Think you know anything about the Gift of Tongues?

Take Charles A. Sullivan's two quizzes, and think again!

Fr. Rutler: Pentecost was not an occasion for 'Enthusiasm'

Fr. George W. Rutler's article, "Pentecost Was Not An Occasion for 'Enthusiasm'" (Crisis Magazine, June 1, 2017), has all the appearance of being timed in anticipation of the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal's celebration of it's Golden Jubilee on Pentecost Sunday.

After meandering through a number of typically learned and eloquent distractions, the irrepressible Fr. Rutler comes round to his thesis: how the Catholic Charismatic movement, like the Montanist enthusiasms of the ancient Church, is a heretical distortion. While "not unsympathetic toward the noble integrity of John Wesley," he writes, Monsignor Ronald Knox, in his masterwork entitled Enthusiasm, "holds up the spiritist movements from the second century Montanists to the latter day Quakers, Jansenists, and Quietists as examples of how people go to extremes to confuse themselves emotionally with the Holy Spirit."

Turning his attention to Phrygia of Asia Minor in what is now Turkey during the second century, Rutler writes:

A convert priest named Montanus stirred up a lot of excitement when he confused himself with the Holy Spirit and proclaimed various “prophecies” while in a trance like a sort of divine ventriloquist. In the manner of a typical fanatic so defined, he was confident that God would agree with him if only God had all the facts. In a languid and dissolute period, the local churches already having become formalistic and arid (contrary to romantic depictions of the uniform zeal of all early Christians, and not unlike the motivation of John Wesley to stir up the dormant Church of England), the ardor of Montanus attracted many as far as North African and Rome itself, not all of whom were innocent of neurosis. Even the formidable mind of Tertullian welcomed it. Sensational outbursts of emotion were thought to be divinely inspired, and the formal clerical structure of the Church was caricatured as the sort of rigidity that quenches the spirit. Avowing that prophecy did not end with the last apostles, new messages were pronounced, false speaking in tongues pretending to be actual languages was encouraged, and women like Priscilla and Maximilla left their husbands and decided that they could be priestesses and prophetesses.

In the twentieth century, the Montanist heresy sprung up again. The Pentecostal sects, and even many Catholics were attracted to “re-awakenings” that gave the impression that the Paraclete promised by Christ who never lied had finally come awake having slumbered pretty much since the early days of the Church. While its extreme forms were bizarre, such as dancing in churches and uncontrolled laughter and barking like dogs while rolling on the floor, any quest for novelty quickly grows bored, for nothing goes out of fashion so fast as the latest fashion.

... Heresies are fads. The estimable Servant of God Father John Hardon, whose talks would never be called ecstatic, bluntly said that the modern Charismatics are Montanists. It is true that the Charismatic movement in the Catholic Church wisely was blessed insofar as it not denigrate from or add to authentic dogma. But in the second century the pope Eleutherius was inclined to condone the Montanists too, until the anti-Tertullian theologian Praxeas explained its problems.

More to it, of course, but that seems to be intended nub of something like a warning shot across the bow of the unbridled ubiquitous ebullience of the present season.

Hour-long Catholic critique of the Alpha program

Some people aren't going to like this at all. "The Tyranny of Emotion" (Mic'd Up, January 29, 2016) includes a discussion with Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute about the Alpha program being implemented in many places and notably in Detroit; and Dr. Jay Boyd, who offers an in-depth discussion of Sherry Waddell's Forming Intentional Disciples with some cautions.

The upshot seems concisely expressed in the question: why are Catholics embracing these 'watered-down' and 'protestantized' sorts of programs when excellent Catholic alternatives exist, such as Servant of God, Fr. John Hardon's Marian Catechist Apostolate, now under the sponsorship of Cardinal Burke? Not to mention all the hazards of emotionally-charged low-information evangelization with potentially misleading components. Food for thought. One can hardly say "food for feeling," can we!

