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260. Catholic and Evangelical Charismatics United?

Building a bridge between institutional Roman Catholicism and the Pentecostal and Evangelical churches. This is the mission of the Roman Catholic charismatic movement as described in Filippo D’Alessandro’s book, God’s Dream: Christian Unity in the Power of the Spirit (Italian edition: Il sogno di Dio. L’unità dei cristiani nella potenza dello Spirito, Rimini: Edizioni Rinnovamento nello Spirito Santo, 2026).

The author speaks on this subject with authority, as he serves as one of the regional directors of the Rinnovamento nello Spirito Santo (“Renewal in the Holy Spirit,” i.e., the Italian Roman Catholic Charismatic movement) and as one of its national delegates for Christian unity. The book brings together various contributions, all aimed at illustrating the purpose of charismatic ecumenism: in the words of Pope Francis during a meeting with Pentecostal pastors in 2020, it is a matter of “creating communion and collaboration among the various charismatic communities” (35). Or, in the author’s own words, “to create connections between our Pentecostal brothers and sisters and the priests and bishops in the region” and thus to serve as “a link” (200).

The book does not offer a history of the Roman Catholic charismatic movement that began in 1967, but it does contain several significant stories intertwined with the author’s biography, such as Pope Francis’s meetings with Italian and international Pentecostal leaders. The Pentecostal movement as a whole is viewed as a “current of grace” that cuts across denominational lines, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit associated with it is seen as an “ecumenical grace” (91).

In other chapters, D’Alessandro sets forth the Roman Catholic view of the charismatic experience. It is situated within the sacramental journey and is seen as an activation, a reawakening, or a “thawing” of the sacrament of Baptism. Therefore, in the Roman Catholic understanding, it in no way calls into question the hierarchical and sacramental structure of the Roman Catholic Church, nor the Marian dogmas and the devotions associated with them. So to speak, it integrates the charismatic experience into Roman Catholic life by adding something extra but taking nothing away.
 
D’Alessandro is an admirer of Pope Francis and particularly praises the encyclical Fratelli tutti (“All Brothers,” 2020), establishing the universal brotherhood regardless of different religions, and the Abu Dhabi Document on Human Fraternity (2019), signed jointly with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, where the diversity of religions is presented as the will of God. For him, ecumenical dialogue and interreligious dialogue, though distinct, go hand in hand because both express the catholicity of Roman Catholicism—its longing for the unity of mankind.
 
At times, his language is reminiscent of the Gospels (when, for example, he speaks of the communion of those who are “born-again,” 116), but the framework of his thought is Roman Catholic because being born again for him coincides with being baptized—not necessarily with being a believer in Jesus Christ. From a Roman Catholic perspective, every baptized person is born again regardless of his/her faith in Christ. But is this the case according to the Bible?
 
When offering suggestions on how to organize events and meetings with Pentecostal Evangelicals, he advises avoiding devotional expressions related to Mary and the saints, references to sensitive topics such as indulgences and purgatory, as well as Marian apparitions and private revelations (204). The intention, therefore, is—if not to conceal, then at least to try to downplay—the specific characteristics of Roman Catholicism.
 
Without wishing to question people’s good faith, one cannot help but wonder whether these practices are spiritually honest. Is dialogue truly being promoted if one lacks the courage to say and do the things one believes? Furthermore, how can Evangelicals who participate in these gatherings be so naive as to think that there is authentic Evangelical spirituality if the faith of Charismatic Catholics does not abandon the non-biblical—if not anti-biblical—elements of its creed and practice?
 
In the book’s introduction, Bishop Derio Olivero, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference’s Commission for Ecumenism, writes that the fear of ecumenism stems “from a fragile or poorly understood identity” (9). This is not necessarily true. In fact, the opposite is true. The more solid one’s evangelical identity is (i.e., grounded in Scripture and its message), the more one recognizes that ecumenical attempts which hide identities or cloak them in charismatic language without reforming them from within do not correspond to the Lord Jesus’ prayer to the Father in John 17. After praying: “they may be one, even as we are one” (v. 11), the Lord goes on to say: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (v. 17). Unity and truth go together. When true dialogue takes place, neither hiding nor camouflage should occur.
 
