cult or church?

Great Debates
1

OK… this has to do with http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcult.html this thing.

Now… the Roman Catholic Church [note the “church”] is defined as a ‘church’. Right? But as an ex-member of the RCC, (ex- because i believe them, together with any other religious organised body, to be a bunch of fraudulent scammers) I’d say that ‘churches’ in general have exactly the attributes you state for it being a ‘dangerous cult’.

Following is the definition of ‘dangerous cult’ with comments about how ‘churches’ apply exactly to those definitions.

a: preoccupation with bringing in new members and making money

  • The Roman Catholic Church was one of the wealthiest, if not THE most wealthy organised body in the history of mankind for the most of the last 2000 years.
  • Many Christian pastors and ministers are very wealthy, and (together with some priests on this account) take mistresses as opposed to their ‘rants on goodie goodieness’.
  • Many ‘churches’ including the roman catholic church - preach on bringing new members into the community. I remember a bishop ranting about how if you brang 3 new unbelievers into the ranks of the RCC and they become life devotees, then your place in heaven is guaranteed. What a crock of shit.

b: discouragement or punishment for any doubt or questioning of authority

  • refer to the first of the 10 commandments -
  • refer to MANY incidents in the bible.
  • you CANNOT doubt the authority of GOD or ‘his representatives’. Otherwise you end up a pillar of salt or get raped by watcher angels or some shit.

c: a polarized “us vs. them” mindset

  • refer to the first of the 10 commandments -
  • refer to bible - dont know where - cant be bothered to look it up.
  • ‘I am the one true GOD. All others are FAKE.’ <- this thing.
  • basically states that ‘christianity’, together with the ‘christian’ or ‘jewish’ (the one and the same in my point of view except for that jesus incident) GOD is the ONLY god and hence incites a us(with the CHRISTIAN GOD point of view) vs them(with a non-christian FAKE GOD) mindset.

d: leadership is not accountable to any authority, either financially or morally

  • same deal as b. The RC church leader - the pope - got his own little country so that he’s not accuntable to any authority. They do lots of immoral shit too… like erasing babies in pregnant nuns fathered by priests in unsafe environments and getting the nuns killed and covering these kinds of events up. Basically, THEY can murder(or manslaughter -> i’m SURE they didnt want to kill the nun and all, you know? [nb: sarcasm intended]) but YOU cant, cuz it’s immoral and illegal.

e: belief that “the ends justify the means” and readiness to use unethical means to achieve their goals

  • crusades ring a bell?

f: requiring members to socialize only with members of the cult

  • all churches that i have seen so far ‘recommend’ this and frown if your spouse or children take a different religious view. It so goes as far as a couple had been unofficially evicted and excommunicated from a church because their children (after maturing at ages about mid 20s) rejected the church and elected to believe a different religion.

g: in more extreme cases, requiring members to cut ties completely with family or the outside community

  • in the largest of the ‘Churches’, you got priests, nuns, brothers who are required to do this?

So… cult or church?

My standing on this issue is that ‘all organised theological bodies’ apart from academia are ‘dangerous cults’ and churches are just those cults with which they have official and publicly open buildings in which to perform their regular rituals in.

2

Welcome to the boards, jkim.

I don’t feel like I can adequately respond to your post in this forum. Your characterization of the RCC specifically, and Christianity, Judaism and their scriptures in general strikes me as remarkably ill-informed. You also make a whole lot of statements that I would be surpised if you could back up with specific facts.

If you would like to discuss the issue with other Dopers who are familiar with cults, religious history, etc, I would encourage you to open a thread in the “Great Debates” forum titled “Is the Roman Catholic Church a cult?” You will get a lot more responses there than you will in this forum, even though your question is related to a Straight Dope article.

(as an afterthought, if you simply want to rant against the Catholic Church, take it to the BBQ Pit. You’ll get plenty of responses there also).

Before doing so, I would helpfully suggest getting some facts and cites to back up some of your assertions.

3

I echo the welcome to the SDMB posted by Skammer.

May I suggest that you read a little here and there on the SDMB and get a feel for the place before you post new threads?

You will find, if you do even a superficial scan, that you are not likely to get away with statements like

if you are also going to make statements like

And if you say things like -

you will run into people like me. I have not had my brother-in-law, the RC priest, mention that he was under any pressure to cut ties with me when we had him over to dinner for the holidays. (I am not a Roman Catholic. )

What I am asking is another little something you will encounter a lot on these boards. Cite?

