Cults are typically most successful when they prey on those who are lonely or isolated—those who feel they do not “fit in” with others—and those who are looking for meaning in their lives and so trust that others have the answers. The current transgender movement has many parallels to some of the most notorious modern-day cults in terms of the recruitment strategies used, the secrecy, the alienation from family and friends, the indoctrination in the transgender ideology in public schools and on social media, and the refusal to allow dissenting voices.
Just as transgendered individuals claim that they are in the “wrong body,” each of the 39 members of the notorious Heavens Gate suicide cult became convinced that they also were “in the wrong bodies” prior to committing mass suicide in 1997 in a Rancho Santa Fe, California mansion. Like transgendered individuals, Heavens Gate members became alienated from their bodies. They began to believe that they were actually alien beings from outer space, incarnate in human bodies with a mission to teach others about the possibility of reaching a new stage of existence. For the Heavens Gate cult members, the only way to reach this new stage was to first rid themselves of their despised gendered bodies through surgical castration and hormone therapy—and later through mass suicide when they would finally be free of their human bodies.
In a letter that accompanied a suicide video that was released shortly after the bodies were found, the members of the Heavens Gate cult claimed that they “came from the Level Above Human in distant space and have now exited the bodies that we were wearing for our earthly task.” Calling their bodies “vehicles” or “containers” to be shed through their suicides, most of the 18 male Heavens Gate members had already undergone surgical procedures to castrate themselves in order to rid themselves of gendered desires and behaviors. Female Heaven’s Gate members engaged in Hormone therapy and shaved their heads to appear androgynous. All wore exactly the same clothing – black “flight suits” and black Nike sneakers with Velcro fasteners.
This rejection of their earthly bodies was encouraged by Heaven’s Gate leader Marshall Applewhite who was the first to be surgically castrated in an attempt to ensure he remained celibate. Applewhite had reason to try and repress his sexuality and that of his followers. In 1970 he had been fired from his job as a music professor at the Houston’s University of St. Thomas “after administrators there learned that Applewhite was in a relationship with a male student there.”
Applewhite then began a platonic relationship with a nurse named Bonnie Nettles, who he met during his stay in a psychiatric hospital. Together Applewhite and Nettles recruited hundreds of followers around the country and required them to dress alike, cut their hair, and repress any sexual identity. At the core of their ideology was the belief that the human body was a mere vessel for an asexual soul that could find salvation only in its home in outer space. Researchers who have studied Applewhite claimed that he was so alienated from his homosexuality that he was teaching people not to have sex: “He would put people of opposite sexes together and force them to learn to become neutral, nonsexual.”
Following the 1997 suicides, The Washington Post reported that when the suicide victims at Ranch Santa Fe, California were first discovered, police at first believed them all to be male. They were all identically dressed in black flight suits and black sneakers: “Their idea of perfection was a kind of androgyny…All buzz cuts, all dressed to erase any trace of sexuality.”
In some ways, the current transgender movement parallels the desire to reject one’s sexual identity that the Heaven’s Gate members experienced. One mother of two children who identify as transgender said that she has lost her children to what she called the transgender “cult”. She claims that the transgender community “really has some very cult-like characteristics to it…The trans narrative is promoted on college campuses deeply…there are trans dorms, there’s trans health care, there is trans clubs…As soon as you say that you’re trans, you get love-bombed…You get love-bombed online, you get love-bombed at school…As soon as you say you’re trans, you turn into a star. And kids are thirsty for that kind of affirmation.”
The love-bombing recruitment strategies are no longer confined to college campuses—they now begin in pre-school. Drag Queen Story Hours have been occurring at public libraries throughout the country—all geared to pre-school children—without as much pushback as you might think. For example, this 2020 video of a Portland Drag Queen Story Hour promises children they can meet “drag queens and drag creatures.” The Drag Queen Story Hour Facebook page lists recent events that have taken place on university campuses, at public parks, book fairs, art museums, and, of course, libraries.
The transgender community relies upon schools to convince children that it is perfectly normal for them to feel alienated from their “assigned gender.” There have been several videos posted online recently of teachers telling their students that they can reject the gender that the doctor “assigned to them” because as one Boston first-grade teacher said, doctors sometimes make mistakes when they try to “guess” the gender of a newborn baby.
