Please understand that I respect Dr. Healy as a person and that my personal relationship to her is collegial and amicable, despite the fact that we have agreed to disagree on this topic and each of us thinks the other dead wrong!😀
I believe most of our differences could be easily resolved if the CCR did two things: replaced the word “tongues” (1) with “jubilation” for their unintelligible nonlinguistic utterances, and (2) with “languages” for biblical references “tongues,” which is what the New Testament Greek always means, whether in Mark, Acts, or 1 Corinthians.
Readers are welcome to watch the Renewal Ministries video presentation if they wish. I have provided a “painfully-accurate” transcript below (in black), with my own responses (in red). Video time signatures are placed in brackets at the beginning of paragraphs.
“The Gift of Tongues Explained [Mary Healy],” Renewal Ministries (June 19, 2024) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxsarxDljEc - 31,426 views
_______________________________
RALPH MARTIN:
[0:10] Hello. My name is Ralph Marin, President of Renewal Ministries and professor of theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit [Martin is no longer employed at the seminary]. Every Wednesday, either myself or Peter Herbeck offer a new video trying to encourage, inform, inspire, alert those who care to listen to our videos, which it’s quite a few right now [31,426 views of this video alone as of last count (on 05/29/2026), and climbing!]. Ah, and we’re really grateful for your viewership.
[0:37] This week, our primary video is not going to be by myself or Peter but we invited Dr. Mary Healy, a colleague of mine at Sacred Heart Seminary and a good friend of Renewal Ministries. She’s actually an official adviser to us. And those of you who don’t know Dr. Mary Healy know that, you know, . . . you just need to know who she is. She’s co-editor of an incredibly wonderful new commentary on Sacred Scripture called A Catholic Biblical Commentary. And, uh, she herself has author of a number of the volumes, including The Gospel of Mark, which is extremely popular. She’s also been appointed to the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which is about the highest honor you could ever have, you know, as a biblical scholar. And she’s also been appointed as an advisor, as a consultant, to the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Sacraments. Besides that, she’s just a holy woman. She’s single for the Lord, she’s a consecrated virgin, and she’s just so insightful and such a wonderful person that we’ve asked her to comment on a big controversy going on right now. There’s a lot of, a lot of videos, a lot of YouTube stuff going on sort of talking about the gift in tongues, the gift of tongues, as part of a wider critique or criticism or attack on the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, which itself is puzzling because there’s never been a movement so thoroughly scrutinized by theologians and bishops, so completely uh evaluated, discerned as a legitimate and important movement of the Holy Spirit by pope after pope, including establishing the Catholic Charismatic Renewal [CCR] as an official organization uh recognized by the pope as a public canonical person with offices in the Vatican.
[In this statement, Martin makes a number of assumptions that are questionable. He assumes that the beliefs and practices of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal [CCR] have all been placed beyond question because of the support and endorsement that certain clerics have extended to the CCR. These clerics include, most memorably, Cardinal Suenens, who became what Alan Schreck calls the CCR’s “Cardinal Protector” after the Second Vatican Council. Four years before the CCR was established, Suenens read a speech on the floor of that Council in 1963 pitting a “charismatic dimension” of the Church against its “institutional dimension” – a speech ghostwritten by the famous theological dissident, Hans Küng, with the express aim of “democratizing” the Church (his word). I mention this because these “democratizing” trends in the Church have led to the “synodal Church” movement that has so exercised and dismayed Martin in recent years. Pope John XXIII expressed the hope that Vatican II would yield a “New Pentecost” and “New Springtime” in the Church, though it’s not at all clear that all the aforementioned individuals would have agreed with the CCR on what the “charismatic dimension” of the Church or a “New Pentecost” means. The CCR also counts among its supporters the post-Conciliar popes who welcomed charismatic assemblies in Rome, most notably Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Francis. However, like most of the CCR leadership, Martin overlooks the many warnings, concerns, and criticisms concerning the CCR by these popes, some of them surprisingly blunt and even biting. There are also notable areas of CCR practice and belief where CCR leadership openly defies or ignores certain proscribed practices explicitly condemned by their “Cardinal Protector,” Cardinal Suenens, such as “resting in the Spirit” or being “slain in the Spirit.” (See the last of Suenens’ Malines Documents, and for more details, see Blosser and Sullivan’s series, Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination, vol. 4: Commentary on 1 Corinthians 14 with Related Essays, esp. the concluding chapter.)]
RALPH MARTIN: (continuing):
[2:45] But even so, there’s just been incredible attacks – and one of the attacks is focusing on speaking in tongues. Lots of questions. Hey, maybe speaking in tongues is demonic, or well, maybe it happened in the early Church but it’s not for today. Or, is it really Catholic to speak in tongues? And if it is a legitimate gift, is it a gift that’s open to everybody, or not? So, I, we’ve asked Dr. Mary Healy, who’s an expert on these matters, who’s written many things on these matters, to do our video today and answer these questions about speaking in tongues. Mary, welcome!
[Note that Martin calls Mary Healy “an expert in these matters.” This should allow us to trust her judgment as reliably informed by a detailed and reliable understanding of historical theology. Yet, regrettably, this is one assumption our analysis will inevitably have to call into question.]
________________________________
MARY HEALY:
[3:22] Hello brothers and sisters. In this video, I want to clarify some things about the gift of tongues [NOT DEFINED YET]. But first, let’s pray and ask the Holy Spirit to come. Holy Spirit, spirit of the Father and Son, of manifold gifts, sanctifying gifts, charismatic gifts [NOT DEFINED YET], we adore you. And we ask you to come upon us and on the whole Church in a New Pentecost. Help us to open our hearts fully to you so that the Church may be built up and that there may be a New Evangelization and great harvest of souls, of lost sons and daughters coming home to the Father. And we ask this through Christ, Our Lord, Amen. Mary, Woman of Pentecost, Spouse of the Holy Spirit, who received the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation and again at Pentecost, Pray for us. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.”
[Note that Healy states that she wants to clarify some things about the “gift of tongues.” She doesn’t yet define what she means by this gift or by “charismatic gifts.” She first wants to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to come. There are many things I find winsome and touching about Healy’s talks. This is one of them. She knows how to bathe everything she says in a tone of fervent piety. She would make a terrific homilist. She prays. Her prayer for a “New Pentecost” repeats a common theme of Pope John XXIII and other popes of the Conciliar and post-Conciliar era, a theme regularly repeated by CCR leaders. Her prayer for a “great harvest of souls,” and for “lost sons and daughters” to come home to the Father reminds me of the language of Protestant missionaries among whom I grew up in Japan. This is how some of them talked and prayed. It should be noted here, however, that prayer and piety such as this are no guarantee that the opinions expressed by Prof. Healy are correct or credible. Piety is one thing. Accurate biblical and historical theology is another. Ideally, they go together. We’ll let the reader be the judge in what follows.]
Healy (continuing):
[4:35] Well, I have heard recently about some Catholics who used to pray in tongues but have stopped because they’ve been hearing these claims that tongues is spiritual dangerous, that it’s mass hysteria, that it may even be the devil. And, I think that’s tragic! So, I want to respond to those claims.
