Expert: Fr. Michael - 7/19/2011

Question
Fr Michael, would you say that the charismatic movement is an abomination and could you in short explain why?

Answer
       Charismaticism is a particularly virulent modern-day mania infecting
the Church of the New Order, which has its roots deep in heresy.

       In the late 17th century, the beginnings of Charismaticism can
already be seen as a derivative of the Protestant heresy.  Philip Jakob
Spener and his disciple, August Hermann Francke, from his vantage point at
the new University of Halle, through over 6,000 graduates in Protestant
theology, spread the ideas of "Pietism" throughout Germany.  The Pietists
specially emphasized emotional feeling rather than reason and cultivated
"enthusiasm" in worship.  They encouraged "Herzensreligion," a religion of
the heart founded on an "individual, personal experience" of Christ, much
like the modern Protestant Evangelicals, who talk about a "personal
experience of Christ," by which they refer to an over-emotionalized, highly
personalized attitude that overrides true belief.

       The roots of modern-day Charismaticism (Pentecostalism) go back to
1901 when a group of Methodists at a Topeka, Kansas, prayer meeting began
"experiencing the spirit."  The emotional prayer style soon spread throughout
the Assemblies of God, as well as other small Protestant denominations.  A
typical charismatic prayer meeting includes music, singing or praying in
tongues, healing sessions, prophesying, and body prayer.

       The phenomenon caught on nationwide among Novus Ordinarians who
were searching for new ways of praying during the first flurry of Vatican II
changes.  The movement names Vatican II as the starting point, crediting a
prayer by Pope John XXIII to the Holy Ghost to "renew Thy wonders in our day
as by a new Pentecost."  The Charismatic Movement in the American Catholic
Church traces its beginnings to a "spirit-filled" graduate student and
faculty retreat at Duquesne University in 1967.  Protestant Pentecostal
prayer forms such as speaking in tongues (glossalalia) and being "baptized in
the Holy Ghost" took hold.

       Known initially as "Catholic Pentecostalism," the movement was
renamed to reflect the various spiritual "gifts" (charismata), purportedly
given by the Holy Ghost to individuals.  The movement is associated with such
other cult-like, mind-controlling organizations and programmes as the
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD, which was perfectly
traditional before Vatican II, but afterwards was corrupted), Taize,
"oecumenism," Marriage Encounter, the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults
(RCIA), Renew, Focolare, Cursillo, Neo-Catechumenate, Legionnaires of
Christ/Regnum Christi, Communion and Liberation, Miles Jesu, Wicca (Gaia),
and Life Teen.

        This Charismatic Movement is far from true Catholicism.  It
represents an almost complete abandonment of even nominally Catholic
practices, beliefs, and modes of discourse.  Charismaticism is based on the
erroneous notion that emotional experience always accompanies the conferral
of grace, whereas the Catholic doctrine is that the only sensible indication
of the conferral of grace is the Sacramental sign itself.

       Charismatics see no reason to exclude non-Catholics or even non-
Christians from the chance to experience the "charismata," the extraordinary
manifestations of the Holy Ghost, which helped to spread the Faith during the
early Church, but disappeared after the Apostolic Age, when the Church had
established itself and had no further use or need of the charismata.  Such
manifestations had specific purposes, such as to spread the Gospel to hearers
of different languages, or to prove the credibility or holiness of an
apostolic speaker.  In fact, one of the aims of the Charismatic Movement is
to unite various Protestant movements with New Order Catholics under the
banner of "signs and wonders."

      Charismaticism is intimately connected with the error of "Fatimism,"
which finds a new basis of faith in private revelations, prophecies, visions,
"signs and wonders."  So far does this sometimes go that there are
"Charismatic Catholics" who still continue to practice witchcraft and idol
worship.  All this is, of course, heretical and of Satan, as St. Paul tells
us:

"And then that wicked one shall be revealed:  whom the Lord Jesus shall kill
with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his
coming:  him Whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power
and signs and lying wonders:  And in all seduction of iniquity to them that
perish:  because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be
saved.  Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe
lying" (2 Thessalonians 2:8-11/DRV).

      Charismaticism bears a frightening relation to several heresies
condemned by the Church:

Gnosticism:  a heresy proclaiming a secret knowledge (Greek:  gnosis) that
makes its possessors the only true believers.

Messalianism:  a heresy that originated in Mesopotamia in A.D. 360.  The
Messalians denied that the Sacraments give grace and declared that the only
spiritual power is prayer leading to possession by the Holy Ghost.  Such
"possession" eventually led to immorality, from which they were also called
"The Filthy."  They were condemned by various bishops and councils of the
Church.

Montanism:  a heresy that claimed the Holy Ghost superseded the
revelation of Christ and was supplementing the revelation of Christ, such
that they were acting under a "new outpouring of the Spirit."  Pope St.
Zephyrinus (199-217) denied them communion with the Church.  Note that this
same heresy is prevalent in the Church of the New Order, when it proposes
that the Deposit of Faith, as revealed by Our Lord Jesus Christ, can be
"updated" or "modernized" or even replaced by some kind of "spirit of the
times."

Nominalism: an erroneous modern philosophy teaching that there are no
absolutes, only the senses and feelings.  This philosophy led to the
denial of several doctrines of the Church (the divinity of Christ, the
veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the Saints).

       Archbishop Dwyer, of Portland, Oregon, in a scathing criticism of the
charismatic movement, warned in 1974: "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."

       One author sums up the error and danger of the Charismatic Movement
as:

"a blighted tree bearing poisonous fruit, sown by the Devil among Protestants
and transplanted into the Catholic Church after Vatican II....  This fruit is
truly a seed of destruction.  Make no mistake.  More than just a fad, the
charismatic 'renewal' is a dangerous and heretical movement that is
installing itself in the Catholic milieu.  First, it attacks the Church's
character of exclusive mediator between Our Lord and men, which she possesses
by divine mandate.  Second, this kind of oecumenical gathering denies the
exclusive nature of that mediation by encouraging inter-communion with other
confessions.  Charismatics should be called what they really are:  "chari-
schismatics" (John Vennari, "Close-ups of the Charismatic Movement
[Tradition in Action, 2002], 175 pp.).