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

Notes

259 Notes Preface 1. Examples of such devotions include Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, He Did It All for You (Fort Worth, Tex.: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 2005); Pursuit of His Presence: Daily Devotionals to Strengthen Your Walk with God (Tulsa, Okla.: Harrison House, 2002); and From Faith to Faith: A Daily Guide to Victory (Tulsa, Okla.: Harrison House, 1999). In addition to their coauthored books, the Copelands have each penned their own books, including Gloria Copeland, God’s Will Is Prosperity (Fort Worth, Tex.: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 1978); Kenneth Copeland, The Laws of Prosperity (Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 2010), and Prosperity: The Choice Is Yours (Fort Worth, Tex.: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 1985). 2. Heather Rankle, interview with author, Tres Dias International Secretariat, Rockford, Ill., March 14, 2010. Introduction 1. Throughout the book, I will use the term Cursillo de Cristiandad and the abbreviation CdC to refer to the three-day weekend experience that originated in Mallorca in 1944. Other designations I will use include Cursillo (to refer to the Catholic version); short course in Christianity; Cursillo weekend; Cursillo retreat; and Cursillo encounter. I will refer to the Protestant versions of the weekend retreat by their specific names, such as Tres Dias, Via de Cristo, and Walk to Emmaus. 2. It was Bishop Juan Hervás who renamed Bonnín’s “Cursillos of Conquest” weekend Cursillo de Cristiandad (“Cursillos in Christianity”) when he arrived in Mallorca as auxiliary bishop in 1946. First Conversations at Cala Figuera (Dallas: National Cursillo Center, 2004), 80. 3. In her book Righteous: Dispatches from the Youth Evangelical Movement (New York: Viking, 2009), Lauren Sandler makes a strong case for calling the twenty-first-century movement of evangelical youth the “Disciple Generation.” She relates calls the movement a newer version of previous Christian awakenings. Though this is a smart and savvy portrayal of evangelical youth today, it is telling that this author, a journalist, finds it necessary to contextualize this movement by relating it to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century antecedents. 4. The scholarship on Vatican II and post–Vatican II Catholicism, for example, has mostly examined how American Catholics responded to the Church Council, and to U.S. social movements (second-wave feminism, Vietnam, post–civil rights America), but the premier Catholic lay movement of the 1960s, the Cursillo movement , has received little or no mention in peer-reviewed academic literature. 5. This book offers an in-depth study of mainline Christian laypeople’s moods and motivations, as well as a history of an important but unrecognized post-1950s 260 Notes to Pages 5–12 Christian movement. It addresses what Kevin M. Schultz and Paul Harvey call the missing history of Catholics and Protestants: “If history is the study of change over time, then to ignore one of the important factors (religion) that has motivated Americans throughout this nation’s history is not only to write bad history, but to fail to understand many of the driving forces that animate those that live around us.” Schultz and Harvey, “Everywhere and Nowhere: Recent Trends in American Religious History and Historiography,” JAAR 78, no. 1 (2010): 152. 6. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the northern Illinois Catholic Cursillos were held at the Villa de Chantal until more spacious accommodations were required. Since 2002, Catholic Cursillos in this region have been held at the Believers Together Center at Christ the King parish church in Moline, Illinois. 7. Five years later, in 2010, a new magnet school opened its doors to K–12 students . I am connected to the Villa and to local Cursillo culture, having interviewed dozens of local cursillistas who attended their Cursillo at the Villa. Moreover, my sons, Cormac and Declan, are students at the school (Rock Island Center for Math and Science, RICMS) and my daughter, Josie, will attend once she is of school age. Katherine Burton’s Bells on Two Rivers: The History of the Sisters of the Visitation of Rock Island, IL (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1965) documents the history of the Villa de Chantal. 8. Only recently has Bonnín been credited in print as the primary initiator and founder of the CdC. The Fundación Eduardo Bonnín Aguiló (FEBA) has corrected the historiographical error that Juan Hervás founded the movement. 9. Cursillistas are trained at leaders’ schools, which usually take place over a weekend. During this time, cursillistas practice their rollos and prepare for the weekend they will be working. 10. I am grateful to Augustana College for providing me with a Freistat Research...