Catholic Charismatic Renewal Guide

1. What the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Is

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal is a current of spiritual renewal inside the Catholic Church in which Catholics pray for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit and expect the charisms Saint Paul lists in 1 Corinthians 12 to appear in ordinary parish life. It began among Catholic students and faculty in the United States in 1967, it has no founder, no membership roll and no distinct doctrine of its own, and it takes the shape of prayer groups, covenant communities, healing ministries and schools of evangelisation that remain under the authority of the local bishop. Catholics involved in it receive the same sacraments, profess the same Creed and belong to the same parishes as every other Catholic.

The word charism comes from the Greek charisma, a gift freely given. Saint Paul uses it for the particular graces the Holy Spirit distributes for the building up of the Church: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, tongues and the interpretation of tongues (1 Corinthians 12:8-10). The Renewal is a large, loose family of Catholics who took those chapters as a description of what the Church may still expect, and who began praying accordingly.

Three clarifications belong at the front, because most of the confusion around this subject comes from missing them.

It is a current, not a denomination

Nobody joins the Catholic Charismatic Renewal the way one joins a religious order or signs a denominational statement of faith. Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens, the Belgian archbishop whom Paul VI asked to accompany the movement, described it as a current of grace running through the whole Church rather than a movement alongside it. A Catholic who attends a Wednesday prayer meeting and then goes to Sunday Mass at the same parish as everyone else has not changed religion, changed rite or changed status. There is no register, no vow and no card.

It adds no article to the Creed

The Renewal proposes an experience and a set of practices. It defines no dogma. Everything a Catholic in the Renewal believes about the Holy Spirit is what the Church already professes at every Sunday Mass: the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who has spoken through the prophets. Our companion guide on the Person and work of the Holy Spirit sets out that doctrine, which the Renewal presupposes rather than replaces. This page is about the movement, its history and its discernment.

It is optional

No Catholic is obliged to pray in tongues, attend a Life in the Spirit seminar or raise their hands during a hymn. The charisms are distributed by the Spirit as he wills (1 Corinthians 12:11), and Saint Paul is blunt that not everyone receives the same ones. A Catholic whose prayer is quiet, verbal and Marian is not spiritually behind anyone. Any group that suggests otherwise has misread the letter it claims to be following.

2. Origins: Vatican II and the Duquesne Weekend

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal is usually dated to a student retreat held in February 1967 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by a group from Duquesne University. Its immediate background lies in the Second Vatican Council, which had reopened the question of charisms in the life of the Church, and in the Protestant charismatic movement that had begun spreading through mainline denominations in the United States from 1960. The Catholic version began late, spread quickly, and was under episcopal scrutiny almost from the start. Our guide to the charismatic movement across the historic churches covers the wider cross-denominational story that this page approaches from the Catholic side.

The Council reopens the question

During the drafting of the Constitution on the Church in October 1963, Cardinal Suenens intervened against a version of the text that treated charisms as rare, extraordinary events belonging to the early Church. He argued that the Holy Spirit continues to distribute gifts among ordinary faithful for the building up of the Church, and that a Council writing about the People of God should say so. The text that emerged, Lumen Gentium 12, teaches that the Spirit distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank, that these gifts are to be received with thanksgiving, and that judging their genuineness belongs to those who preside over the Church.

That paragraph is the doctrinal doorway through which everything that followed walked. Whatever one thinks of the Renewal's style, its central claim was already conciliar teaching before the first Catholic prayer meeting.

February 1967 near Pittsburgh

In the winter of 1966 to 1967, several faculty members at Duquesne University, a Catholic university run by the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, had been reading two popular books about Pentecostal experience, David Wilkerson's The Cross and the Switchblade and John Sherrill's They Speak With Other Tongues. They also made contact with a local Episcopalian prayer group. In February 1967 they took a group of students on a retreat weekend built around the first four chapters of Acts and the Pentecost sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus. Over that weekend a number of the participants reported an overwhelming experience of the presence of God, and some began to pray in tongues.

News moved along the network of Catholic student chaplaincies. Within months there were similar gatherings at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and at Michigan State University in East Lansing, and the Ann Arbor and South Bend groups became the movement's early organising centres. Annual national conferences at Notre Dame drew large crowds through the late 1960s and 1970s, and the practice crossed into Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia within a decade.

