I used to live in Lakeland, Florida, and honestly, all the good stuff happened after I left: housing prices doubled (as in – I could have sold my house for double of what I did sell it for even 3 years later)…GirlFights on YouTube (No, that’s not “good stuff.” I know, I know)…and now…
Over the past month, during our occasional forays through the channels, we’ve noticed that one of the religious channels has frequently been broadcasting some kind of revival live from Lakeland. Last Sunday night I stopped and watched for a while – the broadcast was coming from Joker Marchant Stadium, spring training home of the Detroit Tigers and the rest of the time the single-A Lakeland Tigers.
(Christopher’s first employer. He worked in concessions for about a month, occasionally coming home afterwards with boxes of leftover hot dogs. Pleasant.)
The preacher was short, stocky and tatooed. He was on fire in typical Pentecostal fashion. At one point he was informed that a woman who’d come out to see him from California had brought a bag of charcoal, and she wanted to take it back to California to distribute to everyone, so she could spread the fire. The revival preacher then prayed over the bag of coals for a while, praying that through the coals, the fire of the Spirit would spread..
…and at this point, I’m thinking, like I always seem to… yup..you can run but you can’t hide from sacramentalism. Keep running. Just keep running…
I finally got curious enough to wonder what was going on and found out that this is being hailed as a new Pentecost event, categorized by some in the same mode as the Toronto Blessing and its various 
manifestations in Brownsville, Pensacola, and other places.
The evangelist’s name is Todd Bentley, a Canadian who has a dramatic conversion story and interesting things to say about his present spiritual life. He is apparently tied into a bunch of prophetic types associated with Kansas City, the complexities of which are sort of beyond me. His has his very strong critics – those from evangelicalism who are cautious or even more than cautious about Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity, and those with specific criticisms of the visions he claims to have, conversations and encounters with angels and Jesus himself, the purported “signs” of the Spirit’s presence, which include gold and silver dust, and so on.
So, you’re saying, why Lakeland, that small city in between Orlando and Tampa? Well, Lakeland has been a center of charismatic Christianity for a while, both in itself – with the old Carpenters’ Home Church – and its proximity to various manifestations in Orlando and Tampa. From the news stories I’ve read, this revival, which has been going on for a month, has moved around, beginning in churches, then to the baseball stadium or Civic Center when available, and even to the airport grounds.
Here’s an article from the Tampa Bay paper about it
Mark Byron- a long-time Christian blogger who lived in the Lakeland area for a while, has several posts here.
If you do a blog search you can find lots of blunt critiques and views of what’s going on. I’d be really interested in hearing from anyone who lives down there for some perspective on what’s going on, how the other Christian churches are responding, if anyone is actually noticing this, if it’s being ignored, and so on.
There are a number of different ways to talk about this style of religion, but what always interests me the most are the ghosts of ancient historical Christianity within these great-great-great grandchildren of the Reformation (some might say third cousins thrice removed, since it’s a sure bet neither Luther nor Calvin would claim them).
* The persistence of a sacramental sensibility, both through using objects as vehicles to touch God – or let God touch you and as signs of God’s presence.
The other night, I watched my old friend Paula White for a few minutes. She was on her knees praying and behind her was a huge cross with hundreds of papers – prayer petitions – pinned to it. Her assistants were facing the cross as Paula prayed, waving their hands up and down and around this cross laden with prayers, as if seeking to draw God’s power, to direct it.
* The individual minister as a conduit for God’s grace. In a tradition founded on the priesthood of all believers, it is impossible, apparently, to escape the scandal of particularity – that this guy, this person, is the agent, somehow, of God’s presence.
My internet meanderings on this topic took me to this video, of part of a service presided over by one Dr. Cindy Timms. I think what interested me even more than the mass slaying in the Spirit was what she was saying during all of this – which seemed to go further than say, commanding spirits to leave in Jesus’ name (a Biblical practice, after all). She uses the phrase “I decree” – as in “I decree that every invisible barrier is now destroyed” “I decree that the kingdom of heaven comes with force” – she says, “I assign angels to your ministries…” and so on. Now maybe I just don’t get the lingo – maybe what they’d say was happening was that her words represent what God was saying through her.
Even then.
Well, anyway, it’s all pretty interesting, and I’d like to hear more from anyone who has encountered this or anything related personally, especially anyone who’s living in the area and has insight as to how churches down there are responding or saying.
Crafts & Vintage
It’s classic post-Protestant “independent, apostolic” Christianity.
I have a long post on the whole Toronto Blessing phenomena and how it spread (of which the Lakeland happenings are a classic stream) at
http://blog.siena.org/2007/05/challenge-of-independent-christianity_03.html
and another on the the concept of “annointed” apostle and their authority in certain areas of life depending upon God’s will for them (hence all the language of “decree” ) here:
http://blog.siena.org/2007/05/challenge-of-independent-christianity_1320.html
and here:
http://blog.siena.org/2007/05/challenge-of-independent-christianity_04.html
Those three posts are part of an 11 part series I blogged a year ago about the development and history of Independent Christianity and it’s challenge to Catholics.
The whole series starts here:
http://blog.siena.org/2007/05/challenge-of-independent-christianity.html
I happened to study under some of most prominent leaders and advocates of this movement in my pre-Catholic days. My brother belongs to an “apostolic” church, etc. so it isn’t just theory.
