"I think every Christian feels a kinship to some degree with other believers."
ALL Christians are COMMANDED TO love one another substantively and meaningfully. That is a direct command from Jesus. Those who promote docritinal divisions and diviseness Paul called immature Christians unable to have a mature, deeper understanding of the Christian faith.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
Hmm.. he also called them heretics and schismatics.
They are suppose to be a sign for UNBELIEVERS not believers.
"Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to believers, but to unbelievers; but prophecies not to unbelievers, but to believers."
What were tongues used for in the NT?
"And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak.
Now there were dwelling at Jerusalem, Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.
And when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded in mind, because that every man heard them speak in his own tongue.
It meant that when the gospel was originally being spread, people could understand it in their own language. It wasn't used for this:
It has nothing to do with the strange noises I see coming out of people in charismatic circles.
True, but Paul does not say that we are to love one another by incorporating beliefs which contradict the catechism of the Catholic Church. Of the 30,000 plus Christian denominations, a sizable minority exist precisely as a reaction to the Church which Christ founded, and their various doctrines specifically deny Catholic truths.
Catholics owe things to God as well as to neighbor-we have to uphold the faith which is guided by the Church and protected by the Holy Spirit, and love others as well, be they Protestants, Jews, Muslims or atheists. There have ALWAYS been heresies, those additions or subtractions from the deposit of faith. The point of departure for Pentecostal/Charismatics and Catholics is not one of style, emotional exuberance in the institutional organization. It hinges on a singular point of doctrine:the nature and purpose of the Holy Spirit. No matter how you twist or turn it, Pentecostal/charismatic claims regarding the Holy Spirit represent a radical departure from Church teaching because it is rooted in Phenomenalism, Gnosticism and Protestantism.
Phenomenalism literally means any system of thought that has to do with appearances. It assumes that there is no knowledge other than that of phenomena-denial of the knowledge of substance in the metaphysical sense; or that all knowledge is phenomenal—denial of the thing-in-itself and assertion that all reality is directly or reflectively present to the consciousness. To the Pentecostal/Charismatic, one does not truly "know" God until one has experienced Him consciously, usually by some sensory experience (i.e. emotional, or physical as in the case of the glossolalia) of "His Spirit" at work in one. Spiritual experience thus overrules the 2000-year teaching of the magisterium in such matters such as ecumenism for example. To the Charismatics, the very presence today of phenomena supposedly identical to the true charismata present in the early Church ipso facto proves their "divine origin." The experience is what matters, not the discerning Catholic's legitimate questions, such as "Why the 2000-year lapse? Is this experience really the same as the phenomena described in Scripture? or Is ‘the Spirit’ leading us toward a more fully Catholic life or toward apostasy?
Gnosticism in its varying forms have plagued the Church through the centuries. Although they have differed in detail, the central proposition to all of them is the alleged existence of a "secret knowledge," or gnosis, which makes its possessors the true believers and, thus, the only ones really bound for heaven. Pentecostal/charismatic gnosis becomes the experience of God through the interior or exterior manifestations of "His Spirit," which makes those experiencing these strange phenomena the "true believers."
Given the Pentecostal/charismatics ecumenical beginnings, it's no surprise that their thinking is slanted markedly towards Protestantism, notably sola scriptura, or personal interpretation of scripture based on the "inspiration of the Holy Spirit." Charismatics dangerously position themselves toward a Protestant rejection of Tradition as a source of Revelation- a fatal cleaving away from the true Catholic position that the interpretation of Sacred Scripture belongs exclusively to the Church—which is truly led by the Holy Spirit—and not to the individual reader.
What then is the Catholic position on the Holy Spirit? The Catholic Church explains the presence of the Holy Spirit, using the words of Saint Augustine, “What the soul is to the human body, the Holy Spirit is to the Body of Christ, which is the Church” (catechism-797). Just as God created the body of Adam and then breathed life into it, so Christ forms his Mystical Body, and then, together with the Father, breathes life into it, making the Church a living being. The Gifts of the Holy Spirit were never understood to be individual, personal rewards for the apostles. The Holy Spirit descended on the first Pentecost to guide the Church and give it the strength to undergo the many sufferings it would have to face in the world. Thus, the Gifts of the Holy Spirit belong to the Church and are at the service of the Church.
Being a member of the body of Christ, the Church, is more than having membership in a club: you are a member like your arm is a member of you: a living part that works with you. God has a task in mind for each of us and God gives us the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we need in order to do that work FOR the Church. The crucial point is this: the guidance of the Holy Spirit will never and can never lead one away from or against the guidance of the Church. Anything that takes us away from the Church, away from our prayers, away from the sacraments, cannot be the Holy Spirit, but must be rejected as a dangerous delusion. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Church, and we have a share in that Spirit because we are members of the Church. That is the ONLY reason we believe the Church is infallible in teaching us about the faith. Not because we think that popes or bishops, or even councils are perfect (they are human, and humans are fallible). We believe they are infallible because we know that they are guided by the Holy Spirit, who will not let the Church founded by Jesus Christ go astray. No matter how corrupt popes and bishops may be, and in the history of the Church they have been very corrupt indeed at times, and no matter how political some of the councils of the Church may seem, the Holy Spirit will not allow them to teach us something wrong about the faith.
As long as Charismatics don't leverage false ideas regarding the Holy Spirit to overtly teach heresy, they will likely survive as a community in the Church, but if certain trends in this movement are unchecked, the Holy Spirit will withdraw and the movement will schism.