Who is a Charismatic?
The question of who is charismatic is a loaded one. One can of course reference the charisms of I Cor 12 (and elsewhere) and say that those who evidence those charisms are charismatic. But in the “elsewhere”, celibacy is mentioned as a charism and to describe all celibates (or at least those who have received the charism of celibacy as opposed to the obligation of celibacy) as charismatic is not very useful. One of the challenges with human communication is to come up with words that have specific meanings and can actually communicate some content. In the case of a word like charismatic, we face a number of obstacles to useful communication. Don’t get me wrong, I like the word in its most common religious usage, but I think we have to be careful that we don’t make it into a tightly defined word. I’ll explain. Charismatic has a secular meaning of a person with an attractive personality, who can motivate others to work for a purpose, etc. This has little to do with the religious use of t