Suenens and the Malines Documents

Paul VI asked Cardinal Suenens to accompany the new movement, and from 1974 Suenens convened theologians at Malines in Belgium to produce a series of study papers, known as the Malines Documents. The first, Theological and Pastoral Orientations on the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (1974), gave the movement its basic Catholic grammar: the experience called baptism in the Spirit is the release of a grace already sacramentally given, prayer groups belong in the parish and answer to the bishop, and the charisms are ordered to charity and to the common good rather than to personal status. Later documents in the series addressed ecumenism, social action, and the problem of an over-eager approach to deliverance and the demonic.

Those papers mattered because they let Catholic bishops distinguish between a Catholic renewal and a Pentecostal import. What the Malines line insists on is that the Renewal must be an intensification of Catholic initiation. Anything that sets the experience against the sacraments has left the road.

3. Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Explained

Baptism in the Holy Spirit, in Catholic usage, means a conscious release of the grace already given in baptism and confirmation. It is not a second baptism, not an eighth sacrament and not a change in a person's standing in the Church. The phrase comes from John the Baptist, who said of the one coming after him that he would baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:33), and from the risen Christ in Acts 1:5.

The Catholic explanation

Sacramental theology has long distinguished between the grace a sacrament confers and the fruitfulness of that grace in a person's life. A validly baptised infant receives the whole of baptismal grace. Whether that grace becomes operative in an adult's actual thoughts, choices and prayer depends on cooperation, and cooperation can be blocked for decades by ignorance, sin, fear or simple inattention. The Malines line describes baptism in the Spirit as the moment when what was given begins to be lived, often suddenly, often with an accompanying sense of the love of God and a new ease in prayer.

Older Catholic vocabulary already had ways of naming this. Spiritual writers speak of a second conversion, of the grace of confirmation being stirred into flame, of a decisive interior awakening in a person who had been practising the faith mechanically. Saint Paul tells Timothy to rekindle the gift of God that is within him through the laying on of hands (2 Timothy 1:6), which is exactly the shape of the claim: the gift is already there, and it can be rekindled.

What it does not mean

• It is not a sacrament. The Church has seven. Praying with someone for a release of the Spirit confers nothing sacramentally and requires no minister with holy orders.
• It does not repeat or improve baptism. Baptism is unrepeatable and leaves an indelible character. A Catholic who has this experience is exactly as baptised afterwards as before.
• It does not divide Catholics into two classes. Any group that speaks of Spirit-filled Catholics as a superior tier has abandoned Catholic teaching about baptism. Saints canonised for heroic charity have described no such experience.
• It does not require tongues. Some who pray for it receive the gift of tongues, some do not, and Catholic teaching attaches no diagnostic weight either way.
• It does not guarantee anything about the future. Consolation in prayer can be withdrawn. The Church's spiritual tradition is full of long stretches of dryness in people who were plainly holy.

Why the phrase causes trouble

The phrase is borrowed from Pentecostal usage, where it carries a different theological load, and that borrowing is the source of most Catholic suspicion. In classical Pentecostal doctrine, baptism in the Holy Spirit is a distinct experience subsequent to conversion, evidenced by speaking in tongues, and it is not tied to any sacrament. When a Catholic uses the same words to mean the release of confirmation grace, two people can hold an entire conversation without noticing that they are describing different things. Careful Catholic writers therefore often prefer expressions such as effusion of the Spirit, release of the Spirit or outpouring of the Spirit. The sacrament of confirmation is where Catholic theology locates the sealing with the Holy Spirit, and any Catholic account of the Renewal has to keep that anchor.

4. Tongues, Prophecy, Healing and the Other Charisms

The charisms are the particular gifts the Holy Spirit distributes for the good of the Church, and Saint Paul gives three overlapping lists of them: 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 and 12:28-30, Romans 12:6-8, and Ephesians 4:11-13. None of the lists is identical to another, which suggests that none is meant as a closed inventory. Catholic teaching treats them as real, as ordered to service rather than to display, and as subject to the judgement of the Church's pastors.

Prayer in tongues

Praying in tongues, or glossolalia, is speech or song offered in prayer without conceptual content that the speaker understands. Saint Paul treats it as genuine, describes his own use of it (1 Corinthians 14:18), and then spends a chapter restraining its public use. His rules are strict: in the assembly, prophecy is more useful because it builds up the hearers; tongues in public require an interpreter; at most two or three should speak, and in turn; and everything should be done decently and in order (1 Corinthians 14:5, 14:27-28, 14:40). Catholic prayer groups that keep those rules are on solid ground. Groups where a dozen people speak over each other while nobody interprets are ignoring the very chapter they cite.

