“Charismatic Catholicism” Is NOT The Faith of the Saints; It Stunts Spiritual Growth – To Be Avoided!
Editor writes…
More and more, I hear about people of all ages who are not keen to attend the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) – the Mass which nourished the saints and martyrs – because they have been so used to the noise and activity of the new Mass, the Novus Ordo Missae (NOM). They like being “involved”, being invited to do the readings, distribute Holy Communion (Extraordinary Ministers), and so on. Busy, busy, busy. The precise opposite of the interior silence which the great saints and spiritual writers tell us to cultivate in our souls. I stumbled across the article below late last night and I think it should encourage a good debate on the subject of the type of Catholics who prefer the activity of the novus ordo to the silence of the TLM. Have they become “charismatic” Catholics and is that different from being a real Catholic – one who seeks to follow in the footsteps of the great saints, martyrs and Doctors of the Church? Read the article below before sharing your thoughts…
From Unam Sanctam Catholicam…
There have been many responses to the modern crisis of faith in the Catholic Church. While Traditionalist Catholics have typically sought refuge in the traditional doctrines and liturgical practices of the Church’s pre-Vatican II history, other Catholics have looked to the Charismatic Renewal as a means of restoring devotion, prayer and enthusiasm to parishes. Many bishops in particular, wary of the traditionalist movement, have adopted the Charismatic Renewal (CR) in their dioceses. I once had a chat with the former Director of Seminarians for my diocese. He told me that our bishop had a “strategy” of geographically spreading priests formed in the CR all around the diocese so that as much of the flock as possible would be exposed to charismatic Catholicism. The Director of Seminarians lauded this decision as a means to promoting genuine Catholic spirituality in the diocese.
As a former Director of Religious Education and Youth Director who had to work with many young people who had been formed in the CR or were attending CR parishes, I can confidently say that this charismatic spirituality, while ostensibly promoting spiritual development, comes with a lot of negative consequences. While it is not my intention to denigrate or attack those who do have a preference for charismatic spirituality, in the words of St. Peter and St. John, “I cannot help speaking what I have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).
The attraction of charismatic spirituality has always been on the experiential end. Participants approach their spirituality primarily through the avenue of the emotions, which certainly makes people feel good. We should not underestimate the importance of feelings in this discussion. A positive worship experience, whether it is in an incense-filled chapel to solemn Gregorian chant or in a contemporary parish to Christian rock music, can flood one with emotion, and this can be a good thing. The question is not whether or not emotions ought to be engaged in worship; the question is what place those emotions play in charismatic worship.
In charismatic worship, the emotional aspect is absolutely central. If a worshiper is unable to “loosen up” and engage in the music and worship in an emotional way, the experience is relatively stale. Basically, if one is not able to participate in the singing, hand-waving, crying, etc., there is very little left. It is too noisy to pray quietly and there is so much going on around that the experience can actually be distracting. Thus, if a person finds themselves unable to enter into the emotional aspect of the experience, there is not much left.
Here we will look at the seven reasons why the Charismatic Renewal is not the best vehicle for promoting genuine Catholic spiritual development.
1. Over-emphasis on the emotional experiences create dependency
Above, we spoke of the central place played by emotional experience in charismatic worship. Contrast this with the Traditional Latin Mass, or any reverent Novus Ordo liturgy for that matter. In these liturgies, we may be overcome by emotion at the beauty of the chant, the décor of the building, or the awesomeness of the mystery unfolding on the altar as the grace of God subtly moves us. But these emotional responses are not intrinsic to the liturgy itself; we can still recollect ourselves to pray, follow along and fully participate even if we do not feel moved to tears. Furthermore, to the extent that we do feel moved, it comes as gratuitously, almost gently, and is a gift. Contrast this with a CR Mass where we feel compelled to put ourselves into that highly-charged emotional state just in order to feel that we have had any spiritual experience at all. In effect, it makes us dependent upon this emotional high to “feel” close to God.
