21AR26-38

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AR 26:38 - Catholicism's troublesome sects

In this issue:

ROMAN CATHOLICISM - the Vatican finally moves against chronic spiritual abuse within its many lay movements

WOKEISM - "it's so fundamentally misaligned with reality"

Apologia Report 26:38 (1,543)

September 29, 2021

ROMAN CATHOLICISM
"Vatican Forces Lay Movements to Term Limit Those in Leadership Amid Scandals, by Maggie Gile (Newsweek, Jun 11 '21) -- notes that "Vatican leadership hoped the move would reduce scandals like the recent reports of several cases of lay movement founders allegedly sexually abusing their members and instances where founders refused to relinquish control over their communities. ...

"Massimo Faggioli, a theologian and author of The Rising Laity [1] and A Brief History of the New Catholic Movements [2], said the Jesuit pope knows well that members of small religious communities can be manipulated by charismatic leaders.

"'This is very big,' Faggioli said of the new regulations. While the decree only applies to the groups that fall under the Vatican's laity office, 'it sends a message to everyone else,' he said.

"Faggioli noted that under the papacy of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, lay religious movements were often seen as the future of the Catholic Church and were largely left to govern themselves as long as they remained orthodox and faithful to the Holy See." <www.bit.ly/3tiavC9>

Liturgical Press reports that A Brief History of the New Catholic Movements covers "Focolare, Community of Sant’Egidio, Neocatechumenal Way, Legionaries of Christ, Communion and Liberation, Opus Dei. These are but a few of the most recognizable names in the broader context of the so-called ecclesial movements. Their history goes back to the period following the First Vatican Council, crosses Vatican II, and develops throughout the twentieth century."

Also noteworthy: Kent Burtner, a well-known authority on cultic groups operating within Roman Catholicism, reviews J. Paul Lennon's helpful book Catholic Orders & Movements Accused of Being Cult-Like: Intra-Ecclesial Sects? [3] in ICSA Today, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2021), pp24-25. <www.bit.ly/2Y23ry0> Lennon is himself a survivor of the once-powerful Legionaries of Christ/Regnum Christi movement led by Marcial Maciel (1920-2008).

Burtner writes: "Lennon makes clear that, when questions of abuse come to light, Church authorities generally make the mistake of choosing experts to make an investigation who are specialists in theology, not those educated about coercive control and manipulation. Thus, asking the wrong questions, they often miss the essential problem within the group being investigated. ... Lennon aptly notes that the majority of these new groups adopt a more traditional theological position, much to the chagrin of more traditionally minded Catholics, and thus they are much more likely to deflect the inquiring eyes of theologically oriented investigators."

Only days ago, the National Catholic Reporter ran a story announcing that the "Vatican wants boarding schools run by Heralds of the Gospel to be closed" <www.bit.ly/3ijieeJ> in order to to protect the group's residential students in Brazil "from the high risk of psychological and sexual violence." Author Céline Hoyeau adds that the Heralds <www.heraldsusa.org> are an offshoot of another highly controversial Catholic movement, the Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP). <www.tfp.org>

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WOKEISM
"My Woke Employees Tried to Cancel Me: Here's How I Fought Back and Saved My Nonprofit" by Grace Daniel -- one of the best concise response pieces we've seen (and it includes bibliographic resource discussion).

In 2016, Daniel's husband noticed increasingly "uneasy" criticism among the staff of their nonprofit. Staff "made vague assertions that the organization was 'causing harm' and would present a list of demands." She later came to understand that these meetings "were essentially 'struggle sessions' - an opportunity for our woke employees to shame us into submission, a technique often used in Mao's China."

Daniel advises that "there's no shortcut around this learning process if you want to successfully make a principled stand."

To begin, she cites Christopher Rufo <www.christopherrufo.com> to define critical race theory, adding: "I like the term critical social justice to identify the ideology, because it doesn't have a pejorative connotation and is descriptive of the earnest (though I believe misguided) motivations of many of its adherents."

Best of all, Daniel coaches the reader on how to engage the woke mob. She explains that "critical social justice is an anti-objectivity ideology: One of its fundamental assertions is that there are no objective truths, only 'positional' truths."