But parents are beginning to pay attention and some are becoming proactive in responding. Just as de-programmers in the 1980s helped to end much of the cult activity on college campuses, parents have been lobbying lawmakers to begin to address the transgender recruitment problem in public schools. Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has confronted this problem, and parents and most voters in Florida show overwhelming support for his 2022 Florida Parental Rights bill barring any school-based conversations about the transgender ideology for children in Kindergarten through third grade. Many critics of the bill have presented it as hateful and “anti-LGBTQIA+”, but without responding to the actual contents of the bill, which focus as parental rights. Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon, who describes herself as “bisexual”, tweeted, “In Oregon, we say gay. I’m horrified and outraged by the anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation that was just signed in Florida, making schools a less safe space for LGBTQIA+ kids.”
Although Pope Francis has not mentioned the Florida bill, he has been strongly critical of gender theory on several occasions, stating that teaching it in school is a form of “cultural colonization” and calling it a “great enemy” of marriage. But such papal pronouncements seems to have little effect on bishops who have been sending mixed messages and protecting priests who provide platforms to increase the visibility of transgendered parishioners. The Church of Our Lady of Grace in Hoboken, New Jersey, celebrated its annual Pride Mass in support of the LGBTQ community with a homily delivered by Christine Zuba, a transgender woman from New Jersey. Rev. Alexander Santora, a priest for 40 years told reporters that “the other worshippers rose and applauded…our Church was opened in 1878, I wanted Christine to be on that pulpit.” Zuba serves as a “Eucharistic Minister” at a nearby parish, Saints Peter and Paul in Turnersville, New Jersey.
However, a growing number of dioceses and faithful Catholic campuses are refusing to cooperate with the cult of transgenderism. For example, Bishop John Doerfler of the Diocese of Marquette has issued a statement indicating that “Our fundamental approach to persons with same sex attraction and persons with gender dysphoria is pastoral accompaniment: a loving interpersonal encounter along the road to deeper faith in Jesus Christ.” But the statement also cautions that “we are not defined or identified by our sexual attractions or conflicts about sexual identity. Our fundamental identity is as a beloved son or daughter of God. Thus, it is best to avoid identifying persons merely using labels such as gay or transgender.” Still, Bishop Doerfler added that a person who publicly identifies as a different gender than his or her biological sex or has attempted “gender transitioning” may not serve as a sponsor or a Christian witness for Baptism and Confirmation unless the person has repented.
It is impossible of course to predict just how much longer the cult of transgenderism will continue. It is possible the movement will decline as the transgendered individuals who were allowed to surgically or hormonally transition as minors grow up and realize that they never consented to the mutilating surgery or hormonal therapy begin to sue the doctors and therapists who took advantage of them during vulnerable periods of their lives. Perhaps such lawsuits could usher in the end of recruitment of children into the nightmare of transgenderism.
But it still remains to be seen whether or not legal action will affect the continued growth of the adult transgender cult, which relies so heavily on both activism and deception. “If one lesson can be learned from the Florida bill,” wrote Leor Sapir in a recent City Journal essay, “it’s that the success of trans activism depends on the public’s willingness to confuse policies that promote gender self-identification—for which public support is shaky at best—with policies that support gay and lesbian people, for which support is deeper and broader.” Sapir believes the “national fight” over transgenderism to be “escalating”. But others see signs of hope. “People seem to have been galvanized by the Lia Thomas issue,” said Carl R. Trueman in a CWR interview this past week, “and the apparent evidence that trans ideology is being used in schools to confuse children and subvert parental authority. I hope that we are witnessing the beginning of significant resistance to this lunacy.”
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In the end, all cults simply reflect an attempt to replace God’s truth with their own. THIS ONE is no different.
That’s why their parades are called “PRIDE.” Taking the place of God.
That’s a good guess, but Pride has, for many, meant something entirely different than the pride of the seven deadly sins. It has meant the opposite of shame, where very human, and even faithful, gay people have found that they are no different than heterosexuals.
Homosexuals are no different from heterosexuals? In what way? That we are all sinners? If that is what you intended to say, then Yes, agreed.
However. Calling oneself a homosexual differs from calling oneself a heterosexual. And that makes all the difference when two paths diverge in a wood.