Update: William J. Cork, D.Min., "Is ALPHA for Catholics??," offers a fairly detailed outline and critique of Alpha, arguing that it promotes (a) an individualistic Christianity, (b) a congregationalist ecclesiology, (c) an evangelical perspective on the sacraments, as well as (d) a charismatic agenda. The author concludes:

Despite the commendable intent of Alpha to evangelize the unchurched by facilitating an initial encounter with Jesus Christ, we must conclude that even with a Catholic supplement, it remains deficient, and cannot be recommended for Catholic use. Alpha does not fulfill the expectations for Catholic catechesis and evangelization, and presents what Catholics must see as an impoverished and distorted Gospel. It is not "basic Christianity," but is Charismatic Protestantism. To tack Catholic elements to be tacked onto the end, especially issues of Church and Sacrament, denies the integral nature of Christian revelation.

Pope embraces charismatic renewal

As reported by Kathy Schiffler on Patheos (May 30, 2014), two Americans, Dr. Ralph Martin, founder of Renewal Ministries, and Patti Mansfield, popular Catholic author and speaker, joined the Holy Father and 52,000 Charismatic Catholics from more than 50 countries on Sunday afternoon, June 1, at the Olympic Stadium of Rome. On that day, Pope Francis -- the first pontiff to ever visit a sports stadium in Rome -- participated in the 37th National Assembly of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement. The June 1-2 conference had the theme of “Convert! Believe! Receive the Holy Spirit!”


The assembly reportedly had numerous representatives of other Christian "denominations" present in a spirit of ecumenical good will.

According to Catholic News Service, the pope reported that in the early years of the charismatic renewal in Buenos Aires, he "did not have much love for charismatics" and compared them to "a samba school." On June 1st, however, he declared that the Holy Spirit had begun the charismatic renewal as "a current of grace in the church and for the church." He also reportedly pleaded with charismatic groups "not to try to organize everything or create a bureaucracy that attempts to tame the Holy Spirit."

In an interview with Boston Globe, Ralph Martin, one of the featured speakers and a longtime leader in charismatic circles who today teaches at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in the Archdiocese of Detroit, sat down in Rome with John L. Allen, Jr., preceding the rally to discuss the significance of the event the the pope's involvement:

Globe: What’s this weekend in Rome about?

Martin: The charismatic renewal is very strong in Italy, and they have an annual meeting. They usually have it in Rimini but this year they decided to do it in Rome, and when they explained it to Pope Francis he said, “I’m coming!” He volunteered to come. He’s going to be spending a fair amount of time with us, and more than 50,000 people signed up within a couple weeks.

The hope is that papal calls for a New Pentecost, which go back to St. John XXIII, and papal calls for a New Evangelization, which go back to Vatican II and especially to St. John Paul II, can come together. Pope Francis’ vision is to bring together the reality of a New Pentecost with the urgency of a New Evangelization.

Globe: Do you expect him to engage in charismatic practices such as speaking in tongues or healings?

Martin: Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised. We don’t know what he’s going to do. We know he wants to enter the stadium walking, he wants to participate in the worship that’s going on, and we also know that he wants to say something to us. Beyond that, we’ll just have to see.

Globe: What was the pope’s relationship with the charismatic movement in Argentina?

Martin: He’s said publicly that initially he didn’t know what to think, and he wondered if it was superficial emotion, but as he got to know [charismatics] he changed his mind. [Note: In a press conference during his return flight from Brazil in July, Francis said he used to think that charismatics “confused the holy liturgy with a school of samba,” but that he was “converted when I got to know them better and saw the good they do.”]

My hope for the weekend is that all Catholics will become more open to the presence and reality of the Holy Spirit, because I think we really need it.

Globe: What do charismatic Catholics make of Pope Francis? They tend to be fairly conservative theologically, yet they must like his free-wheeling style.

Martin: It’s pretty much what a lot of committed Catholics are making of him. They’re thrilled, they’re refreshed, they think it’s a breath of fresh air. Charismatics have seen pictures of Pope Francis when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires praying and asking Protestant pastors to pray for him. His friendship towards the charismatic renewal is there.

