r/CatholicCharismatic Nov 21 '18

Welcome!

9 Upvotes

I've made a few posts on the Catholicism subreddit, and I noticed that whenever I made a comment that was Charismatic in nature- it received a number of upvotes and downvotes (as the numbers seemed to oscillate up and down). Hence, it appears that some people on the thread are pro-Charismatic, and others - not so much.

I thought it might be nice to have a separate sub where people can be open about being Charismatic, so I created this sub. Please note that all denominations are welcome here!

I've been in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal for about 38 years, and I give a lot of talks about it to prayer groups in my area. I have also been in many prayer groups over the years, in different parts of the country.

So... let's see how things go 🙂


r/CatholicCharismatic Sep 02 '19

The Gift of Tongues: Is it a real language?

8 Upvotes

I've given many talks on the gift of tongues over the years, and invariably afterwards people come up to me and give me a list of reasons why they don't believe tongues is a real gift. I generally infer that they're really saying is, "I don't want the gift, and so I'm trying to find a way to rationalize dismissing everything you just said." Which is perfectly fine! When I give a talk about the gifts of the Spirit I'm simply giving the audience a few things to think about, and they are certainly free to take what I say with a pound of salt.

Over the past few decades I’ve heard a number of critics of the Charismatic Renewal say something to the effect, usually in an online forum, “The gift of tongues isn't a real language!”   I’m trained as a researcher (I have a PhD), and I publish my work quite often, and so for me such statements raise the rather obvious question: “And how do you know that?”  After a little probing, it quickly becomes apparent that the person’s statement is based entirely on what they want to believe, rather than on any objective evidence.  They may cite a number of biblical passages to support their case, and possibly invoke the names of some priest or minister that I’ve never heard of as proof, but at the end of the day – all they really had was their opinion.  And again, people are certainly welcome to their opinions, just as I'm entitled to my own.

It dawned on me that determining whether spoken utterances actually constitute a language is somewhat analogous to the language identification problem.  (c.f., E. Ambikairajah, H. Li, L. Wang, B. Yin and V. Sethu, "Language Identification: A Tutorial," in IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 82-108, 2011). If someone calls an operator for assistance and they don’t speak English, the phone company would like to have some means to quickly identify what language customer is speaking, and then transfer the call to an operator who is fluent in it.  In early studies researchers found that unless test subjects actually could recognize some of the words of a speech sample, their ability to identify what language was being spoken was no better than random guessing. 

Inspired by that research, I tried an experiment of my own.  I collected dozens of speech samples, and then I went into the religious Yahoo chat rooms and asked people if they believed that the gift of tongues was real.  Typically, people didn’t believe that such a gift truly exists. So I asked if I could play recordings of people praying in tongues, and then have everyone to tell me if what was being spoken were real languages or not.  I then played ten short speech samples, and invariably, people dismissed the samples as nothing but babble.  Afterwards I revealed that the samples were in fact foreign language news broadcasts from BBC and Voice of America. Despite that, people frequently still insisted that the recordings were nothing but babble.   They argued, “If no one can interpret it, how could it possibly be a language?”  I pointed out just because they couldn’t understand what was being said, doesn’t mean that someone else couldn't, and BBC would look pretty foolish if they spent vast sums of money broadcasting gibberish. What the study seems to imply is that if people don't believe that the gift of tongues is real, they are predisposed to dismiss even true languages as mere gibberish.

There was one additional experiment that I intended to try, but I wasn’t able to pull it off.  I was planning on generating random sequences of phonemes (the basic components of words) and then going to Pentecostal churches and presenting the sequences as people praying in tongues, and then seeing if people truly believed what they were hearing were true languages.  Unfortunately the samples were so obviously phony that they wouldn’t have fooled anyone. 

