'The Charismatic Renewal is not a movement, but a current of the Holy Spirit."
The above was spoken by Cardinal Suenens half a century ago and more recently by Cardinal Raniero Cantalamesa. These are the only two charismatic Catholic cardinals that I know. They have impeccable credentials. Suenens was one of the presiders at the Vatican Council, a prelate of immense prestige and influence at the time, and the ecclesiastical godfather of the Catholic charismatic renewal. Cantalamesa was papal preacher for 44 years, in service of John Paul, Benedict and Francis. That these three distinctive popes would all surrender to his influence is extraordinary. To disagree with such authorities takes a lot of chutzpah. Fleckinstein does not hesitate: With due respect, your Eminences, but, as in most things Catholic, this is not an either/or. This renewal was a movement, as it continues as a Pentecostal current. But first, a confession.
Craving the Renewal of the 70s
Nostalgia is at least a near occasion of, if not an actual sin: a disordered attachment to an idealized past and thereby a disconnect from the actual graces of the present as they move us into the promises of God for the future. I stand guilty as charged: I have been longing for the Renewal of the 70s.
They were the best years of my life...in regard to zeal for God and the things of the spirit.
Spring 1973, we were happily married for two years when we made Cursillo and joined a charismatic prayer group. Our lives changed drastically. We entered into intimacy with Jesus as our Lord and Savior and then received the "baptism of the Holy Spirit," an internal surge of the Spirit, within a community of prayer, and a defining sense of God's powerful, loving presence and guidance. We filled up with praise of God, prayed in tongues, experientially received clear guidance, and surged with Joy and Hope. For the remaining 7 years of that decade, we participated fervently in the prayer group and life took on a steady ecstatic tone. From joy to joy!
We received our first three children. My wife, fully engaged with me in this new life (at once, and miraculously, Pentecostal and Catholic), stayed home with the children. I made just enough money to get by. I taught religion in a tough Jersey City Catholic high school and fought the good fight to maintain discipline and share the faith in a time largely disinterested in the things of the spirit. I was employed by a local parish to connect with Spanish-speaking families in a housing project and to teach summer bible camp. For 18 months I was without a steady job, bounding from one thing to another: painting homes of friends, loading trucks, teaching school, riveting trucks at the Ford plant, going to job interviews. We always received, providentially, just enough money, just in time, to meet our needs. I was blissfully unconcerned, although our parents were not so fortunate. My serenity was in part my temperamental positivity, in part the result of coming of age in a thriving economy in which I always found a job, and largely our intense trust in God's perfect providential plan and guidance. Things like career planning and financial security were nowhere on my horizon. Why worry about such trivia when every day brought a fresh encounter or revelation...spiritual, intellectual, dramatic. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be given to you." And so, November 1977 I had no work and went to UPS which was hiring seasonal help; they hired me for my typing skills as a clerk at $9,000 annual, almost enough to support us with some raises and overtime. That became a 25 career, mostly in supervision. Praise the Lord!
The Charismatic MOVEMENT
My son reminds me that lay leadership in the Neocatechumenate, like the Cardinals quoted above, are averse to the word "movement." Perhaps they associate it with movements of human agency: civil rights, farm workers, peace, etc. I firmly believe both are actions of the Holy Spirit, but they are also human, sociological, empirical phenomena. Cardinal Suenens said "there are no founders to the Renewal." This is accurate. But there were clear leaders who shaped it in specific directions. The foundations of the Charismatic Renewal as a movement:
1. Baptism in the Holy Spirit. This is a very specific event, which manifested in the Pentecostal movements from 1900 and across the denominations in mid-century. It is not primarily emotional. It is the prayer, in expectant faith, to receive the Pentecostal anointing of intimacy and empowerment that the apostles, with Mary, received in the cenacle 10 days after Jesus ascended. It includes: intimacy with the powerful Holy Spirit, prayer in tongues, ongoing guidance through interior messages-scripture-communal discernment, divine healings, deliverance from demons, prophesies, and more.
2. Prayer Meetings. In contrast to traditional formal Catholic liturgy these were informal, spontaneous, characterized primarily by praise in words, song and tongues along with attention to readings from scripture, teaching and personal witnesses. These spread all over the country in the 1970s; and largely disappeared as quickly going into the 1980s.
3. Pentecostal/Evangelical Teaching. With extraordinary efficiency and speed, a gifted elite of lay leaders, especially Ralph Martin and Steve Clark, emerged spontaneously and worked together to incorporate elements of Pentecostal and Evangelical spirituality into the Catholic Charismatic Renewal: strong sense of the supernatural, spiritual combat with demons in deliverance ministries, openness to the miraculous in healings and guidance, strong traditional gender roles, new forms of authority including in very personal direction, the emergence of covenant communities.