Homosexuality is sodomy. Sodomy has a meaning. A Biblical city carried the name of Sodom, and it is known for having been destroyed and why. The sin of sodomy opposes nature and hence opposes God. Sins between men and women (fornication and even adultery) are logically lesser than homosexual sins because they do not oppose the givens and limits inherent in nature. Only one other type of sexual sin is more base than homosexual sin, and that is bestiality.
There are scientific case studies of how the HIV virus probably passed from animals into humans. Use of an imagination can suggest that vector. I know people who confirm use of animals during homosexual sex. This is disgusting to even write or think of. Do we need more evidence of the existence and strength of diabolical influence?
May God forgive and help us overcome our disordered thinking, speaking, and acting.
Thanks, meiron.
It’s very interesting what one considers against nature and how we pick and choose that line. My mother’s chemotherapy treatments for her stage 4 pancreatic cancer are certainly against nature. If we did not intervene with our human will, she would die. Curious as to your thoughts there.
I’m also very concerned to hear you are communicating firsthand with people practicing homosexual sexual acts with animals. I assume you are in fact speaking directly with the source and not perpetuating rumors based on hear say. I advise you to please steer clear of these people and surround yourself with those following a more Christ-like path. Have you reported these people to the police?
“Pride is the opposite of shame” – that’s one of their lies. The opposite of shame is not being ashamed. I have brown eyes – I’m not ashamed about it, and neither is it a source of pride, why would it be? Same of the gays – claiming to be PROUD of their orientation makes no sense. At best they would not be ashamed of it.
How long? Well as it is the case that “The transgender community relies upon schools to convince children that…”
It can continue as long as we have
1.The USA
2.The State
The suing can’t come soon enough.
I echo Carl R. Trueman’s opinion, “I hope that we are witnessing the beginning of significant resistance to this lunacy.” We do well to remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 18:6, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
You mention trans dorms. There is part of the problem; the schools have gotten away from education and opening the youthful mind to zeroing in on gathering the dollars, from it sometimes seems, any means possible.
Yes, transgender is lunacy, as Trueman argues a shameful imposition by adults on our children, and as the author implores us to continue opposing it.
However, this cultic ideology isn’t going to be defeated by reason and resistance alone. It is an entrenched moral evil satanically inspired in the soul of men and women, deceived children as freedom of choice [whereas it’s enslavement to an egregious moral deception] that can only be defeated by prayer and sacrifice. As I noted in the essay on the appointment by His Holiness of Cardinal Czerny SJ as prefect to the Dicastery for Human Development, Czerny himself pro female ordination open to LGBT – along with appointments Cardinal Hollerich SJ favorable to LGBT as Synod relator, the prospective appointment of Archbishop Scicluna in favor as well, as prefect to the CDF, and also the same the preeminence in Germany of Cardinal Marx who openly celebrates Queer Liturgy [not a slur rather his own description] the Church itself is evidently infected with this moral leprosy. If we resist, and indeed we must we’re in for a fight and likely accusations of lack of tolerance and charity.
Indeed, although Dr. Hendershott is correct in pointing out Pope Francis’ words against transgender ideology, they are unfortunately just words, and speak much less loudly than his actions. He has given a private audience to a celebrity transgender couple, consistently chastised “rigorous” Catholic in language that everyone understands, and lent his full support to LGBTQ propagandists like James Martin. Every schismatic, morally bankrupt bishop knows he has Bergoglio’s support, and no one is afraid of openly promoting LGBTQ perversion within the Church and society.
When I was younger I used to think that “nothing human is alien to me” in the sense that it was possible to get inside another person’s experience and thinking and understand the motives for even terribly immoral actions. I no longer believe that, for instance I have absolutely no clue how an educated person could possibly believe “””as one Boston first-grade teacher said, doctors sometimes make mistakes when they try to “guess” the gender of a newborn baby””. There is nothing in my experience or understanding of the world that gives me entry to the mind of a person who would think such a thing, or even consider it a rational thought.
Can’t be wholesome. Won’t lead to anything wholesome. Held in place by what is not wholesome. Mustn’t be entrusted with what is wholesome.
“There is nothing in my experience or understanding of the world that gives me entry to the mind of a person who would think such a thing, or even consider it a rational thought.”
My experience is the same, and that’s probably ultimately a good thing. How groomers think and feel is not something I want to understand or affirm in any way.
When you have a Catholic, father of eight, Supreme Court Justice declare that freedom entails the freedom to “define one’s own reality,” I would say that transgender lunacy can indeed last a very long time, until the very collapse of what little is left of our civilization.