My advice, is to stay away …stay close to JESUS in the CATHOLIC CHURCH AND DONOT WASTE YOUR TIME WITH THIS…
Very interesting post. We must never forget that we have the most “POW-erful Point of CON-tact” imagineable. It’s not a hanky or a piece of charcoal, it’s Christ Himself in the Eucharist.
Amy, what do you mean by this: “There are a number of different ways to talk about this style of religion, but what always interests me the most are the ghosts of ancient historical Christianity within these great-great-great grandchildren of the Reformation”?
What ghosts of ancient historical Christianity?
Pam, I think Amy means things like incipient sacramentalism and priesthood. The idea that objects communicate either holiness or evil. The idea that the modern preacher/prophet/apostle can have spiritual authority and power over the physical and spiritual; makes him or her look a lot like a priest. For instance, Amy writes:
“The persistence of a sacramental sensibility, both through using objects as vehicles to touch God – or let God touch you and as signs of God’s presence.”
I think immediately of Benny Hinn, who once went to pray at Kathryn Kuhlmann’s grave to get an anointing from her bones. That sounds quasi-catholic, doesn’t it?
Yeah, but that doesn’t seem to me to be anywhere near what I know of the early Christian Church. I mean, in the really early years, they had prophets and charismatics, and there were the Montanists, but these people don’t seem to resemble them at all.
Pam: Irenaues is right. I didn’t say they
are
expressive of the ancient historical Christian faith – basically Orthodoxy in the East and Catholicism in the West – I said that there are ghosts of that – no matter how hard they try to shake them and how much folks like this rail against us papists and our “works” and “mediators” between God and humanity.
I think Irenaeus’ remarks on objects communicating holiness or evil recalls animism rather than anything in early Christianity. In early Christianity, relics communicated the holiness of God through the intercession of the saint, but this doesn’t seem to be the ethos of pentecostalism.
I have another question – how are they even called Christian? I notice Sherry Weddell calls them Christian, but some practice a baptism of the Holy Spirit, and some believe that speaking in tongues is necessary for salvation. This is a misinterpretation of St. Paul (Romans), where his reference to speaking in tongues is not literally glossolalia, but is a kind of crying out for salvation.
My primary question is based on reading Weddell’s post here. Why is every deviation from true apostolic Christianity included as “Christianity,” whether or not it conforms in any way to historic Latin or Greek Christianity? And the idea that pentecostals resurrect, in some inchoate way, early Christianity (which isn’t really true if their beliefs and practices are examined) is stretching it, I think. They pick and choose elements that could be from any tradition, but the constellation that did, in fact, form the true apostolic Christianity of the early Christian period is fundamentally lacking in pentecostalism or any of these weird offshoots that we keep saying are “Christian.”
I know there are some colloquia between Catholics and Pentecostals, including one, where a priest named Fr. Kilian McDonnell is one of the participants. He co-authored a text on “Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries,” but his conclusions have largely been discredited by scholars in the field.
I’m in Lakeland. If not for the Ledger and Tribune articles, most of the town wouldn’t even know it was happening.
Oh, the Lakeland Tigers are now the “Flying Tigers” after the WWII air squadron.
The excellent lead article by Ralph Martin in Renewal Ministries’ June newsletter reveals how the Church is endeavoring to re-capture the charismatic dimension that it ignored for so long.
All:
There is an incipient sacramentalism in the movement – but we must grasp that a good deal of it is negative. I.e., they believe that matter can be a conduit for spiritual realities but much of the time they think of things as being used by demonic spirits.
*Some* major factions of this movement are deeply anti-Catholic but not for the standard Reformation reasons.
It is because they are convinced that those of us in communion with the Pope are in a demonic covenant with the “Queen of Heaven” – the most powerful demonic spirit behind religious deception (of course, masquerading as Marian devotion!). They didn’t derive this idea from Scripture but from prophecies received by “annointed” prophets who were involved in major evangelistic thrusts in Latin America in the 90’s.
Ralph Martin, the well known Catholic charismatic renewal leader, had a well publicized letter exchange with C. Peter Wagner on this very issue in the 90’s (covered in Christianity Today) but Wagner, who is a former missionary to Bolivia and deeply anti-Catholic wasn’t going to budge.
And they are acutely aware of the possibility of demonic spirits being attached to religious objects so are paranoid about being around statues and other objects that have been used in or are related to worship or prayer in other religions. Put that together with anti-Catholicism and you can easily see what you get.
But it is only one part of the movement and we must remember that this is a network of thousands of apostolic networks involving millions of “churches” all over the world (we would call many of them small Christian communities) all joined together by a common Pentecostal spirituality that emphasizes the restoration of the office of “apostle”. Some are consciously anti-Catholic, almost all are unconsciously anti-Catholic because their deepest assumptions about how God works in the world are so profound different.
Independent Christianity is nearly devoid of and completely uninterested in the marks of the Church that are so central to Catholic ecclesiology: historic, apostolic, creedal, and sacramental. The movement is almost a perfect antitype; it is a-historical, anti-hierarchical, anti-intellectual, and non-sacramental. It is also massively “pentecostalized” in spirituality and ecclesiology.
