Catechism Of the Crisis in the Church
PART 26
This part of the Catechism deals with the charismatic movement, its origins, historical development, and infiltration into the Catholic Church.
Doesn’t the Charismatic Renewal accomplish some good, bringing back to the practice of Catholicism a certain number of souls and nurturing the piety of others?
The devil in his perspicacity knows how to lose a few to gain many. This is the teaching of Blessed Marie of the Incarnation:
Ecstasies, visions, and revelations are not a sure argument for the presence or assistance of God in a soul. How many have we seen who have been deceived by these sorts of visions? Even though they were the cause of the conversion or even the salvation of a few souls, it is nonetheless a strategy of the evil Spirit, who is content to lose a few to gain many.1
What advantage can the devil find in these displays of piety?
Pentecostalism not only revived and revitalized a moribund Protestantism, which risked leaving the Catholic Church an open field, but today it is allowing him to progressively take hold of Latin America2; the devil finds obvious advantages. Likewise, “Catholic” Charismatism perpetuates within the bosom of the Church the errors that are destroying it.
Isn’t the Charismatic movement against the post-conciliar desacralization of the Church?
It is precisely because it reacts against certain excesses that the Charismatic movement attracts Catholics troubled by the crisis, but only to bring them round to the conciliar errors! (in the same way that Pentecostalism brought back to Protestantism those who fled its excessive rigidity in droves).
Can you provide an example?
The Emmanuel Catholic Charismatic Community has reintroduced in many places adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the Rosary, confession, etc. These “conservative” devotions have rallied very many disoriented Catholics. But this conservatism merely serves to conserve…the conciliar novelties! Who would deny that the sentimental scenes that the Charismatics know how to stage so well are the principal crutch still holding up the new liturgy?
What is the link between Vatican II and the Charismatic movement?
Vatican II is fully responsible for the introduction of the Pentecostal rite within Catholicism. Not only because John XXIII desired a “new Pentecost,”3 or because the Pentecostal pastor David du Plessis—who had worked so effectively to infiltrate the “baptism in the Spirit” into all the Protestant confessions—was invited to the Council as an observer (he was influential in introducing several passages on the charisms into the conciliar documents)4 but it was especially the Vatican II decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, that led the Catholics of Duquesne University to receive “the baptism in the Spirit.”
How could this decree lead Catholics to “the baptism in the Spirit”?
Speaking about the communities separated from the Catholic Church, the Decree Unitatis Redintegratio states that “the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation.”5 It also says that “whatever is wrought by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of our separated brethren can contribute to our own edification.”6 These passages convinced the Catholics of Duquesne University to ask the Protestants for the imposition of hands on February 20, 1967.7
How does Charismatism promote the errors of Vatican II?
Like Vatican II, the Charismatic movement contributes to the upholding of a false ecumenism (Charismatism springs from ecumenism), to the confusion of the orders of nature and grace in every domain, to the weakening of the hierarchical authority willed by God, and to the forgetting of the ascetical side of the spiritual life.
How does Charismatism contribute to confusing nature and grace?
The desire to feel the action of grace (per se intangible) is to expose oneself to the danger of confusing faith and religious sentiment (as the modernists do8), as well as divine inspiration and imagination, the theological virtue of hope and optimism, the life of grace and psychological well-being. Psychology, as it so happens, occupies an important place in Charismatic communities.9
What can be said definitively about the rite of the baptism in the Spirit?
The Charismatics themselves do not quite know how to explain the rite of the baptism in the Spirit. It cannot be a sacrament since Jesus Christ instituted only seven. Thus they see it as a means of conversion, a reactivation of the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, or else a religious experience. But none of these explanations can account for the efficacy of a rite that seems to act of itself like a sacrament.
Can the baptism in the Spirit really be compared to a sacrament?
By linking spiritual effects to a specific rite, the baptism in the Spirit resembles the sacraments. But the latter transmit a grace that is not sensible (they leave us in the order of faith), while the other rite claims to make the action of God felt. Thus it can be defined as a caricature of a sacrament that transmits, not the grace of God, but a perceptible illusion of this grace. We know that the devil has the power to create this illusion in those who seek to experience physically the divine action.