[These claims about spiritual danger, mass hysteria, and the devil are certain important and must be addressed, as Sullivan and I do – in passing – in our four-volume history of speaking in tongues. However, these are far from being the most important considerations for our purposes here. In fact, they can serve to distract us from the more fundamental question of basic errors of biblical and historical theology that are widespread in the CCR, such as the error of assuming that the contemporary Pentecostal and CCR practice of “speaking in tongues” is what St. Paul, the Church Fathers, and ecclesiastical writers up through the centuries, including Pope Benedict XIV, and many others have always meant by “speaking in tongues.” Our own research into the Church Fathers demonstrates that “tongue” (whether in Latin, Greek, Aramaic or Syriac) never referred anything more than either (1) the physical organ we call the “tongue,” or to (2) ordinary human language.]
[4:58] Now, most of what we know about the gift of tongues as a gift of the Holy Spirit is from the teaching of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians, especially ch. 14.
[Why does Healy say this? Do we not lean about the gift of the tongues from Luke’s account of the Apostles speaking in tongues on Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles? The reason Healy says that most of what we know about the gift of tongues as a “gift of the Holy Spirit” is found in 1 Corinthians is not only because St. Paul offers a more substantial discussion of this gift (Luke’s account in Acts doesn’t even mention the word “gift”), but because Paul’s discussion, on its face, seems to offer the most support for the charismatic assumption that “tongues” are not ordinary human languages. In Paul’s account, “tongues” seem mysterious. In fact, he suggests, it’s possible that nobody may understand the tongue-speaker (1 Cor 14:2). Like other Pentecostals and Catholic charismatic Bible scholars, Healy assumes that Paul is referring here to what many today call a “personal language of prayer and praise.” On a surface level, let me be the first to admit, this initially seems like a plausible assumption. However, be sure to read our concluding paragraph about 1 Corinthians at the very end of this post.]
[5:09] And he is responding there to what is evidently an immature use of tongues [One wonders what a “mature” use would look and sound like in Encounter Ministry rallies.] and the other gifts of the Holy Spirit, and an overvaluing of the gift of tongues [This strikes me as disingenuous: glossolalic “tongues” are the most widespread “charism” claimed by charismatics. A high premium is placed on learning how to “speak in tongues” in their way. One of my charismatic colleagues even offered to help me “lean how”! It is what early Protestant Pentecostals called the “initial evidence” of one’s having been “baptized in the Spirit,” or, for those in the CCR, a badge of membership in what Joseph Fichter calls The Catholic Cult of the Paraclete – the title of his 1975 book], and so he corrects the Corinthian Christians. And, yet, he also says “strive eagerly for the spiritual gifts.” [“Spiritual gifts” is a mistranslation of πνευματικά (“spiritual things”) in ch. 14:1 and misleadingly suggests paranormal “manifestations” which charismatics typically regard as “spiritual gifts.”] And he lists those gifts [in ch. 12, not 14: These gifts include service, working, words of wisdom, knowledge, faith, “mighty works” (often translated misleadingly as “miracles”), prophecy, tongues, interpretations of tongues, apostles, prophets, teachers, administrators, helpers, etc. This contradicts any assumption that 1 Cor 12-14 should be viewed as a treatise on the management of paranormal manifestations.], which include “tongues.” “Strive eagerly for them.” [In ch. 12:31, where Paul says to “earnestly desire the higher gifts,” he immediately moves to the higher, “more excellent way” that follows in ch. 13 – the way of LOVE. He offers no reason to suppose that the gift of tongues is more excellent than the gift of service, working, knowledge, faith, or the work of teachers, administrators, or helpers. The highest gift is love – higher even than “faith so as to move mountains” (ch. 13:2) . . .] He also says, “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than you all” [in 1 Cor 14:18]. And he says, “I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more, to prophesy.” [However, in 1 Cor 12:30, Paul also asks: “Do all speak in tongues?” – contradicting the common charismatic assumption that we should expect the Holy Spirit to distribute the gift of tongues to each of us, provided we just seek it. Furthermore, like other charismatic scholars, Healy overlooks Church Fathers, like Origen, who state that Paul’s reference to speaking in tongues “more than all of you” refers to his natural gift of languages he acquired and used throughout his missionary travels. (Origen, Comment. in epist. ad Rom., Bk 6.)]
[5:51] Now, if tongues [still no definition] were inherently evil or spiritually dangerous or hysterical, would he say that? Of course, not. He would give a stern warning. Avoid tongues, flee from tongues. But he doesn’t. He says “I want you all to speak in tongues.”
[Yes, but remember how he also asks, in the context of discussing the diversity of gifts and talents among the members of the body of Christ, “Do all speak in tongues?” – as he also asks: “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all interpret?” (ch. 12:29-30) And when it comes to “tongues,” a great deal rides on whether one gets the definition right. Healy assumes the Pentecostal non-linguistic redefinition of the early 1900s rather than the historical linguistic view of the Church.]
[6:10] We also see in the Catechism, para. 2003: “The gift of tongues is mentioned among the charisms of the Holy Spirit.” And it says, “Whatever their character – sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues – charisms are oriented towards sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church.” [Notice that when the Catechism, referring to tongues, says “whatever their character,” it makes no reference to the unintelligible utterances that the CCR calls “tongues.” Instead, it says that “sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the miraculous gift of tongues,” implying that at other times the gift may be understood in the ordinary non-miraculous sense in which we commonly speak of a person having “a gift for languages.” It its magisterial documents, the Church also plainly states the following: “Extraordinary gifts are not to be sought after, nor are the fruits of apostolic labor to be presumptuously expected from their use.” (Note that the word “rashly” as a modifier for “sought after,” found in previous translations of this text from Lumen gentium 12, has been dropped on the Vatican website, perhaps for emphasis.) The reason these extraordinary (miraculous) gifts are not to be sought is, first of all, because they are utterly gratuitous graces (gratia gratis data) that cannot be merited or earned by prayer or holiness; and secondly, because willfully seeking them can lead to deception, temptations of vanity, and even loss of faith, as St. John of the Cross states in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk. 3. Further, the Pontificale Romanum (1973) states in its Rite of Confirmation: Etsi hódie advéntus Spíritus Sancti dono linguárum non amplius declarátur (“In our day the coming of the Holy Spirit is no longer marked by the gift of tongues”). Charismatic authors typically seem either to avoid mentioning these magisterial texts or to be ignorant of them. One wonders how they can continue to treat what they call the “gift of tongues” as one of the most common and celebrated gifts of the Holy Spirit today. The reason should be obvious: they are assuming an entirely non-Catholic definition of “tongues.”]
[6:32] So, what, exactly, is the gift of tongues? Well, it’s clear from what St. Paul teachers in 1 Corinthians, that it refers to a gift of praying and praising God in a way that goes beyond human words, that goes beyond what can be articulated in one’s own language. It’s praying under the influence of the Holy Spirit – speaking under the influence of the Holy Spirit in a language you don’t understand. So, he says, “One who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God, for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the spirit.” [This is from 1 Cor 14:2]
[Finally, we have a definition! Let us call this DEFINITION #1: “WORDLESS JUBILATION.”
