These Last Days News - June 2, 2014
The “Catholic” Pentecostal Movement...
"Many call upon the Holy Spirit, My child, but the spirits they invoke are not from Heaven and the light. They come up fast from the abyss. Flee! Have no part of these gatherings, for they are not from the light. In time, My children, you will evidence the disasters that these gatherings provoke. Many who should know better have given themselves over to this diversion. You need not this diversion. My Son is always with you in the Eucharist.
"My children, many are turning from your Sacraments, searching for a new world, a world that is abounding with the word 'love, love!' But who knows the true meaning of the word love? How many are willing to sacrifice for this love? How many are willing to starve themselves of their worldly desires for this love? How many would be willing to give their lives for this love?"
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, June 15, 1974
By Dom Peter Flood, O.S.B., M.D., M.Ch., B.A., B.Comm., J.C.D.
Montanism, called after its first and leading sponsor Montanus, has continued since the end of the second century A.D. under various names and in various forms. It remains always the original Phrygian heresy taken up by Montanus somewhere about A.D. 175.
At different times and in different places it has done and is doing much harm to the Church. Satan, being a pure spirit, by nature does not learn by experience but repeats the old attacks on the True Church and inspires such entitlement of them as will gain their acceptance the more easily, so that even the elect may be deceived for a time.
St. Jerome thought that Montanus had been a priest of Cybele; he came from Ardabau in Phrygia, a place where the frenzied convulsive dances of those priests would have been well known. He attracted to himself, away from their husbands, two women, Priscilla and Maximilla. The latter outlived him by some years and though both were his prophetesses, she asserted that prophecy would die with her. Montanus claimed that a new era of revelation had begun, that of the Holy Spirit. At first claiming to be just the spokesman of the Paraclete, he seems eventually to have thought that he himself was the Holy Spirit. This sect did much harm to the Church and its most notable convert was Tertullian, that stormy African, who soon founded his own subsect, as might have been expected. He then denied the power of the keys and generally that of the Papacy. His subsect, calling themselves Tertullianists, were for a time strong in North Africa. In the time of St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, they had a basilica of their own in Carthage, but that saintly bishop soon reconciled them with the Church. Much could be written about the early ramifications of these emotionalists, but it is sufficient to note here that their pagan origin displayed the same manifestations of hysterical states of prophecy--the word usually means no more than a bizarre form of preaching, and not an actual predicting of the future. Where Maximilla prophesied, she was usually proved wrong in the event.
Under various disguises, this pagan hysteria, often accompanied by eroticism and with deviations from sound doctrine, has appeared at almost every stage of the history of the Church. The Illuminati are the best-known examples, about the time of St. Teresa the Alumbrados. Indeed, it was her sound teaching of the ways of prayer at all levels that destroyed them. Later convulsive Jansenists, and in America such orgiastic groups as holy roller, all added their revivalist expressions of these sad aberrations to the motley of history.
Today, mainly derived from University groups in the U.S.A., new versions of this same folly have arisen and spread through the Catholic world. It is usually accompanied by revivalism in various forms. In Canada, there is a strong injection of vigour from groups in Scandinavia and Holland. England has not been exempt and it is insinuating itself into Ireland. Even Rome has not been preserved from such assemblies. Such is the briefest history of what is basically the cult of an individualism and emotional freedom that contains elements which are parapelagian, and which lead to a rejection of the Magisterium of the Church founded by Christ.
It is the practice of these groups to insinuate themselves under whatever name seems least offensive to local Catholic thought, and later to announce more openly their true character. Thus, bishops and often simple religious, especially women, are deceived, for Satan was a liar from the beginning. Every variety of hysterical manifestation occurs in the meetings of these revivalists, no matter what name they may use. The variety corresponds to the emotional qualities, racial or sexual, of the participants. Beginning in apparent quiet prayer, soon someone starts singing or calling aloud; after a while this becomes more general, and not necessarily do they all sing the same way. A woman may jump up and dance around, apparently joyously and unrestrainedly. This spreads and mutual embracings succeed; for the purely sensitive emotions can easily descend to the erotic or sensual. Someone may call out prayers or for the laying-on of hands, and one or other of those present will hasten to do this. The person affected may then become more hysterical and, as they say, speak or sing in tongues. This glossolalia is not in fact speaking in a strange language, for it is mere gibberish. An interpreter, the chairman or some other person, may proceed to interpret what he alleges the hysteric has said. Faith healing is also indulged in by some groups, but with indifferent success. Those present may be of different creeds; there is no common belief. Every sort of claim is put forward on the basis of false exegesis of Scripture, the commonest being that speaking in tongues reproduces what the Apostles did after Pentecost when, though speaking in their own tongue, each member of the multi-racial crowd heard them in his own language. At these sessions, however, what is uttered is mere gibberish and lacks linguistic structure. Even the promoters of this emotionalism admit that it is open to diabolical illusion, for an evil spirit may manifest himself. This is not an unexpected danger.
