opus Dei, Catholic Pathfinders, Forum "We are the Church". They show very different faces, and partly they are conflictive concerning church politics. In pastoral theology their importance for the church and the society was rarely reflected, which might be the consequence of its traditional concentration on the parish and its pastoral needs. At least five reasons make the pastoral-theological studies in this field urgent: the pastorit for groups with special concern has developed independently from the parish pastorit, the parishes suffer from a multiple crises of faith traditioning, sects and new religious movements compete with the churches in a socially more and more recognized way, on the market of esoterics even christians well integrated in church life find some inspiration for a postmodern shape of their faith, the enormous socio-political and ethic problems of late-modern societies demand for laic initiatives in an explicitely Christian co-responsibility for the future of the (world`s) society. Considering this background the apostolic movements must be studied in five directions by pastoral theology - above one or the other actual church conflict, which up to now mostly motivated reflections on them: their ideas of the human, the church, the society, and the responsibility for the future; their comprehension of religion, faith, spirituality, and piety; their structual and personal integration in the church, and their relations with the parishes; their concret ways of shaping economics, politics, culture, and lifestyles, especially regarding the consequences for the poor, the ignored, and the marginalized.