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185
The
Theological Challenge
of Charismatic
Spirituality
Donald L.
Gelpi,
S.J.*
In 1992 the Catholic Charismatic Renewal is
celebrating
its
twenty- fifth
anniversary.
In the course of those
twenty-five years
the Renewal has influenced thousands of lives in this
country
and has become an international movement in Christian
spirituality.
After a
quarter
of a century
of charismatic
spirituality,
we would do well to take stock of its theological significance:
both its contributions and the
problems
it has raised.
My
remarks on those contributions and
problems
fall into four sec- tions. The first section
attempts
to reflect on the
theological
context within which the charismatic renewal
originally
occurred. The second section considers the initial
theological impact
that the renewal had on popular
faith and the initial
response
it provoked in the academic com- munity.
The third section deals with some of the
theological insights
that have
emerged
from reflection on the renewal. The fourth section deals with the charismatic renewal’s unfilled
theological promise.
(I)
In the fourth
century Gregory
Nazianzus described the Holy
Spirit
as a thcos
agraptos,
as a God about whom no one writes.
By
the
beginning of the nineteenth
century
Catholic
theologians
were
speaking
of the
Holy Spirit
as the
forgotten
God. For a variety of historical reasons the
Holy Spirit
has not
played
a central role in western Catholic
piety
and
spiri- tuality
until
relatively recently.
The retrieval of
living
faith in the
Holy Spirit
did
not, however, begin
with the Catholic charismatic renewal. It began
in the nineteenth
century
with the patient scholarship of European, continental
theologians.
Their retrieval of the role and function of the Holy Spirit
in Catholic faith and
piety
bore fruit in
Pope
Leo XIII’s encyclical
Divinum illud munus
(1897).
The
abstract, scholastic lan- guage
of that
papal
letter had little
impact
on popular Catholic
piety;
but a second wave of
pneumatological
research
gave
rise to a second
papal encyclical, Pope
Pius XII’s
Mystici corporis (1943).
It popularized the insight
that the
Holy Spirit
animates the
mystical body
of
Christ; and it described the charisms of the
Holy Spirit
as a perennial endowment of the Church. Prior to the convocation of the Second Vatican
Council,
*Donald L.
Gelpi, S.J.
is Professor of Historical and
at the Jesuit School of
Theology
which is
Systematic
The- ology part
of the Graduate Theological
Union in
Berkeley,
California.
1
186
Ives
Congar
and Karl Rahner had
argued
that the charisms of the
Holy Spirit
told the
key
to the
apostolate
and
spirituality
of lay Christians.1 1
All this
patient scholarship prepared
the soil for Vatican II’s
teaching concerning
the role and function of the charisms within the Church. We should not underesdmate the
importance
of that conciliar
teaching
for the very
survival of the Catholic charismatic renewal ; for in giving a prelim- inary
and
qualified
sanction to this movement the American
bishops jus- tified their decision
by appealing
to Vatican II’s
teaching concerning
the Spirit’s
charismatic action in the Church. Without the Council’s sanction of charismatic
spirituality,
one
may well
wonder whether the American bishops
would have
given
their
blessing
to a movement that seemed to many
Catholics a syncretistic blend of Catholic and Protestant
piety.2
In order,
then, to understand the
theological significance
of the charis- made renewal one must first retrieve Vatican II’s
teaching concerning
the role and function of the charisms within the life of the church as a whole. That
teaching
did not
develop
in a vacuum. At Vatican II two contradictory
visions of the Church collided. A small
group
of curial integralists
believed in a
highly
centralized church in which
virtually every
administrative decision of any importance occurred in Rome. The liberal
majority
of the
bishops pushed
for and in some measure obtained a decentralization of church
government.
The
integralists
tended to equate
church
unity
with canonical
uniformity.
In contrast to a legalistic vision of the
church,
the liberals called for and obtained in an incultur- ated
approach
to Christian
evangelization.
The
integralists
viewed the Catholic church in
triumphalistic
terms as the one true church of Jesus Christ. The liberals saw all
baptized
Christians as members of the Church;
and
they
committed the Catholic Church to ecumenical
dialogue both with other Christian communions and with other world
religions. When the
integralists
said “Church,”
they usually
meant the
hierarchy. The liberals
by
contrast
portrayed
the Church as a
mystery
that tran- scends all ecclesiastical structures and as the
people
of God of whom the hierarchy
forms
only
a part. The
integralists
saw the Church and state as two
“perfect
societies”
totally possessed
of the means to achieve their purpose
for
existing.
The
liberals, however, portrayed
the
relationship of the Church to secular
society
in dialogic terms.3
lYves
Congar, O.P., Lay People in the Church,
translated by Donald Attwater (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1957); Karl Rahner, S.J., The Dynamic Element in the Church
(New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1964), Visions and Prophecies (New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1965)..
