How the Pentecostal Movement has Brought Millions Closer to the Catholic Church - Paul Thigpen

[Music] you're probably wondering what the heck does he mean by the title of this talk from Topeka to Rome how the Pentecostal movement has brought millions closer to the Catholic faith most of you probably have let me ask first how many in here may have a Pentecostal or charismatic background at least a few of you okay more than I would have thought how many of you have good friends for a Pentecostal or charismatic well that's okay how many of you probably your primary image of the Pentecostal faith is television preachers as you think that's mostly yep yeah that's the case for a lot of us so I'm sure you're thinking what in the world has that how could you get any further away from the Catholic Church than that well I hope by the time I've finished talking this afternoon I'll convince you at least to chew on what I've had to say the theme of course for this conference as battle for the faith 1800 to 1900 the movement I'm talking about actually like what with pets period kind of starts right after 1900 1901 is when the movement mister story ins would say that's when the movement began but it's interesting I don't really want to talk about the battle so much and you're getting plenty of battle though I mean what we just heard from Pat it's plenty of battle I wonder how many of you might have seen a film came out not too long ago it's in France you probably would have seen it in English subtitles and I can't speak French but it's something like joyeux noël okay a lovely lovely film you ought to see it if you haven't and I won't go into details but it's based on a true story from World War one where there was on a Christmas Eve in the middle of World War one when they had the trench warfare and the Germans and their allies and the other side they're all in the trenches and for Christmas against all regulations they called a little truce and they came out of their trenches and they spent some time together and learn from each other before they went back to the battle again very touching very touching thing and in some ways that's almost like a parable of what I want talk about and maybe after talking about all the battles it might be nice to talk about an occasion a situation in which in the midst of all the battles between Protestants and Catholic Church Protestants and one another and even with its own share of divisions that there has been one movement with which I was intimately related connected before I became Catholic that has in certain ways then like rather than a battle something of a convergence in which people who were very far away from Catholic faith came by this experience to begin to have an understanding of the faith and a view of reality of God and of the world that came a little bit to be a little bit more like what the Catholic Church teaches and I'm not saying it's brought millions into the Catholic Church though it was certainly instrumental in my coming into the Catholic Church but let me just start with a little bit about myself I was raised Presbyterian then I was an atheist as a teenager the age of 18 had a conversion experience which is is told in the first chapter of the first volume of surprised by truth path andreas book that he edited and after a while after coming into the Christian community again reverting in that way I had what you might call a Pentecostal experience but Pentecostals call the baptism of the Holy Spirit that experience eventually then took me into Pentecostal circles such as the Assemblies of God and less well organized charismatic circles we'll talk about the difference between Pentecostal and charismatic in a minute and eventually I was ordained as an associate pastor in a non-denominational charismatic congregation so that's kind of where where I'm coming from in it where do we start I think I've said here before there was it a conference one time an academic conference and the man who had to speak had so much to say he was just rubbing his forehead and saying where to begin where to begin and a voice called out from the back of the as close to the end as possible I'll try how many of you have ever heard of father Louie boy a French priest and scholar lots of hands there 1913 to 2004 he was a Lutheran pastor he became a Catholic convert and finally a priest one of the most highly respected Catholic theologians and historians of the 20th century friends of people like Hans Bose von Balthasar Pope Benedict the 16th JRR tolkien its author of many books including my favorite the spirit and forms of Protestantism now within this particular book he has a very interesting thesis that struck me a long time ago because the more thought about it the more I realized that my life was an illustration of it he said that within he was very grateful for his Protestant upbringing as I am and he said that within Protestantism there are certain true spiritual principles that come from the gospel and they're what keep the movement alive keep it from losing faith all together but that these principles ultimately are at odds with certain false aspects or erroneous aspects of Protestant theology and especially of Protestant church structure legal structure what he said was that and he traced us through history throughout Protestant history however these spiritual principles because they are living things and they're their truth the reality that they again and again break out of their institutional and theological confines they they