This view has a long history running back to the Protestant Pentecostal re-definition of “tongues” around 1907 – not as human language but as a “heavenly language of the Spirit” – a redefinition from which the CCR understanding of “tongues” was historically distilled. Here it is typically related to “praying in the Spirit” or “singing in the Spirit,” in a heightened state of spiritual enthusiasm (although Healy says that it doesn’t require a state of ecstasy). Today it is often called “a private language of prayer and praise” – notwithstanding the fact that a “private language,” as Ludwig Wittgenstein notes, contradicts the very purpose of language: communication. I agree that a certain way of reading 1 Cor 14:2 would seem to lend itself to this sort of interpretation. However, it has no support from what we’ve seen in our study of the Church Fathers and later ecclesiastical texts. A better word than “tongues” would be “jubilation,” since it has no intelligible linguistic content. Healy sometimes seems to take this view. Following Eddie Ensley in his book, Sounds of Wonder (1977, rpt. 2013), she claims that while this gift “seems to have been common in the patristic era, it went by another name: jubilation” (Healy, Healing, p. 201, n. 141, emphasis added). However, there is no lexical or historical basis for this claim. She and Ensley cite examples such as St. Augustine’s references to a “voice without words.” I agree that the semantic range of “jubilation” is broad enough to cover vocalizations “without words.” Ensley’s definition is so broad that it includes not only glossolalic “tongues,” but sighing, shouting for joy, whooping, yodeling, and the jubilus or melisma attached to the last syllable of the “Alleluia” in Gregorian chant. In fact, he writes, “It bears a close similarity to chant, mimicry, jingles, be-bop and nonsense or baby-talk” (Sounds of Wonder, p. 132, 2013 edition). However, no Latin, Greek, or Syriac lexicon or theological dictionary that we know of links “jubilation” to the word for “tongue” (glossa in Greek, lingua in Latin, or leshana in Syriac). No lexical connection exists. None. There has been plenty of “jubilating” through Church history – rejoicing, shouting for joy, glorifying God – but it was never linked to words, language, speaking, praying, or singing in tongues before Ensley’s speculative wishful thinking. Origen linked singing in tongues with Psalmody, which is not glossolalia.]
[7:18] Now Paul also talks about tongues as a message. A person sometimes has a gift of an utterance, a message in tongues, which is intended for a person or for the assembly of God’s people. And, in that case, he says, it needs an interpretation. So, the person should pray for the gift of interpretation, either for himself or for someone else. And then, once it’s interpreted, the message in tongues becomes a prophecy. It becomes a word that is understood and assimilated, and it builds up those who hear it. So, it edifies the church. Paul says whoever prays in tongues, edifies himself. Whoever prophesies, edifies the church. That’s why prophecy is greater.
[Here we have a second definition. Let us call it DEFINITION #2: “MESSAGING IN GIBBERISH.” This designation aims at conciseness and clarity, and is not intended as a slur.
If the “gift of an utterance” was not gibberish but simply an unknown foreign language, it could be easily translated orally (interpreted) by a bilingual person who knows the foreign language. The Pentecostal-charismatic narrative, by contrast, insists that the “tongue-speaker” who utters “mysteries in the spirit” (1 Cor 14:2) is speaking an unintelligible “heavenly language.” But why would God gift someone with a miraculous gift of unintelligible gibberish that has to first be explained by someone with yet another miraculous gift of “interpretation” to be made intelligible and rise to the level of “prophecy”? This is classic Protestant boilerplate Pentecostalism, but it’s ultimately not a viable position. Charismatic scholars often link these texts with 1 Cor 14:14 where Paul says “my mind is unfruitful” when praying in a tongue, assuming he means that he doesn’t understand what he is saying. Now, when Paul contrasts “tongues” with “prophecy” (1 Cor 14:2-3, and 18), it’s clear that he is distinguishing between intelligible and unintelligible languages, but not between non-linguistic tongues and linguistic prophecy. Rather, these verses are not about the languages themselves, but about the hearers. Paul does not say that that those who speak in tongues are as such unintelligible, but that hearers do not understand what is being said. (See Ekaputra Tupamahu, Contesting Languages, 117, 124).
The Pentecostal idea of “interpretation” gives a whole new meaning to the word – which reminds me of a story John Vennari relates about Gerry Matatics, a former seminary classmate of Scott Hahn and, like Hahn, a Presbyterian before embracing Catholicism. When Matatics began having doubts about Pentecostal “tongues,” he conducted a personal test. He would carefully repeat the same unintelligible string of gibberish at Pentecostal prayer meetings but kept getting different “interpretations” each time. As a student of biblical languages, he once memorized Ps 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . .”) in Hebrew. Then at a charismatic meeting, he stood up and recited the Psalm in Hebrew. An “interpreter” stood up presuming to offer an intelligible explanation of what was said. However, his interpretation did not translate what Matatics had said. Instead, the interpreter claimed that Matatics’ utterance was a message from Heaven saying, “Oh my children, don’t hold back, O ye of little faith. Build that extra wing onto the pastor’s house and I will bless you and open the flood gates of Heaven and pour out abundance upon you if you make this financial commitment.” The interpreter turned out to be one of the pastor’s best friends. (John Vennari, Close-ups of the Charismatic Movement, 65-67)]
[8:06] Now, sometimes there is a miraculous element to the gift of tongues. And that is when someone is speaking in tongues, and a person hears it in their own language. And that is what happened on the day of Pentecost. That’s what happened when the Holy Spirit fell upon the hundred-and-twenty, the Apostles and the other disciples in the upper room. And that, then, becomes a gift for evangelization, when people are hearing the Gospel in their own language. That form of the gift of tongues, the miraculous form of tongues has been seen at various times throughout Church history. Sometimes a person is speaking in his own language, like St. Vincent Ferrer, and yet heard in a variety of other languages, by people who don’t understand his language. That still sometimes occurs today.
[Here we have DEFINITION #3: “MIRACULOUS HEARING.”
There are reports of this happening through Church history. It happened with St. Vincent of Ferrer. It also happened with St. Francis Xavier in Japan. Healy says this is what happened on the day of Pentecost. However, the question is not so simple. The only serious debate about speaking in tongues for upwards of a millennium in Church history was not whether "tongues" were intelligible or not, but whether they consisted in a gift of speaking or hearing. The interesting thing is that this debate was sparked by an error Tyrannius Rufinus made in translating Gregory of Nazianzus’ Pentecost Oration in the fifth century, giving readers the false impression that Gregory thought that the gift of tongues could have been a miracle of hearing. However, the prevailing view before and after this historical debate was always that the gift was a miracle of speaking, not hearing –even if it could hypothetically have been either. The Pentecost account in Acts 2 seems capable of being read in either way. St. Cyril of Jerusalem clearly believed it was a gift of speaking. He does not say that the Apostles spoke in their own languages and were then merely heard by the pilgrims in Jerusalem from many countries in their own languages. He explicitly states that the Apostles on Pentecost spoke in various distinct languages: “The Galilean Peter and Andrew spoke Persian or Median. John and the other Apostles spoke all the tongues of various nations . . .” (The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, 106-7
St. Thomas Aquinas, while not denying that the gift of tongues could, on occasion, have been a gift of hearing, offers a reasonable argument for why it was more fitting that it would have usually involved a miraculous gift of speaking languages previously unknown to the speaker: “It was more fitting that they should speak in all tongues, because they pertained to the perfection of their knowledge, whereby they were able not only to speak, but also to understand what was said by others” (Aquinas, ST, II-II, q 176, a 1, ad 2). Francisco Suárez also offers a similar argument, stating that the gift of tongues was needed not only so that those who heard the Apostles could understand their message, but also so that the Apostles could understand what the unbelievers were saying to them in order to respond to their questions and even hear their confessions (Suárez, Tractatus de Gratia, 3, c. 5, n52, makes a similar argument). If the gift of tongues was a miracle of hearing only and not a miracle of speaking with understanding, the Apostles would not have been able to answer questions on the part of their hearers.]