They regard themselves as strong anti-classic Protestant and are completely uninterested in denominationalism. We really have to grasp that they are light years apart from classic confessional Protestantism.
They are also not at all historically minded and are completely focused on what they call “new seasons” or “wine skins” that God is revealing today through various annointed leaders.
They are the great ecumenical challenge of our day because they are already the second largest body of Christians in the world – after us.
P.S. Many of the leaders have graduate degrees and know about the Church’s condemnation of Montanism – they just don’t buy the Church’s right or ability to judge the matter.
I can’t possibly do this subject justice in a combox. For more, I really do suggest you read my 11 part series
http://blog.siena.org/2007/05/challenge-of-independent-christianity.html
Sherry:
My problem with much of what you write on this is that so often you seem really anxious that outsiders to these movements see them correctly, which for you, means seeing them, it seems to me, in an idealized light.
When I watch any of this – this “independent Chrisitianity” that is sweeping the world – whether it is that African guy in the Ukraine or Benny Hinn or any of these movements exploding in Latin America, Africa, Asia…when I watch the revivals and so on, I see NOTHING expressive of fundamental, orthodox Christianity and I see EXTREME emotional manipulation.
I mean, look at any of the videos associated with this – what do you see? Repetitious shouting, screaming that God is here, God is moving, emotion, emotion, emotion.
Plus a lot of Word/Faith/Prosperity stuff.
You tend to scold people for seeing that as the norm, but I really don’t see anything else that one could characterize as “the norm” in its place.
This doesn’t really answer the question, however, as to why pentecostals are classified as Christian. If they are a conscious “anti-type,” as you say, Sherry. It’s not really a question of whether they call themselves Christians, it’s a question of whether they have a right to do so. Christianity, especially Latin and Greek Christianity, has certain characteristics, which it has received from God. These are not merely confluences of a historical character, which may be disregarded at will, nor were they at the time. Pentecostalism has none of these. Why should it be included?
Sherry’s characterization “Independent Christianity is nearly devoid of and completely uninterested in the marks of the Church that are so central to Catholic ecclesiology: historic, apostolic, creedal, and sacramental. The movement is almost a perfect antitype; it is a-historical, anti-hierarchical, anti-intellectual, and non-sacramental’ rings true, to me anyway.
However, given that position, how is the orthodox Catholic to engage in conversation? I suggest that the Incarnation, and theology surrounding and flowing from that, is the best point of contact on the one hand and the place where Independent Christianity is least coherent.
Janice:
They are Christians by our own standards because almost all of them (this is so diverse a movement that you can’t be certain about the fringe bits) are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they accept the incarnation, divinity, atoning death, and resurrection of Christ, Jesus as Lord, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity, the Scriptures of course, as inspired and authoritative.
And some of them are also incredibly impressive disciples of Jesus Christ.
One excellent example of the strengths and weaknesses of the movement would be Iris Ministries of Mozambique.
http://www.irismin.org/p/home.php
Founded by a “ordained” husband-wife team (both with PhD’s in theology from London) who, starting from nothing and in great poverty 12 years ago, are now caring for 6,000 orphans and have started a network of 10,000 “churches” throughout Africa. They routinely baptize evangelize and baptize hundred of Muslims (they have a gallery of many pictures of these baptisms) and regularly see healings of all kinds. Young westerners are coming by the hundreds to live and work in Mozambique and be formed by them.
Where they differ massively from us is regarding ecclesiology and of course, the usual suspects: exactly how revelation works, the whole sacramental economy, etc.
Like so many other Reformation heritage groups, (even as they try to throw off the yoke of class Protestantism, they are clearly heirs of the Reformation) they are Christians but they sure ain’t like us in some very important ways.
Margaret:
I’m trying to help Catholics understand this movement *as they understand themselves* because we must do so in order to deal effectively with them.
It just seems to make people crazy that I don’t rant and rave about all their obvious defects from a Catholic perspective – but my time for this kind of thing is incredibly pressed and there are a ton of people ready and able to do that.
But I hadn’t seen anyone with the kind of knowledge that I had and I knew that having access to that knowledge was critical to understanding the world in which we find ourselves so we can respond.
Hence the article, which was actually commissioned by Catholic World Report because of a blog comment I had made somewhere. It took me two weeks of 10 hour days to produce a decent description of the movement. I sure didn’t have to time to write the definite Catholic response, even if I were capable of doing so.
And now, speaking of time, I’ve got several big projects underway and have to get back to work.
To cite a non Roman Catholic example of the sort of incarnational theology I think useful, an article by NT Wright titled One God, One Lord, One People. However, connecting this back to the IC movement takes work, and more than a combo-box.
Sherry:
But being ahistorical IS to be non-incarnational, however. To be anti-hierarchical is to reject the very foundations of Christianity (if one takes Scripture seriously, as well as the subapostolic literature). To be anti-intellectual, while, strictly speaking, not a doctrinal issue, would place them at odds at least with traditional Catholicism. And being anti-creedal is, again, striking at the origins of Christianity (and at Judaism; think of Deut. 6.4 (the Shema). Think of Matt. 28.19 and the numerous baptismal creeds that eventually led to Nicaea.
I guess I don’t see the fullness of connection based on your remark that: “They are Christians by our own standards because almost all of them (this is so diverse a movement that you can’t be certain about the fringe bits) are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they accept the incarnation, divinity, atoning death, and resurrection of Christ, Jesus as Lord, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity, the Scriptures of course, as inspired and authoritative.”