2. This dependency can stunt spiritual growth
A result of this dependency is that many people raised in the CR end up spiritually stunted. They go so far, but no farther, and the spirituality feels shallow over time, primarily because a true emotional response to beautiful worship has to be just that – a response. It cannot be manufactured, and over time, as one becomes accustomed to charismatic worship, one learns more and more what is “expected” in such a setting and begins to learn to manufacture the appropriate responses, gestures, etc. But the a true response to God’s grace cannot be manufacture, and the whole thing becomes shallow. The emotions that allows a person to have a powerful experience at the beginning stops them from doing so by the end. If you break your leg, a crutch allows you to walk, but it also prohibits you from walking quickly. Charismatic spirituality acts as this crutch.
3. Lack of silence, which is necessary to hear God’s voice
With this dependence on emotions, activity and music, there is little place for silent prayer in charismatic liturgies or worship services. This is unfortunate, because our tradition teaches us that silence is ultimately necessary to hear God’s voice. We could recall the silent prayers of Jesus, or the fact that Elijah heard God as a “still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). But in this context we could quote Pope Benedict XVI who said:
“The Gospels often show us … Jesus withdrawing alone to a place far from the crowds, even from His own disciples, where He can pray in silence. “The great patristic tradition teaches us that the mysteries of Christ are linked to silence, and only in silence can the Word find a place to dwell within us.
This principle holds true for individual prayer, but also for our liturgies which, to facilitate authentic listening, must also be rich in moments of silence and of non verbal acceptance. … Silence has the capacity to open a space in our inner being, a space in which God can dwell, which can ensure that His Word remains within us, and that love for Him is rooted in our minds and hearts, and animates our lives” (Wednesday Address, March 6, 2012).
Periods of silence are essential for our spiritual growth. Without it, we can never mature, never “open a space in our inner being”, as the pope says. This is true “for individual prayer, but also for our liturgies.” Unfortunately, in liturgies influenced by the CR we are never allowed a moment of silence; every aspect of the liturgy is consumed with music, gesticulation, and noise. Silence is banished, and participants are never permitted to develop a tradition of silent, contemplative prayer.
4. Charismatic worship promotes undue familiarity with the Divine
We are certainly called to draw near to God and have intimacy with our Lord Jesus Christ, but we must always remember that we are approaching the Divine, and that our familiarity must be within the proper context, especially liturgically when there are clear distinctions between the liberties allowed the clergy and those the laity.
It is easier to give an example:
At one charismatic liturgy I attended, boys and girls (both weeping) were permitted to be “slain in the spirit” and laid down on the floor in the sanctuary between the altar and the tabernacle. Boys were sitting with girls, laying down next to them on the floor, some were rubbing each other on the back or “laying hands” on each other, all in the immediate presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Another boy came in, wearing daisy dukes and barefoot. He apparently believed that it was acceptable to enter into the sanctuary and the presence of God wearing shorts that would make any girl blush and with no shoes.
All of this behavior demonstrates and inappropriate familiarity with the sacred that brings the mysterious down to the level of the human and banalizes the transcendent nature of God. Even when we “draw close to the throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16), we ought to do so carefully, in “fear and trembling,” remembering to Whom we are speaking. We cannot let our emotional desire to “feel” close to God to permit us to engage in behavior that, in the guise of false intimacy, borders on the sacrilegious.
5. Too much focus on supernatural intuition not enough on development of virtue
Charismatics rightly remind themselves that God is a God of wonders and that, when following God, we ought to expect to see wondrous things. I do think the CR is responsible for a modern renewal in Faith in miracles, and I do applaud them for that – though I doubt the legitimacy of what often passes for the miraculous in many CR circles. That being said, the CR tends to put so much emphasis on the miraculous that Christians are led to believe that the normative course of their lives are supposed to be guided by supernatural intuition and the guiding of the Spirit.