Two honest observations. First, most people who pray in tongues describe it as a quiet, undramatic mode of prayer they can start and stop at will, closer to humming than to trance. Second, the Church makes no claim that every instance is supernatural. Human beings can imitate the sound of it, and a group culture that expects it can produce it socially. Saint Paul's instruction to test everything applies here as much as anywhere.

Prophecy

Prophecy in the New Testament sense means a word given by the Spirit to encourage, build up and console the Church (1 Corinthians 14:3). It is not prediction, and Catholic teaching draws a hard line here: public revelation closed with the death of the last Apostle, and no prophecy in a prayer meeting adds anything to the deposit of faith. Saint Paul assumes prophecy will be weighed by others present (1 Corinthians 14:29), which means a prophecy is a proposal offered for discernment.

The abuses are predictable. A prophecy that tells a named person whom to marry, what job to take or when a disaster will strike is a red flag, and one that sets a date for anything is contrary to the Lord's own statement that no one knows the day or the hour (Mark 13:32). Our guides on false prophets and wolves in sheep's clothing handle that failure mode at length.

Healing prayer

Praying for the sick is ordinary Christian practice, commanded in James 5:14-16 and exercised by the Church in the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. Charismatic healing services intensify a practice the Church already has. The Holy See addressed them directly in the instruction Ardens felicitatis desiderium, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 14 September 2000, which permits prayer for healing while setting norms: such gatherings must not be confused with the liturgy, they must avoid anything resembling hysteria or theatricality, they require the authorisation of the local bishop when held publicly, and medical treatment must never be discouraged.

The norms summarised above are from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Prayers for Healing (Ardens felicitatis desiderium), 14 September 2000. The instruction is the document to read before organising or attending a public healing service.

Two dangers sit on either side of healing prayer. One is the promise of a cure, which no Christian may make. The other is blaming the sick person's lack of faith when no cure comes, which is cruel and is contradicted by Saint Paul's own unhealed affliction (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). A Catholic healing ministry that handles those two dangers well is a genuine service. One that handles them badly does real damage. See also our guide on miracles and how the Church investigates them.

Resting in the Spirit

Some people being prayed over fall or sink backwards, a phenomenon usually called resting in the Spirit or slaying in the Spirit. The Church has issued no doctrinal judgement on it. Prudent Catholic practice treats it as neither proof of grace nor evidence of fraud, provides catchers so that nobody is injured, refuses to induce it by pressure or suggestion, and judges it by what follows in the person's life rather than by the fall itself.

Discernment of spirits

Discernment of spirits appears in Saint Paul's list (1 Corinthians 12:10) and has a long Catholic tradition behind it, from the desert fathers through Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Saint John's test is doctrinal and blunt: test the spirits, because many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1). The Renewal's own health depends on this gift being exercised by people with the authority and the willingness to say no.

5. What the Church Has Taught About Charisms

Catholic teaching on charisms is compact and consistent: the gifts are real, they are given for the building up of the Church, they are ordered to charity, and their genuineness is judged by the Church's pastors. Four texts carry most of the weight.

Lumen Gentium 12

The Second Vatican Council teaches that the Holy Spirit distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank, making them fit and ready to undertake works for the renewal and building up of the Church. The Council calls these gifts, whether outstanding or simple and widely diffused, to be received with thanksgiving and consolation. It then adds a caution: extraordinary gifts are not to be sought rashly, and judgement about their genuineness belongs to those who preside over the Church, whose task is to test all things and hold fast to what is good (compare 1 Thessalonians 5:12, 19-21).

The Catechism

The Catechism of the Catholic Church treats charisms in its section on the Church. It teaches that charisms are graces of the Holy Spirit which directly or indirectly benefit the Church, ordered to her building up and to the good of the world (CCC 799). It states that they are to be accepted with gratitude by the person who receives them and by all members of the Church (CCC 800). And it insists that discernment of charisms is necessary, that no charism is exempt from being referred and submitted to the Church's shepherds, and that the ultimate criterion is charity (CCC 801). The Catechism also distinguishes charisms from sanctifying grace: special graces called charisms are oriented to sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church (CCC 2003).

