Sunday, June 05, 2005
CATHOLIC ALPHA
is reviewed by Paul Likoudis in this article at Catholic Culture, originally published in The Wanderer. It begins:
St. Paul — In the February 2002 edition of the British Catholic monthly, Christian Order, New Zealander David Selby asks, in the feature article, "The Second Reformation Engulfs New Zealand," questions increasingly on the minds of fellow Catholics:
"What's going on here? Why are our churches full of Protestant ministers calling themselves Catholic priests, and Protestant congregations calling themselves Catholic? Harsh words you may say, but what would Luther, Calvin, or Cranmer recognize them as — Catholics or Protestants?"
What provoked Selby was a parish mission experience where the priest, dressed in his civvies, downplayed, ignored, or rejected every essential item of the Catholic faith, including the Real Presence, Confession, Holy Orders. About 80% of Selby's fellow "Catholics" agreed with the "priest" and rebuked him — Selby — for acting "unecumenical" by insisting on Catholic doctrine.
Selby's experiences are not confined to New Zealand; indeed, they are commonplace throughout the Western world. So the question naturally arises, with Catholics already more or less Protestantized: Why are Catholic bishops from England to South Africa, and Canada to Florida, rushing to promote a Protestant evangelization program called "Alpha"?
The latest American bishop to endorse Alpha, and promote it in his archdiocese, is Archbishop Harry Flynn of St. Paul/Minneapolis. In January, he sent a letter to his priests, deacons, and seminarians praising Alpha as "one of the most effective" evangelization tools available today, and observed:
"Catholic leaders recognize that [it] is consistent with the foundational teaching of the Catholic Church . . . If your parish does not have an active program for the new evangelization, then I strongly urge you to consider Alpha."
What is particularly curious is the embrace of the program by Archbishop Flynn and other Catholic prelates — including William Cardinal Keeler, who is permitting its use in numerous parishes in the Archdiocese of Baltimore — is that there is no shortage of credible critiques, from evangelical, Anglican, and Catholic sources that the program is designed to create a new breed of "third wave" or "New Age" Christian who is cultish, charismatic, anti-dogmatic, and hostile to traditional Catholic worship, doctrines, and morality.
According to Christian Order's editor, Rod Pead, Alpha is merely "the latest in the long line of New Age/Protestant Trojan horses to be wheeled into Catholic parishes with episcopal blessing."
Pead further says that not only is it a big business, involving an estimated million participants worldwide, "built on copyrights, target figures, line charts, and multi-million pound advertising campaigns," it is a direct descendant of the Toronto Blessing. The latter is "a so-called Baptism of the Holy Spirit which induces hysterical, animal-like behavior (uncontrolled laughter, shaking, gibberish, grunting, howling, etc.) among congregations.
"Nicky Gumbel, who introduced this alien 'spirit' into England via HTB in 1994, is the prime mover behind Alpha: 'I believe it is no coincidence,' he stated in May 1995, 'that the present movement of the Holy Spirit [Toronto Blessing] has come at the same time as the explosion of the Alpha course. I think the two go together'."
Introducing Christian Order's feature article on Alpha for the issue of January 1999, Pead continued:
"One would have thought this connection [with the Toronto Blessing] alone sufficient to alert Catholic bishops and priests to keep their distance from Alpha; to dissuade them from flirting with 'angels of light' (2 Cor. 11:13-15).
"Alas, such is their general loss of faith and blind panic at the massive yearly decline in the Catholic population that our shepherds have rolled out the red carpet instead. Bishop Ambrose Griffiths of Hex-ham and Newcastle, who says that church attendance in his diocese 'has been going down on a straight line graph for the last 25 years,' has embraced Alpha with uncanny zeal."
And so have many other prelates, including the late Basil Cardinal Hume and Bishop Donald Konstant, the UK's pre-eminent catechetical "expert" who oversaw the demolition of religious education in Britain during the postconciliar period, Archbishop Adam Exner of Vancouver, B.C., among others.
Three years ago, Catholics in the English-speaking world were put on notice that Alpha, with its "Catholic" add-on "elements," was dangerous — specifically by Gillian Van Der Lande in Christian Order, January 1999.
She opened her essay with an admission she had participated in the program.
Go to the website to read the rest of the article.
Alpha was presented in my former liberal parish a couple years ago, so it's in the Cleveland Diocese. This is a new religion aborning. It does not serve Christ's Church, but rather works to tear it down. As the article indicates near the end:
Having analyzed the program from its own promotional materials, Van Der Lande then described her Alpha day experience:
"I attended the course 'Alpha Day in the Spirit.' After the three video sessions, lunch, and two small group discussion sessions we were invited to be prayed over by the Alpha leaders and helpers. I am afraid I sought sanctuary in the church at that point, so sickened was I at the sight of lay leaders advancing to pray over others, rub their backs, and cradle their heads.
"I do not know therefore if anyone received the gift of speaking in tongues and whether this was facilitated by the leaders or not. I returned to find another fugitive who was a convert from a Pentecostal Church in America. She was sickened too, having left that form of church to join the Catholic Church. She did not return to complete the Alpha course.
"That day of the Holy Spirit did not begin with Mass even though the parish priest was a helper. It did not even include a visit to the church of the venue, a shrine dedicated to our Lady. We did not even pray the Hail Mary, but of course our Lady is not part of Alpha and there is implicit rejection in Alpha of the Immaculate Conception of our Lady."
Among the components of the "Catholic" add-on "elements" of the program are two tapes, Why Should I Listen to the Church? and Why Bother Going to Mass?
Both will give little reason for an affirmative answer and, indeed, may leave the viewer with reasons to think there are no convincing reasons to either listen to the Church or go to Mass.
The Catholic Charismatic Movement is a Trojan Horse intended to destroy the priesthood, and thus the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the source of our Redemption. This movement is no friend of Christ. It is occult and serves the opposition.
It is best to treat all "programs" that creep into a parish with suspicion. Few of them are Catholic.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