One charismatic priest I know of told his congregation that he was at a cafeteria one day and was about to eat some peas. As he was about to take the peas, he heard the Holy
Spirit telling him, “No, take the carrots instead.” He took this as a supernatural inspiration of God. This may or may not [be] alright for him, but the fact is that, in recounting this story, the priest, as a role model, was intimating that his parishioners should also expect God’s immediate direction in similarly trivial matters. As youth director, I frequently spoke with young people who were torn because either they were not getting these sorts of verbatim direction or they thought every thought and inspiration they had was from the Holy Spirit.
Basically, there was so much emphasis on supernatural inspiration as a means for discerning God’s will that there was little emphasis on growing in virtue as a means to discern God’s will – habitually doing the good things we know we are required to do and gradually, through the practice of virtue, becoming more discriminating in the things of the spirit and learning to discern the inspirations of God from the movements of the devil or ones own thoughts. People are not taught how to truly discern God’s will. They just get confused.
6. Confusion on issue of tongues
Speaking of confusion, nothing has caused more confusion about this than the issue of tongues. Regardless of whether you think what modern charismatics do is tongues or not, the fact is that not everyone, even those involved in CR parishes, will speak in tongues. Yet they are encouraged, sometimes even pressured, by well-meaning peers and family who insist that speaking in tongues is a sign of a special indwelling of the Holy Spirit and will result in deeper worship and a closer walk with God. Those who do not manifest this sign are implicitly led to believe that they are not as close to God as they should be, that there may be something defective with their spiritual life, and that a deeper walk with God is not possible for them. Besides being cruelly false, this leads people to focus more on spiritual manifestations as the key to closeness with God rather than personal holiness and aggressively rooting out sin.
7. Less appreciation for tradition
All of this, of course, leads to a situation in which people are practicing a form of Catholicism greatly different from that known by the saints and doctors. Without the traditional liturgy, without the Latin prayers of the Church that have been sanctified by the long passing of centuries, without the traditional spiritual direction as laid down by masters like St. Bernard, St. John of the Cross, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Alphonsus Liguori and St. Therese of Lisieux. Tradition is replaced by something different, something that substitutes emotion for devotion, produces confusion, stunts spiritual growth and fails to teach proper spiritual discernment. Loss of Tradition = loss of a distinctly Catholic character. True, charismatic parishes do have character, but it is not the character of the historic Church. It is at best a form of Catholicized Protestant Pentecostalism, from which all charismatic movements are derived.
Conclusion
The result of all this is that people enmeshed in the Charismatic Renewal do not mature in their faith. They tend to remain fixed on their emotions and subject to inner doubts and scrupulosity because they have not truly learned how to discern the will of God or worship in spirit and truth. I do not say this without any experience; besides helping many young people through these sorts of struggles as a youth director, I myself as a very young Christian was involved in the charismatic movement and found this to be true in my own life.
Therefore, though spreading the Renewal around may in the short term get us a lot of “dynamic” parishes with youth programs attracting a lot of young people by their music and emotional engagement, this is not the best way to develop authentic Catholic spirituality, in my humble opinion. Source – Unam Sanctam Catholicam
Share Your thoughts…
Comments (28)
I don’t feel at all surprised that so many Catholics are now finding the TLM uninteresting. They have been fed stones since the sixties and they don’t recognise the bread any more.
The priest who created the new Mass said he wanted to protestantise it, and that’s what happened. We now have Protestantised Catholics, sometimes called Charismatics. It’s the same thing.
The Unam Sanctam article is very good and puts everything very clearly, IMHO. Maybe some of those who now think proudly of themselves as Charismatic Catholics will think again.