Of whom do you speak?
I cannot thoroughly fact check the quotation right now, but the original text appears to be from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in the Planned Parenthood v Casey (505 U.S. 833 (1992)) decision:
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
If we had among us any descendants of those who mocked Noah while he was building his ark, they would doubtless have agreed.
USA SC justice Anthony Kennedy in the 1992 PP v. Casey opinion that reaffirmed Roe.
Catholic Kennedy reportedly had only three children. Catholic Scalia had nine children; he concurred in some parts of the opinion and dissented in other parts.
Did Williams conflate them?
https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/cases/4680
The quote that you referenced sounds like something that could have come from out of the mouth of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Although nothing is new under the sun and history is replete with many who fall for the temptations of the Devil, he never will run out of methods to destroy souls. It appears that sex has been used more than any of his other tools to destroy the most souls.
There’s a lot to this although, like Gnosticism of old, transgenderism can also take the opposite form — fetishizing the opposite sex so much that a person wants to transform his (it’s usually his) body into the opposite sex. If you read enough, you will be shocked by how open the people who do it are about it on social media, etc. They are usually followed only by each other, but it’s out there: the belief that they can choose their own sex at will, that they are “both” men and women (and so also “beyond” men and women+. Etc. If you have a strong stomach, read this article about and review of a “trans woman’s” new book — https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/23/how-the-trans-ideology-dehumanises-women/ — and you might just come to think that the “asexual” or “androgenous” side of the scale is the LESSER of two real evils.
This “trans” nonsense will only come crashing down when the only valid, God-created gender identity mechanism, recognized by science since its discovery, which is the X and Y chromosome presence or absence in any given individual.
Everyone will discover that Caitlin (Bruce)Jenner has Y chromosomes, something which all females have lacked since Adam and Eve.
To date, all of the applicable and pertinent laws of the land along with the courts that support such a travesty, have done nothing more that push an adjudicated, enforced pretense upon an entire society, indeed, upon the entire human race.
I don’t know about the rest of them, but Jenner chose to leave his male exterior plumbing intact. A real weirdness about the whole thing. More than “I’m a woman trapped in a men’s body.” First, the body doesn’t “trap” anything. Negate the X and Y chromosomes as the identifier, and we’re left with all this going on in the mind – which is confused to say the least. Look to Jenner. It’s confusing to be a woman, yet have male plumbing. Half an ounce of common sense indicates that. Even to little kids.
Things might change when people start experiencing the long term effects of their transitions and then sue doctors, teachers, and counselors who deceived them. That process has already begun in some cases.
I am known as Sawyer in the 2020 documentary and in the HBO Max documentary and many others as I was a member of the Heaven’s Gate group for 19 years. There is a great deal of misinformation being reported about the group and about TI and DO that I offer correction on for those that want to know.
Thank you for posting….very interesting perspective!
There is also a good deal of social media misinformation about gender dysphoria, as well. It seems that people will believe what they WISH THINGS TO BE, not what they actually are, simply because it fits their narrative.
I would venture to guess that the vast majority of posters here are not psychologists, or physicians.
It will last until TPTB which own the media are forcibly muzzled or decide to move on to different perversions.
All of these weird “movements” are engineered. It doesn’t take very much for those who control the media to promote evil things under a deceptive guise of “grassroots.” One can look into the phenomena of astroturfing.
What must happen is that censorship must be instituted. There is no right to spread errors. Do we allow math teachers to “teach” that 2+2=5?
“Engineered”? There is the possibility that you’re onto something…
Are there a few cases of homosexuality and transgenderism where inadvertent (environmental) chemical interference in individual fetuses, for example, then later DISRUPTS what God has initially created?
One new scientific question is whether fetal absorption of EDCs (endocrine disruptive chemicals) can block normal hormonal development toward physically/emotionally integrated male and female children at birth (among a range of known physical disorders)? Chemicals associated with endocrine-disrupting ability in humans include organochlorine pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, bisphenol A, phthalates, dioxins, and furans.
Does this possible fetal victimhood help explain those real cases of DYSPHORIA, and later aberrant sexual orientation, just as childhood sexual abuse helps us to understand (again, not endorse) later rounds of sexual predation as by (formerly-abused) priests and many others in the general population?
