My cousin who is a cradle Catholic ( In my entire family we are all Catholic going back to 7-8 generations that we are aware of ) is under the influence of a group that follows "Word Affirmation "

He has always been a faithful Catholic so this has taken me by surprise . There is great emphasis on repeating certain verses hundreds of times . eg. Galatians 3:13 Phil 4:19
He and others around him still attend Mass but they try and influence my wife and me to stop praying the Rosary albeit subtly ( we ate infant food as infants but now lets eat solid food from the Word of God!) seeking intercession of Saints .

I cannot find any Catholic basis for the following views they promote ,
1) All diseases and sicknesses are spirits (Hence God will heal everyone of even fever and colds)
2) The enemy cannot understand when we pray in tongues ( so praying in tongues and practicing is encouraged , this is the second most important principle .
3) Certain parts of the Bible are the Word of God and certain parts are not eg. first 37 chapters of the Book of Job are not the Word of God .
4) Proverbs 18:21 The tongue has the power of life and death , so speak life into every situation , be very careful of things you say ( I have been made redundant due to the downturn and have often been told that I should have been more careful when expressing worry about my job situation and even now with things I say )
5) We do not need to "invent" prayer everything we need to say is given in the Word of God eg below

I was given this prayer to say

http://jcilministries.blogspot.ae/p/con ... needs.html

The words that immediately disturbed me were
"Jesus was made poor that I, through His
poverty, might have abundance. " 2 Cor 8:9 I am sure St. Paul did not intend it in this context .
Does anyone have more experience with countering this ? It seems like a mix of Prosperity Gospel and Pentecostalism to me .

Can anyone shed more light on the points I listed ? I cannot seem to find any Catholic basis .

God Bless

You are absolutely right in all of your objections, but the lure held out by this is enticing (as long as you throw out 6:24 and its parallels out of Scripture, which you can if you're willing to ditch the part of Job where he suffers).

As for a reply: There's no written condemnation of this. We don't need one. We have living witnesses. What these people are teaching ... what do you think Mother Teresa would say about it? Would they have a place for St. Francis in their midst?

Or Blessed Margaret of Castello. She was abandoned by her parents after the "miracle" they selfishly sought for her didn't happen.

Thank you Fr.Kenobi and Speed Racer . Since we are cradle Catholics , most in the family don't have a clue of how to counter this nonsense . I developed an interest in Apologetic's after coming across Steve Ray's books but still am a little overwhelmed at times as these are people who have memorized hundreds of scriptures and can repeat them .

Will be grateful if anyone can guide me towards sources to counter this .

Let me be clear about this: Not only is there no Catholic basis for this, there is no Christian basis. This is a blasphemous counterfeit of Christianity.

If you want a good place to start:

If they truly say that the first 37 chapters of Job aren't Scripture, who the gave them the right to say that?

What is the Scriptural basis for saying that the Enemy can't understand tongues?

I don't think any apologetic is possible here. If someone is willing to deny any authority in order to establish their position--be it the authority of the magisterium or the authority of the Scripture--then what basis do you have to argue from? There is a very long history in the Catholic Church of the importance of suffering in this life for the betterment of the next. The Word of Faith movement completely undercuts and contradicts that, and so to embrace it is to say that, on this point, the Church is wrong. But if you can say the Church is wrong on that point, then you are denying her authority. Likewise, if someone recognizes that some portion of Scripture contradicts their theology and so responds by excising it, then they are just saying that Scripture is wrong. More specifically, they are saying that anything that contradicts their theology can't be Scripture, so if it is in the Bible, then it just isn't supposed to be there. But then they could literally cut out and ignore every single verse in Scripture that says or implies that their theology is wrong. As such, they do NOT get their beliefs from Scripture but rather elsewhere and simply allow to stand those verses in the Bible that already agree with them. So the upshot is that the Scriptures have no authority.

There's nothing you can say to someone who is going to use the correctness of their position to disprove any evidence you have against their position. They are committed to circular reasoning from the outset, meaning that even if you took the time to give them a solid argument, the very fact that your argument contradicts their position would be proof that your position is wrong.

The only apologetic I'd offer such a person is to point out the logical error and refuse to discuss any content whatsoever unless and until they gave up their fallacious reasoning. But the moment they do that, the first few chapters of Job alone prove the stupidity of their views.

Thank you theJack and TreeBeard , I praise God that He has enabled me to recognize the danger in this sort of teaching , sadly they are infiltrating the Church through the Charismatic Prayer Groups .

Thank you Father, I now understand perfectly when you say there is no Christian basis also , our good old 'brethren' at Got Questions have this to say of the Word Affirmation movement .

https://www.gotquestions.org/Word-Faith.html