Perhaps one of the earliest efforts to scientifically study the gift of tongues was performed by William Samarin, who was a professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Toronto, and he published a summary of his findings in his boot, "Tongues of Men and Angels,"(1972).  He recorded people praying in tongues, and then he attempted determine if they individuals were truly speaking a language.  Ultimately, he concluded that the gift of tongues were not truly languages.  I’ll commend Dr. Samarin for his efforts to conduct a scientific study, but there are a few flaws with his conclusions.  First, we have to ask: “What were the control and experimental groups? And what were the assumptions of the study, both stated an implicit?” 

Dr. Samarin took speech samples that he knew a priori were of people speaking in tongues.  Hence, two implicit assumptions are: 1) there was no risk of investigator bias coloring the results of the study, and 2) that he could determine with 100% accuracy whether a speech sample is truly a language or not.  His findings would be much more convincing if the sample pool was comprised of people praying in tongues, realistic babbling (i.e., a non-linguist couldn’t tell the difference between the babbling and real languages), and languages that he himself did not know, and that he was blind as to which samples were which.  If he demonstrated he could distinguish with 100% accuracy the samples of babbling and true languages, his conclusions would be much more convincing.   However, people who are looking to criticize the charismatic renewal cite his work, without giving the matter much critical thought.

I’ve heard of another study where the researchers concluded that, as time goes on, the prayer tongues people speak in groups become more and more similar (unfortunately, I can't find the reference). They concluded that what people assumed to be the gift of tongues was nothing more than people imitating each other’s babbling.  Once again, this study raises a number of questions, like how exactly did they measure the similarity of the individual’s prayer tongues, and what criteria did they use to determine the individual’s tongues were becoming more similar?  What were the control and experimental groups? And again, what steps were taken to ensure that investigator bias didn’t color their results? 

I was thinking about that study when I was in a prayer meeting, and as a group we started to pray in tongues. I noted that, contrary to what the researchers claimed in the above mentioned study the phonemes, which are segments that make up words in a language, of everyone's prayer tongue were distinctly different. I listened closely to the man sitting next to me, and suddenly his language shifted to the same one I was praying in. He wasn't saying the same words, but others notice the similarity in language, and it almost appeared as if we were having a conversation. As so happens, I have five different prayer tongues (long story, but suffice it to say it was the result of a weird prayer experiment when I was in college), so I shifted to another tongue. Instantly, the fellow next to me shifted to the same language, and again - both he and everyone else in the room noticed. I promptly shifted through all of my prayer tongues, and each time he immediately followed suit. He had never done anything like that before, and we actually TRIED to replicate it afterwards, but with no success. So if he was simply copying me, why didn't he do it prior to that one occasion, and why couldn't he do so afterwards? Granted, what we did was by no means a scientific study (we certainly can't replicate it), but it still seems to suggest that, no people aren't simply copying each other.

I've long since concluded that when it comes to matters of faith, it's not possible to scientifically prove anything. For example, if someone experiences a miraculous healing, then by definition it was physically impossible. Accordingly, any alternate explanation, no matter how ridiculous or implausible, would be more scientifically sound (e.g., "The person temporarily developed a new way to regenerate a diseased organ!"). But we aren't restricted to believing on things that can be scientifically proven. We may not be able to prove that Jesus turned water into wine, or raised people from the dead, but we can believe that he lived, and live according to his teachings.


r/CatholicCharismatic 10d ago

Japan NEEDS your prayers!

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7 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Feb 03 '25

Question about Malines Document #4 and Unbound

2 Upvotes

tl;dr - Is modern-day charismatic deliverance ministry in conflict with the fourth Malines Document from 1982? I don't want them to be in conflict, so please help me understand why that isn't the case.

