"Charismastic" Catholics

Discussion in 'Non-Anglican Discussion' started by Religious Fanatic, Apr 10, 2018.

  1. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    Does anyone know much about this movement? Apparently there is a Charismatic offshoot within the RCC. How does the RCC view this kind of phenomenon, and what do Anglicans think of it?
     
  2. Aidan

    Aidan Well-Known Member

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    Happy-clappy, jumping for Jesus, hands in the air lot. Similar to evangelical Protestants. Popular in 70s and 80s, less so now thanks be to God! Big into "folk Masses" which was basically a pop concert on the sanctuary led by Fr Trendy!!
     
  3. Shane R

    Shane R Well-Known Member

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    I had a bad experience with some Ruthenians who identified as charismatic Catholics. The whole situation was a mess: the church was basically one large family with a few outliers who liked the Eastern rite better than the Roman rite. They had a dual-rite supply priest come in to sing the Mass for them and he was only available every other week. In his off weeks, the core family went to infest a local Maronite congregation. The whole culture of the group was cultish and the family patriarch let it be known that he was a charismatic and if you were not, you would never be accepted within their circle. I felt sorry for the handful of people who just wanted to go to that Mass and pray in that manner without getting immersed in the family's culture. I'm sure nothing has come of them.

    But that is my general experience of charismatics: they tend to view themselves as super Christians, more holy than others. And they want you to know about their gift or gifts. They don't acknowledge ordinary gifts as equal to whatever they are claiming and run off more people than they bring in with that attitude. They are really rather predatory on the easily impressionable. I'm no cessationist but I think most of the charismatics I have met are deluded.
     
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  4. Scottish Knight

    Scottish Knight Well-Known Member

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    I used to know a few people who were part of the Sword of the Spirit Communities founded by Steve Clark which came out of the catholic charismatic renewal. While not very knowledgeable on the subject I have to say my experience with charismatic catholics was positive. I still read their online magazine from time to time (found here: http://www.swordofthespirit.net/bulwark/ ). I did not find them happy clappy and I admired their faith and evangelical fervour.
     
  5. Scottish Knight

    Scottish Knight Well-Known Member

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    I should also say that the local Melkite bishop of the area of Lebanon I was visiting was very supportive of the Swrd of the Spirit Communities so they seemed to have been well accepted by some at least in the church hierarchy.
     
  6. MadHermit

    MadHermit New Member

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    I have experienced a more intimate connection with Christ in Catholic charismatic worship than I have ever experienced in more traditional Catholic Mass or Episcopal worship services and that is true, despite my doubts that all the messages in tongues and prophetic words were authentic. That said, I had a very ugly experience in a large joint Episcopal/ Catholic charismatic group in Cambridge, MA in the 1970s. The sense of ecumenical unity was exquisite, especially during the joint Communion services. But then the local Catholic bishop discovered that Episcopalians and Catholics were serving each other Communion and banned Catholics from participating in this practice. His intervention created much resentment and led to the abolition of this charismatic group. To this day, I marvel that educated Catholics thought their hierarchy would permit such an ecumenical Eucharist to take place.
     
  7. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I fear that the connection you're referring to is more of an emotion!

    That is to say, you've felt wonderful and transcendent (or whatever) at the charismatic service; and that has been the main problem with modern evangelicalism in its betrayal of traditional Faith: it has substituted emotion for knowledge, feeling for fact, experience for regeneration

    I know that many charismatics are not regenerate from the simple fact that they are often just as pagan, or worse, than the secular culture around them! Yet they 'feel' all this and that, and they raise their hands, and the tears flow from their cheeks... the vain tears of useless emotion that results from human manipulation, not the operation of the Holy Ghost
     
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  8. MadHermit

    MadHermit New Member

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    anglican74: ""you've felt wonderful and transcendent (or whatever) at the charismatic service; and that has been the main problem with modern evangelicalism in its betrayal of traditional Faith: it has substituted emotion for knowledge, feeling for fact, experience for regeneration"

    Yes, it's called "the fruit of the Spirit" in Galatians 5:22-23 and "love, joy, peace" are exquisitely emotional. And the rest of these fruit ("patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control") are often manifest in their outreach to the needy in ways I seldom see in my Anglican acquaintances. But then my exposure to Anglicans is no doubt more limited than yours.