Or, as Skammer mentioned, you may wish to post the same OP either in Great Debates, or the Pit. As he says, in either forum, you are likely to receive a warm welcome and an enthusiastic response. Very enthusiastic. And very, very warm.

Regards,
Shodan

4

Not for any other reason than simply because it is in direct reply to the said definition of cult vs church(refer to link in original post). If you think I’m ill-informed, feel free to look up the information yourself. Here are my sources.

a.1: just open your history books.
a.2: go to your nearest prodestant or etc church (non RCC on this respect - because RCC ministers [priests] do not have the right of ownership) and observe in neutrality your own local minister. If your lucky, you might find a true holy boy. Hey, who’s to say ALL nazis are evil?
a.3: from personal experience. you believe? you believe. if not? too bad.

b.1-3: bible

c.1: bible.
c.2: this comment was a direction to search for a clause similar to what was mentioned in c.3. May have caused confusion in the way i wrote it.
c.3: bible - lots of places: first place that comes to mind is the moses incident and that golden cow or whatever statue thingy incident.

d.1: Well… This was in the newspapers roughly 4 years ago. Article was about detailed documentation about how the RCC covered up such incidents in 27 nations around the world… consisting of multiple murder(they CALLED it manslaughter) incidents together with lots and lots of abortions. The actual existance of this documentation (which was what the article was about) proves that the RCC does see itself as above moral and law. Reliable news paper (The Age) source unlike gossipy news paper (Herald Sun etc). Cant remember exact date, just the contents - so if your interested in debunking me, you can look for it :slight_smile: .

e.1: history books again. Lots of other incidents too, like the war of RCC vs England just cuz the guy wanted an heir… (oversimplification i know :slight_smile: but hey…)

f.1: personal experience. but then i’m sure i’m not the only one…

g.1: Well… these people cant create their OWN family, can they? which was where i was going, not specifically on the point but I verymuch see it as related?

My post was not directed specifically at the RCC, but organised religion in general. The reason it may SEEM like it was directed at the RCC is because I have taken examples from the RCC because I know more about them than any other church.

Lots of simplifications and yadiyadiya, but you REALLY cant tell me those ‘definitions’ of a dangerous cult do NOT fit snuggly(maybe not a 100% fit, but close enuf…) to the definitions of any other church.

Give me a new definition of a cult and I may reconsider:|… who knows?

5

jkim78, you might want to lurk a while and see what other people here do when asked to cite a source. Usually, they provide a URL so curious sorts can just click to it, but there’s a difference between saying “Just look in any history book!” and saying “American Pageant, William Manchester, 1975, third edition, page 75.” (No such book exists, but that’s what a cite would look like.) Or "National Geographic, October 1986 issue, page 35, the article with the naked Brazilian woman entitled ‘That Darn Church.’ "

Bible quotes are even more specific. New American (Catholic) Bible, King James Version, Douay, Book of Mormon? Which Testament? Which book? Every chaper and line is numbered. There are numerous online versions of the KJV for reader convenience.

You have the germ of an argument, but the level for citations here is a little higher than you may suspect.

6

jkim, it’s true that your post is a response to a Staff Report. However, I think you’ll find more debate in the other forum. In this forum, you’ll get people pecking at you for cites – merely stating “the bible” or “any textbook” is insufficient, and implies strongly that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Hence, I am moving this to Great Debates, where the absence of fact and strength of opinion will not necessarily be handicaps.

7

jkim, it’s true that your post is a response to a Staff Report. However, I think you’ll find more debate in the other forum. You made a reasonable choice in your selection of forum, I’m just seeing the way this discussion might go, and thinking you’ll find it more to your liking in the Great Debates forum.

In the forum for commenting on Staff Reports, you’ll get people pecking at you for cites – merely stating “the bible” or “any textbook” is insufficient, and implies strongly that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Hence, I am moving this to Great Debates, where the absence of fact and strength of opinion will not necessarily be handicaps.

8

Right! I have my copy of History of the World (Roberts) open. Anything in particular I should be looking for? Some stuff in here about ‘Meso-Americans’. Sounds cultish…

The difference between a ‘cult’ and a ‘church’ lies entirely with the perception of the masses. Extreme behaviors (claiming to be Jesus, shooting up some ATF agents, publishing hilarious ‘tracts’, etc) do not lend themselves towards mainstream acceptance, thus: Cult. It’s not ‘fair’, but that’s life. A cult can become a church, but it takes time and mainstream acceptance.

9

Feel free to excoriate the Catholic Church as much as you’d like, of course. However, in the context of your OP as a response to the use of words and their definitions, you have utterly failed to make your case.