get out of the corral so to speak and these movements are Protestants will usually call them revivals you've probably heard of that in fact this week I'm sure we can we've heard something when they do then they end up kind of refreshing the Protestant community renewing it the cause and this was the interesting point of his thesis what they're doing is they are helping Protestants to rediscover and reclaim certain important elements of the Catholic tradition that they had formerly left behind and because they're true and they're real they end up bringing new life to the people who embrace them he gives us a classic example within this John Wesley who was of course the founder of the Methodist movement that eventually results for the Methodist denomination and a whole series of denominations known as Wesleyan denominations eighteenth-century Anglican pastor and he became in many ways the father and grandfather of a long extended season of Protestant revival movements with a multitude of forms and he insisted that that Wesley was my boy I insisted that Wesley was the perfect example of this kind of process that's well known among historians of American religion that the Pentecostal movement which was born in America grew largely out of a Wesleyan context Methodist and otherwise so that's an important point for us to keep in mind as we talk about it you know how we go about this is such an interesting thing and I may end up getting Pentecostal on you while we're talking as I think about these things if I break out and singing or if I pull up any hymn and pull this out and walk across the stage and give the cameraman a hard time trying to track with me just to bear with me but one of the things that happened in the Protestant Reformation that was a mistake was that the major reformers pretty much came to the conclusion against the Catholic Church that the season of God's miracles was over that they accepted that in biblical times up through the time of the Apostles that God had worked miraculous deeds and wonders and that she had things like inspired prophecy and other things but they pretty much came to the conclusion that that had ended with the Apostles they were actually some early Catholic theologians who thought the same and especially saying agustin but he changed his mind because he encountered some some miracles they also tended a Calvin especially to the cabinet such a brilliant mind he wanted to focus on how much we could understand of the faith and tended away from history in certain ways the Reformers kind of reacted against what they saw as too much mysticism in the Catholic tradition and moved away back from that so I would say there are two things that are essential to the Catholic faith to the Christian faith that the Reformers reacted to and left behind largely at least in the beginning and the first was miracle and the second was mystery miracle and mystery and it's it's great Marcus has kind of set things up for me last night if you were listening when he was talking about deism it's like its roots in the Enlightenment and then Patrick also helped talking about the Enlightenment a little bit I like to call it the in darkened mint I think that's more appropriate in some ways but Marcus traced deism roots back to the Enlightenment I would trace I would go back even further I say that the roots of the Enlightenment are in the Protestant Reformation when you have people saying yes of course there's a God he works miracles he can work miracles and he can prophesy I can do all these things but he only did it long long ago 15 centuries ago or stopped doing it then he doesn't do it anymore you're saying people up to begin wondering hmm well if he doesn't do it now and he hasn't done it for centuries did he ever really do it and if they would respond to you well yes because how do we know because we have the scripture and it tells us so but then that same person has just thrown out the authority of the church that gave us the scripture then you've set them up to say well maybe the scripture is not telling the truth maybe this is pleasant if I can't trust the authority of the church that gave me these books and told me that they were authoritative maybe I maybe I can't trust the books either and I really think the logic of that mean this is oversimplifying of course but the logic of that eventually worked its way in many ways to help at least contribute to the Enlightenment the interesting thing about enlightenment is that there you have the kind of pure enlightenment enlightenment tied the deist who has Marcus mentioned last night believed that there was a God and that he had made the world but that he was largely uninvolved with the world he was like a watchmaker that's the famous image who makes the watch and then leaves his workshop and leaves the watch on the bench to wind down on its own never involved again or some people call it the absentee landlord theology that God is like a landlord he's built a house and he's let people live in it but he's left and they were on their own well lots of people held to that Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Franklin but in our culture I believe it came to have a much more far-reaching influence that she didn't just have Diaz thinking that way but that way of thinking became so established in the culture in certain ways that even very religious people even some committed Christians began thinking at least being influenced by that and by the time I came along in the 50s and again a