Once Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire, the secrecy remained because of the sacredness of the Sacraments. If one wished to access them, they need only enter the catechumenate! The Sacraments are freely offered, but there is path to access to them to ensure that the person knows what they are asking for. I think I too would have walked out had the priest at my dad’s funeral said no one wants a long eulogy. But viscerally, I knew that saying something personal was necessary for me and my family – and thus it was important that the service was not dominated by the needs of the church or people who didn’t know my dad well. It was a Church of England service. My dad hadn’t attended since he was a young man, but they were more receptive to my family’s needs than the Catholic church described by Georgina Lawton. Cults are usually formed, molded, and controlled by a single individual or small group. The Catholic church, by contrast, has been molded by an incalculable number of people throughout its long history. Catholicism is governed by creeds, councils, and the ongoing magisterium. Take these 12 religious cults for example. Their practice and belief are heavily contributing superstitious attitude of people, so much that it is actually proving to be dangerous for humanity. 1. Scientology Image source And then are you going to keep her there for the last seven or eight months until you force her to risk her own death by giving birth? Is that what you’re going to do in the name of God? Mentally torture her, physically enslave her, and burn her soul? What if thousands of women starve themselves? Are you going to do this to all of them?

An appropriate description of a cult is “a religious group originating as a heretical sect and maintaining fervent commitment to heresy.

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until after the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. The concept of praying to Mary, saints, and angels is not found in in its devotion to Christ's mother, the Virgin Mary, who Catholics believe gave birth to Jesus without having sex first and who was raised body and soul into heaven where she occupies a special place interceding between God and His people Mike Pence laments the 63 million abortions in the U.S. in the last 50 years, but he turns his own brain off when talking about them. Of course he doesn’t bother talking about how you would have had to feed and house those 63 million extra people when American farmers have been saying for decades they can’t keep up with food demand as it is. He doesn’t talk about housing, either: All those millions of people would need 15 Los Angeles-sized cities to live in. After the publication of my book, I began to share my story at libraries and clubs and on radio shows around the country. I came to realize that my listening audience agreed with my daughter: I had been brought up in a cult. The signs that I had overlooked were now staring me in the face: blind obedience to an absolute authority, centralized financial control, paranoia about the outside world, separation of families, scorn for those who left the cult. Why had I missed what now seemed so evident?

In Catholic terms, what is a cult? Well, it is not what the modern world calls a “cult.” Culture is connected intimately to worship. The root word is “cultus,” from which arises the English word “cult.” Cultus comes from the Latin verb colare which means “to till.” Therefore, we have the word agriculture (agri – field, cultus – till). In the Middle Ages, cultus came to mean adoration or veneration specifically. The prime act of worship is sacrifice. It is getting outside of oneself to show that worth is found outside of the self. Worship could thus be seen as “giving worth.” I’m now 82, white and the son of an Irish Catholic mother. I’ve been through the whole gamut of Catholic indoctrination, up to being an altar boy for the bishop on certain occasions. I went to a Catholic grammar school run by the Christian Brothers. Early schooling was under nuns at two primary schools. Authoritarian leaders and structures can usually be found in groups that have a clear mission and identity. From the Catholic Church to the U.S. Marine Corps, many organizations rely on strict discipline and obedience. Using the word cult is an easy way to criticize a group, but a poor way to describe one. Pope Leo X (quoted above) now knows that whatever little worldly gains and lusts he got were not w The prevalence of conservative conspiratorialism in the Catholic Church has much to do with politics, and particularly the politics of the United States. “I guarantee, the Venn diagram of Catholic conservatives who loved (former President Ronald) Reagan and loved John Paul II, is almost an exact circle,” Dancy said. Both groups are prone to see conspiracy theories as signs of a return to a halcyon past.considered more authoritative than the Bible itself. (Matthew 15:3,6-7; Mark 7:5-9,13) The cry of the Reformation was sola scriptura According to Pew Research Center data from 2015, roughly 2% of cradle American evangelicals have converted to Catholicism in recent decades. While a small cohort, many of the loudest and most vehement opposition to Francis comes from formerly Protestant converts.