You are speaking only in the abstract here. But the reality is that their notion of the Incarnation stops with Jesus’ appearance in the flesh; it does not include the history of the Church in history. Etc. It’s really not enough just to speak in the abstract, which sort of smooths everything out.
There are lots of Christians who believe in the sacramental, hierarchical, historic Church, and also in signs and wonders, and the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are called Charismatic Catholics.
RE: Pentecostal lady decreeing
In reply to Amy’s query as to whether “…her words represent what God was saying through her” may I offer this wee insight (and IMHO, by way of an answer Catholics should give to a Pentecostal on this Mothers Day of all Mother’s Days) I posted in recent days at the Roving Medievalist on the wrought iron bars on the great doors at Visby Cathedral in Sweden
http://medievalist3.blogspot.com/2008/04/visby-cathedral-sweden.html
in reference to a related post at the group blog “Catholic Architecture and History of Toledo, Ohio” referencing the immaculate Conception as fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy
The mystery of a virgin conceiving breaks the ‘iron curtain’ of mad-made law and challenges the hubris of creatures who arrogate to themselves the power of ideology to legislate in contravention of natural law… the ultimate (and unforgiven) sin against the Holy Spirit:
pride.
So back to Amy’s question what remedy? Pride’s opposite virtue:
Humility
as Pope Benedict wrote while still Joseph Ratzinger, these three rules of thumb help guide us in our pneumatic ‘flammability’:
In this respect, originality and truth can easily lead to a paradox. But that means that trust is only appropriate when one does not speak on a purely private account, but from an experience of the Spirit tested in front of and standing in the context of the whole, i.e. when one submits the experience of ‘spirit’ to the entirety of the Church. This presupposes as an axiom of Christian faith that the Church herself — when she truly exists as Church — is a creation of the Spirit…“
… born at Pentecost with the glorious descent of the Holy Spirit, but yet conceived in the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation, hence how I see Sunday as the Mother’s Day of all Mother’s Days and Mary’s Magnificat as the Pentecostal prayer of the charism of piety par excellence:
and NOT the publicity stunts on Youtube.
oops! got a little greedy with the jelly-bean quotation marks didn’t I? Sorry!
oops #3 missing Scripture verses: Isaiah 45:2 and Luke 1:51 – 52
Wow. I will certainly read Sherry’s account of this. I do have family in this type of pentecostal movement. I will say I have seen that the phenomena of speaking in tongues really acts as the key for their religious identification. That is one reason why they (generalizing here) don’t really see a need for history, creeds etc.. A lot depends on that experience of the spirit. Just like other groups try to lead others to say the sinner’s prayer or accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, these folks want to see you speak in tongues. And if that happens and if you have no religious foundation, it’s easier to think that now you have found THE church or THE movement. Compared to what they see everyday Catholics or mainstream protestants doing, they really see themselves on fire for God. And yes, I know there are plenty of ex-catholics who go to the particular church I am familiar with.
Re: historicity, recall the diachronic koinoneia Benedict spoke of in NY to the other Christian denominations (including for the first time, Mormons )?
Is not the correct way to refer to our Christian brothers and sisters as separated the most polite? They have separated themselves from us, in time and space over various theological loci, but we may NOT divorce ourselves from them. Sherry’s charitable approach empathizes with their worldview to assist them in broaching the chasm that lies between us by reaching out a hand across the void.
Try reading the book “Flatland” by Anglican Fr. Abbot to see how hard it would be to evangelize a 2-D world of circles if you where a sphere… there’d be no point talking about the joys of spherical living since circles haven’t ever been taught that elevation out of the plane is possible.
mea ‘maxima oops’ culpa: better link to “Flatland”
Clare:
Sherry’s approach is also redolent of the fuzzy ecumenism that was prevalent in the 80s and 90s, when sweeping generalizations took the place of specificity. I refer to her statement that pentecostals differ from Catholics as to ecclesiology. Well, so do the Orthodox, but they are surely nearer to us for an entire host of reasons that include an appropriate constellation of what IS Christianity than are pentecostals.
]
As far as Pope Benedict’s address to our “separated brethren,” I hope you also remember that he minced no words in telling them that creating little communities to conform to their own specifications was not particularly “Christian.” For example:
“Too often those who are not Christians, as they observe the splintering of Christian communities, are understandably confused about the Gospel message itself. Fundamental Christian beliefs and practices are sometimes changed within communities by so-called “prophetic actions” that are based on a hermeneutic not always consonant with the datum of Scripture and Tradition.”
And his remark about diachronic koinonia refers specifically to these communities and I don’t think it was complimentary to them. Benedict also said: “Faced with these difficulties, we must first recall that the unity of the Church flows from the perfect oneness of the triune God. In John’s Gospel, we are told that Jesus prayed to his Father that his disciples might be one, “just as you are in me and I am in you” (Jn 17:21). This passage reflects the unwavering conviction of the early Christian community that its unity was both caused by, and is reflective of, the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” AND “But this proclamation had to be guaranteed by the purity of normative doctrine expressed in creedal formulae – symbola – which articulated the essence of the Christian faith and constituted the foundation for the unity of the baptized (cf. 1 Cor 15:3-5; Gal 1:6-9; Unitatis Redintegratio, 2).”