Iuvenescit Ecclesia (2016)

On 15 May 2016 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published Iuvenescit Ecclesia, a letter to the bishops on the relationship between hierarchical and charismatic gifts in the life and mission of the Church. It teaches that the two kinds of gift are co-essential to the Church, that they come from the same Spirit and are ordered to the same mission, and that neither is subordinate to the other in the sense of being dispensable. It then sets out criteria for discerning charismatic gifts within ecclesial groups: the primacy of the vocation to holiness, commitment to spreading the Gospel, profession of the Catholic faith in full, witness to real communion with the whole Church, recognition of and esteem for other charisms, acceptance of moments of trial, the presence of spiritual fruits, and the social dimension of evangelisation.

That list is short, official and written to be applied, which makes it a practical starting point for anyone weighing up a movement, a community or a prayer group.

The instruction on prayers for healing (2000)

Discussed in section 4 above, the 2000 instruction from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the Church's detailed text on public prayer for healing. Its combination of permission and restraint is the pattern of the Church's whole approach: yes to the gift, no to the spectacle, and the bishop decides.

6. The Popes and the Renewal, 1975 Onward

Every pope since Paul VI has addressed the Catholic Charismatic Renewal directly and encouraged it, always with a call for discernment attached. None has defined it, made it obligatory or given it a privileged status. The record is one of welcome plus supervision.

Paul VI, Pentecost 1975

An international congress of the Renewal met in Rome around Pentecost in May 1975, celebrated in Saint Peter's Basilica, and Paul VI addressed the participants on 19 May 1975. He welcomed the renewal of spiritual life he saw among them, described it as a chance for the Church and for the world, and set out conditions: fidelity to the authentic doctrine of the faith, a preference for the higher gift of charity, and docility to the Church's pastors. That address is the founding papal reference point for the movement, and it already contains the pattern every later pope repeated.

John Paul II

John Paul II spoke to the Renewal's international leadership repeatedly across his pontificate and treated it as one of the ecclesial movements whose emergence after the Council he considered providential. At the Pentecost vigil in Saint Peter's Square on 30 May 1998, addressing the movements together, he taught that the institutional and charismatic dimensions are co-essential to the constitution of the Church, a phrase later taken up in Iuvenescit Ecclesia. He also pressed the movements hard on maturity, insisting that a movement proves itself by its integration into the local Church rather than by the size of its gatherings.

Benedict XVI

Benedict XVI, who had signed the 2000 instruction on prayers for healing as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, continued the same line as pope. His consistent teaching on movements was that a charism is authenticated by obedience, and that a genuine work of the Spirit does not create a parallel church. He met the Renewal's international leaders and encouraged their work while restating those conditions. Our profile of Benedict XVI covers his theology of the Church more broadly.

Francis and the reorganisation

Francis had worked with the Renewal in Argentina and engaged with it closely as pope. He addressed a large gathering of the Renewal at the Olympic Stadium in Rome on 1 June 2014, and again at the Circus Maximus at Pentecost 2017 for the Renewal's fiftieth anniversary, where he pressed the movement's various international bodies to unify their service. That instruction produced CHARIS. His characteristic emphases were ecumenical, insisting that the Renewal share the grace it had received with other Christians, and pastoral, warning against turning the Renewal into an office or a club. Our profile of Pope Francis gives the wider context of his pontificate.

7. CHARIS and How the Renewal Is Organised

CHARIS, which stands for Catholic Charismatic Renewal International Service, is the single body that now serves the Renewal internationally. Its statutes were approved by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life on 8 December 2018, and it began operating at Pentecost 2019. It replaced the two previous international structures, ICCRS (International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services) and the Catholic Fraternity of Charismatic Covenant Communities and Fellowships, which had grown up separately and served different constituencies.

What CHARIS is for

CHARIS is described in its own statutes as a service of communion. Its purposes are to help Catholics live baptism in the Holy Spirit, to promote the exercise of the charisms in the Church and in society, to encourage evangelisation, to promote the unity of Christians, and to serve the poor. Its structure runs through national services of communion in each country, with an international service of communion above them, and its offices are provided by the Holy See in Rome.

The statutes of CHARIS were approved by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life on 8 December 2018, with the body beginning its service at Pentecost 2019. Statements about the Renewal's size vary widely between sources and are not repeated here.