Should the Charismatics be considered as possessed by the devil?
Those who receive the baptism in the Spirit are not for that reason possessed by the devil, nor even necessarily guilty of mortal sin (because of a certain ignorance of what they are doing). But they open themselves nonetheless to a diabolical influence that establishes them in an illusion, risks falsifying their spiritual life and blinding them to the crisis in the Church and to their own personal duty. Some give up the Christian life when, years later, the mirages vanish.
Should the healings and prodigies worked by charismatics be attributed to the devil?
The devil cannot work miracles strictly speaking (which manifest an absolute power over nature), but he can produce prodigies (which use the laws of nature ingeniously). Undeniable miracles are not to be found among the charismatics. They themselves acknowledge that a good number of healings that happen during their gatherings do not last.10 Besides, these outpourings in unknown languages during some charismatic meetings have been identified as blasphemies by people knowing the languages who happen to be present.
88) Can the Church change the rite of the sacraments?
The Church cannot touch the essential part of the sacraments (that is, that which is absolutely necessary for their validity). It can modify the accidental rites, but this must be done for the purpose of more clearly expressing the essence of the sacraments and of facilitating their worthy reception.
Why can’t the Church touch the essential part of the sacraments?
Pius XII explained:
For these Sacraments instituted by Christ Our Lord, the Church in the course of the centuries never substituted other Sacraments, nor could she do so, since, as the Council of Trent teaches (Conc. Trid., Sess. VII, can. 1, De Sacram, in genere), the seven Sacraments of the New Law were all instituted by Jesus Christ Our Lord, and the Church has no power over “the substance of the Sacraments,” that is, over those things which, as is proved from the sources of divine revelation, Christ the Lord Himself established to be kept as sacramental signs.11
For what purpose may the Church modify accidental rites?
The Council of Trent declares:
This power has always been in the Church, that in the administration of the sacraments, preserving their substance, she may determine or change whatever she may judge to be more expedient for the benefit of those who receive them or for the veneration of the sacraments, according to the variety of circumstances, times, and places.12
What are the sacraments the rites of which have been changed since Vatican II?
All the sacraments were changed following Vatican II. There are a new rite of Ordination (1968),13 a new Mass (1969),14 a new rite of Baptism (1969),15 a new rite of Marriage (1969),16 a new rite of Confirmation (1971),17 a new rite of Extreme Unction (1972),18 and a new rite of Penance (1973),19 as indeed there are a new Breviary (1970),20 a new calendar (1969),21 new holy oils (1970),22 a new Code of Canon Law (1983),23 a new Way of the Cross (1991),24 a new Catechism (1992),25 a new rite of Exorcism (1998),26 a new Martyrology (2001),27 and a new Rosary (2002),28 not to mention the “new Evangelization” or, in France, the new Our Father, the new Creed (the expression “consubstantial with the Father” was replaced by “of the same nature as the Father”),29 the new “Rejoice, O Virgin Mary,” etc.–Vatican II has made all things new, as if to found a new religion.
89) Do the new rites better express the substance of the sacraments?
Far from making the sacramental action more readily understandable and facilitating its worthy reception, the new rites do the opposite: they relativize the truths of faith, make commonplace the sacred mysteries, and weaken the respect due to the sacraments.
Do the deficiencies of the new rites affect all the sacraments?
The deficiencies of the new rites affect not only all the sacraments (more or less), but also other ceremonies such as funerals and exorcisms (which are not sacraments, but sacramentals).30 So as not to be over long in our discussion, we shall limit our examination to four examples: the new rites of baptism, extreme unction, exorcism, and burial.31
What modifications were made by the new ritual of baptism?
The new rite minimizes those elements that call to mind the supernatural effects of the sacrament; it suppresses several of the preparatory ceremonies, notably the triple exorcism that authoritatively wrests the candidate from the influence of the devil.
Why does baptism need preparatory ceremonies?