    Anglican 74: "I know that many charismatics are not regenerate from the simple fact that they are often just as pagan, or worse, than the secular culture around them!"
    I could say the same for many Anglicans and Episcopalians I have encountered. It serves no useful purpose to set up a straw man and then knock it down and pretend that your stereotype is typical. Instead, we need to examine the merits and flaws of various spiritualities (of denominational or special movements within denominations) at their best to make any progress in ecumenical dialogue.

    Anglican 74: "Yet they 'feel' all this and that, and they raise their hands, and the tears flow from their cheeks... the vain tears of useless emotion that results from human manipulation, not the operation of the Holy Ghost."

    From my observation and experience, many of "them" have encounters with the Holy Spirit that are so empowering and life-changing that Anglicans can't even remotely approach it in their more sedate liturgies. In my own case, at age 16 my natural skepticism put me on the brink of agnosticism, when it was shattered by an unexpected experience of glossolalia so intense, sweet, and life-changing that this day was by far the most important experience of my life and, decades later, I still draw strength and spiritual nourishment from the very memory of my intimate connection with God that day. My mind was instantly transformed from academic mediocrity to a min d that gained me recognition at graduation as the top-ranked senior in my province (acknowledgement from the provincial premier). That experience also made me clairvoyant and "the word of knowledge" has greatly helped my ministry and personal life. While the glossolalic experience in question was unfolding, a visiting Lutheran pastor interrupted to me to say he rejected speaking in tongues and was just there to study alternative spiritualities. I didn't argue with him; rather, I simply touched him gently on the forehead and he just exploded in other tongues!

    Your post gives me an excuse to raise a larger question about the site, especially about this "Non-Anglican Discussion" section., and whether I even belong here. There is very little discussion of biblical spirituality here. I wonder if such discussion is welcome because it could get controversial. For example, I think I can demonstrate that many Anglicans here lack a sound grasp of Paul's teaching about the work of the Holy Spirit. But would a detailed presentation of such a case offend or be welcomed? Let me give you an idea of where I'm coming from. I was raised for my first 21 years in a large Canadian Pentecostal church. I have an MDiv (Princeton) and doctorate (Harvard) in New Testament, Judaism, and Greco-Roman backgrounds and was a Teaching Fellow in the Harvard New Testament and Classics departments and, for 12 years, a professor at a Catholic university before I became a United Methodist minister.
     
  9. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    While that's fair, the standard is much lower for them, for you claim to have a direct experiential contact with the Holy Ghost, when for a fact we know you have no more contact than we do... it serves no benefit to your cause to make claims of greater divine Intimacy, if you can't rise to any greater level of Christian perfection... Really, it shows that your sensations of Intimacy are optional, really irrelevant to how one lives one's life, and that we are no worse for the wear to reject your Glossolalia, because clearly we won't be any worse in our Christian journey

    I can't speak for anyone, but I always enjoy conversations... We are a pretty stodgy old-fashioned Anglican community, so our interpretations may not match your new-age perspectives, preferring rather the traditions of the church fathers, and the anglican divines, across thousands of years

