A Complicated ‘Denominator’ of the Beginnings of the History of the Charismatic Renewal in the Roman Catholic Church

Every story has its beginning. Most stories have their end. An attempt at a synthetic analysis of the history of the beginning of the Charismatic Renewal in the Roman Catholic Church turns out to be confronted with a certain initial reality: not only does this history not have a specific beginning, but it also has no end. It is a story that is still open. In celebrating its fiftieth birthday in the Roman Catholic Church recently (2017), a symbolic experience was taken as the original reference date. The receipt of charisms by members of a small group of American students on 18 February 1967, in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) in the United States, is a date and place that is in a sense only symbolic. Neither that moment nor that event exhausts the vast and much broader charismatic experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church, which can be seen in various and numerous moments in the history of the Church. This study efforts to explain this singular experience from the perspective of analysing the essential elements of the first structuring of the Charismatic Renewal in the Roman Catholic Church in the 20th century. The study is also an attempt at a synthetic look at the history, but also at its authors, including Ralph Martin, Steve Clark, Gerry Rauch, Veronica O'Brien, Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens and Pope Paul VI.

“As by a New Pentecost”: Embodied Prayer in Catholic Charismatic Renewal Following Vatican II

On 25 December 1961, John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council with his apostolic constitution Humanae salutis, praying that God would show again the wonders of the newborn Church in Jerusalem “as by a new Pentecost”. Not six years later, in 1967, a group of students at Duquesne University in the United States prayed while on retreat for an infusion of the Holy Spirit that they might also experience the power of Pentecost. They received what they reported to be the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and out of the spiritual experiences of that retreat arose what would become an international movement known as the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. This movement, influenced by Pentecostalism, would develop its own embodied praxis of prayer that seeks a renewed encounter with the power of the Holy Spirit made manifest at Pentecost. This article analyzes the embodied prayer language of the Renewal by drawing from Louis-Marie Chauvet’s distinction between language as mediation (or, symbol) and language as tool (or, sign). It will use Chauvet’s distinction as a hermeneutic to flesh out the relationship between post-Vatican II charismatic prayer practices and their intended purpose of participating in the encounter of Pentecost.

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?"