2For the text of the bishops statement, see: Edward D. O’Connor,
C.S.C., The Pentecostal Movement in the Catholic Church (Notre Dame, IN”: Ave Maria Press, 1971), 291-3. _
3Xavier Rynne’s
history of Vatican II still provides the best access to the issues that
the debates. See: Xavier Rynne, Letters from Vatican
City:
Vatican Council shaped II, First Session (Ir’ew York, NY: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux,
1963); The Second
Session: The Debates and Decrees of Vatican Council II
(New York, NY:
2
187
Vatican II replaced a hierarchical
understanding
of the Church with a Pauline vision of the Church as the
Body
of Christ
created, ordered,
and sustained
by
the charismatic
inspirations
of the Breath of the risen Jesus (Lumen gcntium, 6, 32, 48, 50;
Unitatis
redintegratio, 3; Apostolicam actuositatem, 3). Although the council used other
images
for the Church like the bride of the Lamb, the mother of the human
race,
or the
virginal spouse
of Christ, the
frequency
with which it
spoke
of the Church as Christ’s
body, shaped
and
inspired by
the
gift-giving Spirit
shows the centrality
of this Pauline doctrine to the council’s
teaching.
Vatican II
emphasized repeatedly
the
Spirit’s sovereign
freedom in dispensing
the charisms
(Apostolicam
actuositatem, 3; Ad Gentes, 23; Lumen
gentium, 7).
The council insisted on the universal
availability
of the charisms: the
Spirit
calls all
Christians,
ordained and
lay alike,
to some form of charismatic
ministry (Apostolicam actuositatem, 3, 28, 30; Lumen
gentium, 4).
Vatican II
depicted
the
lay apostolate
as
flowing from Christian
baptism,
as an
expression
of the Church’s mission to evangelize
the world, and as an effect of the
Spirit’s
charismatic illumi- nation
(Apostolicam actuositatem, 1;
Lumen
gentium, 9).
In teaching that the
laity
should exercise their
apostolate
in responsive- ness to the. Spirit’s charismatic
inspirations,
Vatican II
placed genuine limits on the
authority
of the Church’s ordained leaders.
By preaching, example,
and sacramental
ministry,
the ordained should
evoke, discern, and coordinate the
Spirit’s gifts
to lay
Christians;
but the ordained have no
right
to
suppress
the
Spirit’s
charismatic
inspirations. Instead,
in what concerns
lay ministry,
charismatic
competence
defines the
laity’s ecclesial
rights
and
responsibilities (Lumen gentium,
12; Apostolicam actuositatem, 3).
The liberal
majority
of the
bishops scrapped
the schema on the Church prepared by
the curial
integralists.
The liberals found the curial
portrayal of the Church too
triumphalistic,
hierarchical,
and over-centralized. The document that
replaced
the
original
schema on the church
incorporated into its
teaching
the
insights
of both Rahner and
Congar
into the charis- matic
inspiration
of the
lay apostolate
and of
lay spirituality.
In the debate on the revised schema, Cardinal Ruffini, one of the curial inte- gralists, complained
that it
spoke
too much of the charisms of the
Holy Spirit
and not
enough
of the need for the
laity
to conduct their
apostolate in complete obedience to the
hierarchy.
Cardinal Suenens
responded by calling
for even
stronger
insistence on the charismatic character of
lay ministry
and
spirituality.
The oriental
bishops
seconded the
and the liberals won out.
–
Belgian Cardinal;
Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1964); The Third Session: The Debates and Decrees of Vatican Council Il (Iv`ew York: NY: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1966). For a briefer summary
of the conciliar debates, sec: Xavier Rynne, Vatican Council II York, NY: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1968).
3
188
At the heart of this confrontation
lay
another fundamental
disagreement between the liberals and the
integralists.
The
intregralists
wanted to model the
apostolate
of the
laity
on Catholic Action.
By
that
they
meant that the
laity
should conduct their
apostolate
in
passive dependence
on the
hierarchy.
The liberal
majority
of the
bishops
at the Vatican
II, by contrast,
held that Catholic
laity
should follow the charismatic
inspira- tions of the
Holy Spirit
in the conduct of their
apostolate
and that the ordained leaders of the church had the
job,
not of
initiating every lay apostolic enterprise,
but of
opening
the
laity
to the charismatic
inspira- tions of the
Holy Spirit through
the
proclaiming
the
gospel, through sacramental
ministry,
and
through example.
In my
opinion
the most
important single theological
contribution that the charismatic renewal has made to the Church has been its introduction of
large segments
of both the
clergy
and
laity
to an
experience
of the Spirit’s
charismatic
activity
that allows both to appropriate in a lived and concrete
way
Vaticans II’s
ecclesiology. Moreover,
we still have a long way
to go in communicating that
ecclesiology
to the Church as a whole.
