Help me understand - What is a Charismatic Catholic

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Share what makes a person a Charismatic catholic and what some of the culture would be like. Thanks.

If you can state below if you consider yourself a traditional or a more modern catholic as well.

Blessings!
 
Charismaticism for me is being open to the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and the lives of others.

Personally, I am both. I love TLM and chant, but I also love Exposition of Our Lord with more contemporary praise and worship music.

It doesen’t have to be either/or.
 
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Paradiso, what you say completely misunderstands being charismatic. It is no more selfish than any sort of praise is selfish – we do not praise ourselves, but God. It is faith in Jesus Christ alone, not in one’s feelings. Charismatics are told to pray and fast and love no matter how we feel in the moment. The goal is God’s glory, not our feelings. Charismatic worship isn’t about showing off in front of others, quite contrary to what you seem to think – the only people there are other worshippers.

And your other comments seem to suggest that miracles ceased with the New Testament, which is plainly against Church teaching.
Paradiso said:
Jesus performed miracles, and the apostles performed miracles, for the sole reason that it was what people expected.
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Was Jesus just a panderer, then, on your view? He just gave the people what they wanted?
 
Everything Jesus did in relation to miracles is plainly explained in the gospels. There’s really no need to say anything further about that.

As for how Charismatic practices help you relate, that’s entirely beside the point. It’s a basic matter of belief. These are related matters and best exemplified by the famous example of “Doubting Thomas.”
 
Paradiso said:
The point isn’t how well you follow practices or why, but the sincerity of your faith. Fasting doesn’t prove your faith, it’s a demonstration of it. It’s the hypocrisy Jesus talks about. If you’re gathering with other faithful outside of the mass, and you’re actively showing each other “how good a Catholic” you are, you’re completely ignoring humility, even if you feel you’re being humble. This is in the gospels. Jesus abhored religious observance for the sake of religious observance. It’s shallow faith, no matter the intention.
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My gosh, do you think that people gather in charismatic worship to show off their goodness? That couldn’t be further from the truth. We gather to bemoan our failings, if anything, and lean on God, who never fails us.

There may be charismatic pharisees, I suppose, but they are the exception, not the rule.
 
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But that’s the mass, that’s prayer. Anything that attempts to take the place of these is seriously misunderstanding them. And I don’t mean that you skip mass or don’t pray, but that if you believe you have to attend some separate event. No, you don’t. Your faith is sufficiently affirmed in the mass and in private prayer. Anything else is in error, however well-intentioned. It’s putting the focus on something other than God. This isn’t against fellowship, against community. This is about refraining from behavior that puts the focus squarely on something else. If the fellowship, if the community becomes the focus, then the focus is not on God. You only think it is. Error can be difficult to understand, especially when you’re surrounded by many other people making the same one. Augustine’s major error wasn’t that he’d rejected Catholicism, but that he’d become embroiled in a version of it that we no longer recognize as such. It’s the same as suggesting Jesus was only a man (which was an error) or only God (which was an error), and yet people who were convinced they were Catholic believed both, and yet neither represented the original, legitimate truths of the Church. Being misled isn’t always that obvious, alas.
 
Maximilian75 said:
Charismaticism for me is being open to the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and the lives of others.

Personally, I am both. I love TLM and chant, but I also love Exposition of Our Lord with more contemporary praise and worship music.

It doesen’t have to be either/or.
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That is exactly it. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work as well when we are closed off to it.

Yeah, there can be abuses and failures there, but there can be abuses and failures anywhere, even in the most traditional of Latin Masses. We are all human. If anything, much of the Charismatic worship I have attended is heavily filled with recognizing one’s own weakness and petitioning the Lord to work in their lives.

And for the record, I consider myself more contemplative, whereas my husband is more Charismatic.

On a separate note, there have been many threads about Catholics involved in the Charismatic Renewal…my gentle suggestion would be to search for those threads as well. Most people are pretty set in their beliefs and these threads usually end up being an argument and don’t really accomplish anything, unfortunately.
 