[9:05] There was a biblical scholar named Louis Lenoir, OSB, Benedictine, who was an expert in biblical languages, and he had been praying about a theological question related to the Virgin Mary. And he recounts in an academic article, actually, how he was invited to a charismatic prayer meeting. And he went somewhat skeptically, um, he didn’t know that this was of God, but he decided to go and check it out, and as everyone was praying in tongues, he was astounded to hear a young woman near him praying in perfect ancient Syriac, addressing a prayer to the Virgin Mary. And, as he listened, the key to this theological issue that he had been mulling over for a long time, was given to him through her words, and he turned to the young woman and said “How do you knowledge (know) Syriac?” And she said, “What? I don’t. It was just praying in tongues.” So, um, that miraculous form of the gift of tongues has occurred in the past. It continues to occur occasionally today.
[First, Healy refers to “the miraculous form of the gift of tongues” as though it were one of several forms. However, this is an unsustainable assumption. The most likely reason for this assumption is that the common Pentecostal-Charismatic practice referenced under the title of “tongues” is, for them, their “private language of prayer and praise” or “jubilation,” which doesn’t fit the historical or lexical data at all. The word “tongues” doesn’t even occur in any historical ecclesiastical writings except in reference to ordinary human languages. This means that speaking in ordinary languages, whether supernaturally or naturally, is what the Church and Holy Scripture have always meant by “speaking in tongues.” It's not complicated.
Second, I wouldn’t for a moment discount the possibility of some such a miraculous event as Healy describes above. However, let’s take a closer look at her account. The young woman prays in “perfect ancient Syriac” yet insists that she didn’t know Syriac but was “just praying in tongues.” This means she understood herself to be praying in the “private prayer language” sometimes called glossolalia. Her utterances had no lexically-definable meaning for her, but they were understood by Louis Lenoir as a prayer in “ancient Syriac.” Healy says that Lenoir was initially skeptical about the charismatic prayer meeting and didn’t know that it “was of God.” But how does she know it “was of God”? Catholic exorcists tell us that the Rituale Romanum, under Title XI (De Exorcizandis Obsessis a Daemonio), states that one sign of diabolical possession is speaking intelligibly in an ancient language one does not know. However, in a traditional miracle of hearing, a person speaks his own native language (say, English) and is heard by another (say, a Korean woman) in her language. Again, in a traditional miracle of speaking, a person speaks (with full understanding) a language he did not previously know (say Japanese), and he is heard and understood by a native Japanese speaker. But in the case of diabolical possession, a person who has never studied classical languages may speak perfect Greek, Latin, or Syriac without having a clue what he’s saying in his own mind, because it is the malicious demon speaking through him. The case described by Healy may not be diabolical. It’s possible that God used the young woman’s glossolalic utterances, though unintelligible in themselves, to communicate an intelligible message in ancient Syriac to a Syriac scholar. However, it is unusual. In the traditional gift of tongues, whether a gift of speaking or hearing, the speaker understands what he is saying and speaks with the aim of communicating an intended message to the hearer. In the case of Healy’s story, there was a clear and credible purpose to the message communicated to the hearer (Lenoir), but that purpose was unknown to the speaker. In most cases where there is a paranormal event with no discernable benign purpose intended by the speaker, a diabolical association is possible. Here, however, the purpose of the message heard was not only benign but positive, so the event may not have been diabolical, even if unusual.
Third, such hearsay accounts of the gift of miraculous languages often leave people skeptical, because there is so rarely any evidence to back up the miraculous claims. There were numerous such claims associated with the Bible College founded by Charles Parham in Topeka in 1901, and he even told reporters from the Kansas City Star that future missionaries to foreign countries would no longer need foreign language study, because they could receive the miraculous gift of foreign tongues at his Bible school in Topeka. However, the claimed miraculous gifts of Ozman and others were later discovered to be nothing more than gibberish.
Finally, the need for the gift of extraordinary, miraculous languages is no longer pressing, since, as St. Augustine declared, the Church now speaks in “all the languages of the world.” Hence, genuine occurrences of the miraculous gift of languages are now rare, although the natural gift of foreign languages is still common.]
[10:20] Now some people claim that that’s the only valid meaning of the gift of tongues. But it’s clear in Paul’s teaching that, um, that’s not the case, in normal circumstances in the church in Corinth. We also see other instances in the Acts of the Apostles where people are speaking in tongues and it seems to be the non-intelligible form of the gift of tongues.
[Here Healy is again suggesting that there is more “forms” of the gift of tongues than that which involves intelligible language. This is simply not true. This view is based neither on the evidence of historical ecclesiastical texts nor on an informed exegesis of biblical texts, but rather on historical ignorance and eisegesis (rather than exegesis) – that is, reading into Scripture what one wishes to find there.]
[10:47] Now, the Fathers of the Church, early on they spoke of tongues in both forms – the form of words understood by no one except the Lord, and the form of something that was understood by the hearers in their own language. But as time went on, the terminology shifted, and the Fathers tended then to reserve the word “tongues” for that miraculous form – say, the Day of Pentecost form. But for the other form of the gift of tongues, tongues as a way of praying and praising God that goes beyond words, they had a different term: “Jubilation.” [There is no lexical basis in history for this connection.] And the Fathers very often speak of this gift of jubilation. [True, but the jubilation is not the gift of speaking in tongues, as we’ve shown earlier.] St. Augustine, for example, says: “One who jubilates does not utter words, but a certain sound of joy without words, rejoicing and exaltation, one uses words that cannot be spoken and understood, but simply lets one’s joy burst forth without words. One’s voice then appears to express happiness so intense that one cannot explain.” And then St. Augustine exhorts his congregation, “If you cannot express your joy, jubilate. Let not your joy be silent.” [We’ve already discussed this.] Another example from Church Fathers – Cassiodorus, who says that “jubilation is the joy expressed with fervored mind and sound of indistinct voice.” [Like Ensley, Healy writes about “jubilation” as though it were univocally a single thing. But it’s equivocally many things. And none of the things it covers is related to the word “glossais,” Greek for “tongues,” meaning “languages.”]
[12:27] Now, St. Augustine compares this gift of jubilation to practices at that time of history among ordinary laborers, boatmen, farmers, who would sometimes yodel, or sing wordless songs as they were working. [Of course, as we’ve seen: Ensley compares jubilation to not only to these, but to “chant, mimicry, jingles, be-bop and nonsense or baby-talk.” But no patristic account links such practices to speaking in tongues, as we’ve seen.] Now you might think, well, then that means that this gift is not supernatural, that there’s just a natural phenomenon that this is describing. But, no, that’s not the case. Most of the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit that St. Paul talks about have a natural counterpart. There’s a natural counterpart to the charism of teaching, to the charism of prophecy, even, to the charism of healing – say the healing, the healing arts. So, most of the gifts of the Holy Spirit build on and elevate some form of natural gift to a supernatural level. And that’s the case with jubilation. One who jubilates is moved by the Holy Spirit, led by the Holy Spirit, and desires to praise God in the way that goes beyond what they can express conceptually or verbally.