If a person is born again, born of the Spirit, and a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Roman Catholic baggage—composed of traditions that are foreign to and contrary to Scripture—must be reformed, not simply and tactically concealed. Saying this to our charismatic Catholic friends does not mean being opposed to dialogue. It means engaging in dialogue in truth, submitting all we are and do to the Word of God. Other paths to unity are shortcuts, perhaps useful for Roman Catholic ecumenism, but not for biblical unity.

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81. “Not a School of Samba”. Francis and the Catholic Charismatic Movement

June 9th, 2014

It was an impressive picture. During the first week-end of June 50.000 people gathered together in the Olympic Stadium of Rome not for a football match but instead to see Pope Francis as he joined the Catholic Charismatic movements for their annual celebration. In his speech the Pope gave a bit of an auto-biographical story of his encounter with these Renewal movements. Today, one Catholic out of ten claims to be charismatic (120 million people on the whole) and most of non-Western Roman Catholicism is heavily influenced by Charismatic spirituality.

 

From Skepticism to Full Endorsement

In his speech, Francis candidly recalled that his first impressions of the movement were rather mixed. The charismatic way of singing and worshipping seemed to him more of a “school of samba” than a properly defined Catholic liturgy. His reservations, however, were overcome as he better understood the movement. From a skeptical observer, Bergoglio became a staunch supporter of it.

 

Bergoglio’s personal change of mind over time reflects the journey that the Catholic Church as a whole made in its evaluation of the movement. From an initial puzzlement over what appeared to resemble the manners of Evangelical Pentecostalism, the Catholic Church worked hard to create a space for Charismatics within the wide fold of Roman Catholicism. The attempt went in a twofold direction. First, it made sure that the Charismatic experience was grafted into the sacramental system of the Catholic Church. Speaking in tongues and the other supernatural events were then considered as subsequent realizations of the already received sacraments administered by the Church. It was not something different or new or disruptive, but something that was grounded in the traditional sacramental theology and actually reinforced it, although in its own unique way.

 

Once the theology was safeguarded a second move was necessary, i.e. strictly connecting the movement to the hierarchical structure of the Roman Church. Pentecostalism was a child of the “free church” or even “para-church” mentality, based on the spontaneity of the group and the prominence of the experience of the individual, which is far from the ordinary Catholic sense of belonging to the mother Church. Paul VI and John Paul II suggested an institutional framework for the Catholic Charismatics whereby the first article of their statutes would insist that the movement was part of the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of its bishops and ultimately under the authority of the Roman Pontiff.

 

In so doing, both the theology and the institution of the Church were preserved and the Charismatic movement became all in all a “child” of the Catholic Church. From being a potential threat, it became a powerful arm of the present-day Roman Church and one its main hopes for the future. In the early Seventies the initial turning point of the Catholic approach occurred at the Gregorian University of Rome (the flagship Jesuit academic institution), and now the Jesuit Pope fully confirms the extremely positive attitude of the Church as a whole toward the Catholic Charismatics.

 

The Role of Renewal Movements Within the System

The Catholic Charismatic movement is just of the many contemporary renewal movements that operate within the Roman Catholic Church. This institution, beside its hierarchical apparatus, is innervated by different movements, each one bringing its own “gift” (singular) to the Church which in turn holds all the “gifts” (plural). Renewal movements have always been in and around the church with their specific vocation. The Roman Church as a system has fought those movements that would not integrate themselves into the sacramental theology and hierarchical structure of the Church, but has welcomed those that were willing to become an organic part of it. The Protestant Reformation is an example of the former, the Franciscan movement an example of the latter. These integrated renewal movements have become means to stretch the catholicity of the system without changing its core.

 

The same thing happened with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Once appeased by the Roman sacraments and the Papal structure, the system has been able to fully metabolize it. As other renewal movements in the course of history, the Charismatic Renewal is a means for the expansion of the system that adds to it and solidifies it, without purifying and changing it.