“Whoever purposes to do a work wisely, first removes the obstacles to his work; hence it is written (Jeremiah 4:3): ‘Break up anew your fallow ground and sow not upon thorns.’ ”32 Great transformations require great preparations. That is why the catechumens of the first centuries were not only instructed in the Creed, but also subjected to a period of probation, examinations, and a series of rites and exorcisms over the course of their advancement.33 All of that was incorporated into the traditional ritual of baptism.34
Are the preparatory ceremonies of baptism effective in themselves or do they merely signify what the baptism properly does?
Several of the preparatory ceremonies of baptism, especially the exorcisms, are efficacious in themselves, distinct from baptism properly so called. Thus, says St. Thomas, they ought to be administered to those who were baptized in haste and therefore could not receive them.35
What is the specific effect of the preparatory ceremonies of baptism.
The preparatory ceremonies remove the obstacles to receiving the full effects of baptism: an external obstacle—the devil, who possesses a certain power over nature; and an internal obstacle—the resistance offered to the realities of salvation by a disordered sensibility (the senses are, as it were, closed to the supernatural).36
What ceremonies remove these obstacles?
The exsufflation (with the command: “Depart from him, unclean spirit, and give place to the Holy Ghost, the Consoler”) and the two other solemn exorcisms, which command the devil not only to go out of but to depart from the baptized person to be, effectively remove the evil spirits.37 The imposition of salt (on the tongue), of saliva (on the nostrils and ears–the “Ephphetha”), the imposition of hands (on the head), and the signs of the cross (on the forehead and breast) contribute to making the person receptive to the mysteries of salvation.
What ceremonies did the new ritual of baptism suppress?
In the new ritual, the priest does not wear the violet stole to meet the candidate at the church door. It omits the exsufflation, the two additional exorcisms, and the blessing of the salt. It no longer renews the gesture of the Lord in healing the deaf-mute with His saliva and telling him “Ephpheta.”
What does the priest’s wearing of a violet stole at the entrance of the church signify?
This welcome manifests that the unbaptized cannot enter the house of God without being purified of his sins. But in our age of ecumenism and universal salvation, no one wants to hear of this.
What does the blessing of the salt signify?
The salt, symbol of wisdom, is to protect our nature from the corruption of sin, while at the same time imparting a taste of the supernatural realities. But this symbolism demands the spirit of faith. The innovators have thus eliminated it.
What does the “Ephpheta” accompanying the imposition of saliva signify?
“Ephpheta” means “Be opened.” This ceremony helps to perceive “the good odor of Jesus Christ” and to open the ears of the soul to the teaching of the faith (teaching that comes from hearing, says St. Paul,38 that is, by an exterior teaching). But for the modernists, the truths of faith, on the contrary, come from the depths of the conscience.
What other changes did the rite of baptism undergo in the new ritual?
Instead of addressing the future baptized through the godparents, (N., what do you ask of the Church of God?; N., do you renounce Satan?; N., do you wish to be baptized?), the new ritual addresses the questions to the parents (What do you ask for N. of the Church of God?).
Isn’t this manner of speaking to the parents more in conformity with reality?
Though the newborn makes no act of his own will in receiving baptism, the orientation of his will is changed by the sacrament. His soul acquires the moral dispositions of someone who would have voluntarily turned away from sin to adhere to Jesus Christ. In this sense, everything the godparents say in his name is realized in the infant’s soul (just as it had really contracted the state of someone who had turned away from God yet without personally committing the act of original sin). This is the mysterious and supernatural change that the Church manifests by having the godparents speak in the baptized person’s name. The new ritual abandons this profoundly supernatural vision for a purely superficial one.
Can you give a last example of changes made to the rite of baptism?
In the traditional rite the priest makes the sign of the cross on the child’s forehead and breast, saying: “Receive the mark of the cross on your + forehead and within your + heart. Embrace the faith with its divine teachings. So live that you will indeed be a temple of God.” In the new rite, the sign of the cross is made on the forehead only, and the priest declaims: “N., the Christian community welcomes you with great joy. In its name, I mark you with the cross which is the sign of the Christ, our Savior. And you, parents, will mark him after me with the same sign.”
