The Influencer Role of Charismatic Renewal in the Spirituality of Post-Covid Society

"In studies of charismatic movements, an essential aspect is often overlooked: any authentic religion requires assumption by faith, (to have no other Gods other than Me!). Or precisely this kind of mentality is promoted in the charismatic movements, of spiritual openness, which is willing to give credit to everything, is specific to culture, not religion. The religious dimension of the charismatic believer is of the syncretic type, unity in diversity, not of assumption, but based on the notion of option, and not on dogma, which leads him to donjuanism. Or it is precisely this danger that is underlined by St. Gregory Senaite, who warns us not to receive, if we see, anything sensitive or intelligible, inside or outside, whether it appears to you in the image of Christ, as an angel or a saint, or if it is shown to you as a light. For the mind itself has the ability to imagine things and can change, beware of receiving or rejecting those that do not know for sure come from the Holy Ghost. The problem of discerning between truth and lie, spiritual or devilish work, is the purpose of this scientific approach. The diverse plethora of charismatic offerings, as well as the interference with traditional Christianity, make us, like Pilate, ask: what is the Truth? or, rather, how can the Truth be distinguished among so many truths?"

Fraternidade: uma noção universal?

A Encíclica Fratelli Tutti, centrada na noção de fraternidade, vai dirigida a toda a humanidade, como se depreende de sua leitura. Entretanto, esta noção básica tem raízes judaico-cristãs. Como ficam as demais religiões? Daí a questão do título. Numa parte inicial se examina a relação da religião com seu contexto sociocultural; em seguida se apresenta a atuação do Espírito Santo como fator universalizante da fé cristã, embora sua ação seja diversamente captada e expressa. Numa terceira parte se estuda a gênese histórica do conceito de fraternidade, sua compreensão por parte da fé cristã e a dificuldade de exportá-la para outras tradições religiosas. Contudo, numa parte final, por serem as religiões entidades porosas que se influenciam mutuamente, a noção de fraternidade pode ser acolhida, embora sofrendo certa limitação em seu sentido. Por isso mesmo, no final, propomos a noção mais geral de dignidade humana, fundamental numa época em que o ser humano é sacrificado ao lucro e à produtividade. Abstract: The Encyclical Fratelli Tutti, centered on the notion of fraternity, is directed to the whole of mankind, as we can infer by reading the text. However this basic notion has Judeo-Christian roots. How do the other religions stand in this case? Therefore the question contained in the title. In an initial part the relationship between religion and its sociocultural context is examined; next, the acting of the Holy Ghost as a universalizing factor of the Christian faith is examined, although its action may be expressed and received in different ways. In a third part the historical genesis of the concept of fraternity is studied, including its understanding on the part of the Christian faith and the difficulty to export it to other religious traditions. However, in a final part, because religions are porous entities that mutually influence each other, the notion of fraternity may be accepted even if after undergoing a certain limitation in its sense. For this very reason, at the end, we propose a more general notion of human dignity, fundamental at a time when the human being is sacrificed to profit and productivity.