Presbyterian Church it's kind of a mainline as they call a traditional Presbyterian Church there was a good part of the culture in Protestant America that and I'm not saying all Protestants thought this way but that they I won't say their functional deist but I would say maybe what you might call dispensational deist in some forms of protestant theology there's the notion that God deals with the world in certain dispensations periods of time and he deals differently in each dispensation and where in a particular dispensation now and it was almost as if the attitude was almost as if that in the dispensation we're in now this is church history a period of church history that it's almost like he isn't that God's there and he's in heaven and you pray and he he answers prayers generally by just kind of arranging circumstances but there's but we can't expect him to interact with our lives to invade our world the way he did in Christ when Christ came to earth God in the flesh or with the apostles and the miracles they worked or even were the kinds of things that have been done in the Old Testament that that was over and we couldn't expect God to invade the world again until the second coming and this dispensation that we live in in between we just we can't expect any of that and of course that takes a lot of great faith and they the people that I was raised with it did have great faith in that regard that even if they never saw a miracle even if they kind of thought they had it figured out because there there wasn't much room for mystery in their faith it took a lot of faith to live that we're that way but nevertheless something happened to change that that at the paradigm the paradigm was that the way we interact with God pretty much is that you pray and your prayers go up to heaven and gods in heaven and he arranges things on earth to answer your prayer one way or another but there's still at least in these circles there was kind of a sense of distance that we didn't really have God invading our world the way he had in Bible times but that's not the only way to see things now you think about the Catholic Church and what I would call the sacramental way of viewing the world Catholic teaching our our vision of reality and it's a true vision that's the way things really are is that when Christ came to earth when when God the Son invaded our world when he took human nature joined it to his own divine nature into one person the eternal son of God became human as well as divine and he will never ever let go of that human nature again it's his forever the one who sits on the throne of heaven now is one of us he's a human being as well as God and once he did that nothing would ever again be the same nothing would ever be again it'd be the same again because he was taking human nature and transforming it and in this incarnation this in fleshing of the son of God what happens is reality itself gets changed so that reality becomes what we call sacrament not in a literal sacrament sense but kind of in the same principle that God isn't just in heaven kind of arranging things on earth in response to our prayer but that he has invaded this planet and he invades it again every day when he comes he's right here with us he's right here among us he works through us through our bodies through our voices he works through material elements and they become sacramental they become not just signs of His grace and power but they are actually vessels of His grace and power so that any distance we might imagine between ourselves in heaven and a sensical is collapsed because heaven has come down ever since his incarnation had been Pentecost the Holy Spirit coming down the distance has been collapsed he's right here among us the kingdom of God is among us it's a very powerful reality and and Catholics tend to forget it too you know a lot of us do we've all had been influenced by these Enlightenment ideas but nevertheless if we pay an attention every time we're at mass we have the reminder of that the epiclesis in the liturgy where the Holy Spirit is invoked to come down the altar and what happens through the words spoken of the priest God uses those words and uses something as humble in common as bread and wine to change them to transubstantiated the very reality of Jesus body blood soul and divinity is not just on the throne of heaven it's right here and we take it into ourselves and it transforms us and the same thing with the other sacraments in Baptism it's not just a sign that we've repented as it is in so many Protestant traditions it's not just obeying God's command to do it in Baptism God Himself God the Holy Spirit convey our world comes down to the individual transforms his soul washes it clean whole new reality and in confirmation the Holy Spirit comes down and in all the sacraments and confessional Christ himself God Himself is speaking through the words of Absolution through the priest the priest is a vessel and his words have divine power they're not just words now see for us as Catholics that sees well yeah of course what else but the tradition I was raised in that's magic what are you talking about no no no it was all in the head pretty much I mean you there was a moral aspect so of course you were supposed to go out and do things and life to do honor the commandments of God but when you came together for worship especially it was you you pretty much worship from here up you would hear the sermons and the scripture read you would do your best to understand you would confess