Can someone explain charismatic prayer/renewal/practice to me?

[Amac1]

This is a term I’ve only heard of recently. Can someone explain it to me in fairly simple terms please?
What is the Church’s teaching/thoughts on it also?
Thanks

 

[Viki63]

It’s a movement that focuses on the belief that the gifts and miracles of the Holy Spirit are available now, as they were in the first century to Christians. There’s an influential book" Nine O’Clock in the Morning, that explains it all. They believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, and other gifts such as prophecy that St, Paul talks about.
There is nothing contrary to church teaching in the movement, and some Catholics participate. Confirmation is supposed to be when Catholics receive the baptism in the spirit, I believe, but since the Spirit is not bound by traditions, he also works independently.
FYI, I received the baptism in the spirit back in 1972 and used to speak in tongues, but have fallen out of the practice.

 

[Dovekin]

Raniero Cantalmessa, ofm, has been Preacher to the Papal Household for he last 40 years. He has been involved in the charismatic movement, and in dialogue with Pentecostals, though he is also a theologian who writes on other topics. Some of his sermons to the Papal Household can be found at the link.

 

[Polak]

FYI, I received the baptism in the spirit back in 1972 and used to speak in tongues

I’ve heard two different opinions in opposition to speaking in tongues.

One, the more common view, is that it’s nonsense and people are just babbling to themselves and not actually saying anything.

Another is that it’s an extremely dangerous practice that doesn’t come from the Holy Spirit but from much darker forces. I remember listening to a story about a man who spoke, I believe that it was Aramaic or Hebrew. He was invited to one of these charismatic events. He decide to go along just to see how it was, without participate. He witnessed a man beside him cursing Jesus during the ‘speaking of the tongues’. He asked the man after the event if he knew what he had said, and that guy told him he doesn’t know what he says when he speaks in tongues, he just knows how to do it.

 

[Viki63]

That occurred to me. However, i always prayed asking for protection beforehand, so am not worried.
St. Paul recommends always having an interpreter present if someone is using tongues in public.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

What is the Church’s teaching/thoughts on it also?

Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) movement has been around for decades.
It’s permitted by the Vatican and a lot of priests are in it.
It’s not everyone’s preference, but like I said it’s allowed by the Church.

 

[commenter]

I was heavily into the Charismatic movement in the 1970s and occasion since then. My feeling is that a few benefitted a great deal, many benefitted to some degree, and for a few it was detrimental.

For someone with a solid doctrinal foundation, the Life in the Spirit seminar opens the door to a new personal relationship with Jesus. It pulls together much that you only know from books.

But for people who never got the solid Catholic doctrine, it was kinda risky. If they were led to go back and study their faith better, understand the context of what they just learned, so much the better!

But some were simply empowered to feed on the subjectivism prevelent now. “Discerning the Spirit” becomes “Follow my Gut Feeling”. Some branched off into fundamentalism, the New Age, or otherwise.

I wouldn’t recommend any prayer group not connected to a parish or solid Catholic institution.

The good far outweighs the bad for the great majority.

 

[Vico]

Modern Catholic Dictionary, excerpt:

Just as on the first Pentecost in Jerusalem there was an extraordinary descent of the Holy Spirit, so today there is said to be a similar effusion of spiritual gifts. No less than on Pentecost Sunday, so now the descent of the Spirit becomes clearly perceptible especially in three ways:

• 1. in a personally felt experience of the Spirit’s presence in the one who receives him;
• 2. in external manifestations of a preternatural character, notably speaking in strange tongues, the gift of prophecy, the power of healing, and in fact all the charismata described in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of St. Paul;
• 3. in a strong impulse to communicate these blessings to others by becoming a messenger of the Spirit in the modern world.

 

[commenter]

The Church generally supports participation with charismatic groups in union with the diocesan liaison, appointed by the bishop.