Rediscovering the gifts of the Spirit

(Vatican Radio) The Pentecostal communities are amongst the fastest growing Churches in the world today with an estimated 600 million followers joining the movement since its foundation just over a century ago.
While their pervasive and expanding presence in many traditionally Catholic countries has caused tensions, and even violence between believers, the Catholic Church has officially been engaged in dialogue with the Classical Pentecostal Churches since 1972.
The most recent session of that dialogue took place in Helsinki, Finland, at the beginning of July, with the two sides discussing the question of discerning the charisms of the Holy Spirit within their respective Christian traditions. While the dialogue is not aimed at establishing structural unity between Catholics and Pentecostals, it does go a long way towards overcoming prejudice, misunderstandings and mistrust between the two sides – that’s according to Mgr Juan Fernando Usma who follows the dialogue at the Pontifical council for Christian Unity. He talked to Vatican Radio's Philippa Hitchen about the Helsinki meeting and about the history of the Pentecostal movement….

Listen:

“One of the most important characteristics of the Pentecostal spirituality is the charisms, as we find in the Bible, but for us the question is ‘is a charism valid or not?’ Therefore the discernment came into play and we were talking about how you can recognise the source of the movement of the spirit…

The Pentecostal movement started in 1906 and they contend that Pentecostalism arises from a spiritual experience that recovered for the Church something that had been lost in the 3^rd century – the experience of Pentecost as described in the Acts of the Apostles, with all the elements, gifts and charisms described by St Paul in Corinthians 1. In 1906 that experience was led again into the Body of Christ. Catholics will affirm that the Holy Spirit has always been in the Church, that charisms have always been in the church and that we’re living through these graces and at times they are more charismatic….

Classic Pentecostals and Catholics all through the world are having very difficult relationships – we must say that hatred, misunderstandings, even violence are still happening- people will hate Catholics and say they’re not Christians, or Catholics are hating Pentecostals and label them as ‘sects’, or ‘tambourines’ or ‘hallelujahs’. The dialogue is helping us to recognise who we are, how the Gospel is embodying in our own constituencies and traditions, we are sharing our spirituality, trying to overcome misunderstandings and recognising the specific role that each has in the body of Christ...."