your faith you would hear what you're supposed to do and you go out and do it and and worship I'm genuine worship but it was worshipped pretty much of the mind some of my students at a State University of Missouri where I used to take teach Missouri State I would give them assignment where they would have to go to a I was teaching American religion all the different kinds and I had to go to a tradition a service of a tradition not of their own and then come back and report to me what they saw what was unusual what struck them and I always remember how Presbyterian students and in particular would go to a Catholic service and come back and say I'd say well so what really struck you they'd say they're moving all the time what do you mean they stand up they said they they stand up this to the other Neal they stand up they do this funny little thing and by the way why do Catholics have itchy lips it's he lives yeah one time everyone in the whole room was scratching their lip just like this and then they scratched their chest too oh well let me tell you about the gospel before the gospel what we do and it just struck them that because they came from a service where it's pretty much this you stand up to sing maybe and you sit down because it's all focused here the body hardly gets involved at all and I say well that's nothing let me send you to one of the Pentecostal churches and that helps to make my point because when you begin to go to a Pentecostal service and you realize that their attitude about the body and worship is a whole lot closer the Catholic attitude then to this other type that I'm talking about now let me go ahead and I'll put in a caveat here many of you younger folks will probably say well you know I was raised in or familiar with Protestant churches 10 years 20 years ago and it wasn't like that at all and actually that helps to make my point because those mainline churches have been so influenced by the Pentecostal and charismatic movement that they've moved away as a whole and that's why I can save millions of people now closer to Catholic way of looking at things but that's ok let's get to a little history and then we'll go on there had been some outbreaks she might say of Pentecostal fervor and phenomena in the last decades of the 1800s here in the United States but the movement as a movement again in Topeka Kansas on January 1st 1901 there was a man named Charles Parr I'm the founder of Bethel Bible College he had been raised a Methodist and then the Holy to holiness tradition both of which are Wesleyan traditions and the students at his college one day after a series of prayer came to the conclusion by reading the second chapter of Acts about the day of Pentecost and other biblical texts that a a baptism an immersion of the Holy Spirit was essential for every Christian believer and that the evidence of that baptism was speaking in tongues there was a young woman named agnes osmond of the methodist episcopal church background and she asked the others to lay hands on her and pray for her to receive the Holy Spirit just as was done in the Bible and when they did she began speaking in tongues and she believed that it was Chinese of course we don't know what it was well soon after that not long a man named William Seymour who was an african-american student at parms College came under the influence of these teachings and then he went back to Los Angeles California he began in 1906 an extended series of preaching and prayer meetings and a little tumble down storefront Church a little place called Sousa Street those meetings soon became quite sensationalists and their display of speaking in tongues and exuberant forms of which worship some of which actually have roots in African religion I wish we could talk about that and also from the more lively revivalist traditions of the old southern frontier some of the folks here from Kentucky you probably all know all about the early revival meetings in Kentucky in the early 1800s and the jumping and the leaping and barking like a dog all kinds of things but people came from all over Southern California to see what was happening and the Los Angeles newspapers thought oh great here's a way to solve these papers will talk about those crazy folks down in Azusa Street and the meetings went on for three years the paper kept doing a series of stories eventually visitors were coming from all over the United States and other countries as well and many of them were kind of puzzled and left but probably most of them adopted the beliefs and practices of this new Pentecostal movement they named it that way of course because the Pentecostals of the Apostles had had the infilling of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and on that day had spoken in tongues so they went back home they became missionaries of the new movement and they spread its distinctive teachings and practices all over the country and overseas as well entire denominations Pentecostal arose the Assemblies of God the Pentecostal Holiness Church the Church of God in Christ and there's and became the fastest core and religious movement Christian religious movement for sure in the world but then a second wave of the movement began in the 1960s or Pentecostal belief some practices found their way back into the older Protestant denominations and into the Catholic Church as well the older Protestant denominations so that the process had usually been you go to one of these meetings you come back you say I'm gonna speak in tongues and I