Not light years from the concerns of Catholics, at all. You must not live in Texas. 
There's a not insignificant number of charismatic Protestants, some being of my acquaintance, who are deeply affected by the recent anti-charismatic turn of the SBC, and who have found themselves drawn to Catholicism, whose "big tent" happily makes room for tongues.
This really is a big deal for a lot of people; many have found themselves comfortably combining Baptistic theology and charismatic theology, sometimes calling themselves "Bapticostal," and this recent divisive antagonism is hurting churches, families, and individuals. Check out the Internet Monk for the gory details.
If I may ask, what is the Church's position on speaking in tongues? When I was growing up, nobody mentioned it except the little girl down the road who went to a Nazarene church. She claimed to speak in tongues and get taken by the Holy Spirit on a weekly basis. I chalked most of that up to a kid's need to impress her friends.
Thing is, in recent years, more Catholics that I know talk about it, and about the sorts of crazy biblical gifts that I'd assumed had fizzled out two thousand years ago (seeing spirits and healing by touch). Heck, my parish even has a charismatic paryer group that speaks in tongues.
So, I'm confused. What does the Church actually tecah about such practices (yes, I've read I Corinthians, so if you've got sources beyond that to direct mt to, I'd appreciate it) and why did they drop off the radar for so long?
Tongues is one of the many charisms which the Holy Spirit distributes as he wills, according to the teaching of the Church. They are not a sign of sanctity and most people do not have this charism (in fact, while everybody has a charism due to their baptism, there is no such thing as a "majority charism" that most people have).
For the soundest exposition of the Church's teaching on charism, see the St. Catherine of Siena Institute, http://www.siena.org)
Stories of speaking in tongues certainly aren't too far from the Catholic communion; if only the same could be said of stories of Catholic college faculty being fired for questionable theological beliefs.
Tongues and other pseudocharismatic nonsense are quite common in the Catholic Church. I can direct you to a few (mostly Mexican) parishes where people roll on the floor and yammer during Mass.
As for the official Catholic position - I don't know what has been spoken magisterially, but until a few decades ago, any Catholic who claimed that the sort of infantile babbling characteristic of low Protestant revivals was authentic glossolalia would not have been taken seriously. The real gift of tongues is the ability to be understood by people of all languages - St. Francis Xavier had this. Babbling that is understood by nobody is the sort of abuse that Paul's letters to the Corinthians were supposed to correct.
One involved Mr. Camp's professed sympathy for speaking in tongues, a charismatic practice in which believers, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, call out in a language others can't understand.
I won't pretend to know what could be the point of speaking in a language no one understands.
You know, I grew up thinking that the gift of speaking in tongues was the ability to speak in your own language but be heard by a foreigner in his or her native language -- like the apostles evangelizing at Pentecost.
Then I became a teenager and learned that speaking in tongues was a gift that enables you to babble incoherently in a state of ecstasy, and that somehow this was supposed to be a very profound prayer to the Holy Spirit.
The first explanation strikes me as a very useful gift in building the kingdom of God. The second second one struck me as silly nonsense when I first heard it (both explained and actually performed), and still does to this day.
Oh, man. I went to Baylor (which is considered an extremely conservative school by most of the world, but a fleshpot and a den of iniquitous thinking by most folks who'd be on the Criswell College side of things - partly why Criswell was founded, IIRC). Went to a "charismatic" Baptist church in Waco for a little while, and that was considered pretty out-there even at Baylor. I can just imagine what this-all was like . . .
P.S. Frankly, the snits and quarrels some Protestant denominations get up to make Catholic arguments look positively magnanimous, IMHO, as one who's been both places. Not that any of these things are very edifying, though.
I won't pretend to know what could be the point of speaking in a language no one understands.
Let us remember that Paul told the early Christians that speaking in tongues would impress any random observer as evidence of drunkenness.
Being unedifying is not an argument against its being speaking in tongues.
OTOH, Paul was clearly out to encourage other gifts.
+J.M.J+
St. Vincent Ferrer is also believed to have had the gift of speaking in tongues. Came in handy during his missionary endeavors. Charismatic Catholics claim that St. Teresa of Avila had the gift as well, but I don't know much about that.
I attended an "independent Assemblies of God" fellowship for part of my stay in Evangelicalism. They taught there that glossolalia is the "evidence of baptism of the Holy Spirit." Meaning everyone who is baptized in the Holy Spirit will speak in tongues at least initially, even if they later lose the gift. I guess they think that's the Spirit's way of saying, "Okay, I'm here now; you can stop praying over him."
I never agreed with them on that point, though. My view of glossolalia was more influenced by a Church of the Nazarene radio preacher who said that most alleged tongues-speaking was gibberish. Guess I still think the same.
In Jesu et Maria,
Glossolalia tongues (as opposed to "being understood by everybody" tongues) appears to be one form (a pretty minor, low on the ecstatic scale one) of going into ecstasy.
The thing is, there are plenty of Catholics and other Christians going into ecstasy during services all the time. It's just that not everybody does it by spouting tongues, crying out, or rolling on the floor. It's a lot harder to tell that someone who's outwardly just sitting quietly is actually experiencing "consolations" and "favors", or that the person covering his face is tearing up for otherworldly reasons.
So let's not get too snitty about each other's devotional practices, gifts, and callings, okay?
Your admonition assumes that we can agree that "glossolalia" is a genuine form of devotional practice, Maureen. I for one am not so convinced, and I suspect that it is not particularly helpful to developing good habits of devotional practice.
Commenting by HaloScan