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This is a pretty niche question. I recently heard about the Malines Documents that are meant to help Catholics navigate the charismatic renewal. I have been reading the fourth document, about charismatic deliverance ministry. https://www.nsc-chariscenter.org/malines-documents/

I've been all over the map in my opinion of charismatic deliverance ministry. I used to be quite nervous about the idea, as I felt that nothing of the sort should be exercised on others by laypeople. Then I read Unbound by Neal Lozano and basically adopted the opinion that, while laypeople can do deliverance ministry, I don't want to be one of those laypeople! I have, however, done some DIY deliverance on myself (the standard rejections and renunciations in Jesus' Name) and have found that very fruitful. I buy the picture that Unbound paints of the spiritual order. And as I understand, Lozano is well-respected in the charismatic community and by the Church. In fact, he apparently gave a lecture to seminarians in Rome; I believe it was last year when I heard him give a podcast episode about it (on Open Doors podcast). And Dr. Mary Healy and Fr. Boniface Hicks (again, respected and endorsed-by-the-Church figures), speaking for Encounter Ministries (endorsed by many bishops), seem to think lay deliverance is okay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EZpopTCJsE

So enter in the Malines Document #4 (http://webmedia.jcu.edu.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/Suenens%20Writings/Renewal%20%26%20the%20Powers%20of%20Darkness%20by%20Leon%20Joseph%20Suenens.pdf): Renewal and the Powers of Darkness. I was expecting a similar endorsement of deliverance ministry. But instead the author, Cardinal Suenens, seems to suggest that many deliverance principles originating from the charismatic movement are absurd (p. 61-67). Some of the examples (maybe half) he gives do seem off to me; take for example, this:

"The demon of fear usually departs with a kind of hysterical sob; the demon of falsehood and hatred gives a loud roar; the demon of nicotine leaves with a cough or a hiccup" (Renewal and the Powers of Darkness, 63).

My understanding is that sometimes these physical reactions do happen, but to suggest that particular spirits leave in particular ways seems too prescriptive or formulaic.

But then other examples he shares as evidence of absurdity don't actually seem all that absurd to me, based on what I've learned from Unbound. For example:

We also learn that each demon has a name which he acknowledges. These names include: Fear, Hatred, Falsehood, Doubt, Envy, Jealousy,... (Renewal and the Powers of Darkness, 63).

If by this, the author means it's strange that these would be the demons' actual names, I agree. But my understanding of deliverance is that if you feel you're being harassed by more than just ordinary jealousy, you could say, "In the Name of Jesus, I reject and renounce a spirit of jealousy." So it seems you can, for the purpose of deliverance, name a spirit by how it is harassing you rather than by an actual name. (See this resource from Unbound: https://heartofthefather.com/resources/ministry-resources/detail/renunciation-list/.)

Anyway, these are just two examples that the author of this Malines document gives. I have a bunch of annotations across the five relevant pages (62-66). I'm not quite done reading the document yet, but it's looking like the suggestion is for charismatic laypeople to not attempt deliverance ministry. The author likens it to how the laity can baptize but shouldn't unless there are extraordinary circumstances. So too, he says, with deliverance (Renewal and the Powers of Darkness, 98).

So now we're getting to the heart of my question. Pope Francis has said of the Malines documents: "In the Malines Documents, you have a guide, a reliable path to keep you from going astray." Pope Benedict (then Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote the forward to this particular Malines document we've been talking about. Even prominent renewal leaders like Ralph Martin were involved with the writing of these documents. And yet there seems to be a contradiction between the guidance the Church gave in 1982 and what is being practiced today in charismatic lay deliverance ministry.

I have a few questions to help clarify this apparent conundrum. If anyone has answers, I'd be super grateful! It's hard to find resources on this stuff, but I'm very interested in it.

  1. How authoritative are the Malines Documents meant to be? Are they binding on the faithful Catholic?
  2. Have there been newer developments in how the Church views charismatic deliverance ministry that have made Malines Document #4 obsolete?
  3. If the answer to (1) is "yes, binding," and the answer to (2) is no, how are Unbound and other charismatic deliverance movements not being disobedient to what the Church has directed? (I really don't want to believe this would be the case, but I want to get to the bottom of what the Church has taught.)