This explanation is not to discount the likely dominant role of SECULARIST CULTURE and early promiscuity in locking-in later addictions. Nor the apparent similarity between specious transgenderism today and 11th-century Albigensianism — the historical poster child of Manichaean dualism (an imagined antagonism between body and soul).
In any event, sound moral theology regarding the immorality of sexual activity outside of real marriage still applies equally for ALL — for the fetal/chemically victimized (?) or later physically-abused victims and others, no less than for the 98 percent of the population who are binary/complementary males and females (so-called heterosexual).
“Alienation” is experienced by many and the idea that it inextricable with sexuality or homosexuality or “being queer”, etc., is irrational. The idea that the individual can somehow define through “alienation” what rights are demandable/derivable, is foolhardy. The legalistic assertion that this is compensated for by recognizing de facto “classes” and “community association” of such individuals, being in need of public policy, is, actually, lawless. Not to mention circular.
The burden put on those who are “not homosexual” to “come up to par”, is called prejudicial. There are other words for it too.
Trying to be brief; more depth is needed in these areas, I think.
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/mixed-messages
When obergefell is reversed by a mom and dad matters constitutional amendment, that will be when this craze ends. Note that much of this drag queen transgender craziness is the type of thing obergefell”parents” might actually *choose* for their procured children so much for parental rights. Note also that the obergefell couples stand ready to foster care for children snatched for whatever reason from their Christian homes headed by dissenting parents. So there is a brave new world reason for their existence.
Generally accepted points -pointers- in the psychological sciences, serve as baselines for methods in dealing with individuals within a rational framing at that level of contact and results. Thus they also serve as starting sites for further development and refinements of the science, for the same uses or purposes.
Compiling these things into an overall viewpoint with an imperative status, so as to form upon them, law and public policy to “help” so-called classes of people and entrench them with “equality” – is contrary to reason, to science, to the sciences in general and to law; and is bad public policy.
At CHURCH MILITANT, Paul Brock III has an approach into this area, in his article “Dehumanization”. I don’t always agree with Church Militant and I may not agree outright with everything Brock says here, but I believe it is a very good penetration into the subject -in the way he goes at it. So I post it here for those interested in the depth Brock is plumbing.
Bear in mind Brock focuses an attention on the defects in the science.
My own outline describes a broader survey of what is actually going on in turning the psychological sciences into subject “composites” and “personality stereotypes”. It tries to give them “objectivity”, “primacy” and “authenticity” that they do not actually possess. They “demand” to be addressed by only those who are “qualified”.
Everyone else “must” accede to the provisions.
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/dehumanization
“Not everyone can accept this word,” He replied, “but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way; others were made that way by men; and still others live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
“Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them! For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
“You are mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. In the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like the angels in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said to you: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
Who is really living God’s word and who is really in a ritualistic cult? Who here is proposing rigid constraints on individual free will and expression?
Continuing my theme of viewing things in broad scales, or, as is said, “seeing the big picture” – as the right way to bronco this material, I would also place issues into a right setting or context, in order to help demonstrate where the content is awry and where meaningful direction can be found.
Here is an example from Russell Shaw. One of the things about it I find compelling, is that a lot of the complement and/or contrast work-outs not only already exist, they’re always on your desk or nearby in the next room, somewhere within reach; you just have to be paying attention.
Shaw is describing a ship without a rudder and a crew fumbling to discover what a rudder is …..
‘ The problems are increasingly visible in the United States. …..
…..
Now, in their own way, secular sources have begun to make points very much like those made by Paul VI and a few others. As fresh evidence, consider recent articles in two very different opinion journals–the neoconservative Weekly Standard and the liberal New Republic. Both are required reading for people who want to know the dismal demographic future that, barring a miracle, lies just ahead. ‘
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2013/01/10/secular-thinkers-notice-reality-but-is-it-too-late/
Here is some more context for bronco-ing, provided by Thomas Doran.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2013/07/19/consensus-and-inconvenient-evidence/
So long as well-meaning people like Hendershott continue to use the manipulated language of those who push the nonsense of “transgenderism” without using quotation marks and/or other means of making it absolutely clear that the terms/notions are fraudulent and do not express reality, the cult will continue to last longer than it should. Below are the primary terms/notions that Hendershott uses in her article without any qualification, and as such her use of the movement’s favored terms/notions unwittingly support the despicable movement that she rightly rails against while blithely playing along with part of its agenda to manipulate language as set forth above:
“transgenderism”
“transgender ideology”; “trans ideology”; “trans narrative”; “transgender movement”
“transgender community”
“transgendered parishioners”; “transgendered individuals”
“surgically or hormonally transition”
___________________________________
In brief, there is no such thing as “transgenderism” in objective reality, and this also holds true for things like “transgender ideology,” “trans ideology”; “trans narrative”; and a “transgender movement,” and so on.