want to prophesy and I'm gonna do all kinds of things with my body while I'm worshiping I'm not gonna be still and they would give you as we call it not the right hand of fellowship with the left foot of fellowship and out you go but by the 60s an interesting thing happened is that some very respectable people began to have this experience and to have their worldview changed among them a man named father Dennis Bennett who was an Episcopal priest up in Washington State think it was and who nevertheless I'm not leaving the church or these denominations I'm gonna stay here and and help people understand why I see things this way and together then over time since the 70s and that's when I began to be involved with it Pentecostals and charismatics have formed the largest Christian movement in the world millions have come into its fold in this country and hundreds of millions worldwide all through Latin America and other places but beyond even the folks who had call themselves Paris charismatic Pentecostal it has indirectly influenced the religious beliefs and practices of countless more now for most Pentecostals and I'll just use that as short term to mean Pentecostals and charismatics they often like to distinguish themselves but that this way of life begins with this experience called the baptism of the holy spirit and usually associated with some kind of speaking in tongues but I would say the main thing about it is this it's a sense that the Holy Spirit does come down and invade you that one of the reasons they call baptism of the Holy Spirit is not just because it's as biblical language but because you have the sense that you are being immersed in God and you're being just totally immersed in God and that God's coming into you the holy s--t and of course you know we don't wanna base everything on feeling but what I want to say is this that that that feeling that sense that that's what's happened then tends to kind of change your whole view of the way you see God in the world and all of a sudden this old paradigm this old kind of classical Protestant paradigm this dispensationalist deism doesn't make much sense anymore because beginning with that and then a whole series of Pentecostal experiences and practices you begin to have the sense that you know no prayers not like that at all I mean we we ask God to invade to take over here and he does come down he doesn't just baptize you with a spirit but he works through you and in you and through your words and through your laying on of hands and through your body postures and worship and through oil and through even sometimes if you can imagine some Pentecostals have holy water and those kinds of things and they begin to see the world in a whole new light that that reveals to them as it did to me the the utter closeness of God he is right here right now and he's busy he's doing stuff so either get with them or get out of the way because God is doing stuff here right now now this is you know it's probably all kind of abstract at this point but I hope you can see right away that at least that that is a more sacramental way of looking at the world that God in Christ comes to the world than the Holy Spirit comes and that in the sacraments the Holy Spirit comes and that he uses material physical things and that he's right here right now so for the Pentecostal as for the Catholic we come to the sense that the divine presence and power are as near to us as the breath that we breathe the water with which we wash the food and drink with which we are sustained and that God comes to us he works with us and within us right here right now by means of humble physical things that are nearby bread and wine oil water human words human hands let's talk about a few particulars okay first let's look at this notion of you can say almost the sacramental notion of the body for Catholics you go to the worship you go to see Mass and you see that they understand that the body worships - it's not just this mental thing and that what you do with your body in fleshes incorporates reflects what you're doing with your mind the kneeling sometimes even well with a priest the raising of hands and sometimes with other Catholics as well and a Good Friday that powerful powerful time when the priests prostrate themselves before the altar that the body is important it's not just this thing that kind of gets in their way you're going to a Pentecostal service and you see the same kind of things folks break out of I remember as a new charismatic it was the hardest thing for me to get my hands up you kind of go like that and they'd say come on it won't hurt but it feels so conspicuous everybody's doing it how could it be conspicuous okay and who felt good it felt good now I'm gonna talk about it now sometime I when I was still still a Protestant but that's how confined we felt within the tradition I grew up in that it was unknown oh don't you dare do anything besides this as a posture of worship stick your hands up kneel jump up and down dance and it actually danced but that was just the beginning of things how about the notion of physical healing see what are the things that really struck me when I started studying all of this in my doctoral program have a PhD in historical theology so I looked at the development of the of the doctrine of the church was that I'm so surprised to find out you know even though Luther and Calvin said that miracle stopped after the apostles the Catholic Church didn't say that the Catholic Church affirmed that miracles have