At the same time, they’re scratching their heads sometimes wondering, “What did he mean by that?” Is he pro-life? What does he mean, “Who am I to judge?” They think he’s fantastic, but they also wonder how some of these pieces fit.

Globe: Francis is going to be holding his prayer meeting with the Palestinian and Israeli presidents on June 8, which also happens to be the Feast of Pentecost. Do you think there’s anything significant about that?

Martin: Whenever people open their hearts to God in some way, the Lord wants to do something good. Even if it just got scheduled randomly for that day, I’m sure [Pope Francis] sees significance in that.

Globe: What do you hope the impact of this weekend will be?

Martin: I think there are a lot of closet charismatics out there. A lot of [clergy] personally have had their vocations saved because of their experience of Christ and the Holy Spirit through the renewal, but they discovered it wasn’t cool [to say so out loud] because it was considered fringe. They got the message from the environment not to talk about it very much. I think the time has come for the closet charismatics to come out. I think the pope’s presence might encourage it, along with a growing realization that an action of God may be the only thing that can save the Church today.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world a Malayalam Catholic charismatic prayer group has staged another spirit-filled performance illustrating the beauty of diversity in charismatic inculturation:

"Pope Francis and the Future of Charismatic Christianity"

Dale M. Coulter, "Pope Francis and the Future of Charismatic Christianity" (First Things, February 20, 2014):

A recent meeting of ministers associated with the prosperity-preaching Word of Faith branch of charismatic Christianity received a surprise announcement: Pope Francis had sent a message to the conference. It was something of a historic moment.

Beginning around the thirty-minute mark of the above video, Francis speaks in Italian and English subtitles are provided at the bottom. As part of his greeting, the pope chose to highlight two themes, his joy at their desire to worship together in prayer to the Father for the Spirit to come and his yearning for Christians to become one again.

And the Pope asked these Protestant charismatics to pray for him; and so, led by Kenneth Copeland, speaking in tongues, they did.

And this, by the way, is not just a kind of fashion, a passing fad. Catholic traditionalists are just so ... yesterday.

[Hat tip to JM: Advisory: Rules 7-9]

Cantalamessa: "the residues of ceremonials" must be "knocked down"

This is really the story of two myths; but first, the one referenced by Candalamessa here: It is the one referenced also by von Balthasar in his famous title made popular by a textbook used in many seminary classes, Razing the Bastions: On the Church in This Age, which views the Church of the past as having erected barriers between clergy and laity making the Church a colossal failure. (Anyone who believes that should check what Joseph Pearce says about the "burgeoning Catholic revival" and "unprecedented heyday of notable conversions" in the generations preceding Vatican II.)


In any case, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, the Preacher of the Pontifical Household, preached in the Vatican Basilica on Good Friday what was formally a homily but what Rorate Caeli calls truly "a panegyric to the new pontiff with an embedded program of great ambition." The post is entitled "Cantalamessa's Panegyric: 'a new time is opening for the Church', 'partitions, staircases, rooms and closets' and 'the residues of ceremonials' must be 'knocked down'" (Rorate Caeli, April 1, 2013).

Here are the key excerpts (emphasis added by RC):

We know what the impediments are that can restrain the messenger: dividing walls, starting with those that separate the various Christian churches from one another, the excess of bureaucracy, the residue of past ceremonials, laws and disputes, now only debris....

As happens with certain old buildings. Over the centuries, to adapt to the needs of the moment, they become filled with partitions, staircases, rooms and closets. The time comes when we realize that all these adjustments no longer meet the current needs, but rather are an obstacle, so we must have the courage to knock them down and return the building to the simplicity and linearity of its origins. This was the mission that was received one day by a man who prayed before the Crucifix of San Damiano: "Go, Francis, and repair my Church"....

May the Holy Spirit, in this moment in which a new time is opening for the Church, full of hope, reawaken in men who are at the window the expectancy of the message, and in the messengers the will to make it reach them, even at the cost of their life.

In short, the message is that we must heed the call of the Holy Spirit, and knock down the residues of traditional ceremonials that stand in the way of the Gospel.

