The gift of tongues is certainly a secondary issue for us as Catholics, it has no bearing on our "Salvation."
QUESTION?
I am listening to your show today and wish to express an objection I have with Kyle Clement. Unfortunately, in ridiculing the 9 gifts of the Holy Spirit as described in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11,
he is throwing out the “baby with the bath water”. The gift of tongues is a SUPERNATURAL gift given by the Holy Spirit for all believers.
Whenever we read about the Gift of the Holy Spirit being poured out on believers we see that the gift of tongues is also manifested, Acts 2:4, Acts 10:44-46, Acts 19:1-6
It is a supernatural sign that follows the believers. “These signs shall follow them that believe: They shall speak with new tongues. Mark 16:17-18.
The gift of tongues is a devotional gift to be used for praise, thanksgiving and worship of the Lord. 1 Corinthians 14:2, 14-19, Romans 8:26-27.
The gift of tongues edifies or builds us up spiritually, 1 Corinthians 14:4
The gift of tongues builds up our faith, Jude 20.
The gift of tongues allows us to pray God’s perfect will and it far exceeds mental prayer, 8:26-27.
The gift of tongues provides us with a supernatural means of communicating with God. 1 Corinthians 14:2, John 4:24
The gift of tongues is a powerful prayer of intercession because it is the Holy Spirit praying through our spirits to our heavenly Father, Romans: 8:26-27
The gift of tongues is a spiritual weapon for spiritual warfare against Satan and the kingdom of darkness, 2nd Corinthians 10:4
The gift of tongues helps us to be conscious of the Holy Spirit indwelling us and makes us aware that we are temples of the Holy Spirit, John 14:16-17, 1 Corinthians 3:16.
The gift of tongues helps us bring our tongue, the most unruly member of our body, under subjection and under the control of the Holy Spirit, James 3:2, James 3:8
I sense that you and Kyle had unsatisfactory experiences with Charismatic priests and laity with whom you have ministered; but I also sense that neither of you have experienced the supernatural gift of tongues which is the entrance gift for allowing the Holy Spirit to use us, The Body of Christ, to manifest the other 8 charismatic gifts. It takes the virtues of humility and trust to receive this entrance gift as most of the time we do not have mental understanding of the tongues. At times the Holy Spirit will give one understanding as in praising God in tongues during private prayer and ending in praising God in English.
The greatest tragedy in the Catholic Church is that the bishops never obeyed Pope Leo the XIII’s request for the bishops of the Church to lead the flock to perpetually pray a nine day novena to the Holy Spirit before the Feast of Pentecost! After multiple attempts to have the bishops perform the novena, Pope Leo XIII did this:
On January 1, 1901, Pope Leo XIII prayed to the Holy Spirit. He sang the Veni Creator Spiritus by the Holy Spirit window in St. Peter's Basillica in Rome. That same day, in Topeka, Kansas, at the Bethel College and Bible School, the Holy Spirit came upon a group of Protestants who had been praying to receive the Holy Spirit as the early Church did in Acts chapter two. Agnes Ozman prayed in tongues, and people began to welcome the Holy Spirit to work in them as in the early Church with healings, miracles, deliverance, and power to effectively evangelize and help people convert to Jesus Christ.
Unfortunately, the stiff necked bishops refused to obey the pope resulting in the Protestants who were hungering for the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit as experienced by the 120 in the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost to receive the gift of tongues. Where this left us is the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit which incidentally, except for the personal gift of tongues for prayer, worship, etc., operate as the Holy Spirit WILLS not as we will. One must be sensitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our spirits to be used with the other 8 charismatic gifts. I heard Dan Schneider mention that his group has “sensitives” in his prayer teams which it sounds like he was describing the manifestation of these supernatural gifts. Please ask him what he meant by the term “sensitives”.
As Church history reveals, the charismatic gifts were intended to be poured out on the Roman Catholic clergy and the Catholic laity under the pope and bishop’s authority. Instead the Protestants received these gifts and began another Protestant denomination call Pentecostalism.
Satan has used this to further divide Christianity because Protestants are lacking the fullness of the TRUTH in the Roman Catholic Faith to the detriment of all believers in Jesus as Savior and Lord. The greatest desire of the Holy Trinity is for the reunification of all Christian denominations with the one true holy, catholic apostolic Roman Catholic Church!
I truly appreciate all that you, Terry, Eddy, Ruben, Kyle and Dan are teaching us but I believe we cannot ignore 1 Corinthians Chapters 12 & 14. Remember, St. Paul said “I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than all of you”, 1 Corinthians 14:8
May God our Father, Jesus our Savior & Redeemer, the Holy Spirit and the Great Mother of God, Mary Most Holy, bless, guard and protect you as you minister the Good News of Our Resurrected Savior Jesus,
ANSWER!
All these verses you quoted I agree with in their proper context based on Tradition which is the interpretive grid for Scripture.
The gift of tongues is certainly a secondary issue for us as Catholics, it has no bearing on our "Salvation." St Augustine said: "In the essentials unity, in the non-essentials liberty (like tongues) and in all things charity." If you can pray the creed you are my brother or sister in Christ, even though our devotional life and pious practices may be different.
The Church recognizes the Charismatic Renewal and the gifts of the Holy Spirit (cf. http://www.ewtn.com/expert/expertfaqframe.asp) are in existence today. However, there is no Magisterial pronouncement as to the nature of tongues, is it 'glossolalia (speaking in an unknown language),' or is it 'xenolalia' (ability to speak in a language that the person has not learned)? Is it jibberish or is it an actual language? The Church has never defined this officially.