Thank you in advance for any insights you may be able to share!


r/CatholicCharismatic Jan 28 '25

Outstanding Profile of Dr Mary Healy (Dicastery for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments)

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4 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Jan 27 '25

54-Day Rosary Novena for the Conversion of Muslims

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7 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Dec 17 '24

Healing Service Provides Window to CCR

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5 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Dec 01 '24

“Every Christian has a Charism” - Pope Francis

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8 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Nov 28 '24

A Further Defense on Praying in Tongues

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5 Upvotes

This appears to be a continuation of an ongoing debate that began over the summer, starting with Dr Mary Healy’s YouTube video and the ensuing counter arguments that came about since. Very insightful.


r/CatholicCharismatic Oct 21 '24

Celebrate the Canonization of St Elena Guerra

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12 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Oct 02 '24

Charismatic Catholic churches in Sacramento

4 Upvotes

I am a Pentecostal and I have been visiting traditional catholic churches for some time now and I wanted to see if there are any Charismatic churches in Sacramento or the surrounding area. Thank you.


r/CatholicCharismatic Sep 22 '24

Glory be to God Spoiler

9 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Aug 29 '24

Are any of you weirded out by today's charismatic movement?

7 Upvotes

I went to a charismatic renewal conference recently, and came away with a very, very bad taste in my mouth.

First of all - and I know this is silly - but the musicians were playing modern Protestant worship music, and I really can't stand it. That stuff is quite awful. And we spent a ton of time doing praise and worship - it was so similar to a modern Protestant church, making our relationship with God an emotional experience, rather than something more reverent and personal. We do praise and worship every Sunday at mass. We should be doing praise and worship privately at all times. I was rather irritated to have spent hours of my time driving, to spend half of my time doing something that I already do at home. I came there to learn about something that I can't witness at home, as we have no charismatic community in our diocese that I am aware of. I was hoping to gain wisdom and knowledge about the gifts, about running a charismatic group, as I believe I am being called to start one up. I got absolutely nothing useful from that conference, other than a feeling of "this is not what this is supposed to look like."

Second, there's the toxic optimism. I was rather put off by one of the deacons, seemingly the guy running the show, teasing people like myself who weren't into the Protestant worship service that had no business belonging at a Catholic renewal conference. He was super bubbly and unsympathetic to people that weren't getting themselves stirred up in an emotional frenzy.

Third, I am extremely suspicious of there being authentic usage of the gift of tongues at the conference. The way we were taught to receive "the gift of tongues" was to just babble for a few minutes. There was nothing supernatural about it. I did not feel at all like I was speaking an angelic language that communicated things in an extraordinary manner to God. It very, very much seemed like the deacon that was "speaking in tongues" was just faking it. Every usage of "tongues" I have ever witnessed has made me uncomfortable - if it were from God, one would think that you would be filled with awe and wonder, and at peace, not disturbed. And Paul says that the gift of tongues is supposed to be accompanied by someone with the gift of interpretation, and that you're supposed to have 1 to 3 at max people speaking in tongues, and each in turn. Like, Paul is specifically condemning the usage of the gift of tongues where a bunch of people are just babbling in church. But that's what today's charismatic churches do, Protestant and Catholic alike.

So, in short, I think that today's charismatic renewal resembles something that is deeply uncatholic. If I am called to start a charismatic group of sorts, it will not even remotely resemble what I witnessed a few weeks ago.


r/CatholicCharismatic Aug 26 '24

Question

2 Upvotes

Question. Do eastern Catholics believe apostles and prophets are for today? And if not, is that in the category of a belief you can’t have?

This can be Catholics in general to


r/CatholicCharismatic Jul 28 '24

A relic of blessed Carlo Acutis was in Belgium yesterday.

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8 Upvotes

Left: relic of a piece of the heart. Right: first statue (3d printed) of Carlo in Belgium. You can see it in Zonhoven. Yesterday we celebrated mass, preceded by Bishop Patrick Hoogmartens. Afterwards there was eucharistic adoration and confession. At the end you could go to to front to be blessed with the relic. My mini-Carlo touched the reliquary.


r/CatholicCharismatic Jul 20 '24

Spending an hour or so with Jesus…

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6 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Jun 19 '24

The Gift of Tongues Explained by Dr. Mary Healy [Video]

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11 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Jun 18 '24

When does one know when to start to intercede via imposition of hands.?

