Catholic Pentecostals: An Offering of Agony

NEWS

While the phenomenal five-year-old Catholic Pentecostal movement is no less Pentecostal than ever, it is decidedly more Catholic—and bigger.

Graham In Belfast: He Loses His Shirt

Billy Graham took a walk along Anderson Street. Belfast, last month just after a bomb being handled allegedly by IRA officers suddenly exploded and killed a number of them. He talked with several people, including relatives of the dead. In one house a woman said, “You know, you are the first Protestant clergyman I have ever met.” With fellow evangelist Arthur Blessitt he knelt in the street near a British army post and prayed for peace in the troubled province.

Next day at a press conference he stressed that he came not with a formula for a solution but because he had been invited by a wide cross section of concerned people. He came as preacher and peacemaker. He told people that “there is a healing for your bleeding,” and that a national spiritual awakening in both Ireland and America would lead to the Lord’s healing both lands. “No part of the Christian Church can suffer in isolation,” Graham added. “When one suffers all feel the pain.”

During three days in Belfast the evangelist lived in a hotel adjoining an area devastated by an earlier bomb. He sent his shirt to a neighboring laundry that was promptly blown up (no connection: tragically, the normal run of things in Belfast these days).

At Queen’s University he addressed a capacity student audience in a meeting sponsored by the four chaplains, including the Roman Catholic. When the official IRA announced a truce, a prominent Labour politician was heard to mutter ruefully that Billy Graham would take the credit for it, but no such connection was claimed.

In two days in Dublin he crammed in several meetings and recordings. He lunched at a gathering that might have been drawn from the Republic’s social register, including the prime minister, the apostolic nuncio, and the capital’s Catholic and Protestant archbishops. Sometime during the five days he met with prominent IRA leaders, but he declined to divulge details. Later he told reporters at the London airport that he had hopes and some evidence that the Provisional IRA in the north will join in a ceasefire. “It is high time for the men in Ulster to join the women in standing up for peace,” he declared.

He said that he found Ulster much worse than he had expected in the number of people “hurt and very bitter and in the amount of destruction,” but that 90 to 95 per cent of the people are tired of violence and want an end to it.

Top priority will be given requests that he conduct crusades in both Belfast and Dublin, he added, possibly within eighteen months.

J. D. DOUGLAS

These observations were clear this month as 11,000 gathered for the movement’s annual charismatic renewal conference on the campus of Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. As last year (see July 16, 1971, issue, page 31), they were a well mixed crowd: young and old, nuns, priests, middle American persons from both white-collar and blue-collar backgrounds, a few Protestants, fewer blacks. They came aboard dozens of chartered buses and planes from all over America and Canada as well as by commercial flights and in thousands of autos, some emblazoned with bumper stickers (“This is a God squad car” and “Honk if you love Jesus”).

Last year’s crowd numbered 5,500, up from 1,250 in 1970 when there were only 10,000 to 20,000 in the movement. No one knows for sure how big the movement is now. Its leaders estimate 60,000, but spot checks indicate it is probably double that—and mushrooming. (For instance, an Alpena, Michigan, group that did not exist five months ago now numbers 150, and a new group that meets weekly on the Georgetown University campus in Washington, D. C., already has 300 members.) An incomplete directory lists more than 500 prayer groups or “communities” in the United States, forty-four in Canada, and forty-four overseas. They are serviced by a monthly magazine, The New Covenant (Box 102, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48107).

Some Catholic officials acknowledge privately that the phenomena is the most significant current development in the Catholic Church (600 million members worldwide, 47 million in the United States). The movement’s leaders are anxious to keep it that way—in the church (and in the good graces of the bishops). They repeatedly reminded participants to be loyal to the church. Declared theoretician-author Kevin Ranaghan: “The Lord has released and nurtured this charismatic movement for the reformation and renewal of the Catholic Church.”

Auxiliary bishop Joseph McKinney of Grand Rapids, Michigan, appealed to members to follow the leadership of the Pope for unity’s sake. McKinney himself received “the baptism of the Spirit” two years ago and was recently appointed by the nation’s bishops to be overseer of the movement. He said “90 per cent of the bishops” look approvingly on the Pentecostals, but he cited “ecumenical indifferentism” (belief that all faiths are equally valid) as one of the fears some bishops have about the movement. “Roman Catholicism has a fullness of the Christ tradition found in no other denomination,” he affirmed, calling on his listeners to “respect the differences” as they practiced oneness in the Spirit with non-Catholic charismatics.

Ranaghan, who more nearly represents the core of the movement, took a dimmer view of such seeming parochialism, underscoring the unity of all Christians “as brothers and sisters—we are one through accepting Christ as Lord and Saviour.” Yet, said he, charismatics are called on to “suffer the pain of separation when we long to be one, so that our fidelity in our churches becomes a testimony to others that we should be one.” Meanwhile, the “come-out-ism” preached by charismatic separatists’ should be rejected because, he explained amid applause, “it is not the will of Christ that the charismatic renewal should lead to further schism or a new denomination.”