Pentecostalism in America

American Pentecostalism is a Christian movement that takes its name from the ecstatic empowerment of early Christians on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, described in Acts 2:1–4 of the New Testament. Known for its enthusiastic worship, the movement holds that the supernatural gifts and manifestations described in the Bible are still available to Christians who have been “filled with the Spirit” through an experience known as “baptism in (or with) the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost).” These gifts and manifestations include divine healing, prophecy, and—most notably—glossolalia, also known as “speaking in tongues,” a form of ecstatic vocalization that Pentecostals equate with the spiritual phenomenon of that description found in the New Testament. The origins of Pentecostalism trace to the Wesleyan-inspired Holiness movement of the 19th century, which pursued Christian perfection through “entire sanctification,” an experience subsequent to salvation said to enable Christians to live a sinless life. Most adherents equated sanctification with baptism in the Holy Ghost. By the late 19th century, Holiness had broadened into an ecumenical, multiracial movement whose most zealous advocates sought to recover the power and practices of 1st-century “Apostolic” Christianity, expected the imminent Second Coming of Christ, and embraced uninhibited worship. In 1901, Holiness evangelist and Bible school teacher Charles Fox Parham identified glossolalia as the telltale sign of Holy Ghost baptism in the New Testament, and a revival featuring that manifestation erupted at his school in Topeka, Kansas. Parham promoted the new teaching throughout the lower Midwest, founding a string of “Apostolic Faith” missions. In 1906, an African American Holiness preacher who had briefly affiliated with Parham, William Joseph Seymour, carried the Apostolic Faith message to Los Angeles, where he founded a mission on Azusa Street and led an epochal revival that drew many into the new “Pentecostal” movement. Early Pentecostalism had no hierarchy or authoritative structures and quickly succumbed to doctrinal controversies. First, a dispute over entire sanctification separated “Holiness Pentecostals,” who adhered to the original Wesleyan teaching, from “Reformed” adherents who viewed sanctification as a process realized progressively over a lifetime. Shortly thereafter, a “Oneness” or “Jesus Name” branch emerged among Pentecostals who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Formal denominations developed within each of these three branches, although many Pentecostals remained independent of formal affiliation. The middle decades of the 20th century witnessed rapid growth and institutional proliferation within Pentecostalism amid two parallel trends: professionalization and bureaucratization on the one side, and revitalization currents like the divine healing or “Deliverance” movement on the other. Meanwhile, Pentecostal beliefs and practices spread through mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox churches, giving rise to the Charismatic Movement. These various strains overlapped and converged in a variety of “neo-Pentecostal” forms over succeeding decades, inspiring creative and controversial expressions such as the Prosperity Gospel, entrepreneurial networks of apostles, and new denominations like Vineyard USA. Pentecostalism in the 21st century reflects the entirety of this historical legacy and thus forms a manifold tapestry of extraordinary range and complexity.

Johann Ignaz Cimbal „védjegye”, a VSG-monogram

Next to his signature, Viennese painter Johann Ignaz Cimbal often added a peculiar sign in his frescoes and oils. It is a combination of letters, appearing in a different form in each of the studied cases (Zalaegerszeg, Oberlaa, Zwettl, Peremarton, Tornyiszentmiklós, Nagykároly [ Carei]), which – and the poor state of the works – make the identification of the letters difficult. In most cases the sign reads VSG, so it is not the initials of the painter.In some Cimbal works the three letters also appear with iconographic meaning. On the picture of the King Saint Stephen side altar in the parish church of Tornyiszentmiklós the letters shining in the halo around the Holy Cross were identified as VSG earlier and decoded as “Vera Sacra Crux”. However, it is more likely that this abbreviation hides the same meaning as the monograms next to Cimbal’s signatures.Guidance to the elucidation of the monogram was provided by the ceiling fresco in the southern vestry-room of Székesfehérvár cathedral. The clearly readable VSG abbreviation appears in the corners of the triangle symbolizing the Holy Trinity, which leaves no doubt that it is in connection of the Holy Trinity. The most obvious explanation is the letters being the initials of the German words for the three divine entities, Vater, Sohn and [Heiliger] Geist.The attribution of the picture (Maria Immaculata) on the high altar of the parish church of Sárospatak to Cimbal was suggested on the basis of this motif, here in three corners of a triangular aureole around the Ark of Covenant. The attribution is also confirmed by style critical analyses. (Analogous are Cimbal’s Immaculata figures in Zalaeregszeg, Tornyiszentmiklós and Székesfehérvár.)The abbreviation alluding to the Holy Trinity, which is perfectly embedded in the iconographic fabric of some paintings, was also used by Cimbal independently of the theme, attached to his name. Inserting a sign referring to the Holy Trinity above his name must have been a religious gesture. Having completed a picture, the painter crossed himself, as it were, offering his work to God. He sealed his offering with the mysterious sign of God “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost”. (A similar religious gesture must underlie the signature 70 of an early Cimbal work, the Saint Anne altar picture in Vienna’s Barmherzigenkirche. The abbreviation “Zimbal i. VR” is traditionally interpreted as “In veneratione” with the explanation that the painter made the picture as a votive offering.) Cimbal always created a new composition out of the three letters, so it cannot have been his aim to make a recognizable constant “trade-mark”. (For this purpose he used his name with the customary addition “invenit et pinxit”.) The linking of the three letters is not just a customary formal solution as in monograms, but it has a meaning: it symbolizes the unity of the three divine persons, just as the circle in the triangle in Székesfehérvár.An extremely expressive iconographic solution needs special mention, applied almost to each of his depictions of the Holy Trinity in Hungary. It is the sceptre held by the three coeternal persons (hence it has extreme length). As it occurs so frequently, it cannot be part of an occasional client’s wish but much rather it is the painter’s invention. Perhaps a comprehensive examination of the entire oeuvre will discover further examples in support of the author’s hypothesis that the Holy Trinity was a particularly favourite theme of Cimbal. It was again his personal devotion that led him to use the Holy Trinity monogram.The motivation behind commissions for religious art works in the period was first of all the client’s personal religiosity. The religious motifs of the artists can usually only be inferred from indirect data and in connection with few works. One such sign is that for the duration of painting the frescoes Franz Anton Maulbertsch joined the Scapular Confraternity of Székesfehérvár, while the group portrait on the organ loft of Sümeg permits the assumption that he took part in the devotions of the Angelic Society founded by bishop Márton Padányi Biró. His pupil Johannes Pöckel who settled in Sümeg was a member of the local Confraternity of the Cord. Unfortunately, no information to this effect is known about Cimbal.His signature and Holy Trinity monogram testify that not only the client but also the painter offered his work to God.