4. Countercultural, Anti-Progressive. These Pentecostal/Evangelical elements were entirely contradictory of the broader cultural-sexual liberalization and specifically theological progressivism dominant in academia and clerical/hierarchical circles. This included opposition to abortion and homosexuality, emphasis on supernatural, more literal (but not fundamentalist) reading of scripture, traditional family patterns and other. Predictably, this led to conflicts with more liberal bishops.
5. Strong form Catholicism. Along with the movement into Pentecostalism, in tension with but not complete contradiction, was the move into stronger forms of Catholicism: Marian devotion (Medjugorje), Divine Mercy practices from St. Faustina, sacramental life (especially Eucharist and Penance), and fidelity to the magisterium.
6. Vast Theological Literature. A large, comprehensive body of practical, theological literature surged, largely from Martin, Clark and other lay leaders. These were lay in two senses: non-clergy and non-credentialed academically. Martin and Clark had walked together away from doctoral programs in philosophy, Martin at Princeton and Clark at Yale, to serve the Lord in Cursillo and then Charismatic. They stand out as among the most dynamic, talented and influential partnerships in Catholic history. They were also assisted by a cadre of outstanding Catholic academic theologians who combined holiness of life, solid scholarship, and pastoral sensibility: Francis Martin, Killian McDonald, George Montague, Edward O'Connor...all clergy and credentialed academics.
7. Huge Rallies and Conferences. Thousands of people would convene (in NJ in Atlantic City) to hear inspired teaching in a charged atmosphere of ecstatic, expressive praise. These were markedly ecumenical, deliberately including gifted preachers from other denominations.
What Happened in the 1980s?
Our own prayer meeting, sponsored by the People of Hope Community in Christ the King Parish, Jersey City, disbanded around 1980. Strangely, the same happened across the country. All these prayer meetings disappeared instantaneously as they had appeared, like the annuals of early Spring. Rallies that had drawn 30-40,0000 were getting a few thousand.
It did not completely disappear. But the flourishing revival among white, middle class Catholics diminished greatly. The movement is powerful in Africa and parts of Latin America and Asia. It remains among Hispanics and Philippinos in the USA. It consolidated into small, intense covenant communities; as the broader movement merged into the Evangelical Catholicism of John Paul/Benedict. This later was zealously Evangelical in its focus on the person/event of Jesus Christ, as it interpreted Vatican II positively, in continuity with tradition, with strong sense of the centrality of family, sexual chastity and marital fidelity in opposition to progressive theology's embrace of the sexual revolution.
Paradigmatic for the broader movement was the split between Ralph Martin and Steve Clark. Martin reveals how painful that was in his recent memoir. He spent the early 80s in Brussels and Rome, working on the international renewal with Cardinal Suenens. He aligned himself closely to the New Evangelization of John Paul and threw himself into study of the Catholic saints and mystics. He deepened his Catholicism, although retaining a sharp Evangelical edge.
Meanwhile, Steve Clark had guided a new coalition of covenant communities into an even more pronounced Pentecostalism, stridently countercultural on gender roles and authority structures and micromanaged into a detailed, monastic-like rule of life for families. The two parted ways. They did reconcile years later before Clark's passing.
Martin's journey was typical of most of the Catholic Renewal. It blended into more mainstream Catholic currents, including the New Evangelization of John Paul. Martin maintained an amazing zeal in this effort, worked with EWTN, continued to preach and write, gained a doctorate in theology at the Angelicum, and taught at Sacred Heart Seminary in Michigan. The specifically charismatic elements (tongues, healings, extreme gender and authority views) were downplayed; communion with the broader sacramental Church emphasized; and focus remained on the salvific person/event of Jesus Christ.
My own path was similar: I was simply enamored of the theology of John Paul, Benedict and their colleagues. Like many charismatics, I was encouraged by the revelations on the Divine Mercy of Saint Faustina, the messages of our Lady at Medjugore, and the entire John Paul/Benedict agenda.
This pattern seemed to be across the Church. Evangelical crusades like N.E.T. and FOCUS had immense influence as an energized, appealing Evangelical Catholicism without much attention to the extraordinary charismatic gifts. Franciscan University thrives as a center of hardcore Catholicism, retaining a strong, but not overwhelming charismatic charism.
