Who Are the Catholic Charismatics?

Catholics involved in charismatic renewal are marking the twentieth anniversary of the movement’s introduction into the Roman Catholic Church.

In February 1967, a group of students and faculty at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University met for a weekend retreat to meditate on Acts and to discuss David Wilkerson’s charismatically oriented book The Cross and the Switchblade. During the retreat, nearly everyone present was baptized in the Holy Spirit. Word about events at Duquesne spread to other schools in the Midwest, particularly the University of Notre Dame, Michigan State University, and the University of Michigan. Hundreds of Catholics at those schools joined the charismatic movement, some with the help of erstwhile foes in the Protestant Pentecostal movement.

In the 1970s, many charismatic Catholics formed large covenant communities. And barely six years into the movement, at least 20,000 Catholics converged on Notre Dame to hear Belgian Cardinal Leon Joseph Suenens, himself a Catholic Pentecostal, endorse the movement. In 1975, Pope Paul VI added his endorsement during an international charismatic conference in Rome, and a charismatic mass was celebrated in Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Catholics showed up 18,000 strong in Kansas City for the 1977 Conference on Charismatic Renewal in the Christian Churches. And they formed the National Service Committee for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, which coordinates spiritual renewal conferences around the country.

Internal Divisions

But internal divisions began eating away at the movement. In the early 1980s, the two hubs of the renewal, centered in the Word of God community in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the People of Praise community in South Bend, Indiana, parted ways over philosophical and ideological differences. Those differences include pastoral strategies, leadership styles, views of the end times, and views on women in leadership. The two groups now duplicate ministries with separate publishing companies, magazines, mission efforts, conferences, and international networks of Christian communities.

The split influenced the tenor of this summer’s North American Congress on the Holy Spirit and World Evangelization in New Orleans. Conference speakers were weighted more toward the People of Praise contingent, possibly because more of them were on the steering committee. Word of God coordinator Ralph Martin, known for his “mourn and weep for the body of my Son is broken” prophecy given at the 1977 Kansas City conference, was not invited to speak in New Orleans. But another Word of God member, former Sisters of Mercy nun Ann Shields, was asked to lead a workshop. The split, admits Martin, “has clearly decreased the strength of the Catholic charismatic renewal.”

With the divisions came a lessening of fervor and a drop in involvement in parish prayer meetings, the mainstay of the Catholic renewal. To combat this trend, the charismatic Catholic magazine New Covenant has published articles on the need to exercise spiritual gifts.

At the same time, the National Service Committee for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal has sent evangelists around the country to encourage the use of spiritual gifts, to try to reverse flagging priestly involvement, and to revive burned-out lay leaders. Although diocesan and regional charismatic conferences have proliferated, attendance at the annual national conference at Notre Dame has dropped from a high of 30,000 to 10,000 or less. Still, charismatic Catholics accounted for just over half of the 35,000 people who attended the New Orleans Congress on the Holy Spirit and World Evangelization.

Auxiliary Bishop Joseph McKinney, chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Liaison Committee with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, says the church’s hierarchy has been mostly favorable toward the movement. In New Orleans, McKinney encouraged Catholic charismatics to publicly support Pope John Paul II during his U.S. visit later this month (see related story on page 58). He also urged them to make it known that they are a significant force in American Catholicism. The National Service Committee for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal estimates that one out of every five American Catholics is or has been a charismatic.

In the past, Pope John Paul II has openly blessed the charismatic movement. Recalls Tom Forrest, former director of the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Office: “The Pope once said to me, ‘This [charismatic] movement is so important because it gives priority to the spiritual.’ ”

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