News Alert

Our Sunday Visitor (a Catholic weekly), 7/20/97: Anyone who watches the news knows what a Promise Keepers rally looks like: stadiums teeming with men, many visibly weeping, some dropping to their knees in emotional prayer, thousands rushing forward to publicly repent of sins ranging from adultery to embezzlement.

While there are no hard figures, some say that 10-20 percent of those men are Catholic. And, recently, Promise Keepers, a largely evangelical movement, has taken steps to attract even more Catholic men to its events and principles of discipleship.

• At its March meeting, Promise Keepers’ board of directors welcomed Mike Timmis as a new member. A Detroit-area lawyer and businessman, Timmis is a longtime leader in the Catholic charismatic renewal.

• At several rallies this year, Promise Keepers has spotlighted Catholic evangelist Jim Berlucchi as a speaker.

• In June, Promise Keepers hosted a “Catholic summit” at its headquarters in Denver, sounding out Catholic volunteers and leaders from around the country.

• And earlier this year, Promise Keepers amended its statement of faith, revising the lines that Catholics had found offensive.

Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney told Our Sunday Visitor recently that full Catholic participation was his intention from the start.

“Back in 1992, at our first stadium event, we very clearly stated from the podium that we eagerly welcomed the participation of Roman Catholics, and we’ve had scores of Roman Catholics attend and go back to their churches excited....”

John Sengenberger is one Catholic man raising two cheers for Promise Keepers, even as he seems to hold back the third.

As executive director of Christian out- reach at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio [strongly supportive of the Medjugorje apparitions], Sengenberger cites Promise Keepers as the inspiration for the men’s conferences his own office has sponsored since 1995.

“At that time, Promise Keepers was having an incredible impact on men across the country,” he said. “It was spreading like wildfire. But it didn’t have all the things we’d want in it as Catholics.”

Sengenberger invited representatives from Promise Keepers to visit the university. “We had some frank discussions and told them we needed to see some Catholic involvement on the leadership level.”

When Steubenville hosted its first men’s conference in 1995, Sengenberger invited two Promise Keepers officials to attend: Dale Schlafer, who was at that time chair- man of the board, and Glenn Wagner, a vice president.

“It was their first time in a Catholic evangelistic setting,” Sengenberger said. “They were impressed. When they were leaving, we invited them to go through our bookstore and take out any books they wanted. They went home with all kinds of theology books, Vatican II teachings....Dale took a set of the Liturgy of the Hours. The following year, he told me he’d incorporated it into his daily prayer, so Glenn asked for one, too.”

Both men returned to Steubenville for the 1996 men’s conference, where Sengenberger took them to a Eucharistic Holy Hour.

“I took them aside and explained what we were doing, how this only makes sense if you believe in the Real Presence of Jesus. That night we were down by the stage, and I remember going down on my knees, then prostrate, down on my face—and right next to me was Glenn Wagner, doing the same thing.” [TBC: Encouraged to worship the piece of bread—but prohibited as a non- Catholic from eating it at the Mass?!]

Yet profound differences remained between the evangelicals of Promise Keepers and Catholics who were sympathetic. Last year, Promise Keepers published a “statement of faith” with lines that seemed to be crafted to exclude Catholics —or force them to reject their Catholic faith.

Section five of the Promise Keepers credo reads: “We believe that man was created in the image of God, but because of sin, was alienated from God. That alienation can be removed only by accepting, through faith alone, God’s gift of salvation, which was made possible by Christ’s death.”

“Faith alone” is a key doctrine of the Protestant Reformation. Though the phrase appears nowhere in Scripture, it was inserted by Martin Luther into his German translation of the Bible.

Concerned about this development at Promise Keepers, Sengenberger had several Catholic theologians review the statement and present their objections to Wagner last summer.

Early this year, Promise Keepers revised the statement in a way that passed theological muster with those Catholics: “Only through faith, trusting in Christ alone for salvation, which was made possible by His death and resurrection, can that alienation be removed.” [Salvation is no longer God’s gift; see next month’s “Q&A.”]