always been the Catholic Church recorded instances of people being healed lots of people being healed not just Saints but other folks too that God actually came down touched their bodies and the human power of God changed them physically what a what a crazy idea for someone from my background and when I became Pentecostal and just began to assume those things then it really struck me that if this is crazy this is one of the big Catholic Protestant arguments in the beginning and on the Catholic side yes God still has miracles he still works miracles and he heals people miraculously and on the Protestant side at least so the Protestant reformers was no he doesn't and I looked at them and I said that's that's odd I'm on the Catholic side of this argument I'm not on the Protestant side of this argument where did they ever get that idea and of course we could talk about where they got the idea but so although we we may not claim that it happens as often as something that Gospels would claim nevertheless I knew that in the corrugation I grew up if you had said that God worked miracles today they would have said nope don't even expect it at least most of them would but on the other hand if I ask Pentecostals or Catholics who said sure Jerry does it what's to stop it well Hara Belt and now we talk a little bit more about the notion of mystery how about the notion of visions our locations now we all know you have to be really careful with the thing of private revelation and I'm not here to say by the way the Pentecostal movement is just wonderful in all of its ways that it's got more eccentric teachings and practices and naivete and Theological weirdness then probably any movement around so believe me I'm not here to try to give a blanket endorsement of the Pentecostal moon I'm simply saying it actually changed the way people saw things that brought them at least a little bit closer to the Catholic faith but how about the notion of visions and locations I remember in my Presbyterian Church when I was a kid one time a pastor would come under some charismatic influence announced for the pulpit one day in a sermon that God had spoken to him about something and they had what we would call the Kishin and it was just a simple thing about how he was supposed to repent about something like that with a few hours he had been fired don't you dare ever claim that God has spoken to you in allocution and they wouldn't use that term but or if they should have a vision or anything like that that doesn't happen now to Catholics that say okay you know we have to be careful but of course Scott does that sometimes and and sometimes he says the Saints to do that but in these ways the Pentecostals were moving back toward a more Catholic way of viewing the world or how about the laying on of hands and most of the presbytery and other traditions I grew up then they would do it but only in ordination and only as a symbol it was kind of like our recognition that God has already chosen this person and so we're agreeing with God and we're demonstrating it but boy the thought that you would lay hands on somebody and that God would work through your hand that you might actually lay hands on somebody and something would happen that that we all know as Catholics the through the priest happens all the time and our ordination is not just a symbol God actually puts an indelible mark on the soul of the person being touched God's hand is acting through that priest hint Pentecostals don't have trouble with that the Protestant groups they came from would have but that's natural to them of course God can work through human hands of course he can make things happen that way we do it all the time and so God can actually but when Catholics say God can actually through the hands of the priests act the power of His grace can through the priests through the water wash away original sin an actual sin that it can strengthen us with the oil and Confirmation that's not such a hard thing for Pentecostals to accept but it sure was hard for the other groups they came from what about let's go out a little bit from the body and I mean commutes and other things fasting most of the Protestant dominations Iowa I knew when I was first younger fasting was just something the Bible but why would you do that and they didn't understand that there's actually a power that using the body and fasting to join fasting to prayer there's actually a grace in that God's grace is in that but the Pentecostals know that they fast all the time I was part of a church that fasted 40 days 40 days no solid food as a whole church only those who are ill and nursing and pregnant mothers did not they knew that there was power in that or how about the notion of religious processions oh my Presbyterian Church would have gone crazy if anybody talked about well let's get in a you know like a little parade and go down the middle and and have beautiful banners or whatever statues or a oh man they would never but the bit of castles understand that they have processions they know that you use the body to worship that they may not have a statue my lady they would do it or how about the human voice that castles recovered something that other denominations had lacked that the notion that there's actually there actually can be the power of God in the spoken word that the words of a human being can be the words of God not just in tongues but prophecy that God can speak through someone prophetically that the name of Jesus has power and we're not just talking