To make this crystal clear, they require quotation marks to designate the utter fraud behind these terms.
In like manner, there is no such thing as a “transgender community,” nor are there “transgendered parishioners” or “transgendered persons” in general. Nobody has or ever can be “transgendered” and magically become a “transgender.”
As egregious as the terms highlighted above are when used without qualification, Hendershott really drinks the Kool-Aid by declaring that some “surgically or hormonally transition,” again without any qualification, and this is just outrageously irrational and simply not possible, yet Hendershott writes as if such actually takes place and people do change their genders.
I call upon all people of good will to cease playing the terminology game of those who use it for one evil purpose or another, and don’t fool yourselves into believing it’s okay to use evil language in order to be polite when in reality you are just being duped no matter how well your intentions may be.
Some people prefer “mutilation” to “transition”. Myself, I have used the word “vitiation”. It depends on the circumstances.
A doctor might say “transition” when in fact he sadistically enjoys the malpractice that would be a crime properly called mutilation: in law, grievous bodily harm, etc.
Then, someone who is really credulous might suddenly in a brainwave realize that the “gentle chemical transitioning” they were led into, will vitiate their bodies and their person-hood.
The Satanist performer may feel empowered to know he can mutilate his being in order to trick someone into believing it was a “transition” not sadistic-masochism (and Satanism).
You see, perversion isn’t just isolated on sexual hang-up; it refers to every manner of fetish and all kinds of interaction. It will endure according to HOW IT HAS TAKEN HOLD. A spring annual will not be there next year. A 50-foot Sycamore? Try uprooting it with your bare hands and see.
Perversion is a branch in corruption: it destroys the heart and the de-constitutes the social uptake. It elides the human and the social experience. Accepting and accommodating it is merciless and anarchic. Yes, we are in an age with tools that make “engineering” possible; but, yes, people do see through it. The evidence of links to Satanism is amassing. And so as with anything SOUND there has to be a convincing both from consequences and into the core of the matter.
Somewhere I can’t remember right now, the popes were saying we have to speak to hearts and defend the common good, as we are professing the Lord’s blessedness.
Amazing.
Catholic church has a stain on the world for sexually abusing children and killing Native American children
But they think transgender people are a cult.
The Roman Catholic Church is a barbaric institution who covers up sexual abuse with money.
I find nothing indicated there, amazing. What I can see is that you lack amazement at your Saviour. Like everything else, there are eternal consequences for persisting in such ways.
There are consequences on it in this life as well, as for example, being awe-struck by things that inhibit and twist understanding; that add poison to insight; and that would weigh everything and everybody to retard measures.
The Catholic Church does not have any stain. Those who repent and are sorry are forgiven and redeemed in Jesus Christ, through her. Those who persist will be condemned in the end and have their reward as a spiritual consumption.
Don’t mislead yourself and put blame on others. And if it is someone has abused you, consider how you have the obligation to forgive and separate yourself from the results.
Well doll, sexual abuse was never intentionally SANCTIONED by the church for any reason. Sexual sins of ALL kinds have always been roundly condemned. Given the reality that humans, even those who are priests, can be sinful and flawed, this abuse has happened with a tiny percentage of priests. Like most people decades ago, the church believed that a few sessions of therapy and a transfer would “fix” the priest’s behavior. We all know now that pedophiles are such for life. I have NEVER heard that the church “murdered Indian children”. The children would however be very susceptible to disease carried by white Europeans, and certainly might die from that cause. .There is absolutely no evidence they were murdered and such statements are nothing but slander.
i am NO LONGER a catholic and yet your argument, although it is an emotionally powerful one, does not destroy the author’s argument regarding the similarities of this religious cult, the Heaven’s gate cult, and transexuals who, to some degree, may feel similar feelings about sex i.e.’ sexual activity is bad’….
Yawn. Red herring argument.
