For those reading who have no idea what it’s like to attend a Charismatic praise and worship assembly, please read the following link:
traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/a032htFusionCatholicism_Vennari.htm
Below are excerpts:
**"Debauched Catholicism
While watching the noisy “commit your life to Jesus” session, I kept asking myself: what is the point? Catholics have never engaged in such a degrading spectacle before. Why do it at all? It is easy to understand why Protestants put themselves through this exercise, since for many of them, it is the one and only means of becoming “saved”.
Most evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants do not believe that a Christian is “born again” when baptized. Rather, a man or woman is not “saved”, does not become a “Christian,” until he makes a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. It is the standard “get saved” process one sees in Protestant tracts. I acknowledge I am a sinner, I acknowledge my need for Jesus, and I commit myself to Jesus by accepting Him as my personal Lord and Savior. Thus, according to this system, even if you are a baptized Roman Catholic, you are still not a “Christian” until you make this personal commitment to Jesus.
I remember my heartbreak when a cradle-Catholic friend told me that he was now a “Christian”. He was beaming with enthusiasm, so happy to realize he had never been a Christian before, and now he was. Here was a man who, due to this newly found “salvation”, walked away from the true Faith, abandoned Holy Mass and the sacraments, and now embraced a heretical creed. He was objectively living a mortal sin against the First Commandment. Yet he displayed a similar kind of effected jubilation, the same effervescent toothpaste smile, that same so-called “alive in Jesus” mannerism that I saw from many at this latest Charismatic conference — which proves that outward appearances of being supposedly “full of the Spirit” mean nothing.
This dear friend of mine had been baptized and raised Catholic, so indeed, he had been a Christian since the day of his Christening. But at one point in his life, he attended one of those noisome evangelical businessman’s gatherings where he was told that his baptism really didn’t matter. His Catholicism didn’t matter. No, if he wanted to be a “Christian”, there was no other way to do it but to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. And as he was a product of post-Vatican II Catholic education, he fell for it in a flash.
The Protestant formula of being “saved” by accepting Jesus as one’s personal savior is based on a rejection of the sacrament of Baptism as the means established by Christ to cleanse original sin and fill the soul with sanctifying grace. It is by this means alone that we receive the Divine Life of the Blessed Trinity in our souls. This is the central point of doctrine denied by the Protestant’s getting “saved” by merely accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior.
So, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, why does the Steubenville Catholic imitate a Protestant practice based on rejection of bedrock tenets of the Catholic Faith? What good does publicly accepting “Jesus as Lord and Savior” when one is already in the state of grace? It is a shallow, emotional spectacle found nowhere in our sacred heritage. One can only try to imagine noble Catholics such as G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc or Emperor Karl of Austria submitting to this gushing “commit your life to Jesus” parody.
In fact, the Catholic Church already has a public ceremony to “re-commit one’s life to Jesus”, if you will, it is the “Renewal of Baptismal Promises” enacted on Holy Saturday. This dignified and noble ceremony is steeped in Catholic tradition and symbolism. It is not, as were the Steubenville antics, a cheap imitation of Jim and Tammy Baker emotionalism. And if a baptized soul falls from grace, then he must seek the Sacrament of Confession, a point of doctrine that the Steubenville species does not appear to deny (there were confessions going on throughout the conference weekend and the attendees were encouraged to go).
Again, what we see in all this is fusion Catholicism: Catholicism admixtured with Protestant elements that denigrate the Catholic Faith, and serves to ennoble a Protestant practice that denies the very words of Our Lord Jesus Christ in His institution of the Sacraments.[2]
Blessed Pope Pius IX, as with all the Popes up to Vatican II, rightly recognized Protestantism in all its forms as “a revolt against God.”[3] Pius IX also, in his magnificent Syllabus of Errors, solemnly condemned the error that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion”,[4] an error on which “Catholic Pentecostalism” is based.[5] What went on at this Steubenville weekend — which was steeped to the gills in Protestant spirit — was by no means an explosive outpouring of the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, all indications point to the spirit of the underworld at work.