about because people hear the name of Jesus and they think oh how nice know that the word itself conveys power that it's a sacramental so to speak they wouldn't call it that they'd sing about the power of Jesus and how it could make the demons flee well we know that the Catholic traditions they're coming that's are coming back to the Catholic understanding that yes the name of Jesus is powerful in the early centuries of the church they had any kind of encounter with demonic power it was Jesus and the side of the Cross and that's what would cinema they rediscovered the power of blessings that they're now you know they would say kind of anybody can do it in an art tradition certain kinds of blessings are reserved for the priests but that God actually does work through that spoken word that blessings aren't just kind of nice thoughts but that there's a power in the blessing because God joins his power to it it's a sacramental now well we won't quickly only have a few minutes beyond the body then the spoken word and I would say that let me just mention that even Presbyterians in particular would say that the spoken word has power in the sense that if you read the scripture and study it that there's power in that but it's only because the mind grasps it for Pentecostals as for Catholics there's a power in certain words even beyond that when the priest says the words of consecration that's the form of the sacrament the power of God is in those words and through that body and blood of Christ come about where once there was only bread and wine penny kostol can can begin - they may not accept it at first but they can understand the principle that the power of words spoken on behalf of God by God through a human being can accomplish something like that Pentecostals have sacramental objects anointing oil they anoint with oil for healing and laying on of hands oh my goodness the Baptist Church were you know I had friends and I was growing up somebody tried doing that and it was out right away that's magical thinking don't you dare think of doing that but when Pentecostal start knowing Catholics they see anointing with oil they of hansel understand that they have the notion of a prayer cloth which is almost like a relic yeah and some as I've noticed even let's say they even have holy water they'll actually bless water and put it on people and to them what's so strange about that of course God works through material things and some of their old Presbyterian Baptist friends might say what are you thinking but for them no big deal two more things one the notion of hierarchy and divine authority now Pentecostals have been known for their some ways lawlessness and always blundering and because they have the attitude you know that every individual can often can have some kind of divine communication so everybody could be a prophet but interestingly enough and those traditions charismatic traditions where people have don't have denominational structures and the inner logic so to speak of Pentecostal faith kin is free us to work out there has been in recent years a development of the notion that God's divine authority gets invested in the clergy and that they speak for God in a way that others don't and you even have this phenomena in some places where you you have spoken of Pentecostal popes where the people have so much authority in the lives of the congregation why it's not it's it's mistaken to think that these people have that authority but they've got the principle down that god when he chooses and ordained someone he puts a mark in their soul and it gives them a certain authority that other people don't have folks that's a Catholic or looking at the world it's a sacramental way of looking at the world and then finally exorcism oh my goodness you know Pentecostals I was present for several Pentecostal exorcism those things were real and we are so much of the mainline Protestant world if they still believed in the devil they still would not touch exorcism with a ten-foot pole it was you know that's medieval or biblical or whatever stay away from it but Pentecostals you know ran right into it hit on Vienna and where angels dare to tread often got themselves in trouble with it but the main thing was that they realized that the spiritual world is right here right now just as close as the breath that we breathe and if God can be that close in some way so can demons and the devil and again a lot of them got thrown out of their churches for even talking about the possibility of exorcism but they hung on to that because it was true and in that way as well they had recovered a more Catholic way of looking at the world I could go on and on there's so much more and if you've been in the tradition and then you become Catholic and you look back and you begin saying oh my look at all these parallels and again if you've been raised in a prostitution that does have more exuberant expressive worship you know where people kneel are you and of course the closer you are to Catholic liturgy Anglican tradition the closer you are in those ways but I'm talking about especially those that are influenced by Calvin somebody Luther that if the church even you know you say has a praise and worship band as they call it people kind of rock out well the only reason they do is because the the charismatic movement when I was a kid I was in as young soon after my conversion I entered into one of these bands I was the lead singer in a Christian rock band and in Pentecostal churches they loved it but