Speeches and seminar talks for the most part rang true to evangelical ears. McKinney, for instance, cut loose with a resounding reaffirmation of the saviorhood of Christ and the need of mankind to “believe in him and be saved.”

But what was left unsaid bothers non-Catholics. What about church teachings on Mary, papal infallibility, absolution, the mass and sacraments, and other doctrines that are unpalatable to evangelicals? Scholars and writers in the movement are seeking to mesh Pentecostal experience and teachings with church doctrine, sometimes reinterpreting or amplifying official statements. For example, Benedictine priest Kilian McDonnell, a leading scholar of Pentecostalism, says baptism in the Spirit is an “actualization” when one says “yes” to what was already given at baptism.

But while the intellectuals struggle with the issues, rank-and-file Catholic Pentecostals seem too engrossed in pursuing a personal relationship with Christ and the dynamics of fellowship and worship with other believers to become bogged down doctrinally.

Another bone of contention is Catholic life style. Workshop participant Vinson Synan, a Pentecostal Holiness teacher and historian, said traditional Protestant Pentecostals are “scandalized” that Catholic charismatics can smoke and drink, yet still have the Spirit’s baptism. He added that the Pentecostal Holiness churches must now make “agonizing reappraisal” as to just what makes a Pentecostal. He said he believes the movement is real but cautioned against neglect of personal sanctity and holiness. (Leaders point out that as one grows older in the movement, he is less likely to smoke and drink.)

Still another issue is integrity; how can some Catholic Pentecostals who no longer believe in, say, papal infallibility or the bodily assumption of Mary remain in the church with a clear conscience? Those thus questioned usually respond that renewal must come from within, and that it won’t happen if dropouts discredit the movement. They quote Paul’s admonition to abide in the same state upon conversion. “Why should I leave the church?” asks one young leader. “It’s the biggest fishing hole around.”

Tongues isn’t the only telltale sign among Catholic charismatics (there were no public utterances at the South Bend conference): they also sing more loudly and jubilantly than before, pray spontaneously, share testimonies freely, and tend to be involved in evangelistic outreach.

One young evangelistic enthusiast is Larry Tomczak, a Cleveland Catholic who “met the Lord” several years ago. Within weeks of his arrival in the nation’s capital last year as an intern at the AFL-CIO headquarters, he organized an interdenominational charismatic prayer group among labor employees. He preaches straightforward Gospel to many Catholic audiences; at one recent meeting near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, dozens of nuns joined scores of others in response to his invitation to receive Christ. On a lunch hour more recently he bumped into President Nixon as the chief executive was walking from the Treasury to the White House. Tomczak shook hands with Nixon, while holding up a big Bible he totes everywhere with his free hand, and asked: “Do you read this book, Mr. President?” Nixon replied: “Not only do I read it; I quote from it.” After his hitch is up at the AFL-CIO, Tomczak plans to work fulltime as a Catholic lay evangelist.

The charismatic movement is also apparently a boon to parish life where it is allowed to function. It has led to the reopening of St. Patrick’s inner-city parish school in Providence, says parish priest John Randall. “It will be a family-centered school where Jesus really is Lord—from first grade up,” he says. Parents of enrollees are currently studying their way through an eight-week “Life in the Spirit” course produced by Catholic charismatic leaders. More than 500 attend the weekly charismatic prayer meetings in the parish hall.

One of the conference highlights came during a seminar as conferees from overseas gathered to report on the spread of the movement in their lands. Lay worker Paul Melton told of scores of ecumenical Pentecostal prayer meetings in Madrid and Barcelona, and he said that at least 25,000 gypsies in Spain are caught up in the movement—and evangelizing everywhere. “They are getting through to the bishops,” he said with a smile.

Priest Phil Kelly told of visiting charismatic prayer groups in Belfast where Catholics and Protestants were one in the Spirit. “Ireland is a boil that is being lanced by the Lord for the healing of the entire Church,” he observed, adding, “There are Belfasts everywhere in the world today.”

Another priest reported that three Catholic Pentecostal groups are functioning in Rome; an English-speaking unit numbers 200, and a French group that began a few months ago already has 100.

Several of the internationals told of unpleasant encounters with non-Catholic charismatic “raiders” who insisted on water rebaptism. Despite the Pentecostal emphasis on unity, it appears that in the nitty-gritty affairs of church distinctives Catholic and non-Catholic charismatics will for the forseeable future find themselves maintaining their separate identities.

Perhaps this was nowhere more evident than in the closing session of the conference: the “separated brethren” were told they would not be allowed to partake of the Eucharist. Loyola University chaplain Harold Cohen of New Orleans said he hoped “the power of the Word” would bring about healing and the possibility of intercommunion. “We offer our agony that we are not fully united to the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said with deep emotion. “Let us pray for forgiveness of sins for the situation that caused our divisions and offer a silent prayer for the day we will be one.”

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