So Who's a Pentecostal Now?

Abstract

In an important article in Gregorianum, now reprinted separately, Fr Francis Sullivan has invited us to take yet another look at the Pentecostal doctrine of ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’, suggesting a new avenue of approach, using St Thomas’s teaching on the mission of the Holy Spirit in la q.43.At the outset, let me confess to a growing conviction that, in the long run, the Catholic Pentecostal Movement (under whatever name it may wish to be known) will be seen to have contributed most to the Church by goading a surprising number of Christians, and even some theologians, into taking a renewed interest in the various traditions we have in the Church concerning the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Whatever reservations one may (or, perhaps, should) have about Catholic Pentecostalism, this, at least, is surely a good thing.Sullivan subtitles his essay, ‘A Catholic Interpretation of the Pentecostal Experience’. He begins by offering a working definition of ‘the Pentecostal experience’ as ‘a religious experience which initiates a decisively new sense of the powerful presence and working of God in one’s life, which working usually involves one or more charismatic gifts’. Members of Pentecostal Churches, he reminds us, would add ‘experience marked