Vouchsafed by the Holy Ghost

Chapter 3 argues that the now-canonical reading of Kate Chopin’s small masterpiece, The Awakening, which takes Edna Pontellier’s sexual wanderlust as symptomatic of a racist, primitivistic projection (per Toni Morrison’s general formulation), utterly neglects the founding plot and concerted characterizations. In The Awakening, Edna, a married Kentucky Presbyterian, is set adrift among Creole Catholics who embody a sexual sacramentality that attracts her but that she can’t, herself, achieve, beyond eventual submission to adultery with a local lothario. When the story begins, Edna is chafing in her marriage to a self-involved financier and, despite her Calvinist upbringing and persisting individualist sensibility, becomes increasingly involved, Theron-style, with a Creole trio: Madame Ratignolle, the mother-woman who is sensual in aspect and touch; Robert Lebrun, a serial acolyte of older women who refuses to deliver on his sexual promise despite beguiling her on the refulgent isle of La Chenière Caminada; and Mademoiselle Reisz, a spinster artiste, whose way with Frédéric Chopin’s nocturnes is her way with Edna, soul and (implicitly) body. Thus The Awakening is American’s first major portrayal of the Protestant-adrift-among-Catholics, and it is only as such that it becomes our proto-feminist exploration of a wife’s quest for sexual and aesthetic autonomy. Whereas Frederic’s Theron Ware is one of talkiest books ever, The Awakening delineates temptations to Catholicism that are more show then tell, capturing the fault lines of full social incorporation in Edna’s fatal sea-swim, which can be understood both as a capitulation, in resurgent Protestant self-immolation, and as a visionary sacrifice.

“God Made Me Thisaway”: Crip-queer Perspectives on Flannery O’Connor

Drawing on disability studies and queer theory, Bruce Henderson uses a “crip-queer” lens to read “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” and “The River.” Henderson argues that while O’Connor rarely writes non-heteronormative characters, there are, in fact, several “queer” figures in O’Connor’s fiction, who don’t play into normative roles. Furthermore, Henderson notes that despite the number of disabled characters who populate O’Connor’s stories, few scholars write about O’Connor from a disability studies lens. Henderson recognizes the complications that most likely contribute to this critical gap, ranging from O’Connor’s orthodox Catholic beliefs about sexuality on the one hand, to the uneasy relationship between associating queerness and cripness on the other. However, he argues that a crip-queer approach provides a useful way into understanding the function of nonnormative bodies and souls in O’Connor’s work.