AboutFr. Michael Expertise A traditional Catholic priest, who provides forthright answers to questions FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF TRADITIONAL CATHOLICISM (not the New Order) on topics pertaining to TRADITIONAL Roman Catholicism, including theology, the Bible, Church history, the Latin language, liturgy (especially the Traditional Latin Mass), and music (especially Gregorian chant), and current events in the Catholic Church.
Question What is your view concerning Nicky Gumbel's Alpha programme being used as a RCIA tool?
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, Theology of the Body, and Wicca (Gaia).
RCIA is the New Order's "Christian Initiation of Adults," replacing the traditional Sacrament of Baptism. It is full of an amalgam of naturalism, environmentalism, a bit of voodoo, wicca (a simplified version of Satanic witchcraft for mass consumption), and some Protestant traits all
mixed together, but absent is genuine Catholicism. (By the way, RCIA was never approved, even by the Modern Vatican.)
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."
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."