(II)
Two events in the
early development
of the renewal left it theologically stunted: the initial failure of the vast
majority
of Catholic
theologians
to take the renewal
seriously
and the well intentioned
suggestion
of the American Catholic
bishops
to rename this movement “the Charismatic Renewal of the Church.”
I have
always
found those involved in the renewal
hungry
for
teaching wherever
they
can find it. In the
early days
of the renewal, its members looked both to the
clergy
and to the
theological community
for
enlight- enment and
leadership.
The
bishops responded
like
good pastors. Theologians, however,
tended at first to look somewhat
aghast upon this
rag-tag
collection of
enthusiastic,
Catholic
tongue-speakers.
With time,
of course, the
theological community
did come to take the renewal more
seriously;
but their failure to respond with
alacrity
to the
challenge this movement
posed
to the Church as a whole created a doctrinal vacuum into which others
rushed, many
of them
spokespersons
for the Classical Pentecostal tradition.
Although
it is
beginning
to learn
theological sophistication,
Classical Protestant Pentecostalism has
traditionally
served
up
to the rest of the Church a rich
religious experience
but
only
thin
theological
broth.4
4Walter
Hollenweger’s study
still
provides
the best introduction to Classical Protestant Pentecostalism. See: Walter Hollenweger, The Pentecostals: The Charis- matic Movement in the Churches
(Minneapolis,
MN:
MA: Hendrickson
Augsburg, 1972/Peabody,
Publishers, rpt. 1988). For an account of the liberalization of Protestant Pentecostalism, see: Richard
Quebedeaux,
The New Charismatics: The Origins, Development,
and
Significance of Neo-Pentecostalism (New York, NY:
The New Charismatics II: How a Christian Movement Became Part
Doubleday, 1976),
of the American Religious Mainstream (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1983).
4
189
Catholic charismatics learned a lot from Protestant Pentecostals about the experience
of the
gifts;
but without a doubt
they
also imbibed a signifi- cani dose of fundamentaIism and a privatized, Pietistic, me-and-Jesus spirituality.
Changing
the movement’s name created other
problems.5
It laid an unrealistic burden
upon
the renewal and caused
widespread
confusion about the
way
the
gifts
function in the church. It laid an unrealistic burden
upon
the renewal because the new name seemed to suggest that this
single
movement bore
primary responsibility
for the charismatic renewal of the entire Church, even
though
it focused somewhat nar- rowly
on those charisms that function within a form of shared
spon- taneous
prayer
that would
probably
never
appeal
to all Christians. The new name also caused
popular
confusion in the minds of Catholics about the
way
the charisms function in the Church because it led
people not
only
to divide the Church into charismatic Catholics and non- charismatic Catholics but also to distinguish the two on an arbitrary and unsound
basis, namely,
whether or not one attends a charismatic
prayer meeting.
Vatican
II, by contrast, portrayed
all Catholics as called to charismatic
ministry
within the Church. In a church that has not for centuries taken the charisms of the
Holy Spirit seriously,
the designation of a small
group
within the Church as a whole as professionally “charis- matic” allowed the so-called “non-charismatic Catholics” to continue to ignore
their
responsibility .
as Christians to take the
gifts ‘
of the
–
Spirit seriously.
(III)
Theologians
associated with the renewal had
initially
to disabuse charismatic Catholics of a false and fundamentalistic
interpretation
of the meaning
of
baptism
in the
Holy Spirit. They
also had to clarify the rela- tionship
between charismatic and sacramental
prayer.
In the
process
of dealing
with both these
questions, theologians
found themselves forced to reflect more
deeply
than
they
had heretofore on the role and function of the charisms in the shared life of the Church.
Classical Protestant Pentecostalism tends to equate baptism in the
Holy Spirit
with the
reception
of the
gift
of
tongues.
It does so out of a fun- damentalistic
reading
of Acts 2 as a normative account of the meaning of that
phrase. Very early, exegetes pointed
out that the New Testament invokes a
variety
of terms to describe the action of the
Spirit
in the Christian
community.6
For examples of growing
theological sophistication
in Protestant
Pentecostalism, see: Russell Spittler, Ed., Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism
(Grand MI: Baker Book
Rapids,
House, 1976); Cecil NI. Robeck, Jr., ed., Charismatic
in
Experience
History (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1985).
50’Connor, The Pentecostal Movement in the Catholic Church, 291-3.
