International Cultic Studies Association
Background of an ICSA conference track entitled, “Are there cultic aberrations in the Catholic Church?”
The Roman Catholic Church, the largest religious organization in the world, has more than one billion adherents. For this reason, if for no other, what happens in the Catholic Church matters to non-Catholics as well as Catholics.
In recent decades, some Catholic movements and organizations have generated controversy because outside observers have called them “cultic” or “sect-like.” …
The sexual, financial, and organizational scandals surrounding Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi, gave impetus to this special track because the Maciel controversy caused Church authorities to pay more attention to the sectarian spirit within the Church . Many who were fooled into thinking that Maciel was headed for sainthood asked, “How could we have been so wrong?”
People affiliated with ICSA are not so surprised. They know of many instances in which seemingly benign leaders or organizations turned out to be very different from their public faces. As with Maciel, this duplicity masked the strategic application of social-psychological pressures to prevent members from discussing, or even acknowledging to themselves, disagreement with the beliefs and/or practices of leaders or organizations. Groups such as the Legion may claim allegiance with a mainstream religion in a sly attempt to “hide” themselves in orthodoxy by shifting the meaning of key theological terms. One might view them as “ideological frauds.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.