See the fuller quotation at the end of the chapter. The Catholic Church fathers, it should be said, did not deny that the Holy Spirit might occasionally bestow a genuine gift of prophecy on an outstandingly holy believer, in the “lesser” sense of prophecy – predicting future events, supernatural insight into someone’s character or past life, etc. (but not new revelations about doctrine or moral conduct). What the Catholic fathers utterly denied was the truly prophetic nature of Montanist utterances, ecstasies, and new moral revelations.
