For many an internet troll on Catholic YouTube channels, “Catholicism is a cult” is a go-to comment. In asking these questions, my hope is not to relativize the issue and say that “cults” are just the same as traditional religions, nor do I want to defend some truly horrible groups; there are definitely some highly misguided people out there who will abuse others for their own gain, and they should not be grouped together with Christianity. Lent will last 40 days, beginning on Ash Wednesday (February 14, 2024) and ending on Holy Thursday (March 28, 2024).

Any Catholic movement should present itself truthfully, and any group that resorts to falsehoods is likely concealing something.

While Catholicism’s acceptance of noncanonical writings (the Apocrypha) and placing of apostolic tradition on par with Scripture are fundamental problems to the Protestant, Catholics nevertheless retain a high view of the Bible (inspired and infallible) and see it as their central source of revelation.

The classification of Catholicism as given above is much more accurate and preferable to the overly simplistic and misguided classification of Catholicism as a non-Christian cult. The unbiblical beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church have often given the enemies of Christ opportunity to blaspheme.It is important that we not think with such a black-and-white mindset in these issues, definitively declaring certain aspects to be bad, as we might find that we are condemning ourselves. Marie-Paul Giguere, the foundress of this organization, acted upon what she claimed was special revelation. Their leaders say there is no salvation outside of THEIR church or organization, rather than no salvation outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. The sisters said certain male leaders’ conduct constituted “grooming” and “culminated in repeated sexual assault and abuse. Or that they have to risk pregnancy to have sex because the church has pulled a fast one on them and successfully restricted or banned birth control through the Republican Party’s efforts.

The Church welcomes questions and instructs the faithful to believe but not without evidence and strong apologetic answers. The ‘Satanic panic’ of the 1980s brought with it a wave of mass hysteria over cult Satanists ritually abusing children in daycare centres, something that seems entirely to have been the product of false memories. Most American-based cults, for example, have to a greater or lesser degree splintered off from other Christian groups, and emerged in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. CNA reached out to one of the alleged victims seeking copies of the lawsuits but did not receive a reply.Every cultish upsurge – the Mansons, the Peoples Temple, the Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church (or Moonies) – met with an equal and opposite wave of hysteria. Her books include Social Creature (2018), The World Cannot Give (2022) and Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians (2023), and she is currently working on a history of magic and modernity. Catholicism is one of the world’s major world religions, with an immense following across continents. This is a fun quiz to help you start thinking about what you should give up for Lent and planning ahead for this season of fasting,almsgiving, and prayer. Each of these devotions is good in itself, but put together in this incoherent way, they risk dissipating into superstition.

God bears witness against him, not for him; and testifies that "there is none righteous, no, not one"; that there is "none that doeth good"; none "that understandeth"; none that even seeks after God, and, still more, none that loves Him (Psa. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. Christianus alter Christus: every Christian is another Christ, a son of God, an heir to the eternal Kingdom. Get ready to discover what Lent resource is best for you to use to grow in your spiritual life from Ash Wednesday.When I was growing up, I heard people everywhere using the name of Jesus and God in different contexts.