6Herbert Schneider, “Baptism in the Holy Spirit in the New Testament” in The Holy Spirit
and Power: The Catholic Charismatic Renewal, edited
by
Kilian
5
190
Only
the
synoptic
tradition
speaks
of
baptizing
in a
Holy Spirit because it cites the
prophecy
of John the
Baptist
that a greater one would follow him who would
“baptize
with a Holy Spirit and with fire.” As Catholic
exegetical
reflection on the
meaning
of the
phrase
“to
baptize with a Holy Spirit”
advanced,
it became clearer that one must
recognize that it takes on different
theological
connotations with each of the
syn- optics. Mark,
for
example,
takes as the
sign
of
Spirit baptism
not the possession
of
any single
charismatic
gift,
but the
willingness
to risk one’s life
by testifying
to the
gospel (Mk 13:11). Matthew,
who sus- pected
those who valued charismania more than obedience to Jesus’
moral
teachings (Mt 7:1),
seems to have looked
upon
ritual
baptism
in the triune name as the fulfillment of John the
Baptist’s prophecy (Mt 28:19-20).
Nor can one read Luke’s
interpretation
of the
meaning
of Spirit-baptism exclusively
in the
light
of Acts 2:1-4. On the
contrary, one can understand Luke’s
interpretation
of this
phrase only
if one reads it in the
light
of the
complex pneumatology
that Luke
develops
in the course of his entire
gospel
and of the whole of Acts. When one does so, one realizes that
Luke,
like
Matthew, regarded obedience to the ethics of discipleship
that Jesus had lived and
proclaimed
as the most fundamental sign
of
baptism
in the
Holy Spirit,
rather than the
possession
of this or that
gift.
More
specifically,
in Luke’s account of
Pentecost, the term “baptism”
does not occur until verse 38, where it refers to the rite of Christian
baptism,
which when administered effects
conformity
to Jesus’ moral
teaching,
not the further
spread of glossolalia (Acts
2 :37- 47).
That event, rather than the
symbolic
events narrated in Acts 2:1-4 fulfills the
Baptist’s prophecy
that Jesus would
baptize
with a sanctify- ing Spirit. Luke,
to be sure,
acknowledged
the charismatic action of the Spirit
in the
community,
but he seems to have
regarded
a life of disciple- ship
as the more fundamental
sign
of Spirit
baptism.7
These
exegetical insights
tend to confirm what
pastoral experience
has taught
those in
positions
of
pastoral leadership
within the renewal: namely,
that the
equation
of
Spirit-baptism
with the
reception
of
any single gift
of the
Holy Spirit
divides the Church
arbitrarily
into those who have received the
Spirit
and those who have not. Such a division contradicts traditional Church
teaching
about the effects of
baptism. Instead of
speaking
of “the”
baptism
in the
Holy Spirit
and of
interpret- ing
it as the
reception
of the
gift
of
tongues, therefore,
it makes sound pastoral
and
exegetical
sense to equate baptism in the
Holy Spirit
with lifelong
transformation in the
Spirit
of Jesus, who comes to conform us
McDonnell, O.S.B. (New York,
NY:
Doubleday, 1975), 35-56;
John Charismata: God’s
Koenig,
Gifts for
God’s People (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster,
1978); George Montague, S.M.,
The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition
(New York, NY: Paulist, 1976).
7For a more detailed treatment of these ideas, sec: Donald L. Gelpi, SJ., “Breath Baptism
in the Synoptics” in Charismatic Experiences in History, edited by Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1985), 15-43.
6
191
to Jesus’
image.
In the course of that
transformation, however,
every Christian
ought
to reach a Pentecostal moment in which he or she
expe- riences the
empowering
call of the
Spirit
to serve the
community
of the Church and
humanity
in some
concrete, gifted way.
Besides
broadening
and
clarifying
the
meaning
of the term
“baptism
in the
Holy Spirit,” theological
reflection on the charismatic renewal has deepened
our
insight
into the role that the
gifts play
in Christian life and piety.
The charisms of the
Holy Spirit,
even if one confines one’s list of the
gifts
to those
supplied by
St.
Paul,
address each moment in the growth
of experience. Human
experience develops
in identifiable
stages: sensation,
feeling, imagination,
rational
inference,
and decision, which may interrupt
the flow of experience at any point.8
Gifts of
prayer, including
the
gift
of
tongues, yield
a sensation of God’s
presence
in our lives.
Indeed,
the
language
of
prayer gravitates spontaneously
to the
language
of sensation. We are told to
taste, savor, relish
graces given during prayer.
In addition, the
gift
of
tongues
recalls the first Pentecost and creates in contemporary Christians the realization that Pentecost is an ongoing event in the Church’s life.9
Feelings, emotions, yield
an initial sense of the tendencies
present
in the
persons
and
things
we encounter and
they pass
final intuitive
judg- ment on those same realities. The
gift
of discernment transforms intu- itive
judgments
of
feeling
into
prayer judgments
of discernment that yield
a felt sense of the
way
that God is
calling
one to act in concrete circumstances. 10
The
gift
of
prophecy engages
the intuitive mind.