Note the word preoccupation. The RCC (as most Christian denominations) does consider itself to have an evangelical mission, but such an effort is nowhere near a preoccupation. The RCC invests far more resources into providing hospitals, schools, social services, and related charity work than it does in outreach and missionary activity. The RCC also has ongoing activities to solicit funds. However, you will generally find that those funds are immediately re-invested in the social activities (or in maintaining physical properties built many years ago) than in accumulating wealth for its own sake. (This is not to claim that there can be no legitimate criticism, only that your claim that that is their preoccupation has not been proved.)

You’ve obviously never been to a Catholic university (particularly one run by Jesuits). There has never been a time in which there was not constant debate within the Catholic Church. It is true that, following the Reformation, the RCC took a harder line against some theological speculation, but there has never been a point in which questions could not be asked. There are, certainly, examples of individuals who have been censored or excommunicated for going beyond some (sometimes arbitrary) limits, but there are many people who have engaged in disputes without any sanctions leveled against them.

Nope. There has been a ceratin amount of retrenchment in the last few years as various non-Catholic Christian denominations have explored the ordination of women, new attitudes toward homosexuality, and other issues, but the RCC is still a very strong advocate of ecumenism. Hardly a polarized position.

Which explains why, when Cardinal Law was found to have violated the trust of the people of the Archdioces of Boston he was able to continue in his office indefinitely without being forced to resign. (And, of course, the RCC is subject to all the same laws as anyone else in any country in which it operates. When the Vatican Bank got itself in trouble a few years back, the Italian authorities were quite willing to go in and prosecute people for criminal activities.)

Your appeal to a single set of events that ended 700 years ago, in which the church was very definitely entangled with the civil authority makes it look like you really don’t understand what the phrase means.

Excuse me? A policy of attempting to dissuade people from marrying outside their denomination (but then permitting it if they insist) is hardly the same thing as forbidding any socializing with people who are not members. This claim is simply ludicrous.

Absolutely not. There are different orders in which the members choose a life separated from the world, but in no case are they prohibited from seeing family members. (And if u]some orders did prohibit family visits, that would hardly be the cult situation of prohibiting all members of the entire church from seeing their families or friends who were not members.)

Again, you can find much to criticize about the Catholic Church, but your particular claim that it meets the given definition for a malicious cult fails on every point.

10

So much garbage, so little bandwidth.

Again I repeat that it would be best if you read more and posted less, especially at first. On the SDMB, one does not make assertions and then airily reply “look up the information yourself”. Because yes, you are very ill-informed.

Nonetheless, the burden of proof remains with you. You, having made your assertions, are expected to present the basis for those assertions. Based only on my own experience, I can see immediately that at least some of your post is simple nonsense.

We have already seen that your assertion that Roman Catholic priests are expected to cut all ties with the outside world and non-Catholics is wrong. Would you care to defend it in some way, or do you accept that you are mistaken there?

Your statement, besides Godwinizing, is unclear. Are you asserting that local ministers own their churches? Again, from personal experience you are incorrect. Or are you saying that Roman Catholic priests are not allowed to own anything? Also wrong.

Or what exactly are you saying?

Also wrong. The leadership in my church is very much accountable to the congregation. Our annual meeting, as a matter of fact, is this Sunday, where the budget (proposed entirely by members of the congregation) will be voted on and approved/disapproved by the whole congregation. My wife is one of the church auditors, and accountable for all the financial disclosures managed by our church treasurer, who is a CPA.

Really? What newspapers, where, and what did they say?

My method of debunking you is clearly not going to be to try and do your research for you. My method will be to assume that you made this whole thing up based on a movie you saw, some anti-Papist propaganda from the Middle Ages, (or maybe the voices in your head), and wait for you to produce documentation that
[ul][li]About four years ago, the Roman Catholic church was shown to have covered up multiple murders[/li][li]That these murders were of nuns[/li][li]That multiple abortions were performed on nuns[/li][li]That the nuns were pregnant by priests[/li][li]That the crimes were classed as manslaughter[/li][li]That this occurred in 27 different nations[/li][li]That this was a matter of policy by the Roman church, proving that they considered themselves above the law[/ul] [/li]
All specific, detailed allegations, subject to factual proof. Got any?

No, based on my experience, you know very little about the Roman Catholic church.

You have yet to provide proof for a single one of your assertions. Care to produce some, or shall we simply assume that you are unable to do so?

Regards,
Shodan

11

Salaam aleikum jkim78

Considering your OP, I have some remarks to post

You happen to overlook the complete history of Islam and Islamic Empires.