“Even within the ecumenical movement, Christians may be reluctant to assert the role of doctrine for fear that it would only exacerbate rather than heal the wounds of division. Yet a clear, convincing testimony to the salvation wrought for us in Christ Jesus has to be based upon the notion of normative apostolic teaching: a teaching which indeed underlies the inspired word of God and sustains the sacramental life of Christians today.
Only by “holding fast” to sound teaching (2 Thess 2:15; cf. Rev 2:12-29) will we be able to respond to the challenges that confront us in an evolving world. Only in this way will we give unambiguous testimony to the truth of the Gospel and its moral teaching.”
Pope Benedict is clearly bidding his “separated brethren” to do what they have not done and that is to hold fast to doctrine. THAT is the hand HE is holding out to them across the void – truth, not sweeping the facts under the rug and making it sound as though they were closer than they, in fact, are.
Sherry’s statements about pentecostals almost make it sound as though they have a few minor disagreements with the Catholic Church on matters of doctrine. She wrote: “They are Christians by our own standards because almost all of them (this is so diverse a movement that you can’t be certain about the fringe bits) are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they accept the incarnation, divinity, atoning death, and resurrection of Christ, Jesus as Lord, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity, the Scriptures of course, as inspired and authoritative.” But when you go beneath the surface, that is simply not true.
I read Sherry Weddell’s whole account of the “independent Christianity” movement and found it very interesting. I also went to look up Montanism, since people were mentioning it knowingly in various comment posts here, and that was interesting, too.
Yes, there is danger and strangeness to be found when people feel free to “improvise” their own personal versions of divine revelation.
And there’s also danger and strangeness to be found in the
structures and customs of a many-layered hierarchy, for example.
Maybe the danger and strangeness in both is simply the danger and strangeness found in our human natures, rather inescapable no matter what systems or structures or lack thereof we prefer, that can lead us to want not to be accountable, in the end, to very much besides own preferences and convenience.
So our religious expressions are always imperfect.
Amidst much imperfection in this world we all make our choices, and often, it seems, we do so as much from the influence of our familial and cultural references mixed with our natural temperments as from anything more simply quantifiable or objective.
It is worth knowing what “independent Christians” are all about, both to understand our differences and why those differences matter and also to understand that they, too, like many of us and like many others, are sincerely seeking to follow Christ according to their lights. To me, it would be important to approach them with that in mind.
Janice wrote and i quote:
“Sherry’s statements about pentecostals almost make it sound as though they have a few minor disagreements with the Catholic Church on matters of doctrine.”
Hmmm. Let’s see – what *were* my exact words?
Oh yes
“Some are consciously anti-Catholic, almost all are unconsciously anti-Catholic because their deepest assumptions about how God works in the world are so *profound different.*
Independent Christianity is nearly devoid of and completely uninterested in the marks of the Church that are so central to Catholic ecclesiology: historic, apostolic, creedal, and sacramental. The movement is almost a *perfect antitype*; it is a-historical, anti-hierarchical, anti-intellectual, and non-sacramental. It is also massively “pentecostalized” in spirituality and ecclesiology.”
*Profoundly different.* *Perfect antitype.*
Strange words for someone trying to say that there are “minor differences”. When I could have, ya know, just said “there are only minor differences between us”
Oh yeah, and then there was this:
“they differ *massively* from us” and
“they sure ain’t like us in some *very important* ways”
Somehow you read these very strong and direct statements as a dismissive “minor differences”.
I’ll let others determine whether that is a fair reading of my words or not.
What really gets you is the fact that the Church teaches that these people are real Christians. Even though they are Pentecostal.
Because they’ve been baptized with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – just like you and me. Which is, according to the Church’s immemorial teaching, what made us members of Christ’s body – that is, Christians.
Separated Christians, sure. Christians holding to bad and/or defective theology, ecclesiology, and practice in many areas, sure. Christians without the fullness of the faith and access to the full means of grace, absolutely.
But real Christians all the same.
Which is why, when Independents and Pentecostals join the Church, they aren’t baptized. Just like the millions of other Protestant Christians like myself were only confirmed, not baptized, when we were received. And it was clearly stated that we were not becoming Christians but entering into “full communion” Because we were already in partial and imperfect communion by virtue of already being Christians.
Your argument isn’t with me. It is with the Church.
Janice, Sherry is correct that the Trinitarian (in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit) form of baptism renders the sacrament valid however “illicit” from your point of view it may seem as performed outside the jurisdiction of a Catholic bishop’s diocesan oversight. All fully-intiated Christians can baptize in extreme circumstances, such as impending death of a salvation seeking soul.
Consider that in the Greek, the action of the Holy Spirit at Jesus’s Baptism in the Jordan is known as Theophany [Θεοφάνεια, “God shining forth” or “divine manifestation”] and icons depict Jesus’ submersion baptism as a prefigurement of his descent into Hades ἡ κάθοδος [hä kathodos eis Haides] preceding the Resurrection where Christ is depicted in the same posture, his arms leading Adam and Eve, with the assembly of onlookers observing from both banks of the river/walls of the chasm.