This is a very inviting and common-sensical to many today, particularly those in the Evangelical Catholic community and those in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. What counts is the "spirit" of the law, not the "letter." The forms of liturgy, memorized 'set' prayers, Q & A (Baltimore) catechism styles all strike them as rigid, empty, lifeless "forms" that should, at best, be viewed as something like "training wheels" for mere beginners who haven't yet learned to fly.

(Here I can't help remembering Peter Kreeft's story about how he came to the rectory and told the Irish priest, while in grad school, that he wanted to convert, and the priest asked, "Who's the girl?" When Kreeft persisted with serious theological questions from the Summa of St. Thomas, the good priest handed him a copy of an elementary catechism entitled, Fr. Smith Instructs Jackson, and told him: "Walk before you fly, son. Walk before you fly!" But this, of course, is indeed another story.)

As to this first myth about knocking down traditions and razing bastions, however, Sandro Magister recently recalled, as noted in Rorate Caeli, one possible response that may be made:

In the pseudo-Franciscan and pauperist mythology that in these days so many are applying to the new pope, imagination runs to a Church that would renounce power, structures, and wealth and make itself purely spiritual.

But it is not for this that the saint of Assisi lived. In the dream of Pope Innocent III painted by Giotto, Francis is not demolishing the Church, but carrying it on his shoulders. And it is the Church of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome, at that time recently restored and decorated lavishly, but made ugly by the sins of its men, who had to be purified. It was a few followers of Francis who fell into spiritualism and heresy.

The second myth is referenced somewhere by Peter Kreeft, but I think comes originally from G. K. Chersterton who once said "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up." That, too, is a kind of common sense, at least to many people it would be so. It is elaborated upon in a book by Kreeft entitled The Best Things in Life, one of his playful dialogues between an imaginary Socrates and imaginary contemporary characters. But here again, it's hard to say where the ideas originate. Others out there write in a similar voice these days, as does Bruce Herman in the following quote:

Taboos fence in a particular experience -- and what is fenced in also fences other things out. Case in point: sexuality. The fence around sexuality is there to protect something that is very vulnerable and precious. If you knock the fence down, you no longer have the sense of preciousness, and eventually all sensitivity is lost.

I have addressed this issue before and some time ago in connection with litugical ceremonials ("'Making it Real' - Part II: The Sacrament of the Altar," Musings, March 9, 2007). The point would be, essentially, that these forms that hedge about the sacred mysteries, far from being "empty forms" or "senseless taboos," or "mere letters of the law" that serve to impede evangelization, in fact serve to preserve and protect that which is most precious and central to the heart of the Catholic Faith, apart from which the living faith of the people would wither and die.

There is another writer who puts the two myths in still other terms. The writer is Thomas Howard. The book is An Antique Drum, which was re-published by Ignatius Press under the unfortunate title of Chance, or the Dance? The first myth is that nothing means anything. In this instance, forms, rituals, gestures, vestments -- all these things are essentially meaningless externals in themselves, the operative word being meaningless. The second myth is that everything means something. In this instance, the altar boys bowing their faces to the floor during the Confiteor, the faithful receiving the sacrificial victim on their tongue rather than taking Him in their fingers, genuflecting at the et incarnatus est in the Credo and at the verbum caro factum est in the Last Gospel -- all of these things point beyond themselves, such that they are tiny instances of the way things are in the universe as a whole. It's always the little things.

I don't know that I can prove or disprove one or the other of these two myths. I can certainly testify to the existence of these two competing myths in the Catholic world today. Readers will have to put two-and-two together for themselves and see what makes sense from their vantage points. Certainly I believe in the Holy Ghost. Certainly I believe also in the Magisterium. I do not see them as working at cross purposes. Never have.

[Hat tip to L.S.]

Was there a new Pentecost after the Council?

Did Vatican II bring a "new springtime" in the Church, a "new outpouring of the Spirit," a "new civilization of love"? Some of us get a bit impatient with such language, not because we deny the active role of Providence in our lives and communities, but because we want some realism about what has been happening in the Church and in the world.