The Sword of the Spirit, with its own alternative hierarchy had problems with the American episcopacy, notably in Newark and Steubenville. But they seemed to have weathered the storms. In NJ, the People of Hope, after a long quarrel with the Archdiocese, is back in good graces and manifesting good fruit. They sponsor a thriving school, Koinonia Academy, and a dynamic summer camp which has had a strong impact on our own family. For instance, one granddaughter is studying at Franciscan University and a number of great-nephews are planning to go there.
The influence of the movement is broad: music, healing prayer, deliverance ministry, focus on Scripture, an ecumenical awareness. Many moved on to more normal parish life and ministry with greater depth and passion.
Going Forward in the Holy Spirit
We cannot replicate the fervor of the 70s. We know the Holy Spirit remains with the Church of Christ, if in a quieter mode. Yet, I personally ambition to retrieve the fire, the zeal of that time.
1. Primacy of Praise. Recently, Cardinal Cantalamessa exhorted charismatics to rekindle the fire of praise that inflamed all those prayer meetings and conferences. In our own small prayer group, one woman seemed to especially exercise the gift of prophesy. She was a simple, humble, charming, local Afro-American woman, Harriet, and she tirelessly repeated the same prophesy: "Ma people: Continue to praise me!" Every time she said that, in her modest, straightforward manner, it seemed to be words directly from heaven. I believe that message was from the Holy Spirit and meant for us then, now and into the future. I have been trying to inflame my life with thanksgiving and praise, even as I yearn for more communal ways to do so.
2. Ecumenical. Cardinal Suenens had said that the heart of the renewal is the reunion of Christians in the love of Christ. That surely is correct. Many of us leaned more deeply into our Catholicism. This is good. But the Holy Spirit surely is urging us to union with others, especially Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Orthodox. My wife and I are volunteer chaplains in our local hospital and enjoy the opportunity to pray often with non-Catholics. This is a great blessing. It was the Renewal that prepared us to pray with them.
3. Closeness to the Poor. Pope Francis encouraged the Renewal, especially to be close to the poor. This was a message that was heard in the Renewal, but not very powerfully. The two covenant communities in our area of north NJ seemed to be suburban, bourgeois, middle class, career and security focused. Our encounter with the People of Hope was in our prayer group in a poor area of Jersey City: we benefited from engagement with the Renewal and also with the poor.
4. Deepening, Intensifying of our Catholic Faith. As noted, the ordinary itinerary of the charismatic Catholic post-1980, strikingly exemplified by Ralph Martin, has been deeper engagement with Christ and his Church in prayer, liturgy/sacraments, charity, morality, theology and all arenas of life.
5. Covenant Communities? I have not followed developments within the Sword of the Spirit. They have been quiet. This is a good sign. Good fruit is evident. Consider our Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. And, as noted, after a rupture with the Archdiocese, the People of Hope are positively impacting our Church, specifically in their school and summer camp. Praise the Lord!
6. The Young? My own primary concern has always been the passing of our faith to the young. Working a variety of jobs, my professional vocation is catechist, one who "echoes" our faith. The singular Joy I share with my wife is that our seven children, along with their spouses and families, all live our Catholic faith with vigor and enthusiasm. They received our Catholic faith, but not in its specifically charismatic dimensions. Realizing the toxicity of our culture, our philosophy in raising our family was that Catholic family/school/parish was insufficient so we methodically exposed them, especially summers during high school, to a variety of intense encounters with Catholicism: Youth 2000, NET retreats, service trips, Friars of the Renewal, Magdalllen College summer programs, Scranton Charismatic Conference. These were not fully Pentecostal, but surely charismatic-adjacent in their evangelical fervor. And so our children received a charismatically-flavored Catholic faith.
So my big question: how have the covenant communities done in passing on the faith? How many of their children and now grandchildren practice Catholicism? How many are charismatic? Are any charismatic but not Catholic? I have been told that the People of Hope, under the Sword of the Spirit, is a stronger, bigger community and more successful than the smaller, unattached Community of God's Love.
This is the same question I bring to the other lay renewal groups: especially the Neocatechumenate and Communion and Liberation.
The Holy Spirit continues to breathe in many ways in the Church. Ours has been the age of the lay renewal movements. As the religious orders have declined, we have seen surges of zealous, lay spirituality. The currents of renewal are many: all moving us into the Kingdom. The charismatic renewal remains an important one.
I myself am eager to inflame the gift of praise that burned brightly in the 1970s. Out of that foundational praise, including tongues, personal and communal, the Holy Spirit moves us deeper into the Church, into communion with our Evangelical/Pentecostal brothers and sisters, and companionship with the poor and suffering.
Above all, we pray for our young: COME HOLY SPIRIT1
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