The same word is used for the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the assembly of the disciples in the upper room at Pentecost: Kathodos tou Hagio Pneumatikos, also known as Trinity Sunday. The popular icon by Anton Rublev on this theme is known as The Hospitality of Abraham, where the angelic messengers of Genesis are prefigurements of the three persons of the Holy Trinity.
The Holy Spirit communes between human hearts.
God is Love.
We, the Church, are as Sarah. We may grumble about the promises of the strangers Abram invites to dinner, but we rejoice when Isaac fulfills them with laughter. Sherry is trying to help us understand that our separated brethren think they have found the banquet when really they have only read the menu!
The problem for us is: look how excited with anticipation a Pentecostal is just praying with gratitude for blessings received (akin to our Hebrew patriarch forefather Abraham and his wife) — and how flat and unispiring we are when we gather to celebrate the Banquet, when at the consecration, the Holy Spirit’s deigns tokathodos and we enter into the Real Presence… If you want to talk cognitive dissonance here, go ahead. But who is suffering from the malady?
The average Pentecostal?
Or the average Catholic?
Do we act like we’re in Hades too, or at the Heavenly banquet? Are our fruits “Isaacs” or “Ishmaels”
Gripes or Grapes?
All:
Think about it.
Are we seriously attempting to assert that it is one’s *conscious ecclesiology* and understanding of the hierarchy that makes one a Christian? Essentially immersion into Christ’ death, resurrection, and membership in his Body through correct intellectual concept?
In a Church that has practiced *infant* baptism for 2,000 years and where every baptized infant was instantly regarded as a full Christian? How many of you were baptized as an infant or small child? Where you not a real Christian then?
In a Church in which the first really significant attempts at universal catechesis didn’t begin until the 17th century? Before you got your intellectual P’s and Q’s in place – as an adult of course because the intricacies of ecclesiology aren’t really a child’s thing – were you not a true Christian?
Oh wait, that’s right – most of us, adult or child, are material (unintentional) heretics in at least some area of Church teaching because mastering the vast body of the Tradition and all its nuances is impossible for all but the most brilliant who have nothing else to do in life. And yet we are still deeemed to be truly Christian.
Do you know how deeply Protestant the whole concept of “membership in Christ’s Body” through correct intellectual concept” is?????
If we are seriously arguing along these lines in the name of “traditional” Catholicism, the rot is deeper than we think.
Well said, on all points Sherry. Thank you for taking the time to debate in a combox!
The only time a pentecostal would not be considered a Christian would be if a.) they were never baptized, or b.) they were in a “oneness” Apostolic Pentecostal church, in which case the baptismal formula was “in the name of Jesus.” However, oneness churches make up a small fraction of the penetecostal movement worldwide.
It was fun when I converted, because I got all 3 sacraments, as I was raised in “oneness” pentecostalism.
… a scriptural way to explain to a Pentecostal our understanding of the “Breath of Heaven” is to use gender. The Pentecostals see in binary, thusly
The Way
as they Church shop for “quality of relationship” where their feelings inform their consciences of the movement of the Spirit, and they buy a bill goods that is heavy on gut instincts. Yet scripture teaches that man is not dualist, but is made in the image of a Trinitarian God – we are made for a tripartite communion with others – a covenant consummated in communion with the Spirit. The bridge descending isn’t some animated Cross of pixels turning in the windmills of our minds. The indwelling Spirit descends into our lives in the flesh, consummated in our emotions, our intellect, our will.
Adam was “isch” male. Eve was “isch-ah” female (from facere, to make male). The Holy Spirit “breathes” through ah-motherhood, raising men to the dignity of Fatherhood in creating new life. This model of human dignity is the incarnational model personified in the Bridegroom Christ wooing his spouse, the Church. Whose first member was? His Mother, who’s consent in her FIAT opened the flood gates to sanctifying grace. Again the Easterns have an image better suited than words to illustrate my point: the Pentecost Madonna, Zoodochos Pege, or Life-Giving Well
The flame of love was ignited perfectly in her heart and reciprocated unconditionally… no accident that consumed is the verb for the action of the flame on the kindling, and the action of spouses in conjugal union. And recall that the Hebrew Shavuot festival marks the occasion of the giving the Covenant to Moses at Sinai, in that other OT theophany: the
Burning Bush That Was Not Consumed an icon title of Our Lady favored by many Eastern churches honoring the Pre-Eternal Infant speaking from the Bush.
Before the Law and Moses, there was Abram and Sarah. Before the Church and the sacraments, there was Mary and Joseph. Before Pentecost there was Shavuot — re-instituted by Ezra when Cyrus granted religious tolerance to the Babylonian exiles. The memory of God’s promises to his Chosen People had been retained not by them themselves but in their Scriptures. The people recovered their identity assembled in public worship (leiturgia, or liturgy) at the Water Gate in Jerusalem to hear the word preached, and they were inundated… the Florida Outpouring? A mere trickle.
What ought concern us is why is the floods not flowing o’er the land from within our midst?
What flood barriers have we constructed in our obdurate wills that contracepts the Holy Spirit’s life-giving love? What unhealthy habits inhibit the implantation of embyronic life in Catholic parishes? What selfish reasons do we give to sever from the womb the developing life of our separated brethren, (abortion is o.k. for rape, incest, foetal deformity)?