This graph was recently posted at Rorate Caeli (December 15, 2012) in juxtaposition with the second of the Advent sermons given in the presence of the Holy Father and members of the curia by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the pontifical household since 1980. You can read the entire sermon in English here: "Was there a new Pentecost after the Council? '-Yes, unreservedly yes! Just look at the Charismatics!'" (Rorate Caeli, December 15, 2012).

Fr. Cantalamessa, a charismatic, likes to contrast the "new Pentecost" with "Tradition wherein the Holy Spirit played no role at all." What is his argument? "When asked whether there was a new Pentecost [after the Council]," he says, "we should respond without hesitation: Yes! What is the most convincing sign of this? The renewal of the quality of Christian life wherever this Pentecost was received."

If what Fr. Cantalamessa means by "a renewal of the quality of Christian life wherever this Pentecost was received" is that the Gospel proclaimed by the Church is personally appropriated by the hearer, such that it is evidenced by growth in faith, hope, charity, holiness, a life of prayer and personal relationship with God and the saints, then we can say no more than that these are the virtues that Catholic Tradition has always sought to instill in the faithful.

If, on the other hand, this "renewal" is in any way uprooted and detached from the Sacred Tradition of the Church, in which alone it can find any enduring nourishment, there it can be little more than an ephemeral whim, or passing fancy. One cannot avoid recalling that Cardinal Suenens, a staunch supporter of the Catholic charismatic renewal, also championed the lifting of the Church's prohibition on contraceptives, going so far as to say that the Church needed to face reality and avoid another "Galileo case." (See Chicago Tribune obituary, May 6, 1996)

This is not the place and time for me to pursue the matter of the "new Pentecost" in any further detail. I have elsewhere offered some thoughts on the charismatic renewal and Catholic tradition (Musings, April 2, 2011). My only concern here is to reiterate the need for more realism in our language about what has happened in the Church since the 1960s.

Related: "The advent of Confessional Catholicism and the decline of Cultural Catholicism" (Musings, June 13, 2012).

Some thoughts on the charismatic renewal and Catholic tradition

I found myself jarred by the title: "Assisi 2011: Road to Pentecost." Then I read the name of the website: "ICCRS: International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services." I had thought at first that the reference was to Pope Benedict's scheduled return to Assisi this fall to revisit the international meeting of world religious leaders first convoked by his predecessor, John Paul II, an event to which many of us likely respond with what a good Englishman might call, in unimpeachable understatement, mixed feelings. But the present reference to Assisi and Pentecost signifies, instead, a convocation of Catholics involved in the charismatic renewal for a series of "inspirational talks" leading up to Pentecost.

All of which raises some issues that I have begun studying in recent weeks about the place of the charismatic movement within Catholic history. It's all a bit curious. Among the spiritual gifts cited by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians, speaking in tongues and prophecy are sharply minimized in the public life of the Church. They are not to be viewed as a source of pride or a litmus test of advanced spiritual standing, but are placed well behind the greatest gifts: faith, hope and charity.

In Msgr. Ronald Knox's study of related spiritual phenomena in his Catholic classic, entitled Enthusiasm(1950; rpt., University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), he refers to movements exhibiting similar tendencies as "ultrasupernaturalism" and chronicles their trajectory from New Testament times in the Church of Corinth through the recensions of the Montanists, Donatists Albigensians, and various Medieval heresiarchs, up through 16th century Anabaptists, George Fox and his Quakers, Jansenists, Quietists, and various French prophets, and Moravians to the Methodist movement of the Wesley brothers. He writes:

The strength of this personal approach is that it dominates the imagination, and presents a future world in all the colours of reality. Its weakness -- but we are not concerned here to criticize -- is an anthropocentric bias; not God's glory but your own salvation preoccupies the mind, with some risk of scruples, and even of despair.