What CHARIS is not

• It is not a governing authority over local groups. A parish prayer group answers to its pastor and to the diocesan bishop, and CHARIS holds no jurisdiction over it.
• It is not a membership organisation. There is nothing to join and no subscription that confers standing.
• It is not a guarantee of orthodoxy for any speaker or ministry. Association with a national service of communion is not a certificate, and any preacher who leans on the name as though it were one should be treated with caution.

How authority actually works

The line of authority for any Catholic charismatic activity runs the ordinary way. The bishop of a diocese is responsible for public worship, catechesis and ministry within it, and canon law gives him the oversight of associations of the faithful operating there. A prayer group meeting in a parish hall does so at the pastor's invitation. A public healing service requires the bishop's authorisation under the 2000 instruction. A covenant community with its own statutes will have those statutes approved by a competent ecclesiastical authority, diocesan or Roman, depending on its scope.

That structure is the whole safeguard. When Catholic charismatic groups have gone badly wrong, the failure has almost always been a failure of this ordinary oversight rather than a defect in the doctrine of charisms.

8. Prayer Groups, Seminars and Covenant Communities

Most Catholics who encounter the Renewal do so through one of three forms: a parish prayer group, a Life in the Spirit seminar, or a covenant community. They differ enormously in what they ask of a person, and confusing them is the source of a great deal of unhappiness.

The parish prayer group

A prayer group typically meets weekly in a parish hall or chapel for an hour or two. A common shape is a period of praise with music, a period of quiet or spontaneous prayer that may include prayer in tongues, a reading of Scripture with reflection, prayer for the intentions of those present, and often a talk. Some groups end with a decade of the Rosary or a period of Eucharistic adoration. Attendance carries no commitment, and people come and go freely.

Cost of entry is low and so is risk, which is why this is the form the Church has generally been most comfortable with. If you want to see the Renewal before deciding anything about it, this is the door.

The Life in the Spirit seminar

The Life in the Spirit seminar is a short course, usually seven weekly sessions, developed in the movement's early Michigan communities and used worldwide since. It works through the basic Christian message, repentance and conversion, the person of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and then a session in which participants are prayed with for a release of the Spirit, followed by sessions on growth and on continuing in the life of the Church. Parish versions vary, and good ones anchor every session in the sacraments and end by pushing participants back into ordinary parish life rather than into a separate circle.

Questions worth asking before signing up for one: who is running it, does the pastor know about it, does it include an invitation to sacramental confession, and what happens to participants at the end. A seminar that treats the prayer session as a graduation into an inner group is structured wrongly.

Covenant communities

Covenant communities are a much heavier commitment. Members make a formal covenant with one another, often share finances to some degree, submit to a pastoral structure, and sometimes live in the same neighbourhood or under the same roof. Communities of this type grew out of the movement's early centres in the United States, and comparable communities emerged in Europe and Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, among them the Emmanuel Community and Chemin Neuf in France and the Shalom Community in Brazil. Several are now recognised under Roman or diocesan statutes and include priests, married couples and consecrated members.

These communities have produced serious missionary work and serious vocations. They have also produced the movement's worst failures, which section 10 addresses directly. A covenant is a promise about the whole shape of a person's life, and the ordinary Catholic rules about promises apply: understand it in writing, take advice from someone outside the group, and be very slow.

9. How It Differs From Pentecostalism

Classical Pentecostalism is a family of Protestant denominations that emerged in the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century, associated with Charles Parham's Bible school in Topeka in 1901 and with the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles from 1906. Pentecostals commonly teach baptism in the Holy Spirit as an experience distinct from and subsequent to conversion, with speaking in tongues as its initial physical evidence. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal began in 1967 inside the Catholic Church and holds the whole Catholic faith while sharing Pentecostal expectation about the charisms.

Stating the Pentecostal position accurately matters here. Pentecostals are not Catholics who got carried away. They belong to their own churches with their own history, their own confessions of faith and their own theologians, and most of them hold the doctrine of subsequence and initial evidence as a considered scriptural conclusion drawn from Acts 2, 8, 10 and 19. Our guide to Pentecostalism and its history sets that tradition out in its own terms.