I cared, therefore, how those who consider the center their home today would receive the book. I shared it with the head of both the men’s and the women’s communities ahead of publication and offered to engage with the current leadership, but those requests were denied. Brainwashing was associated with the Unification Church, or “ The Moonies,” founded by South Korean Rev. Sun Myung Moon. The Moonies would isolate new recruits and shower them with attention, a process called “ love bombing.” I’ve got news for you: You’re not going to turn this Catholic into a torturing, enslaving, soul-burning person in God’s name. I’ll have no part in the church’s effort to push abortion bans through politics. I’m out. I am excommunicating you. As of right now, I am no longer a Catholic. I am no longer a Knight of Columbus. Although the Pope serves as spiritual leader of Catholicism, his authority is not absolute. Catholicism employs a hierarchical structure with various bishops and priests around the globe exercising some degree of autonomy within their dioceses; unlike cult leaders who demand unquestioning loyalty from followers, he does not claim divinity status or demand unquestioning devotion from his congregation. 3. Isolation and Manipulation Also known as the ‘Branch’, this cult was founded in 1955, led by David Koresh, who believed himself to be the ‘final prophet.’ As it was an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, there were power struggles between Koresh and its leaders. Koresh also had sexual relations with many of the female members of the cult, and sometimes even raped underage girls with their parents’ consent. Stories of acute child abuse by Koresh were also circulated though the state failed to collect enough evidence against him initially. Koresh also made his followers believe that the State was their enemy. In 1993, FBI tried to forcefully bring the Branch Davidians out of their Texas refuge, during which the building caught fire, and 80 members, including several children and Koresh himself, died.The Roman Catholic Church is not Christian; her precepts contradict the Bible repeatedly. Nowadays, it can be heard that the Roman Catholic Church gave us the Bible--but she actually burned Bibles and them that translated and believed the Bible (witness William Tyndale, a good and a great man). Rome is full of heresies (e.g., Mary remained a virgin) and blasphemies (e.g., the mass--many died for not believing this). She has killed multitudes of Christians. She has maintained her blasphemous reign as the so-called "church" by force and deception--not by the truth of the Bible (which she publicly railed against). The Bible reveals who Rome is and is therefore dangerous to her. A frequent characteristic of cults is their emphasis on a “remnant identity”— that is, they claim to be God’s exclusive agent or people who restore “authentic Christianity,” which has been corrupted or lost. Usually this type of restorationism has an accompanying anticreedal and antihistorical mindset. While Catholicism has at times been guilty of an unfortunate exclusivity 13 (some Protestant churches have also), they emphatically deny restorationism, and strongly emphasize the continuity of God’s church throughout history. In popular understanding, the leaders of cults use mind control or brainwashing to remake the personalities of recruits by forcing them to do and believe things that they normally wouldn’t accept.

This article discusses the original meaning of the word cult, not the term in the sociology of religion, new religious movements called cults, cults of personality, or popular cult followings.My earliest memories are filled with the sound of laughter, of being in the constant company of the energetic and intellectual men and women of the community. I did not know that they had come together in this joyous enclave because of a falling out with the local authorities of the Catholic Church and Rome. (Father Feeney was dismissed by the Jesuits and excommunicated in 1953 after refusing to reply to a summons to the Vatican.) Nor did I know that my father, a teacher at the Jesuit-run Boston College, had, along with two other professors, been fired in early 1949, when I was just 7 months old, because of their rigid theological views. Cults typically exercise rigid control over their members and demand unquestioning submission, with disobedience punished by shunning and/or excommunication.**This can include any church who discourages reading God's word. Pope Francis is silhouetted during a private audience at the Vatican on Dec. 14, 2019. (Yara Nardi/Pool photo via AP) The Catholic Church places great emphasis on moral law and is strong in its devotion to saints. It embraces a mystical dimension - most clearly visible in its liturgy - which sits uneasily with the modern secular and scientific world.