[This is a very clever move on Dr. Healy’s part. It masks the inconsistencies in the prevailing charismatic understanding and practice of “tongues,” which has nothing to do with the biblical or historical ecclesiastical understanding of “tongues,” which was always linguistic, intelligible language as a means of communication and evangelization. The miraculous gift of tongues has always been (and still is) understood by the Church as a supernatural “extraordinary” gift, not a learned skill. However, Healy’s reference to gifts having a “natural counterpart” in the present context is a way of trying to have it both ways. That is, charismatics want their “prayer language” to be accepted by the Church as a “form” of the supernatural “gift of tongues.” But the Church has classified such tongues as “extraordinary,” whereas the glossolalic “prayer language” is often taught by leaders and learned by newbies, such as suggested in the Life in the Spirit Team Manual. Often they are told to repeat phrases after their leaders and told that the Holy Spirit will eventually turn their repetitions into a personal “prayer and praise language.” One of my charismatic colleagues once told me, with a smile, that he heard one leader having a newbie repeat the phrase, “Bought a Honda, should’ve bought a Toyota,” over and over in an effort to jump start his “tongue speaking.” However, the problem is that even if this dubious learned skill were elevated by the Holy Spirit to a “supernatural level” so that it qualified somehow (God knows how) as “extraordinary,” it would still not fall under the Church’s classification of the “gift of tongues” since it lacks the first essential feature of language: the ability to communicate information between people in lexically definable words. The possibilities here are few: either this “prayer language” is (1) only an acquired natural skill, with or without a “hypnotically” suggested spiritual significance, (2) an acquired natural skill with no connection to biblical tongues that is nevertheless used by God to strengthen the spiritual experience of practitioners, (3) a divinely inspired novelty previously found nowhere in Scripture or Church tradition, or (4) a demonic deception inspired by the father of lies. A former professor at Notre Dame who was a member of the CCR, Josephine Massyngbaerde Ford, held that the first option with the “hypnotic” element was probably the most common among CCR members. Ford, “Glossolalia,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., 6:249-50.]
[13:45] St. Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas, says something about this, too. He says: “When our mind is kindled by devotion as we pray, we break out spontaneously into weeping and sighing and cries of jubilation and other such noises. We have to serve the God to whom we offer reverence and prayer not only with our minds but also with our bodies.” He’s talking about praising aloud in a way that goes beyond words, which is the gift of tongues as usually manifested today. It’s a humble gift. It’s a simple gift. It’s a gift that confounds human pride. When I pray in tongues, do I sometimes feel foolish, or do I sometimes worry about who might be listening to me? Yes, I do. Sometimes. [First, notice that the equation between (a) “weeping, sighing, cries of jubilation, and other such noises” and (b) praying “in tongues” is an equation made by Healy, not by Aquinas. No such identification exists in the history of Catholic Church teaching. Second, she adopts a strategy (also used by other charismatics) of promoting glossolalia as involving a virtue of childish “foolishness.” Childish innocence is one thing. However, there is no virtue in being or appearing foolish as such. St. Paul in 1 Cor 14:23 says “If, therefore, the whole church assembles and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad?” He’s not saying this is a good and praiseworthy thing. He’s saying this is a bad and foolish thing. When outsiders and unbelievers venture into an assembly, they should be evangelized in language they understand. However, Paul is saying that those foolishly speaking in these foreign languages without interpreters would be judged “mad,” since their speech would be unintelligible to the outsiders and unbelievers. Should we suppose that Paul’s verdict would have been any different or that the Corinthians would have appeared any less “mad” had they been uttering “private languages of prayer and praise”?] And yet I’m still grateful for this gift, because it’s a gift that fosters simplicity. Its’ a gift that, that really helps us enter into the spiritual childhood, simplicity before the Lord that St. Therese [She means Teresa of Avila] talks about. It’s a gift that purifies us, that opens the door to other gifts of the Holy Spirit, because it teaches us to yield to the Holy Spirit. And yet, when you pray in tongues you’re not in an ecstatic state, you’re not out of control. You are actively using your voice, and yet you’re letting the Holy Spirit take over.
[Here Healy continues to promote the spiritual virtue of childlike receptiveness. This is all well and good, except one would like it to be coupled with some level of discernment and honesty as well. In a book titled Spiritual Gifts Handbook, which Healy co-authored with Randy Clark, a Protestant Pentecostal of “Toronto Blessing” fame, she discusses jubilation: “Saint Teresa of Avila . . . not only prayed in this way,” she says, “but also desired that all her fellow nuns would do so” (p. 185). She appeals to St. Teresa’s Interior Castle (6:6, 10-11) to support “jubilation” as a glossolalic phenomenon. She quotes Teresa as follows: “Our Lord sometimes gives the soul feelings of jubilation and a strange prayer it doesn’t understand. . . . It seems like gibberish.” The word “gibberish,” of course, is what we have used to describe Healy’s second definition of “tongues,” which we have called Definition #2: “Messaging in Gibberish.” Glossolalia sounds like gibberish.
However, some context is crucial for understanding St. Teresa’s meaning. The “strange prayer” Teresa describes is what she explicitly terms the “Prayer of Quiet,” a mystical rapture of a saint in an advanced state of spiritual maturity, which her fellow Carmelite, St. John of the Cross, calls “infused contemplation,” a condition experienced as a divine favor (gratia gratis data) received utterly without effort, which cannot be induced, acquired by any practice, or explained in mortal language of any kind to anyone. Healy’s quotation omits part of the text in the sentence in question – the part that undermines her identification of this experience with glossolalia. What Teresa wrote was “What I’m saying seems like gibberish, but certainly the experience takes place in this way” (Interior Castle, in the 1979 Kavanaugh-Rodriguez translation). Another translation has: “This may sound like nonsense but it really happens” (Interior Castle, 2006 Benedictine translation). In other words, what seems like “gibberish” is not the vocalizations of her prayer, but her description of it (Fr. John McDermott, “Do Charismatic Healings Promote the New Evangelization? Part 2,” Antiphon, 24 [2020], 205-43, also makes this point). St. Teresa cites as examples of this mystical rapture, St. Francis shouting that he was the herald of a Great King, and Fray Peter of Alcantara loudly singing the Divine Praises. Those who heard them may have taken them for fools because of their exuberance, but not because they were babbling nonsense. They were not. They were perfectly intelligible.]
[15:25] It's also a gift for intercession. As St. Paul says in Romans, “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words.” With inexpressible groanings. And very often when you’re interceding for a situation, you don’t even know how to pray, the gift of tongues can be a powerful way to be just lifting up your heart to the Lord and letting the Holy Spirit pray within you.