The border cases

Two distinctions are worth keeping clear. Oneness Pentecostalism rejects the doctrine of the Trinity and baptises in the name of Jesus alone, which places it outside Trinitarian Christianity altogether; our guide to Oneness Pentecostalism explains the difference from Trinitarian Pentecostals. And the prosperity gospel, which teaches that faith reliably produces wealth and health, is a separate teaching that spread through parts of the charismatic world and has drawn sharp criticism from Pentecostal theologians as well as Catholic ones. Our guide to the prosperity gospel handles that.

The ecumenical dimension

The Renewal's Pentecostal borrowings gave it an unusual ecumenical character from the beginning, and successive popes have encouraged Catholics in it to build friendship with Pentecostal and evangelical Christians. There has been an international Catholic-Pentecostal theological dialogue running since 1972. The Catholic conditions for that friendship are the ordinary ones set out in our guide to Catholic ecumenism: real charity, honesty about differences, and no blurring of doctrine to produce a feeling of agreement.

10. The Serious Criticisms, Answered Honestly

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal has attracted substantial criticism from Catholics of every school, some of it careless and some of it entirely fair. A guide that repeats only the endorsements is useless to a reader deciding whether to walk into a prayer meeting. Here are the strongest objections, each with the honest Catholic answer.

Emotionalism

The criticism: charismatic prayer trades in feelings, and feelings are a poor foundation for a life of faith. The answer: the criticism is fair whenever it is true, and Catholic spiritual writers have warned for centuries against attaching one's faith to consolation. Saint John of the Cross is severe on exactly this point. Catholic teaching says the will, informed by faith, is what matters, and a prayer group whose members collapse when the music stops has built on sand. Charismatic prayer becomes healthy when its participants keep going to Mass, keep going to confession and keep serving the poor in the dry seasons.

A parallel church

The criticism: charismatic groups form an inner circle with its own leaders, its own vocabulary and its own loyalty, which competes with the parish. The answer: this happens, it is a real deformation, and both John Paul II and Benedict XVI warned about it explicitly. The corrective is structural. A group that meets in the parish, reports to the pastor, sends its members to the parish's ordinary work and welcomes people who never pray in tongues has not built a parallel church. A group that does the reverse has, whatever its intentions.

Abuse of authority in covenant communities

The criticism: some covenant communities developed systems of personal oversight, often called headship or pastoral care, in which leaders directed members' decisions about marriage, money, work and where to live, and members who dissented were pressured or expelled. The answer: this is documented, it caused genuine harm, and several communities went through painful public crises and were restructured after review by their bishops during the 1980s and 1990s. Canon law protects the internal forum and the right of the faithful to freedom in choosing their state in life, and any group whose practice invades that is violating Catholic law regardless of how spiritual its language is. Our guide on how the Church handles scandal covers the wider pattern of accountability failures.

Superstition and the demonic

The criticism: some charismatic circles developed an overheated approach to deliverance, generational curses and demonic explanations for ordinary problems. The answer: fair, and the Church's discipline is clear. Solemn exorcism is reserved to a priest with the express permission of the local bishop (canon 1172). Ordinary Catholics may pray prayers of protection, and no one may conduct rites over another person on their own authority. Attributing depression, illness or family conflict to demons without medical and pastoral care is dangerous. Our guide to Catholic spiritual warfare sets the boundaries.

Doctrinal drift

The criticism: Catholics formed by charismatic media, conferences and music absorb Protestant assumptions about Scripture, the Church and the sacraments without noticing. The answer: this is a real risk and it is worth naming plainly, because a great deal of the available worship music, teaching and publishing in this space was written by Protestants for Protestants. The corrective is catechesis. A Catholic who knows why the Church teaches what she teaches about the Eucharist, the priesthood and Mary can profit from a good Protestant book without being reshaped by it.

Celebrity ministries

The criticism: the charismatic world produces platform preachers with large followings, weak accountability and, in some cases, extraordinary claims and extraordinary finances. The answer: this is true of the wider charismatic world, and Catholics should apply the same test to Catholic versions. A ministry that resists financial transparency, that answers to no bishop and that treats criticism as spiritual attack has already told you what you need to know.

11. How to Discern a Prayer Group

Discerning a group is ordinary practical wisdom applied to a spiritual setting, and the criteria are already published. Iuvenescit Ecclesia gives the official list, Saint Paul gives the tests of order and charity, and the Lord gives the test of fruit: you will know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:16). What follows turns those into questions you can ask in a car park after your first visit.