    How is that different from any other kind of emotional manipulation! You know of Hindu yogis, and of the entertainment industry, and of many unbelieving (false) Charismatics who nevertheless achieve the same visible results as the believing ones.... This should tell you that there is nothing special about these meetings, and it is just human manipulation, and that in fact that glossolalia is just a delusion, for it is not related to the Tongues mentioned to us in the holy scriptures
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2018
  10. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    The tongues mentioned in Acts just seems to be the miracle of being able to speak in other languages. Then we have Paul saying, "If I speak in the tongues of angels..." which may not be literal but meaning simply 'eloquent speech'. I do believe some charismatics and pentecostals have demons. Don't tell me "Can Satan cast out Satan?" because I've had Roman Catholics tell me the same thing whenever they experience 'miracles' while engaged in various heresies or unorthodox practices that are unique to their church's doctrines. If you find my thread, "A peculiar experience" you'll hear about an encounter I have had with a Roman Catholic woman who tried to tell me that Protestant gifts come from demons. She claimed she knew former pentecostals and charismatics in her church who became Catholic, and had to have demons cast out of them because their gifts came from Satan and you can only have authentic gifts through membership of the Holy Mother Church. She had a protestant friend come to her in the most oddly coincidental manner (I witnessed it, again, go read the thread) and then the Catholic woman told her how she felt it was important that she become a Roman Catholic because the people she affiliated with had demons, then her friend was 'slain in the spirit' not as a witness to Protestantism but to the 'truth' of the Catholic church because prior to that they were having a conversation where the Roman Catholic woman claimed her protestant friend needed to get rid of any music or books that were not Catholic because songs like I Can Only Imagine deceive non-Catholics into thinking they will see Jesus and she said they will not because they are not Roman Catholic. A demon basically swooned the protestant woman into thinking she was having a legitimate sign from God to save her from Protestants and convert to the Roman Church. However, that stint ended when her boyfriend outed her (the RC woman in question) that they had been looking at porn and having premarital sex the whole time she was talking about salvation and sacraments. The woman had a very dark and brooding air, very spooky herself. She feuded with her boyfriend and tried to deny it at the beginning, but frustrated and with a very angry face, she just admitted it. Her boyfriend asked why she had never complained about all this they were doing if she really believed that, and he himself was not that religious. She left the place humiliated, and rightfully so. I do not believe she was saving anyone but the miracle was a false sign to further enrapture her protestant friend into a cult, for when she fell during the swoon, she was weeping and saying "I won't listen to those songs anymore / read protestant books", etc.

    A lot of Protestants who claim to have certain gifts also have demons that are meant to give false witness. There was a protestant talk show host who constantly praised and welcomed a false prophet who is now dead. He was a believer in tongues and other manifestations and had them from time to time, but none of his predictions ever came true, and I found testimonies of people who knew him prior to this who exposed him as a fraud. My mom naively almost bought into this nonsense before I explained this to her and informed her of his bad reputation. This had been going on for a long time.
     
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  11. MadHermit

    MadHermit New Member

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    [BibleHoarder: "The tongues mentioned in Acts just seems to be the miracle of being able to speak in other languages.
    In fact, only the tongues spoke on the Day Pentecost were comprehensive as "other languages."

    Peter identifies them as the prophesying predicted in Joel 2:28. But the tongues spoken in Cornelius's house (Acts 10:44-47 and at Ephesus (19:1-6) are neither understood nor interpreted and are therefore, for all practical purposes, gibberish. A such these episodes of tongues are carefully distinguished from the gift of prophecy (19:6), just as the gift of tongues is similarly distinguished from prophesy in 1 Corinthians 12-14. So the human languages supernaturally spoken in Acts 2 must be distioguished from the non-prophetic gibberish spoken elsewhere in Acts.

    Biblehoarder: "Then we have Paul saying, "If I speak in the tongues of angels..." which may not be literal but meaning simply 'eloquent speech'. "

    Hardly. Scholars determine the meaning of experiential language in Hellenistic Greek from its use in contemporary culture. Famous first century rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was famous for his ability to interpret angel language and in the Testament of Job people speak in angel dialect and interpret it. So "the tongues of angels" in 1 Corinthians 13:1 is best understood as angel dialect and is Paul's way of understand Corinthian gibberish. In 14:12 Paul labels the Corinthians "zealots of spirits (Greek: "pneumata") and Hebrews 1:7 designates angels as "spirits." So the tongues spoken at Corinth are at least in part understood as angel language.