Universal Living Rosary Association do a good booklet on this phenomenon called ‘The Pentecostal Movement – A Threat to the Faith’ by R Saverino. Available from ulrauk@gmail.com And the charismatic/pentecostal movement is a threat. It’s based on protestantism, high-octane emotion, general mayhem and lunacy. A lot of it is ‘monkey see, monkey do’. They see people babbling in ‘tongues’ or falling to the floor ‘slain in the spirit’ and they copy it. Learned behaviour. These sort of gatherings frequently attract mentally / emotionally unstable people, and there are many reports of inappropriate relationships being formed through charismatic gatherings. People are whipped up into an emotional frenzy and anything can happen. This is partly how the Medjugorje phenomenon started (read E Michael Jones book on the subject). They used to have these charismatic gatherings which the children attended before they became ‘seers’. Also the sexual relationships between the nuns and the priests stemmed from these gatherings. Avoid any charismatic gathering like the plague. I attended a charismatic healing Mass purely as an observer years ago (run by a supposed ‘healing priest’ Fr Peter Mary Rookey – now dead I believe). And believe me, I observed some horrendous abuses and behaviour.
Having read the Above about C.R. I agree to an extent and here’s the reason. I did go to some C.R. meetings and I never spoke in Tounges and I do agree with the Article that that is a bit Hazy to say the least.
One time though I did go to a a sort of Seminar about 16 Years ago which was called The Healing of The Family Tree of which their was a book written. First off their was Mass at that time it was a N.O . Mass which took place before the Meetings and Discussion. As one who has had my fair share of Family Trouble ( nearly all of it caused by me ) I could see that the Sins of The Father do pass down through the Generations.
Also I have to say all of the People who attended Mass and Discussion Meetings after it were good People as I got to know them better every day .
What I will certainly agree with though is the Music and laying of Hands is wrong. To me in my opinion at other meetings I went to people were to keen to give out advice on things in Life that they had no experience with.
In other words. If You Haven’t Walked The Walk. Then You Cant Talk The Talk.
I agree with you FOOF, in that a lot of people who attend these things are often good and well meaning people. Which would make sense as the devil has no need to attract bad people to charismatic events, as he already has bad people in his clutches, so he suggests to good people that they attend events like this precisely because the events will sooner or later wreak havoc in their spiritual lives.
Interesting that the author of this excellent article should quote Benedict XVI on the C.R., when it was that Pope, I believe, who legitimized this movement (I can’t find or remember the name of that papal document, though) – or went a long way towards legitimizing it.
Here is a site quoting what all the Vatican II popes have said about C.R.:
https://ccsraleigh.weebly.com/what-and-why/what-the-pope-says-about-charismatics
I also notice that the Benedict XVI section on this site includes a long quote from Leo Cardinal Suenens, who just happened to be one of the main conspirators behind the Vatican II scenes, and also the one who described the Council as being the “French Revolution of the Church.” How’s that for a C.R. red flag?
To those who recognize this as a form of emotion-based (and therefore a foundation of sand) Protestantism, I would add that there seems to be something else involved: a desire for consolation in prayer. But we know that if we pray seeking consolations, then our prayers are defective.
RCA Victor
The charismatic movement (and associated deviant organisations like The Neocatechumenal Way) were legitimized by the Holy See way before Benedict XVI.
Westminsterfly,
“Neocatechumenal Way” is the group I was trying to think of. Didn’t Benedict specifically approve of them?
No, they’ve pretty much had Papal approval / encouragement from the 1970’s:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocatechumenal_Way#Papal_statements Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Benedict fan, but I don’t think the original blame for all this can be laid at his feet. Although he certainly continued encouraging these deviations.
The late Fr Enrico Zoffoli wrote extensively (mostly in Italian, but some pieces were translated into English) on the errors of the demonic Neocatechumenal cult. I’m pretty sure Christian Order magazine published a couple of his articles and they might be in the CO online archive http://www.christianorder.com
Here’s one of those articles:- http://christianorder.com/features/feature_1995-04.html
Westminsterfly,
That Christian Order article on the Neocatechumenal cult is very helpful. I highlighted this because it applies to other cults as well, notably Medjugorje:
We have every reason to believe that the Pope has not been informed of the errors contained in the “catechesis” of Kiko …; or else, by intervening he is afraid of spiritually damaging the good faith of many believers.
