Abstract
This article attempts, first of all, from an epistemological and methodological viewpoint, to transcend the dilemma posed by the so-called participant observation method as it is applied to groups which are constituted around a particular ideology : one must either adopt the ideology in question and lack objec tivity, or maintain distance towards the ideology and imperil the group's existence.
The article continues by showing the functioning of some charismatic renewal groups within Belgian Catholicism. The a priori systematization of every reality and all discourse that occur within these groups blocks the symbolic process upon which the movement justifies its existence. Consequently, the movement which presents itself as innovating and renovating is caught up in a structure which imposes its stereotypes upon the guilt-ridden adherents. The Charismatic renewal thus be comes an instrument of conservatism and of the demobili zation of certain dynamic movements induced in Catholicism after Vatican II.