Your article is full of misinformation. “most of the 18 male Heavens Gate members had already undergone surgical procedures to castrate themselves” No, it was six which is far from “most”. “Female Heaven’s Gate members engaged in Hormone therapy and shaved their heads to appear androgynous”. If you look at the videos none of the females had “shaved heads”, they had short, not shaved hair. No one before you has ever claimed that the females underwent “hormone therapy”. Whoever told you that is most likely full of it. “Applewhite had reason to try and repress his sexuality and that of his followers. In 1970 he had been fired from his job as a music professor at the Houston’s University of St. Thomas “after administrators there learned that Applewhite was in a relationship with a male student there.” Robert Balch, arguably the foremost HG scholar there is personally told me that Applewhite was actually fired because he had broken off a relationship with a FEMALE student who tried to kill herself afterwards and whose father had an important position at the University. The “male student” thing was just a rumor that keeps getting repeated over fifty years later. “Applewhite then began a platonic relationship with a nurse named Bonnie Nettles, who he met during his stay in a psychiatric hospital”. Wrong, he was never in a psych hospital and Nettles never worked in a psych hospital, another rumor that’s been repeated for fifty years. He was visiting a friend at a hospital where she worked. Rob Balch has stated that this is the most likely story of how they met.
So it sounds like you’re a big fan of Applewhite I guess? Why else would you be defending the indefensible?
Identifying the true causes of a problem is essential to dealing with them correctly.
Woke-ism, cancel /call-out culture, the race card, etc., these are superficial, passing phenomena, too elusive for getting a grapple on them and too transitory to yield anything lasting. They rely on this ephemerality to carry on but there is nothing more to them and they will eventually peter out and be replaced with another set of ephemera amenable to the pulpy media.
They are like pop music or the latest genre of horror movie.
In very distinct contrast, the homosexual “ethos” is not at an inception point, it got established a long time ago and has grown with the system. Power brokers advanced homosexuals to get certain things off the ground; and have to retain them to maintain the hold on power. This is a key mechanical arrangement that of necessity must be this way.
Also, they have at their disposal all the means of communications messaging, viz., PR narrative, marketing concept, brand management, HRM profiling, Hollywood, political party trappings, etc.
Another unique defining characteristic about it, or “key”, or, thread that runs through it, is: aims, scripting, rules and other basic norms, by a certain inescapable logic or fate, are all contrary to ordinary culture and ethical integrity. It has to be so and it must reproduce worse.
When they were in the closet you ran the risks of “defaming” them or somebody else with unknown forces coming to their side. Now, however, those “risks” have been given over to more predictable tolerance levels.
As we saw with the convoy upwelling, some areas are mostly beyond their scope and likely included among these, is a large swath of the labour market and industrial relations paradigms.
Please take note, the second link, CRISIS, contains graphic language, quite uncommon, reader discretion advised.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/national-review-has-unconditionally-surrendered-to-same-sex-marriage/?utm_source=home_blogs&utm_campaign=usa
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2022/are-gays-replacing-christians-in-the-conservative-movement
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/05/25/fr-james-martin-plays-rhetorical-games-with-the-truth-about-transgenderism/
To pepper these notes I would just like to borrow from Shaw, here -:
‘ By contrast to the view described by Strauss, Pius XI insists (and Benestad seconds) that the reform of the social order can’t really be achieved apart from the inculcation of virtue in citizens and its practice by them. That should come as no surprise. On the contrary, it should be obvious that a good society needs good men and women to enact good laws and good men and women to live by them.
The neglect of such elementary truths may help account for the persistent neglect of conscience formation by social justice advocates, in favor of political and social activism. Among other things, too, it helps explain why the American conference of bishops and its staff have given more attention over the years to being—or attempting to be—players in the political game rather than formers of consciences. ‘
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2011/08/08/only-part-of-the-story/
Oh my goodness the pot-kettle of the cult of Catholicism (aka misogyny plus homophobia) asking how long the cult of transgenderism (aka misogyny plus homophobia) can last is beyond the pale hilarious. Love so much that one of the world’s most destructive cults is concerned about one of the world’s other destructive cults, the lack of self-awareness is astonishing in people with “faith” (aka belief without evidence) – honestly I’m surprised Catholics aren’t cheering gender identity on: Catholics have always been interested in silencing women and homosexuals – you’ve got the same goals.