Consider the havoc such a ‘catholic culture of death’ wreaks: the cross animation I linked to is taken from the testimony page of a lapsed Catholic who has found himself a “foster-care placement” within an Assembly of God congregation. Compare and contrast this motherless soul’s idea of Church with the mater meme:
No graces flowing to into a pool of union but rather missiles flying over a sea of division! Does that sound like “My peace I leave with you”? We are called to have pity on those who fall short, send out the lifeboats, not sink to their level…
May I close with a link to a neat story?
“A damaged icon known as the Zoodochos Pege, or life-giving fountain, was saved from the ruins of St. Nicholas Church after 9/11 and displayed at Thursday’s ceremony.” (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)
Happy Pentecost
Happy Mother’s Day
Happy 150 Anniversary of her Apparation at Lourdes
Christ is our Hope!
and the message of Lourdes? Repent of my errors:
“Eve was “isch-ah” female (from facere, to make male).
should have read:
Eve was “isch-ah” female (from fecund, make man fruitful).
And as food for thought, by way of penitential humility, ponder the folly of the people of New York constructing a $400,000 fountain in front of the Deutsch Bank building, meanwhile inside the ruins, two more fire fighters lose their lives in tragic circumstances: the water supply to the fire hydrants needed to fight the fire was sealed off years earlier.
A metaphor for our hubris amidst the misery of global suffering?
Sherry,
You always use the statement: “Your argument isn’t with me, it’s with the Church.” You should do more reading of certain Church documents, esp. the recent CDF document on what constitutes a proper “Church,” not to mention the Holy Father’s address to the ecumnical gathering in NY.
What I said was that you always smooth out differences to make it appear as though “Christians” who differ in important ways from the Catholic Church are closer than they really are. And you do. And, many times, you appear to put various Christian groups on a par with the Catholic Church. You have been celebrating the pentecostal witness to Jesus Christ. What kind of witness do they give? What sort of portrait of Jesus Christ do they offer? How does it cohere with that of Catholicism? You haven’t offered these important details.
You might consider this: if their baptism was all it took for reunion with Catholicism (aside from their own predilections, of course), then why is the road to reunion so difficult? Because issues like their interpretation of baptism itself, the Eucharist, ecclesiology, the hierarchy, etc., are important. If these matters were as unimportant as you appear to think they are, reunion would already be accomplished, at least in theory. Yes, pentecostals, in most, but not all cases, practice Trinitarian baptism, but that doesn’t mean, as I said, that there are not other, significant issues to consider.
By the way, children who are baptized are brought in part of the covenant, not because they are cognitively aware of ecclesiology or anything else. Check the catechism.
You also wrote: “In a Church in which the first really significant attempts at universal catechesis didn’t begin until the 17th century? Before you got your intellectual P’s and Q’s in place – as an adult of course because the intricacies of ecclesiology aren’t really a child’s thing – were you not a true Christian?”
There was, in fact, “significant” universal catechesis before the 17th century. Try going back to the early Christian period. I think what you are really referring to is the production of catechisms, which is a separate issue. And there were, in fact, catechisms of a sort, even in the early Christian and medieval periods: the liturgy having pride of place. And not just the spoken prayers, but the images and hymns, which communicated a lot of theology. There were also, both in England and in Europe proper, various other methods of communicating the truths of the faith, such as the mystery and morality plays, etc. And there was a certain amount of missionary work beyond Europe in the Middle Ages: the Republic of Venice sponsored missions in the Near East, and I really hope you remember the missionary work sponsored by the Popes in the early medieval period to England, Scandinavia, the Gothic regions, etc., which included catechesis and the translation of the Bible into the indigenous languages.
Once again, I think you are glossing over many significant details in an effort to smooth out what appears to be a very bumpy road for groups like pentecostals, etc.
Peace, please ladies!
The Pope analyzes the Federalist fallacy here;
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=12222&size=A
And let’s be honest about our diachronia, shall we? Medieval Europe depictions of “Church” like the line art Amy has posted for Pentecost in her side bar, doesn’t speak to South Americans or Africans – there’s not a black or brown face to be seen… why?
Hello!
Racism, slavery a sin? Who taught that?
Whatever early teaching materials there where, they failed abysmally… (pun intended)
Clare,
Don’t be disingenuous. The teaching materials today fail just as dismally. It’s not all about the correct number of racial or ethnic groups in a fresco that a certain group of people may have seen. It’s also about the lack of any doctrinal apprehension that today’s teaching materials show or their portrait of Christ only as someone’s “buddy,” versus Christ as the Son of God. I hope you “get” this.
Janice:
Last fall, you were engaged in a similar conversation over at Dr. Philip Blosser’s blog in which, if memory serves, you were asserting that Peter Kreeft, Cardinal Avery Dulles, and Louis Boyer were all converts whose ecclesiology showed the contaminating influence of their Protestant pasts.
At which point Dr. Blosser asked you a most pertinent question:
“Let’s get to the point: Here’s a Catholic teaching and tradition. I would like you to comment on it. It says:
“… Catholics must gladly acknowledge and esteem the truly Christian endowments from our common heritage which are to be found among our separated brethren. It is right and salutary to recognize the riches of Christ and virtuous works in the lives of others who are bearing witness to Christ, sometimes even to the shedding of their blood. For God is always wonderful in His works and worthy of all praise.”
