Spain’s bishops have warned that forms of evangelization that leverage high emotions to proclaim the Gospel risk distorting Catholic spirituality and can lead to forms of abuse.

The bishops highlighted those concerns in a doctrinal note from the Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, published in March. The note warns that an “emotional bombardment” employed as part of some methods of first evangelization can become a form of spiritual abuse or promote an “emotional reductionist” form of Christian spirituality, even when such techniques may be used with the best of intentions. The document also warns that those with an “overly emotional faith” are more susceptible “to psychological manipulation” by evangelizers.

The document puts the instruction within the context of “the various signs of a rebirth of the Christian faith in society,” particularly among young people, and “the creativity of the various initiatives of first proclamation [of the Gospel] that the Holy Spirit has stirred up in many ecclesial movements and associations.”

Despite the energy and conversions those events may generate, multiple dangers exist, according to the Spanish bishops. Evangelization based on strong emotions may lead to an incomplete transmission of the faith, one that does not contribute to spiritual maturity but that teaches converts to rely on emotionally intense experiences to affirm and strengthen their faith. New believers can become “consumers of impactful experiences and insatiable seekers of the gratification of spiritual feeling.”

The bishops compared the phenomenon to the current populist political climate where many politicians try to induce citizens to vote for them through emotional appeals to fear or anger.

“In the spiritual life, too, there is a danger of trying to provoke certain behaviors through emotional bombardment,” the document states.

Words of caution

Rafael Vázquez Jiménez, the secretary of the Episcopal Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Spanish bishops’ conference, told America by email that the instruction was not intended to point to any specific group. It seeks “rather to open a personal and communal reflection on the methods of evangelization of the initial proclamation, and the proposal of faith that is being made especially to young people.”

The document, he said, provides criteria for discernment of evangelization methods that should be used by bishops, parish priests and laypeople. He added that the statement was not meant to provide a complete exposition on spiritual abuse, but to point out certain dangers.

Paul Fahey, a licensed mental health counselor who has dedicated much of his practice to addressing spiritual abuse, told America that the Spanish bishops’ note offers much needed words of caution for the U.S. church, too.

“I found it excellent,” he said. “Lights and music to help others enter into more embodied prayer are not abusive. The pomp and circumstance of the Easter Vigil can be emotional. But it becomes abusive when the intention is to use the crafted emotional experience as a means to an end.”

Mr. Fahey could not say if a similar doctrinal note from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is warranted by conditions and experiences in the United States, but he did believe a similar discussion and discernment of evangelization methods could be helpful.

The abuse that the Spanish bishops worried about can have a variety of manifestations, including “emotional peer pressure, which causes individuals to be forced to ‘feel’ the same as others so as not to marginalize themselves from the experience.” On the most serious end of spiritual abuses, the bishops’ document warns of using “false supernatural or mystical experiences…as a means of exercising dominion over consciences by annulling the autonomy of persons or of committing other types of abuses.”

Many Catholics in Spain and other nations, including the United States, have experienced conferences and retreats directed toward young adults that involve dramatic settings and music. They often include speakers recounting personal stories of life-changing encounters with God and theatrical exercises. They typically culminate either in Mass or Eucharistic adoration.

Those evangelizing events can generate a palpable excitement among attendees and provoke strong emotional responses, including weeping. They are often sponsored and led by ecclesial movements with a charismatic spirituality.

In Spain, these efforts have been generating conversions to Catholicism and renewed participation in the church, according to national Catholic media. In recent years, several Christian music concerts and religious-themed conferences have filled large venues with thousands of participants. Retreats are offered widely.

Emaús retreats began in the Archdiocese of Miami in 1978, emerging out of the Cursillo retreat model. (Other retreats descended from the Cursillo model, under names such as Kairos, Search, Emmaus and Encounter, are widely used in Catholic schools and young adult ministry in the United States.) Emaús retreats have become very popular in Spain over the last decade, but even before the Spanish bishops’ document was released, the way some groups were using the retreat method had been called into question as secretive and manipulative.

