What's the difference between a Cult and Organised Religion

What's the difference between a Cult and Organised Religion

By Dark Politricks

Watching The Big Questions this morning there was only one question which was "What's the difference between a Cult and Organised Religion"

On one side were the standard old age religionis, Christians, Catholics, Rabbis and Muslims and on the other side we had members of existing "new" religions such as Raelians, Moonies - or as they are called now members of the "Unification Church", an ex member of the Branch Davidians which if you remember was the target of the ATF and FBI ended up in a state sanctioned massacre of 82 religious people.

The audience was also filled with ex members of cults, psychologists who have studied the "brainwashing" techniques used by such called groups and other affected by these groups in one way of another.

In my mind it is quite simple but lets look at a definition of a Cult

• a particular system of religious worship, especially with reference to its rites and ceremonies.
• an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, especially as manifested by a body of admirers: the physical fitness cult.
• the object of such devotion.
• a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.
• Sociology . a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.

Lets look at the definition of a Religion

• a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
• a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
• the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.
• the life or state of a monk, nun, etc. to enter religion.
• the practice of religious beliefs - ritual observance of faith.

In mine and many in the audiences (apart from those belonging to organised religions) not much difference.

Jesus was supposedly a characteristic person who had followers - apparently a key sign of a cult. 

The same could be said about Mohammed, Buddha, Hari Krishna and many other "old religions".

The disagreement seems to be as one person said one of size. The Catholic Chuch is a huge and rich organisation whereas some of the organisations called cults such as the Raelians who believe we were created (just as scientists on this planet are now starting to do with DNA) by human beings from another planet in the universe.

A case of aliens geo-engineering the earth and it's inhabitants. When compared to some of the stories that the "official" religions believe in such as virgin births, coming back to life after dying and performing miracles not too bizare a belief.

What got my interest though was that one of the audience members said to an ex member of the Branch Davidians asked whether the leader David Koresh sexually abused children at the branch.

The member denied this but others of the "scientific" community said that one of the signs of a cult as compared to a religion was the sexual abuse that was endemic within cults which had such charismatic leaders that the followers did whatever he said due to brain washing techniques as well as the cult of personality.

Well doesn't that mean the Catholic Church has a very big cult, with a long history of sexual abuse of children as well as a personality cult revolving around their leader, the Pope?

This seemed to be a big difference between living your life by a set of defined values (as Christians, Jews and Muslims supposedly do) whilst cult members didn't.

There wasn't any mention of the numerous cases of sexual abuses, pedophilia, cover ups and criminal cases over the years that have been ingrained in "old religons" since their conception.

We have just experience a major Catholic cover up over its treatment of pedophile priests which led all the way up to the ex Nazi Youth Pope.

Court case after case in Ireland has shown the Catholic Church to be one of the biggest organised pedophole rings in the world - and one of the most well funded and protected.

The same sort of sexual abuse has been endemic in Christian history for a long time.

Why a man of breeding age would willingly chose abstinence and the company of little boys over a normal life seems obvious to me but in these times where psychology would give more than one answer it seems like an old excuse to hide ones sexual activities from the community at large.

Islam has always had its critics from those who called the original "cult leader" Mohammed certain terms due to the age of some of his wives.

However in some states of America where the age in some states it's 18 you might call the Spannish strange for having an age of consent of only 13 and other European countries from 13, 14 up to 18.

Even in some places in Africa and Asia is not uncommon for child weddings where an old man takes a 12 year old as a wife.

From Wikipedia:

Traditionally, across the world, the age of consent for a sexual union was a matter for the family to decide, or a tribal custom. In most cases, this coincided with signs of puberty, menstruation for a woman and pubic hair for a man.

In Ancient Rome, it was very common for girls to marry and have children shortly after the onset of puberty.

The first recorded age-of-consent law dates back 800 years: In 1275, in England, as part of the rape law, a statute, Westminster 1, made it a misdemeanor to "ravish" a "maiden within age," whether with or without her consent. The phrase "within age" was interpreted by jurist Sir Edward Coke as meaning the age of marriage, which at the time was 12 years of age.

In the 12th century Gratian, the influential founder of Canon law in medieval Europe, accepted age of puberty for marriage to be between 12 and 14 but acknowledged consent to be meaningful if the children were older than 7. There were authorities that said that consent could take place earlier. Marriage would then be valid as long as neither of the two parties annulled the marital agreement before reaching puberty, or if they had already consummated the marriage. It should be noted that Judges honored marriages based on mutual consent at ages younger than 7, in spite of what Gratian had said; there are recorded marriages of 2 and 3 year olds.