What does this last example show?
This last example shows the same tendency to weaken the expression of the supernatural realities the sacrament produces in the soul to emphasize the superficial aspects of the ceremony (here: the joy of the community welcoming a new member).
1 Blessed Marie of the Incarnation (Madame Acarie), quoted by Arnaud de Lassus, Le renouveau charismatique aujourd’hui., Supplement to Action Familiale et Scolaire, No. 162, p. 154. Blessed Jordan of Saxony (1190-1236) had to exorcise a certain Brother Bernard. Possessed by the devil, he preached in such a penetrating manner, with such a touching accent, such a pious air and such profound words that he brought everyone who heard him to tears. Once the possession was discovered, however, he switched tone and pronounced only obscenities. When the Blessed asked him “Where are your beautiful speeches?” he answered: “Since my ruse has been discovered, I want to show myself as I am.” (Jordan of Saxony, O.P., Libellus de principiis ordinis praedicatorum, §110-119.)
2 See Question 1 of this Catechism of the Crisis in the Church.
3 John XXIII, Apostolic Constitution Humane Salutis officially convening Vatican Council II (December 25,1961).
4 The Constitution Lumen Gentium (on the Church), §12: “It is not only through the sacraments and the ministries of the Church that the Holy Spirit sanctifies and leads the people of God and enriches it with virtues, but, ‘allotting his gifts to everyone according as He wills,’ He distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank. By these gifts He makes them fit and ready to undertake the various tasks and offices which contribute toward the renewal and building up of the Church, according to the words of the Apostle: ‘The manifestation of the Spirit is given to everyone for profit.’ These charisms, whether they be the more outstanding or the more simple and widely diffused, are to be received with thanksgiving and consolation for they are perfectly suited to and useful for the needs of the Church.”
5 The Decree Unitatis Redintegratio (on Ecumenism), §3, in The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., editor (New York: The America Press, 1966), p.346. See above Question 47.
6 Ibid., §4, p.349.
7 “As Catholics, they had been reassured by the Council, which had stated: ‘Whatever is wrought by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of our separated brethren can contribute to our own edification.’ After studying the matter, they decided to ask a group of Pentecostalists to pray for them and over them.” Mario Panciera in Présence Chrétienne, No. 12 (April 1989), cited in the Courrier de Rome (SiSiNoNo), No. 111 (February 1990), p.2.
8 The confusion between faith and the religious sentiment is the fundamental error of modernism condemned by St. Pius X. See above, Question 11.
9 The members of the Well of Jacob community conduct P.H.R. sessions (Personality and Human Relations) in the spirit of the American psychologist Carl Rogers (who played an important role in the elaboration of the techniques of group dynamics). De Lassus, Le renouveau charismatique, p. 69-70. The New Way community, which recruits heavily among health professionals, proposes a medicine integrated with spirituality. The Beatitudes community is also heavily involved in psychotherapy. It is paradoxical that to perpetuate itself a movement that identifies itself as “charismatic” should need to specialize in human psychology which the Holy Spirit, on the contrary, should be able to move effortlessly and alone.
10 One of them explained it thus: “We sometimes see someone begin to be cured but then relapse several days later; that person preferred being sick and helped by others to a healthy autonomy, or else refused to make the efforts to persevere and progress towards complete health, physical, psychic, or spiritual.” (Yves Jehanno, L’Enjeu du renouveau charismatique [Paris: Fayard, 1988], p. 93.) It could not be more clearly manifested that it is a question not of miracles but of simple prodigies (which help nature to produce an effect, but do not have power over it).
11 Pius XII, Sacramentum Ordinis, §1.
12 Council of Trent, Session XXI, cap. 2; Dz. 931.
13 Apostolic Constitution Pontificalis Romani of June 18, 1968. The forms of priestly ordination and episcopal consecration were modified.
