Dear John,

This isn't exactly a liturgical question at least in the sense that it pertains to liturgical law, but nonetheless I'm delighted to take a crack at it and offer MY OPINION rather than a definitive truthful answer.

Let's take a look at the gifts mention in 1 Corinthians Chapter 12:  expression of wisdom, expression of knowledge, faith, healing, mighty deeds, prophecy, discernment, tongues and interpretation of tongues, all of these gifts of course referring to the Spirit.

Well in today's modern Liturgy my guess would be that expressions of faith and knowledge are made manifest in the priest's homily.  Along with these expressions we also find prophecy in the actual texts of the Liturgy, especially of course the reading of Sacred Scripture.

It seems to me that both mighty deeds and discernment are the people's response to what has happened at the Liturgy, not necessarily at the celebration itself but taken from there out into the world.

That leaves speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues: and before I comment on that I want to remind you this is my PERSONAL OPINION.  Back when St. Paul wrote this letter, there was not the mass communication that we have today.  It was common in that world for people to be fluent in many languages, just like it is in that part of the world today. Even though they had all these people speaking all these languages, it would still be considered a gift to have an interpreter present as Christianity grew and grew to new lands and people of new languages, because they did not have the communication capabilities that we take for granted today.  So in MY opinion, the gift of tongues and the gift of interpretation of tongues, AS IT PERTAINS TO TODAY'S LITURGY, is the fact that our Liturgy is translated into hundreds of languages and despite that it's in many languages, we are all praying the SAME THING as a worldwide universal Church.  Most areas of the Catholic world have priests speaking in the native language, using printed texts translated from a common Latin source(in the Latin rite).  That to me is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  The only difference is, in our modern world, we are accustomed to it.

With all that having been said, I'd like to add that in my college years I frequented charismatic celebrations, both at Mass and as separate services.  I was quite fond of the prayer meetings where members often found themselves with the gift of speaking in tongues, however there never was someone present with the gift of interpretation so I'll never know if the gift was genuine and if it was, what they were saying.

Regarding the celebrations of Liturgy where charismatic gifts were encouraged(such as praise and worship):  well personally I found it distracting when used at Mass.  Charismatic prayer is a FORM of prayer, as is liturgical prayer, private prayer, devotional prayer, contemplative prayer, etc...  of all these forms of prayer, liturgical prayer is the highest, and just as you would not insert a another form of prayer into the liturgy for example devotional prayer such as the Rosary into the Mass, in my opinion you would not insert charismatic prayer into the Liturgy.

Hope this helps John, and please feel free to ask a follow-up question because I'd like to continue this "discussion" for at least one more more round even though this is a Q&A forum  :-)

Mr. Slavek