'Anti-Cult' Roman Catholic Cultists

Thanks to Thomas Richards- Spiritually Smart

http://z10.invisionfree.com/The_Unhived_Mind_II/index.php?showtopic=2775

"Rev. Debold is a recent contributor to "Cults, Sects, and the New Age," edited by fellow AFF Advisory Committee member Rev. James LeBar. Totally on his own account, Rev. Debold has published on cults in The Journal of Dharma (Bangalore, India), and in AFF's Cult Observer and Cultic Studies Journal. He is currently preparing a "pre-conference" session for clergy on the occasion of next October's Cult Awareness Network national convention. He is in fact associated with the New York/New Jersey affiliate of CAN and the representative of the Newark Archdiocese on the New York Interfaith Coalition of Concern About Cults, the first such interfaith association in the United States."

http://www.icsahome.com/infoserv_profile/debold_walter.asp

The Above mentioned "AFF" stands for American Family Foundation (Sounds so nice!).

"AFF's official history claims it was founded in 1979 by a concerned parent, Kay Barney, the retired Raytheon International Affairs Director, and Dr. John Clark of Harvard Medical School." (Raytheon just happens to be is a major American defense contractor and the world's largest producer of guided missiles.)

Thats the common information. Here's what Barbara Boyd writes, "AFF's official history claims it was founded in 1979 by a concerned parent, Kay Barney, the retired Raytheon International Affairs Director, and Dr. John Clark of Harvard Medical School, in response to the threat posed by violent and coercive cults, particularly in the aftermath of the purported (reputed or claimed; alleged:) mass suicides of the members of the People's Temple Church of the Rev. Jim Jones, in Guyana in 1978. In contemporary language, this version of AFF's founding is an “urban legend.” In reality, the AFF's business is mind-control. Three of its “experts,” Robert J. Lifton, Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West, and Margaret Singer, did not merely study mind-control—they practiced coercive conditioning in the Nazi-doctor-style horrific secret experiments funded by the CIA's and Army intelligence's MK-Ultra. A fourth MK-Ultra veteran with AFF, Rabbi Maurice Davis, actually financed the psychotic Rev. Jim Jones of the People's Temple suicide church, in Jones's early years in Indianapolis.
However, in 1977, when a series of Congressional hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives forced the CIA et al. to close down the covert mind-control programs, Lifton, Singer, West, and others who had worked for years on the covert CIA payroll, were cut loose. They found a new home in the AFF."



Here Father Lebar goes into a detailed explanation as to why Opus Dei isn't a cult:



"Cult-Like Practices?"
"Opus Dei has been accused by critics of having "cult-like" practices. Religious scholars say Opus Dei is not a cult. But many do say it engages in practices that appear cult-like, practices used by many strict religious groups and that used to be common in some Roman Catholic orders.

Though he doesn't believe Opus Dei is a cult, Father James LeBar, who has been the Archdiocese of New York's consultant on cults for some 20 years told ABCNEWS.com that some of Opus Dei's practices resemble those used in cults: "Yes, because they do use practices that were prevalent in the 1950s in all Catholic orders, [though] many of the orders have done away with them, the close supervision ... " he says.

LeBar says Opus Dei's practices are not necessarily wrong: "If someone wishes to follow a very strict way of life, and be very closely supervised, and they willingly go into that, that's fine," he says. "But if the group manipulates people so that this happens to them and they don't know it, I'd have objection to that."

LeBar says he has been in contact with Opus Dei over the years, "hoping to help them see where the line is drawn and where they cross over it." "What I've disagreed with at times are the methods by which they either invite people in or seek to keep them in when they want to leave," he says, but adds, "I've never found any serious problems, nothing to really raise a ruckus about." Source: http://www.rickross.com/reference/opus/opus1.html

Notice in the above bold that Lebar states, "If someone wishes to follow a very strict way of life, and be very closely supervised, and they willingly go into that, that's fine," This statement is in complete contradiction with the whole mission of the "anti-cult" movement. They are saying that people who are involved with what they consider cults aren't able to make this decision by themselves. Thus it is a completely hypocritical stance he is taking excusing groups affiliated with the Catholic Church while attacking all kinds of other groups that, in my opinion, are way less demanding.

http://www.chick.com/reading/books/153/153_09.asp

Chapter Nine: Betrayed?

Excerpt:

"In Martin's KINGDOM OF THE CULTS he never mentions Roman Catholicism as a cult, and never tells lost Roman Catholics to come out of that unscriptural system "THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." (Rev. 17:5)"

Does Walter Martin speak for the body of Christ? No! Only the Word of God does this. Yet, this man stands on his pedestal, with both hands filled with the slanderous garbage supplied by the Vatican and pro-Catholic sources, and he throws it at Alberto's character to destroy his reputation. Dr. Rivera says he has copies of the original material sent to Martin by the Vatican and the Jesuit superiors in Spain. But you'll notice, Martin hasn't bothered to attack Alberto's message that the Vatican is the whore of Revelation. Only Alberto, the man. And yet, is Martin without sin? What about Martin's past? His reputation could be slanderously destroyed also, just like anyone else's. Would this discredit all his information on Mormonism, and Jehovah's Witnesses? No! God uses us in spite of ourselves.


-Thomas

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SpirituallySmart.Com


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This recalls the 'anti-cult' criminals that cooperated with the U.S. ATF and military's criminal murderous assault on the Branch Davidians of January 28 - April 19, 1993 under Jesiut Georgetown tool U.S. 'President' William Jefferson Clinton.

Behavior of people as this only reinforce the concept of the Roman Catholic Church as a cult.