14 The Novus OrdoMissae was promulgated April 3, 1969.
15 May 15, 1969; AAS, LXI, 548. For the baptism of adults, January 6, 1972; AAS, LXIV, 252.
16 March, 1969. But a new rite of marriage was also published in 1990 by John Paul II.
17 Apostolic Constitution Divinae Consortium Naturae of August 15, 1971; Decree of August 22, 1971, AAS, LXIV, 77.
18 Apostolic Constitution of November 30, 1972; Decree of December 7, 1972, AAS, LXV, 275.
19 Decree of December 2, 1973, AAS, LXVI, 172.
20 Apostolic Constitution Laudis Canticum, November 1, 1970; Decree of April 11, 1971, AAS, LXIII, 712.
21 Motu Proprio Mysterii Paschalis of February 14, 1969.
22 Decree of December 3, 1970, AAS, LXIII, 711.
23 Apostolic Constitution Sacrae Disciplinae Leges of January 25, 1983.
24 Inaugurated by John Paul II in 1991, this new Way of the Cross has fifteen Stations instead of fourteen, several of which were changed. It was used for the Jubilee in the year 2000.
25 Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum of October 11, 1992.
26 See Documentation Catholique, 2198, pp.159-160.
27 Published on June 29, 2001, this new Martyrology includes the names of 6,538 saints and blessed, of whom 1,717 (almost a third) were proclaimed such by John Paul II himself.
28 Encyclical Rosarium Virginis Mariae of October 16, 2002.
29 In July 1965, the philosopher Etienne Gilson published in the France Catholique an article provocatively titled “Am I Schismatic?” in which he challenged this bad translation. The article created a stir, but nothing was changed. He returned to the subject in 1967: “The new Symbol fails to affirm the unity of the Trinity. It does not deny it, certainly, but neither does it teach it, and by imposing this omission on the faithful it prevents them from continuing to profess it as they had always done since the Council of Nicea. For if the Son is of the same nature as the Father, He is God like Him, but if He is not of the same substance or of the same being as the Father, He might be a second God, just as the Holy Ghost might be a third….For [Judaism and Islam], Christianity is polytheistic. Until now the Christian could deny the accusation, since the three divine persons are but one and the same God; he can no longer do so if he is French, for if the three persons have in common their nature only and not their substance or being, each of them is God like the other two. Just as a father and son are two men of the same nature, the Father and the Son are two Gods….The object of the Symbol is not to make the mystery understandable, it is to define it. It is not defined by saying that the Son is of the same nature as the Father, for this is true of every son. What would be an unfathomable mystery would be a son who was not of the same nature as his father. By affirming that they are, nothing is being said….” (Etienne Gilson, La société de masse et sa culture [Paris: Vrin, 1967], pp.128-129.)
30 Unlike the sacraments (instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ), the sacramentals have been instituted by the Church. They do not cause grace directly themselves, but they favor its reception.
31 For an examination of the Holy Eucharist (attacked by Communion in the hand, the reduction of marks of adoration, the shortening of the Eucharistic fast, etc.), see Chapter 7 on the New Mass.
32 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, Q.71, Art. 2.
33 Cf. Dom Bernard Marechaux, O.S.B., Le baptême.
34 This is precisely what the innovators sought to destroy: Annibale Bugnini boasted that “for the first time in the history of Catholic liturgy,” a rite for the baptism of infants had been prepared that was not “an abridged form of adult baptism” (DC 1544, 676). It was a question of applying the conciliar constitution on the liturgy, which requested that the rite for the baptism of infants be adapted “to circumstance that those to be baptized are, in fact, infants” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, §67).
35 ST, III, Q.71, Art. 3.
36 Ibid.
37 The anointing (done before the baptism on the breast and between the shoulders with the oil of catechumens) is also a ceremony for fight. The catechumen is anointed in the manner of boxers in order to be prepared for the fight against the devil (whereas the anointing made on the head after the baptism with the holy chrism expresses the consecration of the Christian: “christ” = anointed). See St. Thomas, ST, III, Q.66, Art. 10, ad 2. In the new ritual, the anointing of catechumens is no longer made between the shoulders but on the breast only.
38 Fides ex auditu (Rom. 10:17).
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