[Certainly, when we use words to pray, praying in tongues is a means of intercession. When we don’t know how to express ourselves in language, when words fail us, the Holy Spirit may intercede for us. But notice: In Romans 8:26, it is not we but the Holy Spirit who does the interceding. The “groaning too deep for words” are attributed to the Holy Spirit, not to us. The point is that when words fail us, the Holy Spirit takes our place in intercedes on our behalf. Even if we read this verse in the way that many do, as referring to our own activity of interceding on behalf of others in groans too deep for words, there is no basis her for identifying groaning with glossolalic “tongues.” It is because linguistic tongues fail that the Spirit must intervene and intercede. Groanings are not linguistic. When words fail we lack the capacity to translate groaning into intelligible language. No interpreter can be called upon to do so. We cannot intercede. So, the Spirit must do so for us.]
[15:59] The gift of tongues is really a form of contemplative grace. It’s a form of contemplative prayer out loud. [Contemplation is an act of calm, lengthy, non-vocal, deep thinking, a receptive observation and reflection on a subject, whereas glossolalic “tongues” are active, audible “gibberish,” unintelligible even to the utterer. To say that it’s a form of “contemplative prayer out loud” is a contradiction in terms. If it’s out loud, it’s active and cannot be equated with receptive, non-vocal contemplation.] Contemplative prayer is the kind of prayer that goes beyond mental prayer, where you’re no longer trying to express something verbally the best you can to the Lord, but you enter into a kind of heart-to-heart communion with the Lord. And so, you’re bypassing the mind. The Holy Spirit is working in you at a level deeper than the mind, and there’s something very powerful about that. So, the gift of tongues is entering into that contemplative grace but out loud, sometimes in a group of people. Sometimes it’s in the form of singing aloud in tongues with the whole group of people. That’s a particularly beautiful form of the gift. St. Paul exhorts us to sing “spiritual songs” to the Lord and to one another. I think part of what he had in mind is singing in tongues. [Healy’s account here is reminiscent of St. Teresa of Avila’s description of what she called a “Prayer of Quiet,” a mystical rapture of a saint in an advanced state of spiritual maturity, which her fellow Carmelite, St. John of the Cross, calls “infused contemplation.” What is odd about this is that Healy identifies what she calls a “contemplative prayer” that can be uttered “out loud” and even “sung” in a “whole group of people” with glossolalic utterances that are among the most common of what charismatics call “manifestations of the Holy Spirit.” So, St. Teresa and other Carmelites insist that this mystical rapture occurs only in “a saint in an advanced state of spiritual maturity,” while Healy and other charismatics insist that the “out loud” form of contemplative prayer is the widely-experienced entry-level grace that “opens the door to other gifts of the Holy Spirit.” Those in the Pentecostal and Holiness traditions called it “initial evidence” of one’s having been “baptized in the Spirit.” It occurs, not “in an advanced state of spiritual maturity,” but at the entry level of charismatic spirituality. The Life in the Spirit Team Manual emphasizes this. Perhaps this is why critics of the charismatic movement sometimes compare to learning how to speak in glossolalic “tongues” with a “gateway drug” to the hardcore paranormal “charisms” that supposedly can follow.]
[17:08] It makes me think of the story of King David when he brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. With incredible exultation and joy, he leaped and danced before the Ark of the Lord. He just had to express his worship. And if you remember, his wife, Michal was looking out the window and despised him as she saw David dancing before the Lord, and she mocked him. And his response was, “I will make myself yet more contemptible than this to honor the Lord who is worthy of my praise. I don’t care what you think of me. I just care about His glory. I just want to give Him my everything even if I look foolish in the eyes of the world.”
Sometimes there’s a spirit of Michal in the Church today. And I think the right response is to be like David: “I don’t care what you think of me. I am just going to honor and praise and glorify the Lord in my own language, in the gift of tongues, opening my heart to the Holy Spirit, letting my . . . letting the Holy Spirit pray within me with all my heart. Because He is worthy.
[The spiritual psychology of the Catholic Faith stresses the antithesis between external, worldly perceptions of Christian foolishness and internal Christian understanding of what our faith requires. In 1 Cor 1:18-25, Paul explains that the "foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom." In verses 26-31, he notes that God chooses what the world considers "foolish" to shame the wise. And in 1 Cor 3:18-20, he states that anyone who considers himself wise in this age must become a "fool" to truly become wise. However, here we must remember two things: First, for St. Paul there is no virtue in appearing “foolish” to the world as such. St. Paul made that point in 1 Cor 14:23 when he criticized the Corinthians for babbling in foreign tongues in a way that would cause outsiders to consider them “mad.” Second, when Christians who love Jesus Christ and His Church criticize the charismatic practice of unintelligible glossolalia, this criticism does not come from the external, worldly, secular “wisdom” of unbelievers but from the internal wisdom of the ecclesiastical writings of saints and theologians of the past two millennia. Not caring what the secular world thinks is a virtue. Not caring what the Church’s saints and theologians have said is folly.]
[18:21] Now, can the Devil counterfeit the gift of tongues? Absolutely. The Devil can counterfeit virtually all of the charisms of the Holy Spirit. There’s false prophecy. Does that mean there’s no authentic gift of prophecy? Of course, not. There are false signs and wonders. There’s false teaching. Does that mean there’s no true signs and wonders, no true teaching? Of course, not. So, the answer, then, is: we discern. We don’t suppress the gift of the Holy Spirit. We discern them. St. Paul says, “Do not quench the Holy Spirit.” “Do not despise prophesying.” “But test everything. Hold fast to what is good. Turn away from every form of evil.”
[True. We should discern. But what does this mean? How do we discern? Do we discern by relying on an interpretive tradition borrowed from the Wesleyan, Holiness, and Pentecostal movements and shutting our minds and hearts to the Sacred Traditions of Mother Church? Non-Catholic denominations have teachings that contradict one another on the most fundamental levels of Christ’s teaching (baptism, ecclesiology, faith, works, salvation, marriage, Eucharist). Yet there is not one denomination that does not claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that the Spirit of Truth would guide us into all truth (John 16:13). However, can the Holy Spirit contradict Himself? Did Christ promise that the Holy Spirit would guide us individually into all truth apart from the Church, which is called “the pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim 3:15)? The fact that there is an authentic gift of tongues, therefore, does not mean that unintelligible “glossolalia” is that authentic gift.
Healy admits that the Devil can counterfeit the gift of tongues, as well as “virtually all the charisms of the Holy spirit.” I wish she and the CCR, in their enthusiasm for “charisms” and “wonders,” would pause a bit longer over this admission. Our Lord warns: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matt 7:22) Even some Protestant Pentecostal groups have come to some serious reservations about glossolalic tongues. For example, Gerald McGraw, a professor at Nyack College, an institution of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, wrote an article in the Alliance Weekly (1974) about a detailed a procedure for testing tongues, using 1 John and similar tests, a small group of intercessors, asking the spirit to confirm Jesus’ lordship, the second coming, and other basic Christological doctrines. Writing about his experience of testing tongues in people who voluntarily approached him and his colleagues, he says: “First, I have been astonished at the high percentage of demonic tongues encountered. . . . Many were quite confident that the test would demonstrate a true gift from the Holy Spirit. But the shocking fact is that over 90 percent of those who requested a tongues test had a demonic tongue.” (McGraw, “Tongues Should Be Tested,” Alliance Weekly [June 5, 1974], p. 5).]