Daniel recommends shifting the focus of discussion away from false assumptions about identity. "[I]dentity-based gatekeeping is a result of the presupposition in critical social justice that all truth is 'positional.' Therefore, only those who have a certain 'social position' due to their identity can perceive or speak truth on topics related to their identity.

"Don't take the bait and engage in self-defense. You will be eviscerated if you let the conversation become about you. ...

"Instead of trying to defend yourself from their attacks on your identity, you must remain fiercely committed to keeping the focus of the conversation on ideas rather than identities. Keep the dialogue on the faultiness of their ideas, not on yourself or them."

To level the playing field, Daniel suggests: "Let your interlocutors know you will be recording all organizational conversations. Insist that terms be defined clearly from mutually agreed upon authoritative sources or fruitful engagement will be impossible."

Daniel crafted "an organizational definition of the term 'psychological safety' our staff were required to read." This helped to "preclude vague definitions of the term and force our staff to recognize when their accusations of 'harm' were unsubstantiated."

She was up against "clinically trained mental health professionals, [that] while purporting to be on a mission to increase safety and reduce harm, were accomplishing the opposite by adhering to a worldview that sees some people as inherently participating in harm and other people as inherently oppressed based solely on their identities."

Daniel emphasizes that an "evidence-based approach ... must be guided by evidence that is both verifiable (can be objectively confirmed to be true) and therefore falsifiable (can be objectively dismissed as untrue)."

She also emphasized that "to be effective, we have to avoid theories and ideologies that undermine honest scientific inquiry. ...

"As soon as I insisted that our nonprofit operate based on evidence-based principles, many of the emotional and irrational attacks that the employees were using lost their effect. ...

"We had to come to terms with the reality that we were at an ideological impasse. ...

"It's not a matter of 'agreeing to disagree.' As our cultural and academic institutions are captured by critical social justice ideology, the impacts will be on the most vulnerable. ...

Daniel realized that "those who had the most to lose" in this conflict are the people she was committed to serve. "You do not have to be an academic, a pundit, or a brilliant orator to join the fight. Wherever you have a sphere of influence, you have an important role to play in combatting the toxic effects of ideological subversion. ...

"You will need to learn not to be concerned with what people think or say about you, since your character will undoubtedly be called into question and your identity attacked.

"I am convinced that critical social justice can and will be defeated ultimately for the sole reason that it's so fundamentally misaligned with reality." DailySignal, Jun 7 '21, <www.dailysign.al/2Vo6YFU>

If you find the above encouraging, you'll probably appreciate the following video clip, which came to us without source credits, and appears to originate with a public school board meeting somewhere in the US near the beginning of this month: <www.bit.ly/3h8D5Rn> (Note: For some reason the link doesn't work on all our devices. You may need to use the included download option.)

Christopher Rufo, (previously referenced <www.bit.ly/3zUZTvq> in AR) has also created a substantial free online "briefing" on CRT which includes:

"Key Concepts and Quotations"

"Winning the Language War"

"Defining Critical Race Theory"

"Using Stories to Build the Argument"

"Polling Data" (showing CRT's deep unpopularity in America) and examples of defensive "State Legislation" and "Legal Action," plus "Further Reading." <www.bit.ly/2X14Mok>

Also recommended: Dave Rubin's recent video interview on Critical Race Theory with James Lindsay, co-author <www.bit.ly/2WWM3dw> of Cynical Theories, a book critiquing CRT [4]. Lindsay, an atheist, has had interaction with Christian leaders concerned that CRT is creeping into the church. Lindsay discusses what he discovered about Christians that surprised him. <www.bit.ly/2VqFjnM>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - The Rising Laity: Ecclesial Movements since Vatican II, by Massimo Faggioli (Liturgical Prs, 2016, paperback, 176 pages) <www.bit.ly/3BMlHtD>

2 - Sorting Out Catholicism: A Brief History of the New Ecclesial Movements, by Massimo Faggioli (Liturgical Prs, 2014, paperback, 244 pages) <www.bit.ly/38IH2aP>

3 - Catholic Orders & Movements Accused of Being Cult-Like: Intra-Ecclesial Sects?, by J. Paul Lennon, 2nd ed. (2020, paperback, 156 pages) <www.bit.ly/3F6oK2c>

4 - Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody, by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (Pitchstone, 2020, hardcover, 352 pages) <www.amzn.to/3b97dYV>

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