Father John Vogler, administrator of Visitation/St. Ann Shrine Parish in North St. Louis, said those relationships are worth examining. “If somebody is restless, they might want to begin a relationship with God or improve it.”

He compared the challenge to the one facing Marriage Encounter in reaching out to couples. “People who seem to be satisfied in their marriage tend not to want to go to a Marriage Encounter, even though it’s for people who have a good marriage. There’s a tendency to believe that if everything seems to be OK, then why bother?”

People view their relationship with God in the same way, Father Vogler said. “If we are satisfied with the way things are going, why bother to grow, to change, to get better?”

Fortunately, other people realize there is more and want to get better in their relationships, he said.

“The great commandments — love God and love your neighbor — are the front legs of the tripod image” used by Cursillo, also called piety and apostolic action, the priest said.

“For the sake of our relationships with God and our neighbor, we realize we need to study, and that’s the back leg of the tripod.”

Those concepts are a focus as Cursillistas begin to share their faith in small groups, he added, noting that he is studying Spanish in order to reach out to more Catholics.

Father Vogler said he borrows an idea from Father Art Baranowski, who liked the Cursillo idea of group reunions and whose vision of restructuring parishes into small communities is described in his book, “Creating Small Faith Communities.” 

“His phrase was: ‘Ordinary people helping each other apply their faith to everyday situations in life regularly.’ I stole that phrase from him, and that’s what we do in group reunions,” Father Vogler said.

Cursillo, he added, promotes the idea that “if we believe this world can change — and we pray for it with ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done’ — then to move society and the world in the right direction it’s going to take people learning to love in a healthy, honest way.”

The way to do that is to introduce people to Christ, bring them “into the civilization of love that the pope talks about.”

Father Vogler credited Cursillo with bringing about his work as a chaplain in the city and county jails and with the Criminal Justice Ministry of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

After a Cursillo event in the early 1970s, he accompanied a priest who was going to visit the city jail. Realizing that the Church had ministries in education and in reaching out to the poor and sick, but none in the jails and prisons, Father Vogler and others in Cursillo enlisted the help of a bishop and those leading Catholic Charities, the Human Rights Commission and others in establishing a formal presence. Out of that effort the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, formed its Criminal Justice Ministry.