IMHO, it is very wrong to fail to speak out to correct these cults, in case such speaking out damages the good faith of many believers. They are already damaged! Just because they don’t know it yet, doesn’t change the fact! Later, when these cults are exposed for what they are, the damage could be beyond repair.
It’s so difficult to live through these times of crisis in the Church. So many problems, with next to no sign of any improvement.
Josephine,
I agree. Look at the plethora of cults or ‘new movements’ as the Church calls them – they seem to proliferate, and yet one by one, they fall by the wayside when their founders or senior members are exposed for being embroiled in some scandal or other (usually sexual). I could name loads.
If you do a search on “Pope Benedict xvi on charismatic renewal” you’ll get some very interesting hits. Here are two of them:
https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2008/october/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20081031_carismatici.html
http://christusimperat.org/en/node/2507
Once again, all this highlights the lack of Catholic Faith in the modernist mind of this pope….who is regarded in the Novus Ordo world (busily “being church”) as a great theologian!
I found this pro-charismatic website with glowing endorsements from the Popes back to Paul VI: https://dev-iccrswp.day50communications.com/en/about-us/the-ccr Yet another post-conciliar disorder.
I have absolutely no hesitation in declaring that the Charismatic movement is of demonic origin. Simply put, it’s Pentecostal Protestantism under any other name, and we know who the author of Pentecostal Protestantism is.
I remember being approached many years ago by a Charismatic in my local parish church, years before I found the Traditional Catholic faith. He wore a big wooden cross around his neck (not a crucifix) and was pretty much known for lying stretched out like a flag on the floor of the church before the tabernacle. I’m sure if he had had his way the red Sanctuary light would have been replaced with a lava lamp. The guy was a complete con man, living in sin, as he was at that time, with a female Charismatic colleague who likewise portrayed herself as a believing Catholic.
Anyway, this clown interrupted my rosary to ask if I would be interested in joining the Charismatic movement. Our Lady must have won the grace for me because I knew instantly that it was a movement not of God and so I responded to him in “tongues” – two words, the second of which was “off”.
Ok, I didn’t actually respond in that manner but my contempt for this dangerous emotional and superficial religious manifestation in the Church was quite obvious to him by my facial expression and curt reply.
All this “speaking in tongues” stuff is fake, but dangerous fake since it opens the soul to possession by wicked spirits, as does the healing/collapsing on the floor routine!
This monkey business posing as Catholic spirituality goes hand in hand with that other hippie garbage, the “we are Church” brigade. The devil is very clever, he’ll give them all the emotional highs they like, and even throw in dollops of seemingly Catholic practices, it’s how he leads souls to Hell. They wouldn’t go within 100 miles of the Charismatic movement if they saw the ugly mug of Lucifer behind it, so he hides his ugly mug and attracts them with scenes of apparent holiness. I’d string up the apostate bishops and priests who promote this falsehood to the young, for it is the young they target, “incautious youth”, as Blessed Pius IX called them.
I firmly believe, though, that any young person with a genuine devotion to Our Lady, especially the rosary, will be given that feeling I had when I was young and approached by that Charismatic conman. I knew in my soul that what he represented was not the Catholic religion of the saints and martyrs.
I should mention here that when the Holy Ghost descended on the Apsotles and infused in them the gift of tongues, they were legible tongues of all the various languages in use at that time, not the gibberish spoken by Charismatics. These latter belong in the Tower of Babel, not the House of the Most High.
Athanasius l am in complete accord with your analysis.
I hope and pray that your health continues to improve.
