Advice on how/if to confront charismatic speaker about teaching error

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Ok, so I was at a charismatic Catholic event today at a local Catholic Church. Now, I was only there for a few minutes. I walked in an hour late, and, after hearing the speaker for about 30 seconds, I made the decision to leave.

The speaker had a Bible in his hand and asked the crowd of 40-50 people:

"Who you should trust when there is a contradiction between Catholicism and the Word of God?"

The crowd, enthusiastically replied, “The Word of God!”

I shouldn’t have to explain to many people on this forum what was wrong with the question in the first place.

It’s bad enough when Catholics have to deal with Protestants telling them that their church is unbiblical. Now there’s a group of people at that Catholic church who’s had a “Catholic” speaker affirm that lie in their heads.

So I decided to leave.

My question is how should I respond to this? I have an opportunity to go back to the conference tomorrow and talk to the speaker in person. Should I ask him to clarify what he meant?

My biggest fears are:
  1. I minterpreted what he meant and will feel dumb for having walked out.
  2. He’ll say, “Nope, you heard me just right! The church contradicts the bible in many places!” and I’ll be tempted to be… umm… quite unchartible to him. 🙂
For those of you who are completely bored, I posted a little short video about my experience and some criticism for my fellow charismatics on my blog. (Be warned: The language is a little blunt.)
blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1&indicate=1

Any advice would be appreciated.

Take care!
  • Dan
 
dan said:
"Who you should trust when there is a contradiction between Catholicism and the Word of God?"

The crowd, enthusiastically replied, “The Word of God!”
Click to expand...
Oh and maybe click the link in my signature, print out the material there on the Word of God, and give the folks a copy.
 
It may be that you misheard what he said. I find it hard to believe he would have been so audacious as to make that claim. Perhaps he meant, if there seems to be a contradiction between what you hear Catholicism teaches and what the Bible says, which should you follow? Not everything you hear is Church dogma. Some of it is pure lies and not endorsed at all by Rome. So, he would be right were he claiming this.

As a sidenote: I left the charismatic movement the day I was “baptized in the Spirit.” I was in the foyer and some lady was exclaiming about how we have a lot to learn from the Protestants. 😛 Looking back, perhaps she was more right than wrong, but I’m pretty sure she meant it in an “evangelical” way–referring to eveangelicalism rather than mainstream Protestantism. And, sorry, but I’m not a big fan of evangelical Christianity.
 
If you’re sure that’s what he said, I’d raise heck with the event people and the church staff. There has to be consequences (even if just long and loud complaints) for this stuff or it won’t stop.
 
dan said:
The speaker had a Bible in his hand and asked the crowd of 40-50 people:

"Who you should trust when there is a contradiction between Catholicism and the Word of God?"

The crowd, enthusiastically replied, “The Word of God!”
Click to expand...
You get some silly people settign themselves up as leading Catholics. However they usually mean well.
For instance if the audience is composed largely of evangelical Protestants, that sort of statement might be a way of drawing them in. Essentially it is untrue, however. The New Testament is a set of internal Church documents written and preserved for internal purposes. Just as I am an authority on the correct intepretation of my own books, it is hard to see how the Church can’t be the ultimate authority on its own literature.
 
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