And then there is the Jewish Talmud, the book of laws made by Rabbis that is full of teachings that allow Rabbis to have sex with girls of extremley young ages or not consider rape illegal if the man was a Rabbi. These Talmudic laws have been known for a long time but are not unique for an age in which rape wasn't even considered a crime.

Even in England raping your wife wasn't considered a crime until back in 1990.

So sexual behaviour cannot be considered a sign of cultish behaviour.

However when a science fiction writer claims that "the best way to make a million dollars is to start a religion" and then goes on to do exactly that. Charging people thousands of dollars for learning it's many steps up to the big reveal, the "ultimate secret" one that wouldn't be out of place in any science fiction book:

Scientologists believe that 75 million years ago an evil galactic ruler, named Xenu, solved overpopulation by bringing trillions of people to Earth in DC-8 space planes, stacking them around volcanoes and nuking them. Then the souls of these dead space aliens were captured and boxed up and taken to cinemas where they were shown films of what life should be like, false ideas containing God, the devil and Christ and told to get ill.

After that they supposedly clustered together and now inhabit our bodies. Scientologists believe that if they rid themselves of these body Thetans then they will be healthier and will gain special powers like mind-over-matter.

People who try to leave are harassed, treated as traitors and have even had to face legal cases over their revelations of the "big secret" that people like Tom Cruise and John Travolata pay up to $500,000 for this top secret information. No wonder the Church of Scientology wants to keeps it's big secret secret!

So there seems to be clear cases of made up religions that can be called cults, in which the aim of the organisation is to extract money from the member instead of a pay if you want to bag of donations passed around a Church on a Sunday morning. However it seems that if one were to go back to the start of each off shoot of the Abrahamic faith with today's knowledge and science each new religion could easily fail into the class of a cult.

In my mind it is up to you what you want to believe but mocking another persons belief using claims that could easily fit your own brand of spiritual belief is stretching rationality at least a little.

When the definition of what is a religion and a cult are so indistinguishable from each other then maybe members of either grouping should stop to consider their beliefs before slagging off their opponents.

I'm right because my religious book says so therefore you must all be wrong - is not a logical argument that stands up too long at all.

By Dark Politricks

Why is the Vatican going to protect the Pope once he steps down?

Will the Vatican protect the Pope once he steps down?

By Dark Politricks

Question: Why is the Pope going to stay living in the Vatican after he retires?

Answer: Because he is wanted for questioning over his role in covering up the huge sexual abuse of children by Catholic Priests during his time before becoming Pope and could be arrested and charged with crimes regarding these events if he leaves the safety of the Vatican.

According to Reuters it seems that the Vatican is allowing the Pope to remain living inside the Vatican City because of the risk that he will be arrested by any number of the many independent investigative magistrates in Europe over allegations that he deliberately covered up the massive paedophilia scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church for the past decade.

In Europe many countries have a system of law which allows magistrates to bring their own charges against people from any nation if they have broken international law or committed crimes that break the law of their country BUT from within another country.

This is why Dick Cheney and many Israeli politicians cannot visit various places around the world as they face the threat of arrest for war crimes and other breaches of international law such as Torture or the illegal renditioning of citizens from the streets of European cities.

Therefore once the pope leaves the comfort of the Vatican City, which is basically it's own country in the centre of Rome (also called the Holy See), he could face arrest and even imprisonment by any number of activist judges and lawyers who want to bring justice to the thousands of children that were raped and sexually assaulted by Roman Catholic priests across the world.

The child abuse scandal in the Catholic church covers 65 countries, with the amount of victims estimated to be in the tens of thousands (that have come out).

In fact just one survivors' group has over 12,000 members! Imagine all the people who have been sexually assaulted or raped by their local Priest who are yet to make that huge step and go public with their own tale of tragedy and injustice.

The Catholic Church has not been exactly forthcoming when it has come to this scandal even attacking those who have accussed it of a cover up. When the Belgian police started digging around the sexual abuse in their own country the Vatican attacked the tactics used by the Belgian police as "deplorable methods" when they raided a bishops' meeting.