Paul Edwards, Promise Keepers’ vice president for advancement, explained that the statement of faith is a “dynamic” document, and that Promise Keepers is open to change.

“Truth and unity are equal, but in tension,” said Edwards, who was raised a Catholic but now attends a nondenominational church. “We try to present truth, not washed down, yet not truth that desolves [sic] interdenominational squabbles.”

Timmis, the Detroit Catholic now on the Promise Keepers board, added that when the group has stepped on Catholic toes, it has largely been because of insensitivity rather than malice or aggression.

“They want me to raise the sensitivity,” he explained. Moreover, “there’s a great sense of repentance for past misunderstandings, which were mostly sins of omission.”

The omissions were evident as Schlafer addressed Steubenville’s conference this past June. Though he spoke before an audience almost exclusively Catholic, Schlafer’s sources were almost exclusively Protestant: Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather, Increase Mather and Billy Graham.

When asked about this, Schlafer and Edwards acknowledged the shortcoming. But Edwards, opening a bag of papal encyclicals he had bought at Steubenville’s bookstore said, “We’re trying.”

Yet the unease remains, and for some Catholics it is an unease with Promise Keepers’ very foundations—and its founder.

McCartney is a former Catholic. While he was defensive football coach at the University of Michigan, he was active in Christ the King Association, a Catholic charismatic community based in Ypsilanti, Mich., and at that time associated with the ecumenical Word of God [extreme discipleship] covenant community. He referred to himself as a “born-again Catholic.”

“The service and fellowship in Ann Arbor were a celebration every Sunday,” he recalled. But when he took the job as head coach at the University of Colorado, everything changed.

“I couldn’t find that worship in Boulder,” he said, “and my family was dying as a result. So I took them to a nondenominational church, and they immediately caught fire again.”

McCartney has since been associated with the Boulder Valley Vineyard, which is affiliated with the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, a nondenominational movement whose leaders are often accused of anti- Catholicism.

Still, as recently as 1995, McCartney was identifying himself privately as a Catholic and admitting that he still prayed the Rosary. Today, he denies both, though he praises the formation he received as a Catholic.

“I went to Catholic grade school, where I was taught the most basic catechism message: Why are we on earth? To know, love and serve God,” he said.

McCartney’s journey away from the Catholic faith remains a scandal to some Catholics, who fear that other men will follow in his footsteps.

Sengenberger acknowledges the risk. “If you’re a Catholic guy and you go to your pastor and say, ‘Hey, I had this experience, and now I’d like to do something more,’ he might not know what to tell you. There’s a chance we can lose men like that.”

But, he added, “We’re not going to stop Catholic men from going to Promise Keepers when they’ re invited.”

Indeed, in 1996, 1.1 million men attended Promise Keepers’ 22 rallies, and perhaps 110,000 of them were Catholic.

“We have to be honest. This movement is doing something we haven’t been doing,” Sengenberger said. “We have to heed Vatican II, which said that anything good and true in the faith of our separated brethren belongs to the whole Church.”

The U.S. bishops’ Committee on Marriage and Family Life admitted as much in its 1996 position paper on Promise Keepers, saying that men “may be finding in Promise Keepers something they are not finding in their own Church—namely, a viable and attractive ministry to men.”

Berlucchi praises Promise Keepers for “bringing men together for fellowship and inspiration, and doing it in the context of good male environments, like stadiums, with a lot of classic male associations. That’s inspired.”

The U.S. bishops outlined a number of ways men could continue to grow once they “came home” from a Promise Keepers experience: “discussion groups, Bible study, prayer meetings, conferences, retreats, devotions....”

Sengenberger agrees that follow-up is key: “The best thing a pastor can do is affirm these men’s conversion of heart, assure them that he’d love to see them flourish in the parish. Then give them something to do. Don’t just tell them to volunteer for bingo or put a new roof on the rectory. If they find a home in their parish, they won’t go running to the [Protestant] church down the street.”