Good signs

• The pastor knows the group exists and the bishop's authority is spoken of with respect.
• Members go to Mass and to confession, and the group actively encourages both.
• People who do not pray in tongues are entirely at ease and nobody comments on it.
• Prophecy is offered tentatively, weighed by others, and never used to direct a named person's private decisions.
• Leadership is identifiable, accountable and willing to be questioned.
• Money is handled transparently and nobody is pressured to give.
• The group serves somebody outside itself: the parish, the poor, the housebound.
• Members have friendships, commitments and interests outside the group.
• Leaving is easy and people who leave are still spoken of kindly.

Warning signs

• An inner circle with private teachings or private prophecies.
• The suggestion that Catholics who have not been baptised in the Spirit are second-class, unsaved or in danger.
• Pressure to speak in tongues, or coaching in how to start.
• Prophecy that predicts dates, disasters or the identity of the Antichrist. Dates are contrary to Mark 13:32, and naming a living person as the Antichrist is a line no Catholic should cross.
• Leaders directing members' choices about marriage, money, medical treatment or where to live.
• Discouragement of medical care in favour of healing prayer.
• Hostility toward the parish, the bishop or the ordinary sacramental life of the Church.
• Criticism treated as an attack of the enemy rather than as a question deserving an answer.
• Financial appeals tied to promises of blessing.
• Difficulty leaving, or shunning of those who do.

The questions to ask outright

1. Who is the priest responsible for this group, and does the parish know we meet?
2. What happens to somebody here who never experiences anything unusual?
3. How do you handle a prophecy that turns out to be wrong?
4. Where do the finances go and who sees the accounts?
5. What does this group ask of me in six months' time that it does not ask today?

A healthy group answers all five without discomfort. A group that treats question one or question four as an insult has answered it.

12. Fitting the Renewal Into Sacramental Life

The Catholic integration test is simple: charismatic prayer belongs alongside the sacraments and under them, never in place of them. A prayer meeting is a devotion. The Mass is the source and summit of the Christian life, and every legitimate devotion leads a Catholic back to it. Where the Renewal has flourished quietly for decades, it has done so by keeping that order.

The Mass comes first

Charismatic prayer is free, spontaneous and led by whoever is leading. The liturgy is not. The Church's books govern what happens at Mass, and no prayer group, however fervent, has authority to alter them. Spontaneous prayer in tongues during the Eucharistic Prayer, prophecy in place of the homily, or healing ministry inserted into the liturgy are all disorders, and the 2000 instruction on healing addresses the last of them directly. Hold the prayer meeting before Mass or after Mass. Do not hold it during Mass.

Confession is the ordinary path of conversion

The Renewal speaks constantly about conversion, and Catholic conversion has a sacramental form. Where charismatic parish missions have borne lasting fruit, long confession queues are usually the visible sign of it. Our guide to the sacrament of confession covers the practice.

Confirmation, understood properly

Most Catholics were confirmed as adolescents and remember it as an ending. Catholic teaching says the opposite: confirmation seals a person with the gift of the Holy Spirit and equips them for witness. Read that way, the Renewal's central claim is a catechetical claim about a sacrament almost every Catholic in the pews has already received. That framing keeps the whole thing Catholic, and it is why our guide to confirmation is worth reading alongside this page.

Marian devotion and the Rosary

Catholic charismatic groups keep Marian devotion, and the theological link is direct: the Apostles were gathered with Mary the mother of Jesus in prayer when the Spirit came at Pentecost (Acts 1:14, 2:1-4). Groups that quietly drop the Rosary under the influence of Protestant material have shifted, and it is worth noticing when it happens.

Ordinary holiness

The final integration test is the oldest one. Charisms are given for service, and the Church canonises people for charity rather than for spectacular gifts. Saint Paul, having listed the gifts, says that a person with prophecy, all knowledge and mountain-moving faith who lacks love is nothing (1 Corinthians 13:2). Any Catholic weighing the Renewal has a straightforward criterion: does the group make its members more patient, more honest, more generous and more faithful in the duties they already have. Our guide to the saints and how the Church recognises holiness makes the same point from the other direction.

13. A Short Glossary of Renewal Vocabulary

Charismatic vocabulary can make a first visit disorienting. Here are the terms most often used, with their plain meanings.