Bob Doss, a systems analyst from Sunnyvale, extends his hands high over his head, arches his neck back and closes his eyes, saying, ``Almighty God our Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, gather us in, bring us in from the fields, as you brought your servant David. . . . Anoint us with your message of love, dear God. Give us victory . . . Lord Jesus Christ, save us, heal us, bring us your gifts!''
While the media focus on entrenched Catholic debate over abortion, celibacy and the status of women in the Church, the officially sanctioned, Roman Catholic movement of ``charismatic renewal'' has brought startling changes to the worship of millions of Catholics.
Doss and the more than two dozen other worshipers at Holy Family Parish's weekly prayer meeting in South San Jose are typical: Even in high tech-saturated Silicon Valley, Catholics seek the primal Christian experience of being ``filled up'' with the Holy Spirit. Like Evangelicals, they talk of having a personal relationship with Jesus. Like Pentecostals, they seek to be ``baptized in the Holy Spirit'' and to use the ``special gifts'' the Spirit is said to bestow on them: Prophecy, healing and speaking in tongues.
The charismatic renewal is part of a broader ``neo-Pentecostal'' movement that crosses Christian denominations in its emphasis on uninhibited worship. It also reflects the trend toward establishment of small, intimate faith communities.
In a nation of strangers, these movements tend to generate a powerful sense of community and meaning; people feel cared for and protected. Within Roman Catholicism, where there is concern over growing parishes and diminishing numbers of clergy, many worshipers realize that ``the perfunctory handshake at 11 on Sunday morning doesn't make a community,'' says William D. Dinges, an associate professor of religion at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., who studies the Catholic community in the United States. ``People are looking for some more intimate kind of connection.''
Those who are part of ``the renewal'' say it is distinctively Catholic, even if its vocabulary is reminiscent of Evangelicalism. The word ``catholic'' means ``universal,'' and charismatic Catholics say they are getting back to the fundamental core of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. ``To have a group that is focused on Jesus is very Catholic,'' says Linda Schubert, an author and prayer group leader from San Jose whose charismatic ministry takes her around the world. Schubert, whose booklet ``The Miracle Hour'' has more than a million copies in print, laughs when she says, ``I go to daily Mass, but I totally adore the `Hallelujah' thing.''
Pope John Paul II has spoken favorably of the renewal movement which calls itself the ``largest Pentecostal church'' in the world: Estimates of the numbers of Catholics who have been baptized in the Holy Spirit range as high as 70 million in more than 120 countries. At least 38 prayer groups meet regularly in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Jose; they pray in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean.
Nearly 300 other prayer groups meet in six other Northern California dioceses. About 2,000 people from all seven dioceses joined late last month at Pentecost for an annual weekend of charismatic prayer and liturgy at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
Charismatic Catholics claim to have helped restore a sense of rejoicing to Catholic worship: ``We had come to believe that to be reverent meant to be silent,'' says James O'Connell, lay leader of the prayer meeting at Holy Family Parish. He left his job in the computer industry a decade ago for full-time ministry and is now among the busiest and best-known charismatic leaders in the San Jose diocese.
Lifted by charismatic prayer, worshipers grow ``hungry to receive the sacraments,'' says Betty Nun~ez, who joined the renewal with her husband, Jim, in 1975 during a time of marital crisis. They lead a prayer group at Star of the Sea Church in Alviso, and their sense of renewed faith has brought them through other hard times. When their 25-year-old son, Matthew, died of leukemia two years ago, the prayers of friends ``lifted us up,'' she says. ``I'm not saying that other Catholics don't believe. But when you're renewed by baptism in the Holy Spirit, your faith comes alive.''
``Too long Catholics have felt stuck in an intellectual approach to their religion,'' agrees Loretta Pehanich, assistant director of media relations for the Diocese of San Jose, who attends Holy Family Parish and puts herself on the ``fringe'' of the charismatic movement. For charismatic worshipers, renewal means Catholicism is ``not a set of rules,'' she says. ``They've met this person -- they've fallen desperately in love with Jesus. And then they look back at their church and see his footprints.''
The Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament describe how the Holy Spirit filled Jesus' disciples ``like the rush of a mighty wind'' in the weeks after the Resurrection. Increasingly, modern religious scholars argue that such ``baptism in the Holy Spirit'' was an integral part of the early church, commonly experienced by adult converts. After this spirit-filled initiation, the scholars say, converts went out to evangelize and ``build up'' the church. Watching the ``special gifts'' of the Spirit -- known as ``charisms'' -- make a comeback late in the 20th century is like watching the opening of ``a time release capsule,'' says George T. Montague, professor of theology at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas.
Montague is co-author with theologian Kilian McDonnell of ``Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries,'' which was the subject of a three-day conference attended by scholars and bishops in Boston in October. The book is part of the new intellectual undergirding for charismatic Catholic worship as it grows less controversial in many parishes. ``The people in those parishes will not see themselves as part of a movement,'' says Walter Matthews, director of Chariscenter USA, a national office for the renewal movement outside Washington, D.C. ``What they're experiencing is a sort of normal, enlivened Catholic Christianity.''
Even so the church hierarchy is not always entirely comfortable with the renewal's influence.
``Officially, the bishops are very supportive of the movement -- looking at its fruits, lives transformed, people praying,'' Matthews says. ``Whether they buy the heart of the charismatic renewal -- this grace we call `Baptism of the Spirit' -- that's a little more problematic.''
Charlie Peissner, bishop's liaison for charismatic renewal in the Oakland diocese, says that's because charismatic worship is noisy, and ``free-flowing gatherings of the spirit'' can go on for hours: ``The renewal's a little unsteady. It can't be predicted,'' he says. His fear is that the renewal will be tamed over time so that it resembles `` `religion' in the worst sense of the word -- staid and regular and predictable.''
The charismatic renewal can be viewed as growing out of the Second Vatican Council of the early-to-mid 1960s when Pope John XXIII invited the Holy Spirit to renew the Church. As the council made sweeping changes in the Mass and other traditional modes of devotion, a ``vacuum'' emerged in Catholic worship, says Dinges of Catholic University. Folk Masses in the vernacular and other changes in liturgy and ritual quickly reshaped the character of Catholic worship. But for a segment of the Catholic community, the mystery of worship had been lost. ``Charismatic renewal stepped into that vacuum,'' Dinges says, ``by presenting a new Catholic mode of devotional piety.''
The movement has gone through cycles of expansion and contraction. In 1975, 10,000 charismatics meeting in Rome were blessed and encouraged by Pope Paul VI. Charismatic masses filled American sports stadiums with tens of thousands of worshipers late into the '70s.
``I've seen both extremes,'' says Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, professor of Puerto Rican studies at Brooklyn College and a member of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians. ``I've seen those who leave and join the Pentecostals, and those who meet before Sunday Mass for healing services and are a tremendous asset to the parish.''
For many, the best thing the renewal has accomplished is to create alumni. Men and women may drop in and out of prayer meetings, but they say they are spiritually nourished by their experience and often go on to evangelize and start new ministries: Youth ministries, educational ministries, itinerant healing ministries. The Virgin Mary often looms in the background of charismatic worship, whether or not her name is mentioned at prayer meetings. Mary was the ``first charismatic'': She conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and was present among Jesus' disciples at Pentecost when they were filled with the Spirit.
``The spirit of God sent in Pentecost 2,000 years ago is fully alive and working in the Church,'' says Father Tony Pereira, an assistant pastor at St. John Vianney Parish and one of three diocesan liaisons to local prayer groups. ``And we believe that and not just in doctrine, but in our hearts, and we live that way . . .
``I'm not a hallelujah guy -- yet,'' says Pereira, who attended his first charismatic Mass as a college student 20 years ago. When he heard Catholics speak in tongues, ``it sent shivers down my back,'' he remembers. Speaking in tongues is said to be the gentle bubbling up of God's prayers from the heart. Now Pereira prays in tongues in charismatic prayer groups, but not while leading regular Sunday Mass at his parish. ``No. You always have that gift: You can drive the car or not drive the car. You can control that. It doesn't overtake you. What sometimes overtakes me is the power of the message. That's what I can't control.''
© 1996 Mercury Center.
First published
Saturday, June 15, 1996
Page: 1E
San Jose Mercury News
Republished on the
Catholic Charismatic Center's
Web pages with the permission of the author.
Richard Scheinin is a professional writer, and neither he nor the paper has released the copyright to this article. He requests that you contact him for permission prior to any republication. He can be reached through the newspaper.
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