There are times in life when some of the buried past comes up, and last week was one of them. Last Thursday, we said goodbye to the matriarch of the family that lead the Catholic Charismatic prayer group I was a part of in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. We’ve stayed connected with the family so it wasn’t like, “we haven’t seen you in years” and the reciprocal.
As I’ve said many times, my years as a Roman Catholic were crucial in my formation as a Christian, both intellectual and spiritual. The prayer group was in the centre of the last act or two of that play. I outlined that history in my tribute to her husband, who passed away in a house fire in 2008. The suppression of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Chattanooga forced a course correction for me which wasn’t really voluntary but has been a fruitful endeavour of its own. I still believe that the main driver in that suppression was the desire of local Catholicism for respectability, something the Renewal didn’t seem to confer. It was also driven by the change in pontificate. John Paul II wanted to run a tighter ship, and ecumenical movements such as the Charismatic one didn’t fit in his agenda. Knowingly or not, his desire for institutional integrity outweighed his ostensible pastoral desire for a laity alive in its faith. (In some ways that desire outweighed any impulse on his part to get to the bottom of the priestly sex scandals, a thing that the current Occupant of the See of St. Peter shares.)
The Charismatic Renewal had its own problems. Many of those centred around the authority issue in the covenant communities. I had beaten those off in Dallas before coming to Chattanooga, and I was blessed to be a part of a group whose leadership did the same in the group, even with the head of the Tennessee-Georgia Christian Camps in our midst. Ultimately though it wasn’t enough.
Those controversies and the fallout were long in the past when we gathered to say farewell to Jo Ann Roueché. Her funeral was lovely, but you could tell the priests who celebrated it were more traditional than those who did her husband’s sixteen years ago. The program “read the riot act” about who was allowed to receive the Body of Christ, and I still have a hard time with the “new” translation of the Mass. The music was a mix. They started with this classic from the “old folk Mass” and had some traditionally Protestant songs but many were more “traditionally” Catholic. It worked well because, in the aftermath of the suppression, her children started the Roueché Chorale, which has become a community institution, and perform everything with their characteristic professionalism.
That music produced one of those “aha” moments. The Chorale’s style is more formal and beyond the folk style which predominated during the Charismatic Renewal. But then I realised: I’ve been asking the questions like How Did We Get From Scanlan to #straightouttairondale? I then realised the answer was right in front of me: the Catholic Church had beaten us (well, some of us) into submission, those who were left had to adjust and adapt. That beatdown got a professional explanation in David Peterman and the Hard Choices of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, but from a worship style standpoint the guitar strummers had to put them back into the case for good, and the hand raisers had to lower them for the last time.
The chief victims of the current papal beatdown are the trads. I’m not really in sync with their idea but I am sympathetic with their suffering from the way the Church is treating them. It’s the same story we went through. After I left I read Pascal’s Provincial Letters, and considering what he and the Jansenists went though, I saw the same story. No matter what motivation you ascribe to these beatdowns, the result is always the same: the enforcement of mediocrity amongst those who have to “know when to kneel, when to stand, and when to reach for their wallet.“
For those of us who were challenged by the Church and then betrayed in this way, it still hurts, even after all of these years.
Memory eternal, and my prayers are with the family.
Positive Infinity 
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