Saturday
In 1974, in a scathing criticism of the Charismatic movement, the staunchly orthodox Archbishop Dwyer of the United States said, “We regard it bluntly as one of the most dangerous trends in the Church in our time, closely allied in spirit with other disruptive and divisive movements; threatening grave harm to unity and damage to countless souls.”[6]
Joseph Fitcher, in his 1974 book The Catholic Cult of the Paraclete, mentioned that some Catholic prelates were “worried about the Protestant influence on their people” due to Pentecostalism. Fitcher quoted Bishop Joseph McKinney’s worry about Catholics being “misled and not being firmly grounded in theology”.[7]
6. Dwyer’s criticism appeared in an interview published in the National Catholic Register, July 21, 1974 and is cited from Joseph Fitcher’s The Catholic Cult of the Paraclete, Sheed and Ward, Inc. New York, 1974, p. 40
7. Op. cit. page 40. Original quote from Bishop Joseph McKinney appeared in an interview published in New Covenant, September, 1971, pp. 10-16.
My weekend at Steubenville proved how correct were these good bishops’ concerns. This was especially evident during Saturday’s events. The day began with a short “Worship and Praise” session, with the same rock’n’pop music, the same emotionalism from the audience, the same Protestant-style “Praise God”, “Hallelujah”, “Praise the Lord” salvos from the podium. This was followed by two lectures. Al Mansfield spoke on “We Walk by Faith, Not By Sight”, telling the heartbreaking story of his New Orleans home being destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. In the process, he urged everyone, “do not leave here without getting baptized in the Holy Spirit.”
Then came Bert Ghezzi’s “The Transforming Power of the Sign of the Cross,” which was by and large a fine presentation. He explained the Catholic practice of making the Sign of the Cross, the history of this practice and what a holy and powerful sacramental it is.
This was followed by the 10:30 a.m. “Eucharistic Liturgy”, a Novus Ordo celebration full of rock’n’pop music. Some of the details of this liturgy will be recounted in a future installment.
We then arrived at the two afternoon workshop sessions: the first at 2:00, the second at 3:30. Each of the sessions had five workshops conducted simultaneously by various speakers. For the moment, I will only mention one of the workshops I attended. It was entitled “Forming Your Character With the Saints” conducted by Joanne Storm, Ph.D., a preppy and enthusiastic young lady who teaches Psychology at Steubenville. Though her manner of presentation may not be for everyone, the content of her speech was, for the most part, quite good. She listed a “Top 10 Characteristics” of the Saints that included: frequent use of confession; living a counter-cultural life; humility; devotion to the Eucharist and other points. Not mentioned on the Top 10, however, was devotion to Our Blessed Mother. I thought this a serious omission, though I do not in any way question Dr. Storm’s love of Our Lady.
During her presentation it occurred to me that there was another point the saints had in common. All of them became saints without a Pentecostal “baptism of the Holy Spirit”. All of them rose to heroic sanctity without attending rock’n’roll masses, without publicly “accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior” in the Protestant fashion, without adopting Protestant terminology and mannerisms. Her talk inadvertently demonstrated that the last thing one needs to become a saint is any participation in this new wave of Pentecostalism now infecting the Catholic Church.
In fact, every saint that Dr. Storm mentioned: Saint John Vianney, Saint Teresa of Avila; Saint Joan of Arc, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint John Bosco, would have run from that Steubenville conference screaming in horror at what was presented as “Catholic” to gullible participants. Worse, Saint Katherine Drexel of Philadelphia, who died in 1928, would have immediately recognized the Steubenville weekend for what it was: a high-decibel reincarnation of the revivalist, big-tent, store-front Protestant pentecostalism rampant in early 20th Century America."**
Please click on the link above to read it in its’ entirety.
Peace and God bless you as you discern the Truth!
)
) so I can’t directly compare the two, but from what I’ve been reading it seems to me to be very similar.
). Anyways, after Father completed the anointing, and had left, this lady came up to me and invited me to one of the healing Masses that they have - and to be honest, what bothered me was that it felt like she was saying that the sacrament I had just received was insufficient, and I needed to go to a special service to really be healed. That was just too much like my old Pentecostal days for me, and I declined. Now, to be fair, this is all my subjective opinion, but, there it is. After this, any idea of checking them out is pretty much gone.