Prophets proclaim
an imaginative
vision of a world transformed
by
the action of God.
They call us to repentence or to
hope by weaving together images
that touch
8For a more detailed development of this construct of experience, see: Donald L.
S.J., Grace as Transmuted Experience and Social Process, and Other Essays in North American
Gelpi,
(Lanham,
MD: University Press of America,
1988); Inculturating
North American Theology
Theology: An Experiment in Foundational
Method (Atlanta,
GA: Scholars Press,
1988). For further discussion in the correlation
be- tween specific gifts and different moments in the
growth
of human see: Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., Charism and Sacrament: A
experience,
Theology of Christian Conversion (New York, NY: Paulist, 1976), 63-96; Experiencing
God: A Theology of tluman Emergence (Lanham,
MD: University Press of America), 205-58.
9George Montague, “Baptism in the Spirit and Speaking in Tongues,” Theology Digest (Winter, 1973),
21:342-61; F. Sullivan, “Speaking in Lumen Vitae (November 2, 1976) 31:145-70; “‘Speaking in Tongues’ in the New Tongues,” Testament and in the Modem Charismatic Renewal,” in The Spirit of God in Christian edited by Edward Malatesta, S.J.
Life,
(New York, NY: Paulist, 1977), 23-74.
lOMichael Buckley, S.J., “The Structure of the Rules for Discernment of The
Spirits,”
Way, Supplement #20, 2:19-37;
William Spohn, S.J., “Charismatic Communal Discernment of Ignatian Communities,” The Way, Supplement #20, 2:38-54; John Wright,
SJ. “Discernment of Spirits in the New Testament,” Communio (Summer, 1974), 1:115-27; M. Kyne, “Discernment of Spirits and Christian Growth,” Christus (May, 1968), 7:20-6; Jacques Guillet, et. al. Discernment of Spirits (Collegeville, MI: Liturgical Press, 1970).
7
192
the human heart.
Moreover, reflection on
the renewal has led us to dis- tinguish theologically
between two forms of biblical
prophecy:
the ecstatic
prophecy
of the nebilim which resembled the kind of prophetic utterance that
goes
on in
prayer meetings,
and the
prophetic activity
of the
writing prophets,
which resembled more the of Dr.
l
ministry King, Daniel
Berri`an,
or
Dorothy Day.
Gifts of
teaching
transform both
imaginative
and inferential
percep- tions of reality into the effective
kerygmatic proclamation
of Christ and into instruction for the Christian
community
in matters about which it needs to know. Gifts of
healing
and of miracles
accompany
and confirm the efficacious
proclamation
of the
gospel. 12
Finally,
the action
gifts
like
administration, pastoral leadership, orga- nizing
care for the
poor,
and the other
gifts
that mobilize the Church
transform human activities into concrete deeds of service that
embody .
its commitment to live
together corporately
in the
image
of Jesus
The fact that we can correlate different
gifts
with different moments in the
growth
of human
experience
makes the charisms shareable. That same fact also casts
important light
on the natural foundations of the gifts
of the
Spirit.
Medieval
theologians
classified the charisms as created
graces
and called them somewhat
redundantly “gratuitous grace.” Grace builds on nature.
Contemporary personality theory
teaches us that as human
beings put together
a personality it tends to focus on different stages
in the
development
of experience. Some
egos specialize
in sensa- tion, others in
feeling,
others in intuitive
insight,
others in abstract think- ing.
Introverts need to
figure things
out before
they act;
extraverts
figure things
out in the course of
acting.
The
Myers-Briggs
test offers a way of identifying
such
ego specialization.
If, however,
different
personalities cultivate
sensitivity
to different
stages
in the
development
of human experience
and if different
gifts grace
each of those same
stages,
then it follows that
personalities
that
specialize
in a particular area of experience
llC?ol1 Stuhlmueller,
“Prophecy
in Isracl,” in Perspectives in Charismatic Renewal, edited by Edward O’Connor, C.S.C. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 13-36; K. L. Crenshaw,
(Berlin:
Karl Rahner,
Prophetic Conflict Topellman, 1973);
Visions and
Prophecies (New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1964); Gerhard von Rad, The Message of the Prophets (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1965).
12Avery Dulles,
The Survival
of Dogma (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1973); Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1972; Donald Gelpi, S.J., “The Ministry of Healing” in Pentecostal Piety (New York, NY: Paulist, 1972), 3-58; Morton Kelsey, Healing
and
(New York, NY: Harper
and Row,
1973);
Dennis Linn and Matthew Christianity Linn, Healing
of Memories (Paramus, NJ: Paulist-Newman, 1975) ; Francis McNutt, Healing (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Nlaria Press,
1973);
Louis Monden. Signs and Wonders
(New York,
NY: Desclee, 1966).
13Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P.,
Ministry: Leadership
in the Church
of Jesus Christ, translated by John Bowdcn (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1981).
8
193
develop
a natural
susceptibility
for
receiving
its corresponding gift
More
concretely, feeling types display
a natural
susceptibility
for the gift
of discernment. Intuitive introverts show a natural
susceptibility
for prophetic
vision. Both intuitive and
thinking types probably
have a natu- ral
susceptibility
for
gifts
of
teaching.
Extraverted sensate
types
have a natural
susceptibility
for nuts-and-bolts administration. Extraverted intuitive
types display
a natural
susceptibility
for creative administration.
Theological
reflection on the
gifts
that has
emerged
from the charis- matic renewal in the United States has, then, drawn
creatively
on the personality
sciences in order to
probe
the human foundation of the gifts.15
One observes that
tendency,
for
example,
in the
theological reflection on the
gift
of
healing.
In my own
opinion,
this creative theo- logical
use of the
personality
sciences to describe both the
way
human beings experience
all the
gifts, including healing,
flows from and expresses
the kind of Christian humanism that has
typified
Catholic reflection on the
relationship
between nature and
grace.
Besides
humanizing
the
gifts, theological
reflection on
contemporary charismatic
experience
has also made it clear
why
the charisms
play
an organic
and
indispensable
role in the life of the Church and
why
we cannot confine their contribution to the life of the Church to the first generation
of Christians, as most Catholics before Vatican II were
taught to believe. 16 The charisms of the
Spirit play
an
indispensable
role in the life of the Church because
they
create the shared faith consciousness of the Christian
community. 17 Moreover,
that shared faith consciousness provides
the matrix of
grace
within which individuals can be nurtured to adult
maturity
as Christians.
Individuals achieve consciousness
by distinguishing things
and inter- relating
them. Communities,
especially
an
historical, world-wide com- munity
like the
Church,
come to consciousness
through
much more complex processes
of
interpretation.
A large community like the Church achieves its
present
sense of
identity by reaching
a consensus about the
l4See Gelpi, Experiencing God, 205-58; The Divine Mother: A Trinitarian Theo- logy of the Iloly Spirit (Lanham,
MD: University Press of America,
1984),
183- 214.
15Matthew and Dennis Linn, llealing
Life’s tlurts: tlealing
Memories the Five
Through
Stages of Forgiveness (New York, NY: Paulist, 1978); Bernard J. Turrell, Christotherapy: Healing Through Enlightenment (New York, NY:
II: A New
Seabury, 1975); Christotherapy Ilorizonfor
Counselors,
in
Spiritual Directors, and Seekers
and Growth Christ
of Ilealing (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1982); Christo- integration :
the Transforming Love of Jesus Christ (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1989).
Charism and Sacrament, 97-110;
Experiencing
God, 205-58; The Divine l6Gelpi, Mother, 103-214.
17For documentation of this point, see: Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B., “Communion Ecclesiology
and Baptism in the Spirit: Tertullian and the Early Church,” Theo- logical
Studies (December, 198$), 49:671-92.
9
194
coming
to shared awareness
grounds
its
Spirit.
retrieving
its
founding
mystery-together
with the
history
collaboration
guided by
the
Spirit ity.
Without the
charisms,
openness
event which founded it and about the
history
that links it to that event. On the basis of that shared sense of
identity
the Church can then reach consensus about the kind of future to which God is calling it. To achieve full shared
awareness, however,
the Church must then orchestrate all the gifts
of all its members as
they
collaborate with God to make that future a reality.
Each of the charisms
plays
an
indispensable
role in the Church’s
in faith.
Prophets
and teachers who
pro- claim the
gospel
summon the
community
to the kind of conversion that
faith. Gifts of
prayer
and of
healing give
the
community
a vivid sense of God’s
presence
that nurtures charismatic to the
Teachers
help
the Church reach a shared sense of its
identity by
event-the
ministry
of Jesus and the
paschal
that links the
living
Church to those events.
Prophets,
teachers and
pastoral
leaders
help
the Church reach a consensus about the ultimate and
proximate
future to which God is call- ing
it.
Finally,
those with action
gifts
mobilize
community
to corporate
that make the Church’s future a real-
no shared faith; without shared faith, no matrix of
grace
to nurture
people
to mature faith and active Christian service.
of the
theologians
have discovered a close connection between charimatic and sacramental piety.