But wait. That’s not all:
“Nor should we forget that anything wrought by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of our separated brethren can be a help to our own edification. Whatever is truly Christian is never contrary to what genuinely belongs to the faith; indeed, it can always bring a deeper realization of the mystery of Christ and the Church.”
Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) (1964), I, 4.
Janice, what do you think Mother Church is teaching us here? Which “truly Christian endowments” and “riches of Christ and virtuous works” among our separated brethren do you think could be described as “genuinely [belonging] to the faith,” “wrought by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of our separated brethren” and, moreover, could be considered as “a help to our own edification” as Catholics, bringing us to “a deeper realization of the mystery of Christ and the Church?”
Note, first, that the Decree is not even discussing Catholic converts here, but non-Catholic Christians; and, second, that the Decree is not stating merely that certain endowments and works of non-Catholic Christians are compatible with Catholic teaching or belong to “our common heritage, but that they may serve to edify Catholics. Your comments, please.”
At which point you went from dominating the conversation into a deep radio silence that lasted for weeks. You never responded to Dr. Blosser’s question.
But it seems appropriate here to give you a chance to respond again.
What do you say to this teaching which was promulgated at the highest level of magisterial authority?
Janice:
Re: the history of formation. No, I am not referring merely to the development of the catechism of Trent and all its various children. And yes, I am aware of the numerous attempts to mandate and provide some form of lay formation before the Reformation. In fact, I’ve done a considerable amount of research in the area – out of both professional and personal interest.
I probably should do a blog post on this very topic when I get the chance.
But scholars of the era all recognize that wide-spread implementation as we now understand it to be normative didn’t happen. Not because some Catholic leaders didn’t see its importance but because the infrastructure to make it happen wasn’t in place. It was the disaster of the Reformation and the religious wars that it spawned that made it crystal clear that universal catechesis was not a luxury item – and it still took centuries and the heroic and visionary leadership of many saints and religious orders to implement the vision of Trent in this area.
And I almost certainly know more about the missionary efforts of the Catholic Church in the middle ages than you do – again because I’ve done a lot of research in the area and find it personally fascinating. I could go on and on about the heroic and tragic Dominican missions to central Asia that produced large dioceses and cathedrals but were wiped out by the Mongols, St. Thomas Aquinas’ work intended to support missions to the Muslim world, the amazing Raymond Lull – missionary scholar and advocate who probably died in North Africa preaching to Muslims.
I am not here nor have I *ever* regarded these heroic, pioneering efforts as pointless, fruitless or whatever you think. I think they were simply marvelous – but their impact was limited by violence, war, vast distances and minimal communication, and lack of commitment in a Catholic Europe that was pre-occupied with other issues.
How we, in an age of jet travel and internet communication could look down upon the almost unimaginable risks they took and the costs they paid to preach Christ to the whole world, is beyond me. And certainly I have never been a party to it.
I should bog on this too.
Thanks for the inspiration, Janice!
Wow – have I been too incendiary in my zeal, irritating both Janice and Sherry? Sorry ladies.
May I attempt again to approach the abyss: I agree “The teaching materials today fail just as dismally” but for different reasons – instead of too much Parochialism (denying the sacraments to the barbarian heathens) now we suffer the effects of the opposite sin, too much Corporatism. Both extremes neglect our existential truth: I am who am, the Logos, He who creates, redeems and sanctifies… we are barbarians all, who know Him not… prefering our own reasoning over His communion and liberation…
May I add my own to Shelley’s obviously extensive experience? In Germany they still use a term coined during the Renaissaince by the poet Hans Sachs, to refer to a fantasy fairytale Utopia, a land of milk and honey, the
Schlarafenland(*)
of sensual delights, that in Reformation circles was used to critique certain deficits in Catholic feudalism prevalent in Europe, from the middle high german sluraff = sloth, and affen = apes.
And what does this have to do with Pentecostals?
Milk and honey are the foodstuffs referred to in the Book of Ezra as being suitable to celebrate Shavuot, the Hebrew festival celebrating the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, that prefigures the Christian celebration of Pentecost. They are symbols of Paradise. Those who succumb to immanentizing the eschaton do so because they have been raised in a 2-D world (see Flatland above) that denies the world of the flesh, living in a gnostic spirit-world of their own making. There is a L.O.N.G tradition of antipathy to the perceived (and real) carnal sins of lay and clerical Catholics throughout history, unfortunately ascribing guilt to Holy Mother Church. Trying to deny this fact will not help us evangelize those raised in that tradition. Sherry, romanticizing the Asian missions doesn’t overcome an Eastern antipathy to the invasion of “barbarian hordes” — the Western merchant navies who transported the Jesuits also traded guns into a bow’n’arrow culture, wreaking deep and lasting havoc.
* Babelfish translation here:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=de_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSchlaraffenland
Lives of holiness, evidencing beauty make for the most illuminating witnesses to the faith. And we poor bloggers would do well to recall the maxim “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” and conform our wills to the Prince of Peace and the example of his Immaculate mother!
Clare:
Have no fear. You haven’t offended me at all. No worries.
Sherry
This blogger, formerly known as “Totem to Temple”, has been following the Lakelanders for a while. He is definitely NOT a fan. Most of his coverage is circa late April & early May 2008.