What are Charismatic Catholics?

[Ohana]

there is some content on Charismatic Spirituality in the Spirituality forum. I do think it is banned as a topic in Traditional Catholicism due to people being disturbed. Check out "Preparation for Catholic Charismatic , , , " Post # 44 is really good. There is also a link to a booklet written by Monsignor Walsh about the topic. I hope these are helpful to you.

 

[jacobhalo]

In our Catholic Church in California, it ment people who were open to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We enjoyed praising God in song, praise, and occasionally in tongues. You may experience a prophecy if some one feels led by God to share one. We also prayed with people who requested healing. My experiences were positive. These people were joyful, and respectful.

We you please explain what you mean by “speaking in tongues”. I’ve yet to heard it.

 

[Reuben_J]

Sorry to offend anyone. Having not been raised in any church, I didn’t know it wasn’t part of traditional Catholicism. Since it was offered at my RICA class- I didn’t know it would ’ provoke reactions’ to ask about it.

As another poster suggested, I will look elsewhere.

Hi. Most of those ‘Charismatic Catholics’ do not have any prefence especially in masses and even prayers. Some would look for the EF mass and bask it its reverence and worship. Some would love the rosary and have become ardent marian devotionists. Of course the same people also arer quite at home with the praise and worship.

If you encouter them even in the RCIA, probably that is because they are running it for the church. Most of them are people who have been lasped or ordinary cradle Catholics so to speak, but have found a new zeal for their faith. So they are quite active in the church doing many kinds of work and ministries as services they can render personally or corporately.

As the terms suggest, Traditional Catholics may do have problem with them as we can have that with anybody but generally that is not the case today. The phenomenum is quite old and pretty much part of the Church.

 

[po18guy]

I think that is where there is a disconnect. I did a session in charisms with the Catherine of Sienna Institute. It helped people identify the gift of the holy spirit. The disconnect is that the majority of Charismatic Catholic (and Pentecostals) is they heavily focus on prophecy and speaking in tongues. In reality those two gifts are exceedingly rare, but in some charismatic groups it seemed everyone spoke in tongues and many prophesied.

The charisms are subject to testing by the Church, as we are talking the spiritual world here. The Charismatic movement seeks to enable Catholics to identify and use their charism(s) for the building up of the Church. This is in accord with Matthew 25:14-30. Since each confirmed Catholic on earth has at least one gift of the Holy Spirit, can prophecy actually be all that rare? It is probably the most misunderstood of the gifts. It is not always or exclusively about the future. As to tongues, unless someone is there with the gift of interpreting, it is used only to build oneself up. Since we cannot know the mind of God, charity demands that we ascribe the most pure of motives to those who speak in a language which we do not understand. It is quite possible that those individuals need that building up, and that manner of speech connects them much more closely to God. If it looks or appears odd to the rest of us, I ask so what?

In fact, most charisms are much quieter, and some are not able to be discerned at all by others via looking or listening. As it is with the media, it is those who are noisiest who get all the attention. That is not exactly justice, either.

 

[grannymh]

We you please explain what you mean by “speaking in tongues”. I’ve yet to heard it.

In general, speaking in Tongues is an unique gift of the Holy Spirit. Tongues is the name of the various vocal sounds which are made with the power of the Holy Spirit. They can be simple sounds or they can be complex like a human language. These sounds can be sung or they can be so quiet that only the person yielding to the power of the Holy Spirit can feel them. Whatever the sounds, they are always under the control of the individual yielding her or his speech mechanism to the Holy Spirit.

This is what happens. The Holy Spirit’s gift of Tongues enables a person to freely yield one’s speech mechanism, including lips, tongue, larynx, directly to the Holy Spirit Who in turn will use the physical aspects of speaking in two different ways.

The common use of Tongues is to transform our human prayer into a spiritual prayer to God. As in other forms of prayer, we can praise God, thank God, ask God for mercy, and petition God in Tongues. As we all know, the first and primary prayer to God is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. From there, we find and use our own methods of prayer such as the Rosary, Divine Office, Liturgy of the Hours, Chaplet of Divine Mercy, meditation, spontaneous prayer, praying in Tongues and so on. We need to avoid the trap of thinking that one type of prayer is better than others. We are not clones of each other; we are individuals loved deeply by our Creator. In turn, we love our Creator deeply in our chosen prayer life.

The second way is to use the yielding of the speech mechanism to the Holy Spirit as a vehicle for God to give His divine message to the community. In this particular use, there is also an Interpreter of Tongues Who will give God’s message in the language of the community. This second, separate use of Tongues is one of the nine classical gifts listed by St. Paul and requires a mature spiritual life and serious preparation. In contrast, the first use of Tongues, which is actually praying to God, requires our sincere commitment to live in surrender to God’s will…as best we can.

In both cases of using Tongues, we let go of our own thoughts, memory, and intellectual control of the sounds coming from our mouth. In both cases, Tongues requires deep humility on our part.

Tongues is traditional in that it was part of a prayer experience when adults were initiated into the Catholic Church during the early centuries following Pentecost. Tongues is also traditional in the sense that it was part of the ordinary practice of Christians in the time of St. Paul.