But the implications of enthusiasm go deeper than this; at the root of it lies a different theology of grace. Our traditional doctrine is that grace perfects nature, elevates it to a higher pitch, so that it can bear its part in the music of eternity, but leaves it nature still. The assumption of the enthusiast is bolder and simpler; for him, grace has destroyed nature, and replaced it. The saved man has come out into a new order of being, with a new set of faculties which are proper to his state; ... he decries the use of human reason as a guide to any sort of religious truth. A direct indication of the Divine will is communicated to him at every turn, if only he will consent to abandon the 'arm of flesh' -- Man's miserable intellect, fatally obscured by the Fall. (pp. 2-3)

The contemporary Catholic charismatic renewal movement is part of a more recent phenomenon. In Jack W. Hayford and S. David Moore's The Charismatic Century(New York: Warner, 2006), the 20th century movement is described in terms of "three waves." The first wave began, the authors say, with the historic Pentecostal revival meeting in Los Angeles on April 14, 1906, with the African American preacher, William J. Seymour -- an event known as the "Azusa Street Revival." The second wave, often called Neo-Pentecostalism, is associated with the "Latter Rain" movement, the healing movement linked with Oral Roberts in Topeka, Kansas, after the Second World War, as well as with the Episcopalian priest Dennis Bennett of Van Nuys, California, after his experience of speaking in tongues drew national attention. The third wave, as C. Peter Wagner calls it, apparently refers to those Christians intent on practicing biblical Christianity who acknowledge the "place and power of the Holy Spirit in ways of which many [are] unaware" (pp. 8-9), but who prefer not to be called Pentecostal or identified directly with those involved in the first two waves. The Catholic charismatic renewal apparently finds its place in this latter movement.

According to the authors, the Catholic charismatic movement grew out of post-Vatican II movements of spiritual renewal. Particularly, the movement is said to have been sparked by a weekend retreat on February 17, 1967, involving Catholic students, a priest and two faculty members from Duquesne University, who gathered to read and discuss evangelical author, David Wilkerson's book The Cross and the Switchblade, "because of its emphasis on the importance of Spirit baptism" (p. 217).

There were antecedent hints before this that something was afoot, the authors suggest. They point Pope Leo XIII's invocation of the Holy Spirit by singing the hymn "Veni Creator Spiritus" on January 1, 1901, dedicating the twentieth century to the Holy Spirit. They suggest the particular inspiration by the Holy Spirit of movements associated with the Second Vatican Council:

In 1959 Pope John XXIII, at the "sudden inspiration" of the Holy Spirit, called for the [twenty-]first ecumenical council for the Roman Catholic Church, only the third council since the Reformation. Especially important was the prayer of Pope John XXIII that the council might be a "New Pentecost." Several themes emerged from the council's periodic meetings from 1961 to 1965 that helped create a favorable environment from which the Catholic Charismatic Renewal emerged. There was a particular emphasis on the importance of charismatic gifts in the church. A key leader to the discussion on the gifts of the Holy Spirit was Belgium's Leon Joseph Cardinal Suenens, whose words helped foster an atmosphere friendly to the Renewal.

It will not pass without notice by some of our readers that Cardinal Suenenes was one of those ambivalently-regarded luminaries in the firmament of the "Spirit of Vatican II" who promoted contraception in defiance of Church teaching (as Dr. Janet Smith pointed out to me), introduced Communion in the hand in Europe in defiance of the rubrics of the Holy See, and, among other things, disdained the traditional pre-Vatican II Latin liturgy.

All of which raises a host of questions about the relationship of the Catholic Renewal to Catholic Tradition, about priorities, emphases, the place of Magisterial teaching, formal Church membership, the life of faith, personal experience, supernatural graces, hermeneutics of "rupture" and "continuity," the letter and spirit of the law, and so forth. Not only this. It raises questions also about what led to the spiritual wasteland and the dearth of spiritual food and drink apparently perceived by many Catholics in the aftermath of Vatican II that induced them to turn to these experience-based movements of spiritual renewal. Apparently the stripped-down free-form New Mass alone did not quite do the trick. As one wag observed: “The police did not need to be called to Catholic churches each Sunday to hold back the hordes of lapsed Catholics whose faith had been rekindled at the prospect of saying the Confíteor in English” (Michael Davies, Pope Paul's New Mass,p. 92) -- or, one could add, holding hands during the Our Father and exchanging hugs during the rite of peace.