Whether or not one links
Spirit-baptism
of course,
depend
on the
meaning
one attaches to the term
“baptism in the
Holy Spirit.”
I have
suggested
that we
ought
to
interpret
this phrase
as life-long transformation in the
sanctifying Spirit
of Christ that
in a Pentecostal moment in which one
experiences
call to serve others in the name and
image
of
flow from the sacraments of initiation: sanc-
Finally,
the
majority
will,
culminates
Spirit’s empowering
Jesus.18 Both
experiences tification from
baptism,
Pentecostal sacraments of
matrimony Spirit.
The rite of reconciliation
associated
with the renewal
to sacramental
worship
the
anointing
from confirmation. The
to the
graces
of those sacra- The rite of
anointing prays
for
covenant
and orders both confirm a charism of the
reaffirms the commitment one made in baptism
and
deepens
one’s
receptiveness
ments, including
the
Spirit’s
charisms.
the
gift
of
healing
in the context of a formal sacramental
the eucharist as the
ordinary
sacrament of
ongoing conversion reaffirms one’s
life-long
commitment as a Christian to live in
renewal.
Finally,
openness
to the
Spirit’s guidance.
to recall events
occurred,
(TV)
I have tried to
suggest
the
theological
that
helped
set its
theological
outline some of the
important theological insights
that have resulted from
tBGelpi, Charism and Sacrament.
,
context in which the renewal
agenda,
and to
10
195
I would like to offer a few
It seems to me that both whole
pose significant challenges renewal’s unfulfilled
reflection on this movement.
In
conclusion,
remarks about the charismatic
renewal’s unfulfilled
theological potential.
the charismatic renewal and the church as a
The charismatic
to the Church
challenges
unfulfilled
theological potential stituencies
The charismatic
conversion
apart
that conversion
that there is a Holy Spirit Belief in the
Spirit
makes
systematically
into both they
have hertofore;
to one another.
Indeed, fulfilling
the
demands,
in
my opinion,
of
theological potential
keeping
both of these constituencies in creative
dialogue.
renewal has
posed
and continues to pose serious theo- logical challenges
Church as a whole, at the same time that the
as a whole has
posed
and continues to
pose
serious
theological
to the charismatic renewal. In my
opinion,
we shall fulfill the
of the renewal
by keeping
both con-
into more
effective, transforming dialogue
with one another.
renewal
challenges
the Church as a whole to personal
to Christ and to belief in the
Holy Spirit.
Ever since the eclipse
in the catechumenate in the fifth
century,
the Catholic church
from its missions has
scarcely placed
conversion
high
on its theo- logical agenda. By bringing
thousands of
people
to an
experience personal
conversion to Jesus as Savior and Lord, the renewal
together with the restored catechumenate continues to call Catholics to recognize
authenticates Christian faith.
Moreover,
for centuries the Catholic church,
especially
the Church in the
west,
has tended to believe
rather than
really
believe in the
Holy Spirit. 19
faith in the third
person
of the
trinity practical. The renewal makes faith in the
Spirit practical by inculcating
an expec- tant faith in the
gifts
of the
Spirit.
Most Catholics need to enter more
of these dimensions of charismatic
piety
than
and in order to do that the need to stop
making
false and
misleading
distinctions between “charismatic Catholics” and “non- charismatic Catholics.” In effect,
then,
the renewal
challenges
all Catho- lics to a more
systematic appropriation
of the Church and
concerning
the need to
ground
in ongoing conversion and in practical
openness to,the
of the
Spirit
of Christ.
a whole
challenges
the renewal to advance more
sys- tematically
that it has
beyond fundamentalism,
religion.
In her
perceptive study
of the charismatic
and
Community, Mary
Jo Neitz
correctly
world in which the rank and file of the renewal live and the more
theologically sophisticated
concerning
the nature Church renewal charismatic
anointing The Church as
somewhat fundamentalistic
of the
teachings
of Vatican II
pietism,
and
privatized
renewal,
Charisma distinguishes
between the
world of its elite
History of the (New York, Confirmation
19Michel Dujarier, A /listory of the Catechumenate (New York: Sadlier, 1952); A
Catechumenate: The First Six Centuries, translated by Edward Hassel
NY: Sadlier, 1977); “A Survey of the History of the Catechumenate,” in
Re-examined, edited by Kendig Brubaker Cully (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, Co., 1982), 23-36.