    Biblehoarder: "A lot of Protestants who claim to have certain gifts also have demons that are meant to give false witness."

    You wouldn't like it if an outsider dismissed Anglican spirituality as wooden demonic tradition, now would you? It is one thing to critique alternate Christian spiritualities. But it is the ultimate in malicious judgmentalism to label demonic Protestants to whom you have limited regular exposure.
     
  12. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    They already do that, but thanks for reminding me. I'll have to remind the Roman Catholics and Protestants who are practicing psychics and mediums, that go to reiki practicioners, all the while taking sacraments, that they're just another legitimate expression of Christianity.

    BTW, take my comments about the subject of tongues with a grain of salt. I am currently going back over the book of Acts. And I do believe some instances of the miracles of interpretation are certainly inspired and can be legitimate, but you cannot say all forms of miracles are authentic witnesses to the Christian faith or should be preferred over the authority of scripture when discerning their origin and trustworthiness.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2018
  13. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    In all honesty, we ought to pray for MadHermit. I know we disagree with him on some matters, but I'd rather we just settle things and let the man be.

    What this has taught me though, is that flaunting your credentials is not a healthy way of getting someone to listen to you. I personally hate it, even though I know quite a few things even without any degrees of any sort. I try not to be rude when explaining things of this nature to them, it has undone me in the past. Humble people do not boast about that crap and often times it makes people aggressive when you flaunt it to them rather than simply explain things in a way they can understand and can be reasonably demonstrated to them in some way by scripture. You cannot always prove some things to them directly like what something means in a biblical language or certain facts about history relating to the culture of the bible without it being taken on hearsay. Those things require some technical explanations of those subjects. Not everyone gets that. People talk a lot of nonsense about biblical languages sometimes.

    And of course, some people with actual credentials are not even Christian, like Bart Ehrman, who has made criticisms against the bible that, despite his education, have reasonable answers.
     
  14. MadHermit

    MadHermit New Member

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    Rather than diccuss the issue on its merits, you choose the ad hominin route and charge me with "flaunting" my credentials. In fact, all I was doing was providing a context for what might seem like arcane allusions to relevant Jewish background material. What this shows me is that Anglicans here are interested only in confirming their hardened perspective. I pressed the issue in this way to determine whether an honest and open dialogue is possible with Anglicans in the same way it was when I lived in the Episcopal Divinity School dormitory during my grad study years in Cambridge. I now see that it is not and will vacate this site. btw, for the record, I consider 90% of modern Charismaticlmanifestions to be bogus. Bye
     
  15. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    No, rather than discuss things on their own merits, I suggested we do you a favor and try to take things easy because according to your profile, you are a 70 year old man who claims in his username to be a 'Mad Hermit'. The bible says we're supposed to be nice to older people and respect the elders. This kind of discussion is not good for your health. I know it may sound like I am assuming you to be frail because of your age, but this is true more often than not. Just accept the favor and calm down.
     
  16. Magistos

    Magistos Active Member Anglican

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    I let this go on because the powers that be are open to discussion, and I admit to being curious as to the personalities involved. However... well, this may already be too late.

    I know this is spitting in the wind because hey - politics, religion, and money - but let's try and keep it civil.

    This is to everyone. You can disagree - forcefully, but attack the POINT, not the PERSON.

    This site is definitely going to take a harder stand on things like this. It's pretty much a given that if they are on a site like this, and a REGULAR, they have STRONG feelings and beliefs and members not going to apologize for what they believe. :dunno: But part of the whole point of the restructuring is that new voices, different voices, are going to come in and talk. It's going to get uncomfortable. If something can be taken two ways - choose to accept the nicer one as benefit of doubt.

    (Heck, I don't agree with everyone here on everything, that's for sure. But I'm southern, so I just smile and whisper "Bless their hearts." I also walk away from Catholic Answer forums feeling like a heathen and I don't even post there.)