I know one Catholic clergy who happened to be what you describe as “wealthy” for the simple reason that he was born in a wealthy family. Yet he does not live in other circumstances then other priests normally do.
I don’t know any Catholic clergy who has a mistress.

I never heard of such a Bishop and I doubt if any Bishop would ever be that lunatical to declare himself having the authority to give people a free pass to heaven.

  • The first commandment is not about “authority”. It is about belief in One God.
    You can choose not to believe, or can’t you?
  • The Bible is also about belief. You believe what is in it or you don’t. Nobody tells you you can’t believe the Bible.
    Further you need to read the stories in their context and with their exegeses.
  • You surely can doubt God or His prophets if you want to, or is someone forcing you to bleieve in God? For the Bible interpretation, see above.

-With"us" versus “them”, you can have a point if you refer to the amount of people who follow this mindset. Yet there are many who don’t.

  • The first commandment is about believing or not believing. You place such in the context “us” versus “them”. In my opinion that is a false debate since nobody forces you to believe in God.
  • If you don’t believe in One True God, then why bother about those who do saying that all others are “fake”?
  • You once again forget Islam. Muslims worship the same God as Christians and Jews. Yet that doesn’t prevent you from choosing not to, or from believing there is an other God, does it?

In any case, everyone who believes in God is considered to be held accountable for his/her actions by God.

If the Vatican wouldn’t take notice of “other authorities” it would seize to exist in no time. And I would like to see some evidence of your horror stories.

I think you mix up the USA policy here with the Vatican.

To me it does :). Yet to state that these events only happened “because of religion” is nothing more then giving in to the falsified and/or incomplete popular “history” writing. I suggest you try to find out what was going on in reality = behind the surface of the societies involved.

Really? Then how come my Catholic mother married my Muslim father? How come she ever looked at me while I was raised in good old Islamic religion and tradition?
How come I have Catholic relatives who don’t stop asking me when I shall visit them again?
How come I have many Catholic friends?
How come I ever got my enrollment at a Catholic university, let be that I have diplomes with the name of that institution on it? (By the way: I studied Islam and its history there… And more then one of the professors are Catholic clergymen).

Oh God, I must contact the Pope to excommunicate all of them.

Really? I thought those brothers and nuns who do this, choose to do that out of free will when entering their specific convent. I also thought to know that they are not “forced” to do this and that they are given an amount of time to be there as novice, before taking such a vow/decission.
Salaam. A

12

Well from an anthropological standpoint, ALL religions are cults. We only bother to make the distinction between “Churches” and “cults” as a way to distinguish dangerous sects from relatively harmless sects. All religions are considered irrational activity, some more than others. Specifically, Christianity like many of the world’s faiths, is a Death Cult. What that term refers to is the fixation on the reward in the afterlife. Because it and it’s many sects happen to be a dominant religion in the West it is referred to as a religion rather than a cult. From a scientific standpoint, Atheism, or perhaps also agnosticism are the only rational choice for faith. SO is Christianity a cult? Yes. Is it a dangerous cult? It certainly CAN be. According to my textbook it scores, overall, a respectable 74% out of 100 on a scale for danger. Roman Catholocism Scored a slightly lower 68% Lowest of the Christian sects with the exception of Greek orthodox which scored a 66%. Highest were small protestant sects which often got into the mid 80’s.

To be considered a dangerous cult, a group must score a 65% or better on this scale. To give balance The Heaven’s Gate cult scored a perfect 100%. The Moonies got a very respectable 97%. This is only an INDICATOR that a set of beliefs can be dangerous. While Christianity and it’s various sects certainly can be cultish, most of it’s large modern incarnations are under enough scrutiny that it doesn’t degenerate into such activities.

In the past I’d say that Catholicsm and Christianity in general CERTAINLY were full blown cults at times. Today I’d pass most of the sects.

Just for fun, here’s how a few of the others stacked up: Islam: 72% Judaism: 58% Buddhism: 50% Hindu/Sikhism: 60% Taoism: 48% Confucianism: 50% Shinto: 62% Wicca (gardenarian): 65% Wicca(neo/modern) : 62% Asatru: 70%

Cheers!

13

If you start reasoning like that then every single belief or every single behaviour that people practice is a cult because each on its own shows characteristics that are inherent to religion.

To name some:

Atheism
Patriotism
Tribalism
Nationalism
Racism
Whatever is said “in your (nameles?) book” can be said about the above.

Salaam. A

14

Not totally, but you have a point there. On the other hand, this reasoning sounds fine by me.

