Yet, the charismatics, 50,000 of them, who gathered at the Olympic Stadium in Rome recently, ‘spoke in tongues,” some of them appeared to do so anyway, with no interpreters, because no one had a clue what they were gibbering about.
Saint Augustine:
“In the earliest time the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed: and they spoke with tongues which they had not learned ‘as the Spirit gave them utterance.’ These were signs adapted to the time. For it was proper for the Holy Spirit to evidence Himself in all tongues, and to show that the Gospel of God had come to all tongues [languages] over the whole earth. The thing was done for an authentication and it passed away. (Ten Homilies on the first Epistle of John VI, 10).”
Furthmore Thomas Aquinas (Also a Doctor of the Church) agrees with Augustine and states that tongues has ceased because the Church no longer requires it, as she (all the people who make up the Church) already speak all languages:
“…whereas even now the Holy Ghost is received, yet no one speaks in the tongues of all nations, because the Church herself already speaks the languages of all nations: since whoever is not in the Church, receives not the Holy Ghost (Summa Theologica, II, II, 176) “
Protestant evangelicals like to speak in tongues. But they are not “in the Church.” So, they cannot “receive the Holy Ghost.” But so many Catholics go along with this nonsense. Why? Because these Catholics have no problem with a heretic who refuses to say a “Hail Mary” being inspired to speak gibberish by some “spirit”.