[19:10] What about the claim that somebody got possessed by a demon due to speaking in tongues? Well, you can’t make a generalization from one experience of which we know virtually nothing. [Of course, we could say the same about generalizing from alleged cases of miraculous healings, prophecy, and speaking in perfect ancient Syriac in charismatic prayer meetings.] Who knows the person’s background, what they got into, what motivations there were? Anyone can seek the gifts of the Holy Spirit with an impure motivation, seeking power, seeking spiritual control. And we see that in the Acts of the Apostles in Simon the Magician. He wanted the power to fill people with the Holy Spirit that he saw Peter and John do. He got a very sharp rebuke from Peter. So, certainly it’s possible to seek the power of the Holy Spirit in a way that is motivated by pride and self-aggrandizement, and that’s spiritually dangerous, for sure. [Acts 8:9-25 describes the account about Simon the Magician mentioned above. When Simon asked Peter and John for the gift of healing and offered them money, Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money” (Acts 8:20). The charismatic Encounter School of Ministry in Brighton, MI, offers classes in which students are taught how to acquire the gift of healing via Spirit baptism, with practicums in “healing rooms” where students receive hands-on experience praying over others for healing. They offer a 2-year “transformation course” for which they charge $300/quarter (totaling $1,200/year; $2,400 for two years), or $1000/year for an annual tuition discount, or, for seminarians or priests, $150/quarter or $500/annually. How is this different from Simon the Magician?]
[20:13] But what we can be sure of is that anyone who asks for the gift of tongues or any of the other gifts of the Holy Spirit with a sincere heart, because they love God, and they . . . they want to serve Him, and they want to build up the Church, that the Lord is trustworthy: and He’s not going to let them be possessed by a devil because they’re asking for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” That’s in Luke’s version. And in Matthew’s version, “How much more will the Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him!” . . . including the good gifts that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians, or, again, St. Paul says “strive eagerly for them.” Or “earnestly desire them,” you can translate it.
[We have already seen that magisterial Church documents say that “extraordinary are not to be sought after, nor are the fruits of apostolic labor to be presumptuously expected from their use” (Lumen gentium 12) and “In our day the coming of the Holy Spirit is no longer marked by the gift of tongues” (Pontificale Romanum, 23). The Church, of course, understands this as the “extraordinary” (miraculous) gift of languages previously unknown to the speaker, whose purpose was evangelism. However, Church Fathers and Catholic theologians from St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine up through St. Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suárez have consistently repeated that the need for the miraculous gift of tongues is no longer needed because the Church is now spread throughout the world and means of communication are readily available. Consequently, they state that authentic occurrences of this gift are now exceedingly rare.
More importantly, spiritual writers have constantly warned us against seeking after extraordinary charisms. For example, Vincent Ferrer, whom Healy mentioned earlier in her talk says that the “first remedy” against spiritual temptations the devil plants in our hearts “is to have no desire to procure by prayer, meditation or any other good work, what are called revelations, or spiritual experiences, beyond what happens in the ordinary course of things. . . . The second remedy is to dispossess the soul of consolation, when at prayer, small though it be” lest they engender “sentiments of presumption or of self-esteem. . . . The majority of raptures and ecstasies, or to call them by their proper name, the frenzies of these forerunners of Antichrist spring from this cause. Hence, the only consolation you should admit into your soul, in time of prayer, is that which is produced by the consciousness of your nothingness and misery . . . to preserve you in humility and . . . reverence for the grandeur and majesty of God. The third remedy is to have a horror of every thought and sentiment, however elevated they may be, which gives indications of a desire to penetrate into the secrets of God . . . .” (Ferrer, Treatise on the Spiritual Life, ch. 12). St. John of the Cross in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk. 3, chs. 30-33, also warns against the dangers of deception, loss of faith, and temptations of vanity that often attach to those seeking extraordinary spiritual gifts.
When St. Paul tells us to “earnestly desire” the higher gifts (1 Cor. 12:31), it’s significant that he says he will show us “a still more excellent way.” He says this as he’s transitioning to ch. 13, where he says the highest gift is charity, and that all other gifts acquire their value only through charity – whether the gift of tongues, prophetic powers, or even the gift of faith. Yet all these gifts, he says, will cease. All will pass away, except for charity. Paul was not concerned with getting Corinthians to acquire charisms they didn’t have, but rather with getting them to use their gifts (mostly ordinary, natural gifts) for the glory of God and good of the Church. This is how natural gifts can be genuinely elevated to a supernatural level.
Finally, the traditional “Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit” the Church associates with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord (based on Isa. 11:1-3), and the traditional “Fruits of the Spirit” are: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (listed in Gal. 5:22-23). And St. Paul significantly adds: “Against such things there is no law.” These are among the highest gifts you can seek. Notice, again, that “love” (or “charity”) heads the list, as it does in 1 Cor 13. There can be no danger is earnestly seeking these gifts!]
[21:20] I think one thing that those who criticize the gift of tongues don’t realize is how often this gift is first manifested in a person’s life at the moment they have a transformative outpouring of the Holy Spirit. A baptism in the Holy Spirit that changes their life radically, that puts them on a path of deeper conversion, deeper commitment to the Lord, greater love for the Church, greater love for the Scriptures, greater amazement at the gift of the Sacraments. All of those things often putting a person on a path of radical missionary discipleship.
[According to former Notre Dame professor and psychologist, Morton Kelsey, “All who have written of their first experience of speaking in [glossolalic] tongues call it one of the most valuable and transforming experiences of their lives. To many of them it was the most important event they have known . . . . They had been seeking, knocking, asking, and now they had found what they were looking for, and it was even more wonderful than they had hoped.” (Kelsey, Tongue Speaking, 219). John P. Kildahl also acknowledges this, citing an article, “Glossolalia and Mental Health,” sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health and co-authored with Paul A. Qualben, in which they mention that glossolalists are “less depressed than non- glossolalists,” have a greater sense of “personal power,” and are zealous for their faith (Kildahl, pp. 138-39; 142 n. 1). Vern Poythress, distinguished polymath and professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, argues that even a person who erroneously embraces the contemporary charismatic practice of glossolalia as a “personal prayer language” and mistakenly believes it to be identical to the biblical “gift of tongues” can nevertheless be edified by it insofar as it reinforces belief in the immediate reality of God’s existence (Poythress, “Linguistic and Sociological Analyses of Modern Tongue Speaking,” Westminster Theological Journal 17 [1980], 367-88).