11
196
suggests
that we need to communicate to
leadership.20
That distinction
the rank and file far more
effectively
than we have heretofore the results of
systematic theological
reflection on the renewal and on the
gospel. The wider church also has a word to
speak
to the charismatic renewal concerning
conversion. In Claarisma and
Community,
Prof. Neitz faults the renewal for
having
in
part
sold out to the culture of narcissism that characterizes the late and decadent
capitalist society
in which we lives Once
cannot, of course,
lay
blame on the
privatization
of religion at the feet of the renewal alone. All the mainline churches in this
country
have preached
a
privatized gospel
since the nineteenth
century.22
Neverthe- less,
in their most recent
pastoral letters,
our
bishops
have
joined
their voices to those of liberation
theologians
in other
parts
of the world in order to call all
Catholics,
including
members of the
renewal, to recog- nize that conversion remains
incomplete
unless the turn to Christ includes a turn to the
poor,
the
marginal,
and the
oppressed.
That means that conversion remains
incomplete
unless it includes an active
practical
commitment to end the
unjust
social structures that force more and more Americans into
poverty
and homelessness and that cause half the human race to face the realistic
prospect
of death
by
starvation or from
hunger related diseases. For all its
virtues, the renewal needs
desperately
to repent
and hear this
good
news.23
The Church as a whole
challenges
the charismatic renewal to cultivate a
truly integral
charismatic
piety.
To a
great
extent the renewal’s
piety has fallen victim to the
principal
institution it has created: the
prayer group.
The fact that so much
energy
in the renewal
goes
into shared prayer
causes its members to overvalue those
gifts
that one can share in the context of
prayer
and to undervalue those that function in a more secular context. The
deprivatization
of charismatic
piety
could contribute significantly
to a deeper appropriation of those other charisms. I suspect that, if the
apostle
Paul were
writing
letters
today,
he would include community organizing among
the charisms of the
Spirit.
If the renewal hopes
to succeed in cultivating a more balanced charismatic
spirituality, it needs to realize both
theoretically
and
practically
that we cannot con- fine the charisms of the
Spirit
to the Pauline lists. In fact we can number
20Mary Jo Neitz, Charisma and Community (New Brunswick, CT: Transaction Books, 1987), 27-62.
2lNeitz, Op. cit., 225-48; Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: Ameri- can
Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 1979).
22Robert N. Bellah, Richard
Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Stephen
M. Tipton, Ilabits
of the lfearl: Individualism and Commitment in Ameri- can
Life (Berkeley, CA: University of Califomia Press, 1985), 210-4.9.
23For a development of these insights, see: Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., “Pcrsonal and Political Conversion: Foundations for a Theology of Liberation,” in Grace as Trains- muted Experience and Social Process, and Other Essays in North American T’heoloyy (Lanham, MD: University Prcss in America, 1988), 97-140.
12
197
as many gifts of the
Spirit
as we can
persons
called and
empowered
to serve others in
any way
in the name and
image
of Jesus. Until the renewal learns to validate all the
gifts
of the
Spirit,
it will
continue,
I fear,
to find a significant number of its members
abandoning
charismatic prayer
because
they
cannot find within the renewal full
scope
for the exercise of the
gifts they
have.24
Finally,
it seems to me that a renewal that cultivated a truly balanced charismatic
piety
would have a
significant
contribution to make to the restoration of the catechumenate in the
contemporary
Church. Like the renewal,
the restoration of the catechumenate mandated
by
Vatican II is raising
serious
questions
about the
degree
conversion and
community commitment
present
in our
existing
eucharistic communities. When Rome first unveiled the
shape
of the restored
catechumenate, liturgists pointed
out the success or failure of the restoration would
depend
on creating
the kind of community of shared faith and
prayer
that an effec- tive catechumenate
presupposes.
To some it seemed that in the United States, one would find oneself hard
pressed
to discover such communi- ties
apart
from the charismatic renewal.25 An effective catechumenate needs to introduce catechumens to an experience of integral conversion before Christ. It also needs to
help
them discern their call to service in the Church. A charismatic renewal that
truly
valued all the
gifts
of the Spirit
and not
just
those that function in the context of shared
prayer would,
in
my opinion,
have much to teach the restored catechumenate about conversion and the
experience
of the
Spirit
in the Church.26 Indeed,
the creative future of the charismatic renewal would seem to lie in a fruitful
dialogue
with all the other renewal movements active in the Church in an effort to bring openness to all the charisms closer to the heart of Christian
spirituality.
.
24Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., “The Church Sacramental and Charismatic: False
Avoiding
Dichotomies,” Church (1987), 19-24.
A. Keifer, “Christian Initiation: The State of the Question,” in Made Not Born: New 25Ralph
Perspectives on Christian Initiation and the Catechumenate (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), 138-51.
26The recent researches of Kilian McDonnell and of
such
George Montague
a
support
suggestion; see Kilian McDonnell and
Christian Initiation and Baptisrrc in the Holy Spirit: Evidence
George Montague,
from the First Eight Centuries (College- ville, MI: Liturgical Press/Michael Glazier, 1991). On this work, see the review below (pp. 209-213).
13
