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376 BOOK REVIEWS Catholic Charismatics. Are they for Real? By R. Douglas Wead. Carol Stream, lllinois: Creation House, 1973. Pp. HW. $3.95. It is no secret to even the most casual observer of the American religious scene today that Pentecostalism or Charismatic Renewal is making news as the fastest growing religious phenomenon in our era. The reasons for the rapid spread of this movement, particularly in the Catholic Church, have been analyzed by many, but it seems to me that they were best summed up by Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B., of Saint John's Abbey, Collegeville , in a talk he gave about three years ago to the Charismatic prayer group that meets at the Gregorian University in Rome. He chose four major reasons for the success of the Charismatic movement: 1) People are looking for religious experience and find it in the movement; ~) People are searching for community and find it there as well; 3) Just because people have been exposed to the preaching of the Gospel, it does not mean that they have consciously accepted the Gospel of Christ and committed themselves to him, but Charismatic renewal offers the means to this end; 4) Charismatic Renewal could not achieve any success in the Church unless it had the acceptance or at least the tolerance of the American hierarchy. These reasons, I think, help to explain the fact that thousands of Catholics who would have reacted very negatively to the "Pentecostal " experience before Vatican II as something allied to the " Holy Rollers " are now deeply committed Charismatics. This book was written from quite a different perspective by a man who is an ordained minister in the Pentecostal tradition, the son of a Pentecostal preacher, and a member of one of those classical Pentecostal churches that sprang up at the turn of the century when the mainline Protestant denominations refused to have anything to do with those of their flocks who had been "baptized in the Spirit " or had undergone the Pentecostal or Charismatic experience. R. Douglas Wead grew up in an atmosphere where this experience was taken for granted, where the charismata described by St. Paul in I Cor. 1~ and 14 (which Catholics have considered to be extraordinary) were considered an ordinary aspect of the Christian life and where " speaking in tongues " was thought to be a normal and desirable way of praying. The task he sets himself in this book is to prove to other classical Pentecostals that Catholics can " receive the Spirit " too, since his co-religionists have tended to limit the work of the Spirit to those who shared their doctrinal understanding of this experience. Mr. Wead does this in a highly popular vein, with many examples and stories, both moving and informative. He emphasizes the contributions that Catholics can bring to the movement if they avoid radicalism and other pitfalls of the Classical Pentecostals themselves. Actually, a Catholic wanting theological analysis and exploration of the Charismatic Renewal BOOK REVIEWS 877 would do better to read The Pentecostal Movement in the Catholic Church by Edward O'Connor, C.S.C. or Did You Receive the Spirit by Simon Tugwell, O.P. On the other hand, Catholics involved in the Charismatic Renewal would do well to read this book, as the author sees Catholic strengths and Pentecostal pitfalls that the Catholic Charismatic may overlook , all the while affirming what the Spirit is saying to the churches today. GILES DIMOCK, O.P. Providence College Providence, Rhode Island The Other Dimension: A Search for the Meaning of Religious Attitudes. By Louis Dupre. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 197fl. Pp. 545. $10.00. Something of a product of the Enlightenment, philosophy of religion has tended to pass judgment on religious statements and attitudes by testing whether they met philosophical standards. Dupre intends to turn that about, affording religion the pride of place, and employing philosophical tools to clarify what religious people do. He means to shift the bias only, holding philosophy itself to be a neutral instrument of critical inquiry. His intention leads him to a predilection for more dialectical forms of philosophy, however, since these-notably Hegel-prove more attuned to the harmonics of religious affirmations. In...

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