Emaús participants are prohibited from sharing details of the retreat, a characteristic that has been widely criticized in Spain. Participants described exercises designed to exploit participants’ psychological wounds and personal tragedies to elicit a conversion response.

One priest who had agreed to hear confessions for a retreat told the Spanish Catholic magazine Vida Nueva that in the end he decided not to hear confessions but instead to simply talk with those who came to him. He explained that he found many of the participants “in shock” from the group exercise that preceded the opportunity for confession. He questioned whether retreatants had genuine freedom and use of reason to participate in the sacrament.

Finding a sustainable path

Father Carlos Hernández Prieto coordinates Emaús retreats in Astorga, a small town in northwest Spain. He believes that Emaús may have come under particular focus in Spain because the retreat movement burst into the church without being integrated into the wider life of Spanish Catholicism.

He interprets the bishops’ doctrinal note as an expression of their concern that evangelization with strong emotional components may not provide a path to ongoing formation to sustain and deepen a budding Christian life. “The greatest fear of the bishops’ is that [such events] don’t help participants to sustain and preserve [their faith],” Father Hernández said. “I see this happen.”

While Emaús retreats are now often hosted at parish churches, catechesis offered in Spanish parishes focuses on sacramental preparation of children and adolescents, according to Father Hernández. There are few opportunities for ongoing spiritual development for adults.

Catholics looking for experiences to help them deepen and practice their faith outside the sacraments often must seek out movements and organizations beyond parishes, he said. This situation, compared to a perhaps more robust parish life in the United States, can make it more difficult for retreatants to continue to nurture their newfound faith.

The Catholic Church in Spain, Father Hernández added, also has had a more limited experience with different forms of Christian expression, like the Charismatic movement, that have become familiar aspects of church life in both North and South America.

Eduardo Brunet and Rafael Olmedo have participated in a number of Emaús retreats and wrote a book about their experiences. They acknowledged that the experience of an initial conversion can indeed be deeply emotional for retreatants, but argued that Emaús is intended to inspire participants to grow spiritually far beyond that initial fervor.

The retreat, Mr. Brunet said, is meant to provoke “an opening of the heart so that the Lord may enter and that will lead you to a path, to a mission that is for your whole life and that must unfold in the rest of your being.”

According to Mr. Vázquez, a danger in these settings is that organizers may set themselves up as the spiritual leader for the new converts, “exerting an excessive influence on people’s conscience by restricting their freedom or isolating them from the ecclesial experience of faith, which would hinder the encounter with the authentic face of Christ.”

Abuses, he added, should be reported in the dioceses where they occur so they can be investigated.

In fact, such reports and investigations have already occurred in Spain.

A budding religious community of women, the Daughters of Merciful Love, started in Spain in 2007, frequently sponsored Emaús-modeled retreats and Effeta retreats aimed at young people. It was investigated by the Archdiocese of Madrid and later by the Vatican after reports surfaced of various psychological and spiritual abuses, including abuse of authority by the community’s founder, María Milagrosa Pérez Caballero.

The community has been prohibited from assisting with retreats in parishes or hosting their own. According to the investigation, the retreats led by the group were the principal methods of both recruiting new members and initiating them into a cult-like dynamic of psychological control by Ms. Pérez. She was expelled as superior for the community in 2025 by archdiocesan officials.

Authentic evangelization teaches and proposes, but it does not coerce, Mr. Fahey said.

He added that spiritual leaders should not offer interpretations of a participant’s emotional responses. An abusive element comes into play, he said, “when it’s communicated that the emotional experience means God is here or that he is asking you to discern your vocation.”

“People must be given the space and freedom to bring these emotional experiences into dialogue with the Lord in the innermost sanctuary of their heart in order to discern God’s will,” Mr. Fahey said. “If those in authority suppress or bypass that freedom, then we move into the realm of spiritual imposition and abuse of conscience…. Then the ground is tilled for intentional and unintentional manipulation.”

He also agreed with the Spanish bishops that group pressure is a special concern and that young people are particularly vulnerable to manipulation.

“This is a real problem in high-control religious groups where the explicit or implicit threat of ‘not belonging’ is always present,” he said.

Bridget Ryder is a freelance writer based in Spain.