They also dared to compare the investigation of child sex abuse with the practices of communist regimes and called the raid "serious and unbelievable". The Vatican dared trying to play the victim in one of the most widespread sex scandals to hit the modern world.

Pope Benedict XVI was named as a defendant in a 2010 law suit alleging that he failed to take action as a cardinal in 1995 when he was allegedly told about a priest who had abused boys at a U.S. school for the deaf decades earlier.

The lawyers withdrew the case last year and the Vatican said it was a major victory that proved the pope could not be held liable for the actions of abusive priests. However whilst he remains Pope he also remains head of state and the head of the Catholic church which offers protection in the eyes of many countries.

Once he steps down from this position it leaves him vulnerable to any law suit that may be filled against him. Could this be the reason that the Pope plans to remain living within the Vatican after stepping down?

Although the pope is not currently named in other cases the Vatican is not ruling out the possibility that new charges could be brought once he leaves his position as head of the Church.

The Vatican said:

"If he lived anywhere else then we might have those crazies who are filing lawsuits, or some magistrate might arrest him like other (former) heads of state have been for alleged acts while he was head of state."

Even if he leaves the Vatican he is still safe within Italy as the 1929 Lateran Pacts between Italy and the Holy See, which created the Vatican City as it's own sovereign state, has said the Vatican City would be "invariably and in every event considered as neutral and inviolable territory". Therefore the only risk seems to be if the Pope, once de-throned, leaves the safety of the Italian shores.

Since the revelations of a massive cover up of sexual abuse and paedophilia across the world by Roman Catholic Priests, from the massive amounts of abuse in Ireland to the claims from America and other European nations there have been constant calls for the Popes arrest and his involvement in covering it up by moving priests accuses of sexual crimes to new dioceses.

When he was serving as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer he is accused of covering up for Priests accused of sex crimes and that not only did those Priests not face internal discipline the relevant information was not passed to civilian authorities so that they could deal with the accusations properly.

Before taking the role of the Pope, Benedict was head of the Vatican's main doctrinal arm called "the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" which was in charge of all investigations by the Vatican into claims of abuse by Priests worldwide.

Senior church official's have already admitted in 2010 that a German archdiocese had made "serious mistakes" in handling an abuse case while the Benedict was serving as its archbishop. A priest who was accused of molesting boys was given therapy instead of being arrested and later was allowed to resume pastoral duties before committing further abuse and finally being prosecuted for his sexual crimes.

He is also accused of failing to act over complaints during the 1990s about a priest in the USA who is thought to have abused almost 200 deaf boys!

According to Church and Vatican documents an archbishop wrote letters to Cardinal Ratzinger in 1996 calling for disciplinary proceedings against Fr Lawrence Murphy who is believed to have molested some 200 boys at St John's School for the Deaf in St Francis, Wisconsin, between 1950 and 1974.

Apparently he assaulted the boys whilst hearing their confessions, in his office, in his car, in their dormitory beds and even at his mother's house!

An internal trial authorised by Cardinal Ratzinger's deputy was halted after the accused priest asked the future pope to halt proceedings and to allow him live out the remainder of his time in the "dignity of my priesthood". Despite objections from a second archbishop the priest was moved to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes and schools.

There was also the massive cover up of sexual abuse by Irish priests over decades which recently came to light. The Pope condemned these abuses as a "heinous crime" as well as a "grave sin" however one Irish priest has admitted to abusing more than 100 children, while another confessed that he had abused minors systematically and regularly over a period of 25 years.

Therefore the Pope has a lot to answer for and he currently heads the worlds most organised and powerful paedophilia ring which seems to be able to sit above international law through the Vatican basically being it's own country.

So it doesn't take too much brain power to work out that the aging Pope might be scared of being arrested by an activist judge somewhere in Europe who could already be sitting at an airport waiting for George W Bush to land so he can pounce on him and arrest him for the war in Iraq which many people still consider an illegal crime.

If international law is to mean anything then just as the heads of state from Bosnia are currently facing criminal charges in the International Criminal Court for war crimes during the break up of Yugoslavia and the ex President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, has proved that being a head of state does not grant you immunity from international justice it is only logical that once the Pope resumes life as a normal citizen he will become a target for those looking to add international sex rings to the list of crimes that leaders of states can be charged with at the Hague.

View the original article "Why is the Vatican shielding the Pope from arrests over sexual abuse?" at www.darkpolitricks.com.