They focus on God insofar as they use each other as surrogates. The only legitimate surrogate in the Church is the priesthood. Charismatics attempt to create others. Even if a priest is involved, that doesn’t mean they understand what they’re doing. A priest does many things, but they represent their calling in private ministry and the mass. Period.
 
I do not know if this is what you really mean, but it sounds like you are limiting the definition of a good Catholic to a life merely of attending mass and private prayers. It sounds like you are suggesting that gathering with other faithful outside of mass is considered merely showing off. As in… gathering for bread and broth during Lent, community events, religious talks, prayer meetings, etc are not necessary.

While my introvert side will gleefully like that individualistic view, my logical side does not accept that. After all, we Catholics are called to be disciples of God, we are individuals in a community. There is a reason that we receive Eucharist during the part of mass called communion.
 
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Any service directly related to a church, such as Stations of the Cross or Adoration, praying a group Rosary before mass, anything where the focus remains the intentions of the mass, meaning directly on God, an unmitigated meditation of faith, that’s legitimate.

And likewise, any event that’s purely fellowship or community based, where you’re not actively soliticiting prayers, merely enjoying each other’s company, that’s legitimate…And besides, a perfect Catholic is likely an introvert. No worries there!
 
Charismatic worship is not my thing. I find it quite uncomfortable really, but perhaps that is just me (an introverted conservative).

Having been along to a charismatic programme, which I left before the end, it really did seem to me that you were expected to actively want to receive the gift of tongues. Why should you actively want to receive this? For what purpose? This was never adequately explained, other than it being a special form of prayer. There also was the expectation that you would wish to be ‘slain in the Spirit’. Again, why?

I have indeed met some very faithful Catholics who are into charismatic worship (including one who also attends TLM and who has an amazing faith) but I just don’t get it.
 
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It’s not my cup of tea…Jesus has told a number of saints that faith is not based on consolations, and St. Padre Pio said that we should remain indifferent if God decides to bestow on us special graces. Why strive after them? It seems it would be an incorrect understanding of God, that God is there just to make you feel good and special. He is much more than that; our faith is based on our wills, how much we are willing to do for the Lord, not our feelings.

At times God even pulls such consolations away from the soul for a time so that the soul doesn’t depend on such consolations and feelings, but on God Himself.
 
I am not happy with it either. To me, its much like what a Pentecostal church would do.
 
Thank you for sharing that and I would say that is a great thing to do to be more open to God and to contemplate Him. But I can’t help noticing some who go to such a mass that have a different disposition than you, who go there simply to use God for pleasure. I have heard of people falling down “by the power of the Holy Spirit” and some even not being able to move. Others “speaking in tongues”, misunderstanding the original use of speaking in tongues, the original method not being speaking in unintelligible ramblings.

When St. Teresa of Avila would levitate during mass or prayer in the presence of others, she thought she was being punished and begged God not to do that again.
 
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I attended a Charismatic Mass once where there was “Witnessing” before the final blessing. People came up to the ambo one by one to Witness about God. One lady shared that everything she merged onto I-75 God miraculously came down from heaven and parted the traffic. She likened the event to Moses parting the Red Sea and gave absolutely no credit to the other drivers who were no doubt helping her merge. Many of the testimonies were of a similar nature.

This led me to see that there is a certain amount of mystical thinking for this particular group of people. That made me consider if this is true in varying degrees for all of us who belong to particular sub-groups of the faith.
 
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I have a buddy who thinks the devil is after him. If he gets a hangnail it’s the devil. It he has a low tire, it’s Satan. If a bug runs across his floor it’s an evil omen.
 
Do you have any idea the fun you can have with a friend like that? Maybe a few pranks will break him of the habit. I had a friend like that in college. He thought everything was a miracle. I bought and exact copy of a statue of St. Joseph he had in his room. I broke the nose off and kept switching them. He was thoroughly convinced St. Joseph’s nose was disappearing and then growing back. 😱
 
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My first “experience” with God came in the middle of the Mass. The Spirit of the Lord fell on me and overwhelmed me. I fell to the floor by His weighty presence. It was awesome!
 
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