Every blessing
Michael 🙏
Athanasius, you more or less have got it in one BUT there are or their were very good meaning Catholics who did go to Charisimatic meetings, as i said before most of the ones i knew had Broken Families and of that i mean ones especially who had sons or Daughters with Drug problems , and before every meeting their was a lit candle of our Blessed Lady and a decade of the The Rosary was said .Like everything else its not one size fits all. Although am totally with you as far as speaking in Tongues are concerned ,and the Happy Clappy Music .But remember what Christ said — Truly i tell you whoever believes in me will do the works i have been doing and they will do even Greater things than these because i am going to the Father — I personally believe i have seen and heard of Miracles in my Life . Your own recovery seemed like one to me and ,i hope and pray Martin you keep in great Health . God Bless . J. D.
FOOF
I see where you’re coming from and I would say that God heals and helps in spite of involvement with the charismatic movement, but not because of it.
WF. I wasnt really inferring of course that Christ only healed because of The Charismatic Movement that would be ludicrous . What i am certainly saying is that it brought these Good People together . They were not in noway Happy Clappy meetings and if it helped broken Families ,which these meetings did [ an not of course saying it got what was mostly their Children off of drugs ] what it did at least show them was that they were not alone .
FOOF
It is precisely the Catholics you speak of that the Charismatic con merchants target for recruitment, which is why I said that Lucifer is prepared to throw in dollops of seemingly Traditional devotions for the purpose of ultimately leading well-meaning Catholics into error. The Charismatic movement is Protestant Pentecostalism pure and simple – there is no trace of it in 2000 years of Catholic Tradition. Any Catholic with any sense of the faith at all should see this instantly and avoid the CR movement like the plague. It won’t strengthen their faith, it will destroy it by replacing sound and sanctifying doctrine with hollow emotionalism.
The question arises, how could so many priests and religious fall for this emotionalism dressed up as spirituality?
Seeing religious – like the Sister in the photo at the top of this page – acting out this ridiculous “slain in the Spirit” baloney, is a case in point.
They must know that there is nothing supernatural happening here, unless it is demonic activity. More often than not, however, I believe these people are play-acting. And I think that because…
Some years ago, in conversation with a sixth form student who was trying to convince me that the Charismatic Renewal group she attended had changed her life, and that recently she had been “slain in the Spirit”, I pressed her for more information about what she claims actually happened.
It soon became clear that she had seen everyone before her in the queue being “slain in the Spirit” and thus she felt obliged not to let the side down, so to speak, not to be the only person in the church who wasn’t “slain in the Spirit”.
I smiled a wry smile. I can’t recall if I offered any advice, but I hope I told her to pray a rosary every day and do some solid spiritual reading, lives of the saints written prior to 1960, that sort of thing. We need to feed our souls with solid spirituality – beginning with the Traditional Latin Mass. The fact that it’s not happy clappy and that we are not “actively involved” (i.e. running around the sanctuary) means that we can devote our souls to concentrating on God alone. That pleases God. Trust me. I know.
This student’s experience/admission is, I suspect, not unusual; people are play acting – or diabolically driven – at these events. The only way to avoid being misled, is to steer clear of the whole Charismatic movement. It’s not Catholic. End of discussion.
Editor,
I’m not surprised about your student – as I said in my original comment: ‘monkey see, monkey do’. The pressure to conform to the highly-charged emotive atmosphere at these events is enormous, I should imagine – particularly if you are of a weak character, and want to ‘fit in’ and be part of the ‘in crowd’. I mentioned earlier that I was an (unwilling) observer at one of Fr Peter Mary Rookey’s charismatic ‘healing’ Masses. The abuses I saw that day were legion – ‘tongues’, ‘slain in the spirit’, people writhing around the floor screaming and behaving like animals, the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance being disrespectfully waved around all over the place, etc, etc. After listening to Fr Rookey’s prideful speech about how he fasts every single day, and that we were all going to witness miracles that day (in the event, the only miracle that took place was that I was able to bear staying to the end). But I did witness this kind of behaviour where one person sees or does something, and others follow suit, and false myths are born. A woman in my pew said she was seeing the Sacred Heart above the altar. There were two spotlights either side on the wall, and the light coming from them formed a very vague heart shape in the middle of the wall. She nudged her neighbour, and said ‘Look, the Sacred Heart!’ and the neighbour said ‘Oh yes I can see it now!’. She was just about to turn to me and I suspect ask me if I could see the Sacred Heart and I turned round and told them to stop being so stupid and that the ‘heart’ shape was formed by the spotlights. Anyway, what I said ‘broke the spell’ and although I got glares from both of them, I heard no more nonsense. But this is how these things spread. If I hadn’t have nipped that in the bud, those daft women would have probably told all and sundry that the Sacred Heart appeared at Fr Rookey’s Mass, and this probably would have been added to his catalogue of supposed ‘miracles’. These people often go for signs and wonders and entertainment, also FOOF touched on this in a previous post – they also go because they are lonely and these charismatic groups become their ‘family’. It’s all so tragic. Athanasius’s post at 4.08pm was bang on the nail.
