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Cults (when defined as heretical sects) are classified as such because of their outright denial or rejection of essential Christian doctrine. Historically, this has principally been a denial of the nature of God (the Trinity), the nature of the incarnate Christ (divine-human), and of the absolute necessity of divine grace in salvation (the Pelagian controversy). 11 While Protestants have accused Catholicism of having an illegitimate authority and of confusing the gospel (two serious charges to be examined later), Catholicism does affirm the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, and that salvation is ultimately a gift of God’s grace (a rejection of Pelagianism). 12 I challenge anyone to name a recognized cult that affirms the Trinity or the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ ( see comparison chart). At various Marian shrines around the world, for instance, the Catholic Church believes that a small number of miracle cures of illness have been effected. Catholicism's stance on abortion is part of its wider and keystone teaching on the dignity of the human person which informs its understanding on all issues. So while much has been written of Catholicism's outspoken stance of sexual morality, and more generally of its tendency post-Reformation to regard anything modern as negative, less has been written of its social gospel, often called its 'best kept secret'.
The term cult identifies a pattern of ritual behavior in connection with specific objects, within a framework of spatial and temporal coordinates. Rituals would include (but not necessarily be limited to) prayer, sacrifice, votive offerings, competitions, processions and construction of monuments. Some degree of recurrence in place and repetition over time of ritual action is necessary for a cult to be enacted, to be practiced. [5] We don’t need big families. We need small families, and we need to control our reproduction as a society. So let women control their own lives and procreation. Most will have children. Most want to have children. But they also want the right to control how and when they do it, as they have to run the risks, so let’s let them have that. I have been asked how I could forgive my parents for what to many seems like abandonment. I understand that point of view, but I saw and still see it in a different light. Even as a child I was aware of a creeping grasp that Father Feeney and Sister Catherine had on everyone at the center. I felt that my parents and I were suffering together, and when we were once again reunited as a family, several years after I was banished, I never felt anger toward them nor the need to forgive them. 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?
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There is no "seven channels of grace." The only thing that God accepts is faith in the blood of Jesus which was shed to pay for our sins. In recent years, the number and volume of conspiracy culture in Catholicism has grown,” said Massimo Faggioli, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. Well, I don’t agree. I’m going to put my faith in my fellow female humans. In my life and line of work, I see at least 100 women a day. They are my family members, my co-workers, my friends, neighbors, and customers. They are a regular part of my life. I don’t talk to any fetuses, but I do talk to women all the time —and I will not betray their citizenship. I will not stand there and look them in the eye and tell them they are less than me. I will not tell them they have to be slaves to a pregnancy if it happens. Or that they have to risk pregnancy to have sex because the church has pulled a fast one on them and successfully restricted or banned birth control through the Republican Party’s efforts. Or that they have to risk death through birth. Cultus is often translated as "cult" without the negative connotations the word may have in English, or with the Old English word " worship", but it implies the necessity of active maintenance beyond passive adoration. Cultus was expected to matter to the gods as a demonstration of respect, honor, and reverence; it was an aspect of the contractual nature of Roman religion (see do ut des). [3] Augustine of Hippo echoes Cicero's formulation when he declares, " religion is nothing other than the cultus of God." [4]
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. The People’s Temple of the Disciples of Christ’, commonly known as the Peoples Temple, is a religious cult founded by Jim Jones in 1955 in America. Jones was a twisted man, and using the idea that the Bible was only white men’s justification to dominate women and coloured people, he preached ‘socialism’ and solidified his ability of fake ‘faith healing.’ The people’s temple is truly a doomsday cult in nature, considering 918 people died at the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project in a mass murder and suicide, to reach ‘divinity,’ an incident that records the most number of determined civilian death in the USA before 9/11. Cults are usually formed, molded, and controlled by a single individual or small group.**When I read this, I think of the Pope and the Vatican. Remember, their whole argument is essentially just “the ends justifies the means.” They are trying to say that the ends — protecting a brainless embryo and fetus that might, only might become a person — justifies forcing a woman to carry that fetus against her will. But if the pregnancy isn’t voluntary, then by definition it’s involuntary. And as the pregnant woman is laboring — to carry and develop a child which alters her physical body and causes her to risk death in childbirth — it absolutely is involuntary servitude forced by the state. The 13 th Amendment bans this —but the Pope doesn’t care. He and Republicans have decided that the religious slavery of women is justified to make sure children are born. My daughter’s description of my childhood caught me completely off guard. A cult? My home was a cult?But I was devastated when, at the age of 6, together with my 4-year-old sister and 3-year-old brother, we were separated from our parents and two youngest siblings. No longer part of a loving family, we were suddenly being raised by one of the big sisters, a stentorian woman who meted out corporal punishment on a regular basis. I watched in agony as my little sister, Mary Catherine, became a frail and frightened child, prone to going for days without eating. My only recourse was to assume, as best I could, the role of protector, which often meant surreptitiously eating her meals so that she would not be punished. The Geographic Cure A view of St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, and Rome from the top of Michelangelo’s dome in St. Peter’s Basilica. Photo by David Iliff/Creative Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0 The term “cult” also gets in the way of understanding American politics. There are real differences between isolated religious groups that live together communally and political movements that attract millions of people. 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.
in its opposition, as stated in the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae vitae, and reiterated on numerous occasions by Pope John Paul II, to artificial methods of contraception which, it says, interfere with the transmission of human life and the sacred purpose of sexin 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 As a child, my life was centered around the activities of the men and women who chose to follow Father Feeney. In fact, early Christianity could be called a cult because Christian beliefs and practices – such as not sacrificing for the emperor – were considered strange and dangerous in ancient Rome.
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