The whole set-up of these meetings favours suggestion from any prominent personality present, just as much as it favours self-hypnotism. Usually the joy experienced is only sensory excitement, because certain of the lower brain centres are stimulated and out of the control of higher mechanisms. These states can be produced in rats stimulating electrodes inserted into the hypothalamic centres. The organ of speech escapes from higher control and so the person gives vent to gibberish or song deviants. In a word, the phenomena do not exceed those of any simple dissociation experience and the victims become hysterical and no longer in control of themselves. A considerable study has been made by Samarin from tape recordings, and he suggests that glossolalia always turn out to be the same thing: strings of syllables, made up of sounds known to the subject. He asserts that it is not supernatural. A more technical study has been made by F. D. Goodman, who calls it a vocalization pattern, a speech automatism produced on the substratum of hyperarousal. It is thus just uncontrolled use of the power of vocalization, usual in fits of hysteria and in the tantrums of young children not yet capable of sustained speech. To assert that this is an individual intervention of the Holy Spirit is not only blasphemous and even sacrilegious, but simply stupid. There is no warrant in Scripture or elsewhere for the assertion that baptism of this sort adds anything to, or can replace, the Sacraments of Christ. Every form of self-illusion can be present but these manifestations are DEFINITELY NOT PRAYER, which, as St. Teresa has rightly shown, is an act of the will. She has also pointed out that even in orthodox mental prayer there are, for beginners, dangers of self-illusion. It is easy to believe that words come from God, which in fact come from our own unconscious desires. Unfortunately, like all forms of purely sensory delectation, this emotional arousal can easily and rapidly descend to the sensual level. One writer says, Christian love in many renewal situations unfortunately bears more relationship to "eros" than to "agape" and this not uncommonly between people with commitments which make this kind of relationship inappropriate.
A very real danger is a weakening of faith and a contempt for, or actual dislike of, the sacramental order of the Catholic Faith. At first, finding these sensory pleasures in what they have been misled to believe is prayer, many Catholics seem to become more devout, but soon, not finding satisfactions in the calm order of the Church’s liturgy, they drop the practice of the latter. Then comes the greater risk of believing that they are in a higher state than other Catholics and that, being personally in contact with the Holy Spirit, they know more than the Vicar of Christ. An American convert, who has studied this matter, says that they then cease to attend Church, and as they are often practising contraception, they attempt to rationalize this evil by appealing to their private inspiration. This is pure folly! It is the old monanist division between the enlightened and the ordinary Catholic.
From time to time, Bishops have sought to delimit or denounce this movement and even to exorcise its more prominent supporters. They have lacked success because they are not united, or lacking in firmness. Among these people (charismatics) a kind of para-clericalism soon develops whereby they arrogate to themselves rights and duties which belong properly and solely to Priests in Sacred Orders. This rapidly spreads and despite lip-service to Catholic beliefs, they soon lapse from the Faith. In practice, there are nearly as many beliefs among them as there are groups. Unfortunately, like any other uncontrolled emotion, this love of sensory excitement grows in any community, even in monasteries and convents. Appealing to the emotions and the desire for the bizarre, this movement in all its manifold varieties can do great harm in the Church. For this reason both Religious and laity should be aware of the dangers involved and remain faithful to the approved forms of liturgical and private prayer.
"My children, you have fallen into errors. My Son gave you a concise, a direct plan for your salvation in His House, His Church. All manner of novelty and change must be stopped now. You will not gather souls with compromise.
"You who call upon the Spirit forcefully command the spirit of darkness, the prince of darkness, to send his agents into you. You are treading where angels would fear to go, My children. You cannot force the Spirit to come to you. It is a gift given at the discretion of the Eternal Father. Stop now your meanderings into regions of darkness."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, June 18, 1976
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