www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Charismatic (Renewal) Movement and Eastern Catholic Churches

If any of them ever do, be sure & invite me as I would get quite a kick out of seeing that.

I myself speak in tongues every day I'm at work. That's what I'm paid to do. Why, just today I spoke in fluent English, French, German, and Spanish - and all the people I spoke to in those tongues understood me, even if they didn't much care for what I had to say. Like, for example, "your connecting flight has been cancelled" or, "yes, you do have to fill out and submit a customs declaration", or, "the decision has been made to deport you back to the country you just came from" or, "put your hands behind your back for handcuffing"... etc., etc., etc.

Please don't get me started!. The "Latin" Catholic Charismatic Movement is nothing more than heretical Pentecostalism trying to put it's mark into Catholicism. It's an innovation from protestantism. And that is where it can stay!.

But that is just your opinion.

The official opinion of the Catholic Church is that the Catholic Charismatic Renewal is a valid movement in the Catholic Church, a gift from God for the Church (just like any other movement) and it is bearing a lot of good fruit for the people of God.

Of course, like in everything, there are those who with various degrees of knowledge commit abuses, make mistakes, etc. But these are individuals, not the movement as a whole.

Now, if you do not like the movement, you are perfectly free not to associate yourself with it. However, you do not have the authority to declare us heretics.

God Bless!

Shalom,
Memo

I frequently pray in tongues ... in my private place, particularly when I have run out of the many ways of saying thankyou in my language. (I'm not blessed with more than one). So as I search for the Now in which to pray, I open my soul and it reaches out to the LOrd praying giving voice.

Hope that makes sense.

James

While I do not favor all of the goings on in the Charismatic Renewal such a statement is simply not true. There has been a long history of the gifts of charisma in the Catholic Church through out the ages. It is wrong to condemn someone simply because they have a different spirituality than yourself.
Stephanos I

Although I am no fan of charismatic movements within the Eastern Churches, they have a history - recent and more ancient - in the Western Church and it is not our place to condemn them or sit in judgement on their spiritual efficacy.

Father Stephanos' comments are well-taken and should resound particularly with we of the East whose spirituality and praxis have not always been embraced with enthusiasm by our brother Christians of the West.

On that note, this thread appears to have run its course and to be verging on the prospect of inviting a lack of charity between East and West that is not conducive to the coming celebration of Pentecost, when the Apostles spoke in tongues.

The thread is closed; thanks to all who participated.

Many years,

Neil