Thursday, September 27, 2012

Glossolalia

          I came across this blog post some way that I don't remember,

http://whatshouldcatholicismcallme.tumblr.com/post/29285463966/when-im-at-adoration-at-a-steubenville-youth

          which describes, with the use of amusing gifs, what a young Catholic person experiences during a youth conference that includes Mass and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
          Based on my own experience at the exact same type of youth conference described, I can say it's spot on. Mass and Adoration were held in the gym--a huge room filled with emotionally charged teenagers and resounding with praise and worship music, and the combination resulted in behavior I considered melodramatic, at best. People were crying, embracing one another, falling to their knees. As Adoration progressed and Christ in the Monstrance was processed through the aisles, these more innocent displays of excitement turned into hysterical laughing, hysterical crying, people fainting and collapsing, people speaking in tongues (which greatly surprised me), and other emotional upheavals.
          I looked around me in amazement at the huge number (it was more than half of the congregation) of fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds who apparently had been so struck by the Spirit that they behaved as if possessed. I thought, "Is the Holy Spirit truly flowing through every one of these kids, and if so, is something wrong with me that I feel nothing?"
          I continued to think about this for a while. It didn't bother me that I was seemingly unmoved in a room full of young people slain in the Spirit--on the contrary, I decided I preferred being among the few sane and stable people there. No, what occupied me was the statistical unlikelihood of such a thing happening to a room full of young people. I couldn't shake the theory that most of them had simply faked it, and to this day I still believe that to an extent. Am I cruel to think that? I had a nagging impression that these people were so driven by their own emotional instabilities and desire to feel something for their own satisfaction, combined with the swelling music and the influence of their peers, that they--for lack of a better word--aped these dramatic spiritual reactions. Or at least exaggerated them.
          Another theory I heard later is that these teens may have been so willing to remove barriers in order for the Holy Spirit to enter that they had opened themselves too much, had become too vulnerable, and thus were possessed quite easily by the lurking evil spirits. They were easy prey because of their emotional immaturity and willingness to relinquish control of their faculties in order to achieve a spiritual experience. However, this seems a bit excessive. While it's hard to believe that, for the first time since the Apostles, that many people in one room were truly given the gift of speaking in tongues, it's also unlikely that all of them were possessed by demons together at the same time.
          I finally (years later, after pretty much having forgotten about it) came across something that helped me make more sense of it. I was on an online forum with a pronounced atheist who mentioned practicing glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, outside of religious or spiritual gatherings. I read into this a little bit and found some words about it in the online Catholic Encyclopedia.
Corinthian Abuses (I Corinthians 14 passim).—Medieval and modern writers wrongly take it for granted that the charism existed permanently atCorinth — as it did nowhere else—and that St. Paul, in commending the gift to the Corinthians, therewith gave his guaranty that the characteristics of Corinthian glossolaly were those of the gift itself. Traditional writers in overlooking this point place St. Luke at variance with St. Paul, and attribute to the charism properties so contrary as to make it inexplicable and prohibitively mysterious. There is enough in St. Paul to show us that the Corinthian peculiarities were ignoble accretions and abuses. They made of "tongues" a source of schism in the Church and ofscandal without (14:23). The charism had deteriorated into a mixture of meaningless inarticulate gabble (9, 10) with an element of uncertain sounds (7, 8), which sometimes might be construed as little short of blasphemous (12:3). The Divine praises were recognized now and then, but the general effect was one of confusion and disedification for the very unbelievers for whom the normal gift was intended (14:22, 23, 26). TheCorinthians, misled not by insincerity but by simplicity and ignorance (20), were actuated by an undisciplined religious spirit (pneuma), or rather by frenzied emotions and not by the understanding (nous) of the Spirit of God (15). What today purports to be the "gift of tongues" at certainProtestant revivals is a fair reproduction of Corinthian glossolaly, and shows the need there was in the primitive Church of the Apostle's counsel to do all things "decently, and according to order" (40).

          This corresponds with my assumption that this behavior was not the norm. Perhaps the reactions these young people experienced weren't completely artificial, but they were almost definitely the results of their own inner emotional workings and not legitimate seizure by the Holy Ghost.
          It is important for all Christians to remember, especially the young and impressionable ones, that everything we think, feel, and do, should be for God's glory, not our own.

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