boy that Baptist Church wasn't about to let us through the door it was the Methodists or any of the Lutheran's the Presbyterians don't you dare come in here with that stuff and so the fact that so many of these mainline churches now have special services with that kind of worship is a testimony to the influence of the movement I'm talking about but anyway let me summarize with this I can say from firsthand experience and I didn't talk to some other folks in the last few hours about this who have agreed about it that once I and other Protestants like me entered Pentecostal circles and began to see the world this way then many Catholic practices didn't really seem so strange after all they made sense in a way that they hadn't before whether it was miracles but it was laying on hands whether it was anointing with oil whether it was kneeling worship body postures and worship whether it was exorcism he's in other ways it made sense because our whole way of seeing God and the world had changed it's time to close so let me summarize well one more point perhaps by now you're wondering how exactly did Pentecostals find their way back to these catholic ways of viewing the world well it's simple they read the scripture and they did not read it through a kind of Calvinist wounds that I would call I mean and we all have it to one degree another I guess but a yes but lens yes it was done in Bible times but but not now when they just read it for what it was I mean that's what happened to me I was sitting alone in a Presbyterian Church one night reading the book of Acts I didn't know that it was an incendiary tract I got to the second chapter I read about the Holy Ghost coming down on the day of Pentecost and I put the book down and I said Lord I don't know if this happens today or not I didn't have that you know I've been told it doesn't but if it does I'm gonna sit right here until it happens and something happened now how I understand it now in terms of Catholic theology I'm not sure but I just you know that was the beginning of being able to say I put aside this lens of it happened there but not now and once I just read the scripture then I saw that people they'd hands on they had known it was oil that were miracles there were exorcisms all these things were right there in Scripture now here's the summary within my lifetime a lifetime but most of us millions of Protestant Christians have had some form of product Pentecostal experience that has transformed their way of viewing God in the world through their participation in Pentecostal or charismatic religious culture that come to a more sacramental understanding of reality why is this especially important to know for folks like ourselves who either have made or are now making the journey into the Catholic Church well for several reasons and we'll end with its first it's important because the Pentecostal experience has prepared the way for many believers like myself from non-sacramental traditions to become more sacramental to become and then eventually to become Catholic to actually enter the church we need to be aware of this process so that we can help people who are in the middle of it who are experiencing it to find their way home to the church we can help connect the dots for them to see you believe in this well so does the Catholic Church you see you're headed this way second it's important because even though not all Pentecostals and charismatics make their way into the Catholic Church the Pentecostal experience has nevertheless opened their eyes to certain spiritual sacramental realities that the Catholic tradition as a whole has always affirmed has never given up on in doing so the Pentecostal movement has built ecumenical bridges of common experience at a fundamental level we need to affirm those bridges and make use of them finally it's important because the charismatic experience has restored too many Catholics themselves a more thoroughly sacramental way of viewing the world many of the Catholics I know who have participated in this movement confess that before it they had lost something of the sacramental perspective under the influence of our modern secular culture that denied both miracle and mystery no doubt as I said before the Pentecostal and charismatic movements have at times brought in their wake more than their share of problems eccentric behavior and teachings spiritual naivete a divisive 'no sand electoral shallowness all you have to do is turn on the TV preachers to see it nevertheless in all the ways we briefly examined I think we find ample evidence that the Pentecostal experience has recaptured for Christians of all kinds a strong and abiding sense of God's and mediate presence and power that God is here and now and an awareness that the natural by God's grace can become a vehicle of the supernatural in doing so this movement has brought millions closer to the Catholic faith and we should be really grateful to God for that thank you and god bless you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Coming Home Network International

Views: 25,536

Rating: 4.7670684 out of 5

Keywords: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Faith, Christianity, Catholicism, Prayer, Dispensationalism, John Wesley, Revivalism, Miracles, Mysticism, Pentecostalism, Coming Home Network, Deep in History, Sacraments, Enlightenment, Mass, Liturgy, Charismatic, Baptism, Confirmation, Confession

Id: w7H7qJKD1dU

Length: 48min 9sec (2889 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 16 2018