Abstract
This article deals with Catholic Charismatics in Italy. The brief description of the case study gives a chance to make some more general comments on what is happening under the sacred canopy of Global Catholicism where the Spirit blows, and furthermore in relation with so-called Global Pentecostalism. In other words, my working hypothesis includes the following statements: (a) Catholic Pentecostalism constitutes a variant of a more global phenomenon, which seems to challenge the organizational model of historic Christian churches. (b) The study of the Italian case is interesting because its story shows the extent to which Pentecostalism questions the Roman form of Catholicism. Elsewhere in the world, the development of the phenomenon has not encountered the same difficulties as it did in Italy. Indeed, in some cases (Brazil and the Philippines), it has been supported and accepted as a sign of new religious vitality. From this point of view, Rome is relatively far away. The Roman–Tridentine model governed by the clergy resists in Italy, while it appears weaker where the Spirit blows wherever it wants. The Charismatic movement was gradually brought back to the bed of ecclesial orthodoxy after a long persuasive work carried out by bishops and theologians towards the leaders of the movement itself. However, despite this ecclesification/clericalization process, the charismatic tension remains, and the expectation for a pneumatic church constitutes an implicit form of criticism of the Roman form of Catholicism.
Highlights
The Catholic Charismatic movement (CCR) is part of the vast and highly articulated reality that, for the sake of convenience, scholars call Global Pentecostalism as a sociolinguistic shortcut (Miller and Yamamori 2007)
The differentiated models of aggregation have changed during the so-called three waves of Pentecostalism (Hollenweger 2005; Anderson and Bergunder 2010): the first was historical or classical Pentecostalism (1900–1939); the second was the Neo-Pentecostalism of the 1960s and 1970s; and the third began in the early 1980s, taking the form of what I propose to call the charismatic enterprise
Of modern Pentecostalism, in all its variants (Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox) and its variations on a theme, we are talking about the imagination of the Kingdom by various collective movements that refer to the Christian message of Salvation at the End of Times
Summary
The Catholic Charismatic movement (CCR) is part of the vast and highly articulated reality that, for the sake of convenience, scholars call Global Pentecostalism as a sociolinguistic shortcut (Miller and Yamamori 2007). Of modern Pentecostalism, in all its variants (Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox) and its variations on a theme (from classical Pentecostalism to neo-Pentecostalism and, to the charismatic enterprise), we are talking about the imagination of the Kingdom by various collective movements that refer to the Christian message of Salvation at the End of Times They are socio-religious actors who, precisely, mobilize crucial symbolic resources that belong to the Christian message and try to keep together the belief in the promise of the Kingdom and the practical forms of spirituality, rituality and organization which are considered more adequate to faithfully reflect this eschatological expectation. The competition is an adaptation to the pure logic of the market, governed by the rules of supply and demand, where salvation goods—symbolic products designed for immediate consumption that are aesthetically attractive, and are designed to produce a sense of marvel (somewhere between entertainment and dramaturgy)—circulate freely
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