Their are good Catholics on both sides of this debate that are faithful to Rome and would come out on the opposite side of the coin on this question.
St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelic Doctor) in the Summa Theologica Pt.II-II Question 176, deals with the issue of tongues specifically. He makes it very clear that he believes that the gift of tongues is a real language given by God. St. Thomas Aquinas does say that the person receiving the gift may not understand what he is saying, but there is never a thought that what they are saying is not a real and understandable language.
The charismatic understanding of tongues simply does not exist for the first 1,900 years of Christianity. For that reason alone, in spite of experiences that people may have had, I believe what they experienced was the power of suggestion and manipulation. I came back to the Church through the Charismatic Renewal, I have been around the Catholic Charismatic Renewal since 1988 having spoken in spanish and english at all their major Conferences across the nation.
I have heard of cases where people do, in fact, speak in languages that they did not learn and some understand what they are saying (the gift of interpretation). That is certainly the genuine gift of tongues, I have seen it and have witnessed an interpreter of said gift. But “hum de la hum de la bum de la yum yum”, or “buy a honda buy a honda buy a honda” by a thousand people at the same time in a moments notice is not the gift of tongues. There is alot of psychological pressure to conform, you don't want to be in an audience of 1000 people and be the only one not speaking in tongues. The tongues popularized in the charismatic movement are unhistorical, contradict the meaning of the Greek term for "tongues", and are unbiblical. Let’s not forget, the devil can imitate the gift of tongues in cases of possession.
The evidence from Catholic scholars is that the gift of tongues is not childish babble, but is an actual language that you've never studied. Here is the proof for my claim:
[EVIDENCE]
1] Faithful adherence to the text of Sacred Scripture makes it obligatory to reject those opinions which turn the charism of tongues into little more than infantile babbling (Eichhorn, Schmidt, Neander), incoherent exclamations (Meyer), pythonic utterances (Wiseler), or prophetic demonstrations of the archaic kind (see 1 Samuel 19:20, 24) - http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14776c.htm (Catholic Encyclopedia 1917 edition).
2] Acts 2:4 (NAB) “And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues (glossa), as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.” *[2:4] To speak in different tongues: ecstatic prayer in praise of God, interpreted in Acts 2:6, 11 as speaking in foreign languages, symbolizing the worldwide mission of the church (http://www.usccb.org/bible/acts/2#52002004-1).
3] Act 2:6 (NAB) “At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language” (dialektos – conversation, speech, discourse).
4] Act 2:11 (NAB) “both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues (glossa) of the mighty acts of God.”
5] Strong's Concordance - glóssa: the tongue, a language. 1100 glṓssa – tongue, used of flowing speech; (figuratively) speaking, inspired by God, like the evidence of tongues-speaking supplied by the Lord in the book of Acts to demonstrate the arrival of the new age of the covenant (i.e. NT times). [The normative experience of the 120 believers received "tongues (1100 /glṓssa) as of fire" (Ac 2:3) and miraculously spoke in other actual languages, i.e. that they could not speak before (Ac 2:4f). This sign was repeated in Acts 10:46, 19:6 – furnishing ample proof (three attestations) that the Lord had incorporated all believers into Christ's (mystical) body (1 Cor 12:13)].
6] The apostles were given the gift of speaking in tongues (other languages) so that the good news can be proclaimed to all nations. This gift was meant to undue the curse at the tower of Babel where all the nations were divided through the multiplication of languages, now the Holy Spirit is going to unite the family of nations through the Church.
Fr Chad Ripperger (speaking in tongues - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc0UwaF6FJQ): There are 2 kinds of graces, grace which makes you pleasing to God (sanctifying grace & actual grace) and gratuitous grace (charismatic grace). Its defined in Trent, gratuitous graces cannot be merited, you cannot pray for them, you cannot do anything to get them. They are gratuitous on the part of God, He gives them to people as he wills. This came into the Catholic Church through the Pentecostals who do not have a proper theology of grace.
There are 3 kinds of gifts of tongues:
1] The person speaks his language and the other person understands him in their language (just like St Peter in Pentecost).
2] God infuses in you the knowledge of the foreign language so you actually know what you are saying in order to evangelize someone in their language (the case of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch). St Thomas says that God always uses an instrument according to the nature of that instrument. We are intelligent creatures, when we are doing something volitionally like speaking, God doesn’t use us to evangelize or pray, unless we know what we are doing. He infuses the knowledge and than from there we know what we are doing in His service. A knowledge of knowing what you are doing is a way to distinguish it from diabolical tongues, where there is speech coming out but they don’t know what they are saying.
3] When people say “I just open myself up to the spirit and the gift of tongues comes out.” There is a name for that, its called ‘channeling.’ This is where you allow a spirit to speak through you, this is dangerous and superstitious.
St Paul says to prophecy is greater than speaking in a tongue (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:1-12), moreover an interpreter is needed is someone if is speaking in a tongue (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:13-19) and their must be order when this gift is exercised, not disorder (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:26-40). Now if we want to get real biblical, St Paul says "women should be silent in the Church" (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35). Instead I see woman speaking in tongues at charismatic events, laying their hands on the heads of men and praying over them, preaching and giving "prophetics words" or "words of knowledge" to men all the time. Hey, I'm just pointing this out, I'm just the messenger, the Word of God is the 'Message' (that must be followed).
I agree with St Paul: "I would rather speak five words with my mind, so as to instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue" 1 Corinthians 14:19.
Our Lord Jesus Christ spoke about speaking in tongues once (cf. Mark 16:17), he cares more about your interior life.