One of the chief patterns that emerges in Msgr. Knox's study is the propensity of movements of the charismatic kind, in their celebration of spiritual charisms, to become detached from the institutional Church and her liturgical and sacramental forms. This may not always happen, as it assuredly does not among most Catholic charismatics whom I know. Yet there could still be a subconscious inclination to regard formal 'set' prayers and liturgies and chants as, at best, a set of disposable training wheels to prepare one to ride solo, as practices that outwardly conform to the 'letter' of the law but inwardly may hamper the free flight of the 'spirit' if one continued to adhere rigidly to them -- whereas extemporaneous forms of prayer and worship and song may be regarded as the more authentic medium for expressing heart-felt devotion in a living relationship with Jesus Christ.

Without question there are traditions of mystical theology in Catholic tradition that attest to sublime flights of the spirit into realms transcending the mundane dimensions of religious experience. One thinks of the Carmelite mystics. Without question there are traditions of miraculous healings and supernatural happenings in Catholic tradition. One thinks of any number of saints, although Padre Pio comes to mind at the moment. Yet whatever graces such phenomena may hold, the conclusion that emerges from Msgr. Knox's study is that none may serve to substitute for the ordinary means of grace furnished by Holy Mother Church in her seven sacraments, her liturgy, her teaching, her traditions of dogma, prayer and devotion. These have always been the ordinary means of supernatural grace in the life of Catholics throughout the ages -- the place where the individual soul encounters his living Maker and Redeemer.

One memory is, for me, emblematic of the problem at issue here. I remember sitting in the room where, after one of Franciscan University's summer conferences, the meeting was held that led to the founding of the Coming Home Network, the association that has assisted numerous former Protestant pastors, laymen and their wives make the arduous transition across the Tiber to Rome. Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska, was present, and, at one point, he was asked to say a few words, which he did. The principals in the leadership of the convocation apparently involved a significant number of charismatics and former Protestants. At one point, an individual in attendance -- one, I think, who had not yet become a Catholic -- requested prayer for his particular circumstances. A number of those in attendance got up from their seats, surrounded the individual seated in the front of the room, and placed their hands on his head as one of them said a prayer invoking God's anointing and guidance in the man's life. Bishop Bruskewitz remained seated throughout, a bit awkwardly it seemed to me, his apostolic office as bishop neither solicited or consulted, but seemingly regarded in this instance as inessential.

Having said this, I hasten to conclude on a personal note by observing that I owe a debt of gratitude to Catholics associated more or less with the charismatic renewal during the years around the time I was received into the Church. While I have never been personally disposed to seek any of the extraordinary charisms such as speaking in tongues, I found that the verbal expressions of faith among charismatic Catholics I initially encountered coincided most directly with my own as a former Protestant -- not in the sense that I was ever personally a charismatic, but in the sense that the language of personal experience was most reminiscent of the more evangelical style of Protestant faith to which I had ample exposure since my childhood. The Catholic who sponsored me at my Confirmation was a charismatic. Many of those whom I came to know at Franciscan University and its summer conferences were charismatics. My erstwhile colleague at Lenoir-Rhyne University (no longer there), Dr. Ronda Chervin, is a charismatic. More recently, the deacon who baptized our youngest daughter in North Carolina was a charismatic. A number of my closest and dearest colleagues at Sacred Heart Major Seminary have been formed or influenced in one way or another by the Charismatic Renewal. In light of this, nothing I have said in the preceding post may be construed fairly as stemming from any kind of personal animus against those involved in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. On the contrary, I have great appreciation for their personal and spiritual depth and wisdom -- nobody more than Fr. Francis Martin, who just retired from Sacred Heart Major Seminary and whom I have known from the two separate occasions we had him down to speak to an annual theology conference hosted by the Center for Theology at Lenoir-Rhyne Univeristy in North Carolina.

Korean Catholic charismatic movement

"Korean Bishops denounce Charismatic excesses" (Rorate Caeli, January 9, 2009) -- specifically practices associated with "family tree healing."