In a way, these writers corroborate Healy’s description of glossolalia as “transformative.” Kildahl says that an initial glossolalic experience is often preceded by an “existential crisis,” in which a person is “generally drawn to a person who is a leader whom he trusts” who inducts him into the practice of “tongue-speaking.” The feelings of well-being the experiences are not caused by the actual making of glossolalic sounds itself, but by the “feelings of acceptance by the leader and group of fellow tongue-speakers.” As a group, says Kildahl, glossolalists tend to be “more submissive and dependent in the presence of authority figures” and more susceptible to the hypnotic power of suggestion: “Hypnotizability constitutes the sine qua non of a glossolalia experience,” he writes, adding that the experience may not only be unifying but divisive and alienating to those outside their immediate circle (Kildahl, 128-39, 139-50). Kelsey, who ultimately defends glossolalia, nevertheless also expresses concerns over its divisiveness, particularly stemming from “overzealous claims for power” (Kelsey, 222-26). As we have seen Josephine Massyngbaerde Ford, a Catholic charismatic at Notre Dame, described hypnotically-induced glossolalia as most common:
The hypnotic type produces the characteristics of divisiveness, projection of anger, group camaraderie, histrionic display, preoccupation with glossolalia, and, most importantly, regression of the ego. (Ford, “Glossolalia,” 249-50)Kildahl notes that glossolalists sometimes claim that anyone who has not experienced it is in no position to evaluate it. Without prejudice, this reminds me of what LSD and cocaine users have said in defense of their habit. Kelsey warns: “The people who have this experience and value it will not be reasonable about it, and enmity develops within the formerly peaceful church groups” (Kelsey, 222-23). I have experienced this myself. I have had charismatic professors contact editors of Catholic periodicals and ask them not to publish articles I have written on the charismatic movement. I have been invited by the student association of Franciscan University of Steubenville to come and speak to them about the four-volume history of speaking in tongues that I have co-authored with Charles Sullivan, only to have the administration disinvite me because the “did not approve of the topic.” Does this strike anyone as professional, let alone reasonable? I was slightly amused and felt sorry for the students.]
[22:06] An example is from a friend of mine, a wonderful biblical scholar named George Montague, who is in his 90s now, still going strong, a wonderful man of God, and he wrote about his receiving the gift of tongues. He said, “As I knelt there, hearing the voices of those praying over me, I began to feel a bubbling inside. It was just there and I didn’t know what to do with it. Then later on, on New Year’s Day, as I drove to visit my family, I felt moved to just relax and let the bubbling come out, however it would. It came out in a melody without words. Three days later, words came to fit the melody. The Spirit of the Lord has touched my soul. I went to my room, closed my door, knelt down and let go.” So that’s tongues. [It is? Is it the sincerity of Montague’s description that verifies the authenticity of the verdict Healy draws here? “So that’s tongues,” she says, with an air of decisive finality. It’s as if the “So” in her conclusion functions as a "conclusion indicator" in a logical syllogism. But what are the premises of her syllogism? The impassioned sincerity of Montague’s self-description of his experience? C. S. Lewis says somewhere that “experience” as such teaches us nothing. Experience needs to be interpreted by reference to credible criteria. It cannot serve as its own criterion. Church tradition provides adequate resources.] And he goes on, “Praising God by letting the Spirit do it in you, for you, and with you. Since then, my life has been so different, so rich, so full of inexplicable events. I witnessed physical healing. I witnessed powerful inner healings of soul and spirit. The healing of marriages and families. The healing of long-festering hatred. But my greatest witness to the Lord’s deep healing is myself. I have found a new strength and vitality, a greater willingness to risk for the Lord, a greater ability to cope with stress and chaos.” Does that sound like the work of the enemy? Or mass hysteria? Obviously not. And that testimony of Fr. Montague could be multiplied by the thousands and possibly the millions. How many people witness to a whole new life in the Holy Spirit, a life of seeking sanctification, seeking the glory of God because they open themselves and receive the gift of tongues, when the Holy Spirit was poured into their life in a new way. [All things being equal, any testament to spiritual renewal, inexplicable physical healings, healings of marriages, families, long-festering hatreds, and greater commitment to Christ are things that should cause any of us to rejoice. However, I would add the following. The “by their fruits” test has some conditions. All things being equal, it works. Our Lord says that “the tree is known by its fruit” (Matt 12:33) and warns against false prophets, saying “you will know them by their fruit” (Matt 7:15-20). However, there is also the logical fallacy called Post hoc, ergo propter hoc (“After this, therefore, because of this.”) In other words, zealous faith as a good fruit of deep conversion cannot be retro-projected back on the experience of glossolalia as its “cause” or as proof that it can be equated with biblical tongues. We can rejoice in Montague’s spiritual flourishing. This by itself does not demonstrate the authenticity of glossolalia as biblical tongue-speaking.]
[24:16] So, I encourage you, be not afraid of this gift. If Paul said, “I would that you all speak in tongues,” we can say that too. I would that you all speak in tongues. Of course, we should never pressure anybody, we should never give any impression that if you speak in tongues, you’re better than other people, you’re a higher class, or anything like that. No, the very opposite. We should be more humbled by having received this gift. And we should use it as David did, to give our whole heart to the Lord, glorifying Him, in our own little prayer closet and in the midst of God’s people. God bless you. [“Amen!” to most of this. However, Healy again side-steps specifying what Paul means when he encourages all to “speak in tongues.” The Church Father, Origen, said that Paul was referring the abundance of foreign human languages he had in mind when he said “I speak in tongues more than you all (1 Cor 14:18) – foreign languages he used on his many missionary journeys across the Mediterranean world. Healy would, I believe, suggest that Paul is referring to her first definition, which we have called “Wordless Jubilation.” While I think this is probably the best definition for current charismatic practice – much more accurate and less misleadingly than “tongues” – I would challenge anyone to demonstrate that such a definition for “tongues” (Wordless Jubilation) can be found in any ecclesiastical writing before the higher-critics coined the term “glossolalia” in the 1830s and before the Pentecostals re-defined “tongues” as a “heavenly language” in 1907. The elephant in the room, so to speak, is that no reference to “jubilation” refers to it as “tongues.”
Finally, when it comes to Corinthian tongues, there is no support for such a “jubilation” theory before the 20th century charismatic writings – specifically, those of Eddie Ensley or Mary Healy. It is not supported by what we’ve found in our study of ancient texts. Patristic writers like Sts. Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria, and Ambrosiaster, in writings that are virtually never cited by charismatic scholars, state that the tongues that people in the Corinthian assembly could not understand were foreign languages. The upshot is that Hebrew continued to be the language of the messianic (Christian) liturgy until the Jewish Bar Kokhba Revolt was crushed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in AD 136 (this is confirmed by Pope Benedict XIV, the most erudite Pontiff to every occupy the See of St. Peter, as well as by the 16th-century Catholic theologian, Johannes Eck). Hadrian built a Roman city called Aelia Capitolina on the ruins of Jerusalem and made it a capital offense for any Jew, including Christian Jews, to set foot in the city. Thereafter, the bishops of Jerusalem, who had all been previously of Jewish descent, were all gentiles, and Christianity became less Jewish and more Greek and Roman. The aforementioned patristic writers held that Hebrew was the sacred language of the liturgy before AD 136 and needed to be interpreted (orally translated) into Aramaic and various dialects of Greek for the Corinthian assembly (there was also at least one Roman, possibly more, in the assembly, suggesting the possibility of Latin also being an issue). Without an interpretation, the presider (lector or celebrant) would be edifying himself but, as far as most in the congregation were concerned, “uttering mysteries in the Spirit.” A Jewish liturgical tradition going back to Ezra in the 5th century BC after the repatriation of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, had bilingual interpreters standing beside the liturgical lector or presider, orally translating the unknown sacred language (here Hebrew) into the vernacular (Aramaic or Greek). St. John Chrysostom attests to the fact that this practice was continued also in Christian churches in north Africa, well after the time of St. Paul. Churches in Syria even had a dedicated minor order – alongside acolyte and exorcist – called the order of interpreter. This is not speculation. This is not wishful thinking. This is history.]