But if the Way's mission is to expand the ranks of practicing Catholics and excite those whose faith has gone cold, it also has been, on occasion, controversial and divisive. In some parishes, congregants have complained that the small groups, meeting apart from the larger church community, are secretive; that they engage in atypical liturgical practices; that they do it all with fleeting regard for tradition. At St. Charles, some of those worries, and others, were laid out in a series of letters to McIntyre.