Friday, October 5, 2007

Charismatic renewal celebrates 40th anniversary

Karen Mahoney reported in our Catholic Herald on Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR).
Raising a 5-year-old son with liver disease hasn’t been easy for Karin Stewart. One thing that sustains her since her husband left the Catholic Church after 35 years to become a Fundamentalist Baptist is the Holy Spirit.

Maybe someday we'll see some interviews of these people who've left. In the meantime, what about CCR?
Charismatic Catholics typically participate in the same Mass, recite the same liturgy and believe in the same theology as other Roman Catholics.

Interesting qualifier that "typically".
But they also worship in ways similar to Pentecostal Protestants: Lively music, spirited prayer and public profession of faith. Some charismatics, feeling filled with God’s spirit, speak in tongues, or unintelligible languages — a practice traced to the early Christians in the New Testament’s Book of Acts.

See Acts 2:1-12, Acts 10:46, and Acts 19:6. Of course, there's snake-handling in Mark 16:18 and Luke 10:19. The story goes on with some pretty general references to the Holy Spirit and to Pentecost. It could have used a bit on the specific theology of CCR.

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