As I suggested in part 7, beyond the immediate victims of an abusive Group or Founder, consideration must be given to the predicament of that far larger group of good people who find themselves “second-hand” victims of an organization afflicted with cultish attributes—those ordinary priests, consecrated and laity who do the bulk of the “praying, paying, and obeying”, as the old saying goes, in a new ecclesial movement. What breaks the heart is that these second-hand victims are invariably among the most idealistic in the Church, the most generous in spirit and fervent in faith. Indeed, it is their very virtues of idealism, generosity and fervor, coupled as they often are with youth, inexperience, and spiritual and/or psychological immaturity, that render so many of these good Catholics vulnerable to groups promising an inside line on God’s will and the Church’s blessings.

A priest-friend once commented that it can take the Church centuries to integrate and “normalize” the kind of revolution/renewal in the liturgy, canon law, and religious life one saw after the Council of Trent. He predicted a similar time-frame for the Church with Vatican II and the new ecclesial movements. Well, centuries are a very long time and unfortunately we, who are still in these frontiers, the “Wild West” decades of the new ecclesial movements, are too often forced to learn the hard way that good intentions, fervor, and ostensible orthodoxy are not enough to protect us from serious abuses; that sometimes even the apparent blessing of the Church—that “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” granting some form of canonical status to a new movement—is not enough. Bishops, as we in America have had reason to learn in the last few decades, sometimes fall down on their job of protecting the faithful from wolves in shepherds’ clothing; nor even is papal support, as other commentators on the Maciel scandal have pointed out, among those “faith and morals” decisions which fall under the assurance of infallibility. As the history of the Church proves, when the laity rely solely on their immediate leadership to discern spirits and the signs of the times—when they truly do nothing but “pray, pay, and obey”—they are likely as not to be led astray.

I wrote in my previous post about the methods some groups use to control their members; but many who have never suffered this kind of experience still wonder how it is possible that so many good, intelligent people take so long (if ever) to recognize the manipulations and deceptions.

The flip answer is often, “brainwashing!” While that’s no doubt off the mark in most cases, there is one way at least in which the notion of “brainwashing” may be instructive: that is, in the propensity of imbalanced groups for “forming” their members in a manner which will eventually place them in a situation of “false conscience”:  where obedience to the group’s methods or leaders conflicts with fundamental principles of charity and the teachings of the Church. In this excruciating moral “double-bind,” a member will either resist thereby suffering feelings of guilt and confusion, as well as the displeasure of the the Group; or else submit his will and do what is asked of him, even though he knows it, in his heart of hearts, to be wrong. Either way, the person’s human and divinely bestowed dignity suffers tremendously, and that suffering can be acute.

In his classic Apologia pro vita sua, Cardinal Newman, relating the story of his conversion from childhood Evangelicalism to youthful Anglicanism and finally to Catholicism, describes his own struggles with a case of “false conscience” derived from absorbing contradictory theological notions at an early age:

Now I come to two other works, which produced a deep impression on me in the same autumn of 1816, when I was fifteen years old, each contrary to each, and planting in me the seeds of an intellectual inconsistency which disabled me for a long course of years. I read Joseph Milner’s Church History, and was nothing short of enamoured of the long extracts from St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and the other Fathers which I found there. I read them as being the religion of the primitive Christians: but simultaneously with Milner I read Newton on the Prophecies, and in consequence became most firmly convinced that the Pope was the Antichrist predicted by Daniel, St. Paul, and St. John. My imagination was stained by the effects of this doctrine up to the year 1843; it had been obliterated from my reason and judgment at an earlier date; but the thought remained upon me as a sort of false conscience. Hence came that conflict of mind, which so many have felt besides myself;—leading some men to make a compromise between two ideas, so inconsistent with each other,—driving others to beat out the one idea or the other from their minds,—and ending in my own case, after many years of intellectual unrest, in the gradual decay and extinction of one of them…

In new ecclesial movements exhibiting cult-like attributes, the double-bind situation of “false conscience” arises when a Group undertakes to form its members to accept, unconditionally and simultaneously, two potentially contradictory “absolutes” that go something like this:

1. The Church is the Body of Christ and the means by which Christ gives us the (“ordinary”) grace of salvation. It is our duty as Christians to obey the teachings of the Church in all matters of faith and morals.
2. The group (or the Founder, by way of his charism) is our group’s special (“extraordinary”) means of grace. By God’s will, it/he is the means given to us to fulfill our Christian vocation. Therefore it is our duty as members of the group to work tirelessly for the  Group/Leader; to trust that it/he has received special graces of discernment which we cannot share or even understand; to obey our Founder and Group superiors in all matters, even when we think they are wrong.

Now, number 1, of course, is the teaching of the Church herself; the sine qua non of Catholic ecclesiology and the basis for our moral system and the proper formation of conscience. But number 2 is an exaggeration of the Church’s understanding of the special (“extradordinary”) charisms an individual may receive from God by means of a community or form of spirituality. For those who believe they have a call, the practice of a certain spirituality within a specific community may indeed be their particular way of living out the universal Christian charism; but it is not sine qua non (required for salvation), and can never (should never attempt to) contradict or usurp the ordinary means of Grace or the Church’s universally established teachings on faith and morals.

To most of us, the notion that a Founder’s charism might give him (or his group) “special” permission in “special” circumstances (because of “all the good it does”) to keep a mistress, or abuse young men, or misuse funds, or cook the books, or lie (even to the Vatican and members of the Curia) to maintain appearances, or hide crimes and malfeasance from legitimate authority, or villify critics and ex-members, or insist that members receive spiritual direction only from “loyal” priests, or demand the kind of absolute obedience, reverence and freedom from criticism that not even the Pope could or should enjoy, is complete (and malignant) nonsense. Unfortunately, the more the group resembles a cult, whatever its originally Catholic mission, and whatever its canonical status (which is never “once and for all”, incapable of being withdrawn) the more the importance of the Group or Founder’s “charism” is exaggerated; even to the pointing of trumping, as it were, the Church’s teaching on its own nature.

The Group/Founder with an exaggerated, even Narcissistic, sense of its/his own grace and mission will accomplish this dangerous control of otherwise good Christian consciences by means of the methods mentioned in post 7. They/he will also do it by imposing the constant repetition of slogans and prayers referencing the Group’s or Founder’s charism; by ceaselessly assuring members that the approbation the Group/Founder has received from the hierarchy is sufficent cause for trust that everything the Group/Founder does or demands is “of the Holy Spirit”; by constantly referencing the “good fruits” achieved by the Group in terms of conversions, growth in membership, or support (especially financial) from famous or important Catholics. Every community meditation is on the glories of the Group/Founder, and how members should serve and be grateful to it/him; every homily is about the Group/Founder and the graces received from it/him.

Given the power of human concupiscence, with its temptations to lust, greed, pride, anger, or the desire for power, if this sort of overheated and imbalanced “spiritual formation” goes unchecked by legitimate ecclesial authority, disaster and scandal in some form is inevitable. It is also likely to overshadow, to say the least, all the “good fruits” for which members offered up countless prayers and sacrifices. The whole Church suffers.

Next: specific examples of how this “false conscience” operates in morally problematic situations.