WF,
It’s a long time since I’ve read such a brilliant analysis – hilarious! Your story about the spotlights/Sacred Heart, reminds me of a Protestant friend who (some years ago) referred to a statue of Our Lady allegedly “in tears”: “The real miracle would be to find a statue that is NOT crying”!
Priceless.
The reason so many Catholics fall into the charismatic renewal movement is because they’ve not understood the Catholic religion properly. The make all their decisions based purely on their feelings. That’s not the Catholic faith, at all.
We were always taught to understand that God’s ways are not our ways. We were also taught that if we are obedient to God’s law, and the Church’s laws, then we will be pleasing God and everything will work out for us, without any need for excessive behaviours, such as goes on at these charismatic meetings. We are supposed to use the approved instruments given to us by the Church to make us holy; the sacraments, obviously, but also the sacramentals, such as the rosary, miraculous medals, brown scapular, etc. Lots of spiritual reading, as well. That’s all we need.
It’s sad that there are Catholics who prefer the modernist Mass to the ancient Mass, so I thought I would post this article which is linked on this blog, because I’ve often recommended it to family and friends and it might help people reading this thread if they wonder why the new Mass is frowned on here. This shows the changes that were made by the priests re-writing the Mass. I found it really helpful when I first read it, years ago now.
https://catholictruthscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Dan-Graham_Mass-Differences.pdf
I’ve never had any time for the charismatic renewal which doesn’t renew Catholic faith, it destroys it. They speak with the language of Protestants (and this is not a dig at Protestants in good faith) but they are so far from understanding the Catholic religion that they become Protestants without realising it. Then they try to live as hybrid Catholics, neither one thing or the other. It is a very dangerous movement.
The Charismatics ignore an important detail when St Paul( incredibly systematic, due to his training) lists the gifts of the Holy Spirit the gift of speaking in tongues (didn’t make it to “top five”😐)
Anna,
Well noted, LOL! The thing is, TBH, I’m surprised that St Paul included speaking in tongues at all. I know that Athanasius was right to point out that this meant that the apostles understood and could speak the languages in use at that time, not the gibberish you will hear at a charismatic meeting (I was at one, once, and they were just gibble gabbering away, made no sense), but I can’t imagine that many people are given that gift these days. That was an exceptional gift, surely for those days at the very beginning of Christian discipleship.
A relative of mine has emailed to ask if I would publish the following link to a book written by a priest, Fr Christophe. This was part of his Masters program which he has published as a book. He is a lovely hard working Traditional Latin rite priest in Kampala. Incidentally the TLM is booming there. I think many of us associate African Catholics with the Charismatic Renewal so that is very interesting indeed, and very useful to add to this discussion. Here’s the link…
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Role-Traditional-Latin-Mass-Evangelisation/dp/6204185942/ref=mp_s_a_1_9?crid=1YIJYWMDNIYWE&keywords=christophe+nouveau&qid=1651586193&sprefix=christophe+nouveau%2Caps%2C792&sr=8-9#immersive-view_1655681546147
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