But I’d like to know how these scores are calculated… :dubious:

15

I think there’s also another form of distinction to be made, anthropologically speaking. As in, there are cultic religious paths and religious paths that are not cultic. Many of the ancient paganisms (some of which are still extant or are being reconstructed) are termed “cultic”, by which is meant that they were focused on the rituals and celebrations (especially of the city’s patron god or gods) rather than some form of divine revelation or scriptural basis, as is common with the modern monotheisms.

More familiar (at least to those people who aren’t in cultic religions themselves) would be the various cults of the saints or the Blessed Virgin, in which the practitioner cultivates the favor of a particular entity through rituals and acts and celebrations specific to that entity.

16

Exactly. Cite: Religions in Practice: An Approach to the Anthropology of Religion
John Richard Bowen

Across the Boundries of Belief : Contemporary Issues in the Anthropology of Religion (99 Edition)
Morton / Weisgrau, Maxine (ed.) Klass

Scores were calculated against a general list of attributes that what modern anthropologists and civil authorities consider all cults have. There was a small score discrepancy (no more than 5 pts) between the authors so I took the median number. There are 100 specific characteristics scored at 1 point each. All religions and the majority of moral philosophies will score a 40 or better. It’s not meant to be insulting. A 65% merely indicates the POTENTIAL for a group belief to become hazardous to the mental or physical health of the adhearents or others. It’s commonly used by civil authorities to evaluate small fanatical groups that may be involved in illegal cultic activities. I’ll try and search around to see if I can find a copy of it online if you insist on more cites. :slight_smile:

17

DTW

Would you be so kind as to offer a citation for this finding.
Thank you

Zig

18

Hey, that would be a nice bonus – it would find it interesting to see which are the 100 items and to be able to see how the “weighting” goes of the factors; as you pointed out, each book is slightly different so that would probably trigger a whole different debate. Which is an important one, if each “factor” is considered to be equally worth 1% (To take one extreme hypothetical: I would not give the same number of % points to “encourages avoiding ‘unclean’ foods” as to “currently sponsors witch-burnings” )

It does however seem to imply that the modern definition of of “cult” involves a value judgement of the civil authorities (or the behavioral scientists, or the social consensus) as to what religious behaviors are hazardous to public safety (or health, or social order). This does mean that a sect within an otherwise respectable religion CAN be a cult, and so can, as Aldebaran wisely pointed out, secular ideologies and theories. The “step up” from cult to religion often can be seen as a matter of the sect or group either becoming mainstreamed – either by de-radicalization or by actually effecting a change in the values of society.

BTW, jkim78 does warn us that he’s an “ex-member” of the RCC who broke off because he concluded they were a scam. So it’s reasonable he’d be predisposed to look for and find a series of real instances of corruption in the modern church (and sadly, the nun sexual-exploitation scandal was real), and recorded instances of corruption in the institution’s history that reinforce his position; BUT – and here is his big mistake – he then throws in some common misunderstandings about doctrine (e.g. abandonment of your family, the meaning of Commandment I, etc.). These were probably inculcated by the very teachers of the faith doing their job badly: this is a consistent problem I see in Catholic child/youth schooling – unless you bother to go to primary sources or take advanced religion courses, you risk your cathechesis to be ridiculously limited and serious confusions left uncleared beyond “because We Said So”. So yes, at that level, depending on context, it DOES look like it shares “cult” traits. But so can any movement that contains people who are unquestioning True Believers and have suspended their common sense – be it Catholicism, Islam, Nationalism, Animal Rights, whatever.

19

Ask and ye shall recieve! You can find the whole list at the bottom of this page. Most of the points can be argued into oblivion if you want. A lot of it is semantics and perception. Please ignore the commentary by the writer of the page as it’s not relevant to this issue.
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cult_q8.html

The test is the same one as cited in my texts. I’m not sure how the questions were weighted. I was given to understand that they all counted one point each. The discrepency seemed to be nothing more than a difference of opinion on the part of the authors. We spent a while on this in a few Anthro/religion classes I took in college.

20

Boy, and aren’t you right about that! (And, thanks a lot! :cool: ) Fer instance, “Trance-inducing practices” – meditation, peyote, gospel music or sleep deprivation?

But I do see some “weighting” in the form of reiteration of criteria – for instance:
95 (actual) Threats to apostates + 96 (actual) Threats to critics. Narrowing it down as it were – one sect may be unfriendly to dissenters but not actually do anything to hurt them them, so they don’t score as high. And yes, you are right, w/o the contextual comments, on a straight y/n vote, it would make a lot of religions and philosophies sound “cultier” than expected.