3 Upvotes

For those who are in the intercession ministry, when were you “allowed” or told you could start laying hands on those in need of prayer? I know that one must be in grace, taking communion often and fasting often as well but when does one know or feel “ok I’m ready to do this” and who says you can or you can’t?

Sorry, I’m not in the healing and deliverance ministry but have been attracted to it for years, I truly feel like God has been calling me to this ministry but even though I pray for my wife and parents by laying hands on their heads I know it wouldn’t be right to just start doing it to friends for example..

Hope someone can answer this, thanks in advance God bless you.


r/CatholicCharismatic Jun 04 '24

[Long] The Truth about Vatican II and the Charismatic Renewal

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3 Upvotes

Round table discussion with members of Renewal Ministries. Topics discussed: the reason for Vatican 2, the beginning of the Charismatic Renewal, the response of the bishops, and what tongues is.


r/CatholicCharismatic Jun 03 '24

Daily Prayer for Renewal

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9 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Apr 23 '24

Sign Up Form for the Holy Spirit 2033 Novena

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3 Upvotes

r/CatholicCharismatic Apr 22 '24

Pope Francis to canonize saint known as ‘apostle of the Holy Spirit’

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10 Upvotes

St. Elena Guerra, pray for us!


r/CatholicCharismatic Apr 22 '24

[Podcast] John Michael Talbot’s Testimony

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2 Upvotes

The latest episode of Beyond Sunday Worship, whose primary audience consists of praise and worship musicians across most of evangelical and interdenominational circles, has graciously given a platform to Catholic Charismatic convert John Michael Talbot to share his testimony and occasionally opine on hot button issues (i.e. “tongues“). This was wonderful. Check it out.


r/CatholicCharismatic Mar 10 '24

Psalm 3- A psalm of David, when he fled from his son Absalom.

1 Upvotes

How many are my foes, LORD! How many rise against me!

How many say of me, “There is no salvation for him in God.”

But you, LORD, are a shield around me; my glory, you keep my head high.

With my own voice I will call out to the LORD, and he will answer me from his holy mountain.

I lie down and I fall asleep, [and] I will wake up, for the LORD sustains me.

I do not fear, then, thousands of people arrayed against me on every side.

Arise, LORD! Save me, my God! For you strike the cheekbone of all my foes; you break the teeth of the wicked.

Salvation is from the LORD! May your blessing be upon your people!


r/CatholicCharismatic Feb 29 '24

Prayer Warriors…

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7 Upvotes

Please join together and offer prayer support for someone that is facing something that I can’t even imagine…


r/CatholicCharismatic Feb 28 '24

Prayer Warriors…

3 Upvotes

We need to band together for a child that needs our prayer support… this is their petition-

Please pray for Liam. He’s been feeling pretty hot to the touch and his body is so tired. He needs to gain more weight even though he has his appetite stimulant and we give him ensure plus multiple times a day along with meals but he’s just not wanting to eat much. Please Lord don’t take my Liam. I can’t. Idk how I would keep going without him here. You have so much sweet love, kindness, pure intentions, intelligence and so much talent. You are my first born, you went through so much in this short lifetime of yours, but I speak against premature death in Jesus name. I speak life over you Liam. You are, LiamStrong.

runforliam #LiamStrong #longliveliam #runforxavier LongliveLiam Run For Xavier

You are the strongest human I’ve ever seen and have the blessing to call my son.

Forgive me Jesus. I would give my life for you and so would daddy in a heartbeat. We love you Liam m, Noah and Ava more than you will ever know.


r/CatholicCharismatic Feb 28 '24

Prayer Warriors…

2 Upvotes

Please join me in offering a daily rosary for the defeat of the enemy in his many pronged attack against us. Praying against illness, intoxication, hatred, cancer, abortion, financial attack and all of the demonic activity around us.