The
book by Gordon Urquhart – a former member of the
insidious Focolare Movement - called The Pope’s
Armada exposes three Roman Catholic movements as full-blown cults. The Neocatechumenate.
Communion and Liberation and Focolare are the
terrible threesome. Kiko
Arguello, Luigi Giussani
and Chiara Lubich are the
founders of each respectively. These
evil charlatans are enthusiastically endorsed by the most dangerous charlatan
of them all, the pope. John Paul II even
granted a special status to their lay members (page 20).
The book tells us about Rita of Ealing Abbey Parish who joined the Neocatechumenate. It became her new family. The parishioners found her wedding mass celebrated by the movement to be hypnotic. She aggressively sought to make converts of the neighbours. Eventually, she was told to have nothing to do with her family. The movement in the parish was led by Fr Michael Hopley. The movement was very secretive. That shows it had something to hide.
Communion and Liberation and Focolare encourage people to keep away from anything that is not of the movement. Everything is thought to be a bad influence. They also insist that faith and experience are superior to reason (page 58). If you reason tells you that there can’t be a God you must ignore it if you feel that God is with you. That is evil and deceptive.
The author felt he was love-bombed by Focolare (page 17). He joined and it nearly cost him his personality and he stopped thinking and feeling what was normal (page 19).
Focolare has secret writings of the founder which are considered to be offensive
to the public (page 33). This shows that
the Movement is dishonest and manipulative.
The author saw a secret text in which Lubich
said that God gives all grace only through Mary and she said that she was the
little Mary through whom all the supernatural powers that forge unity
come. Lubich
like all Romanists holds that that there is no real unity without holiness so
she is really saying that there is no grace – the supernatural force that
removes from you all that God does not like – given unless she intercedes with
Mary who must in turn intercede with God.
The author was told by several members that it was enough to believe in Chiara if one did not believe in God. What they must have meant was not than an
atheist could believe in Chiara for you can’t believe
in Chiara if you think there is no God – and especially
when she says that it is only God that matters – but that we must believe in Chiara and she will lead us to God so we believe in God
only because of Chiara. Chiara is still
made superior to God for what God says does not matter but only what she says.
The
Focolare and Neocatechumenate
cults insist that there is a gift from God that their founders have that makes
them know everything (page 35).
The latter urges
people to publicly confess the worst sins and is not afraid to ask revolting
and personal questions (page 37).
It
tries to compel people to put it first even before families and demands total
obedience (page 38). The leaders of Focolare didn’t like people thinking and told them not to
do it (page 47). Any cult that does that
is to be avoided.
The author stated that incredibly simple exams are given by Focolare. Such exams were certainly for a dishonest purpose for why ask questions as silly as who the Son of God is? They want to give the appearance of teaching while not really teaching very much.
At
Loppiano, the Focolare
members had to wear themselves out to make visitors think that it was Heaven
and to do it all day (page 50).
Chiara had an unpublished book in which she commended obeying absurd orders
(page 52). The author had experienced
religious blackmail and was told that each person was to blame for any problems
that he or she had (page 53).
The
Information Network Focus on New Religious Movements, INFORM, claims that
brainwashing does not exist for if it did nobody would leave the group. But the author correctly notes that this
proves that it does not work as well as it could in such cases (page 54). Focolare tries to
keep you from any influence it does not like.
Members are almost forced not to leave the environment even for brief
excursions into the outside world.
People were made to behave as if the unnatural behaviour demanded by the
Movement was natural to them. This makes
an example for others and frightens them from doing anything that is
disapproved. The strict demand for
obedience and the fact that people are imperfect gets them sucked further into
the Movement for they will want to expunge guilt and make amends for failure
and to prove to themselves that they can be better members. Once a month, members would have to tell one
another their sins. This practice makes
them feel that they are not their own property but the property of the wily Chiara Lubich and her evil
mentor, the pope.
The
frequent use of cult jargon is a reliable method of conditioning yourself and
others. Focolare
does this.
Dogma
is put before persons. But all
Christians are meant to do that for their faith tells them that death is
preferable to heresy or sin – what God says is wrong.
The
three movements destroy the personality and are determined to make others
control you (60, 61). Lubich wants people to desire suffering and anguish for
themselves for the suffering Jesus is loved by loving them (page 61, 62).
And
God is thought by all the cults to be experienced only through the members of
the group (page 63). So, when the cult
controls your perception of God and his seemingly odd commands it follows that
the cult can get you to do anything. And
when feelings and stories are made to determine what God is like and who he is
and not reason it is obvious that the cult is made
superior to God. What is says is what
matters to you and not the truth.
At
least we have to give the Neocatechumenate credit for
saying that if we are sinners then we are all murderers, thieves and perverts
(page 85). This is true for we are as
good as in that case but then it says we hit rock bottom (page 85). Its heavy on the
guilt thing. The Movement took over a
parish near
The
Movement grabbed plenty of money and priests were known to be big spenders even
though the ideal was giving what you had for God (page 97).
Laura
received much mental cruelty from Fr. John who was a Neocatechumenal
priest. He once told her that God made
her depressed to prevent her becoming a worse prostitute than her sister. He called the sister that because she lived
with her boyfriend. He also let bad lots
run riot in Church and did not care that the worshippers were annoyed and
endangered (page 98, 99). Laura gave £1,
600 to purchase a crucifix for the priest and he bought her a cheap one with it
and would not return the remaining money when requested. He gave her a heap of verbal abuse.
In
The
cult has not defended itself against accusations of heresy (page 106) probably
because they are true! It has attacked
Fr Zoffoli who wrote books on its heresies but that
is as close as it gets to proving itself orthodox.
The
movement is so powerful in the
It
was not in the list of organisations approved by the
The
pope refuses to listen to criticisms of the movement and many Italian bishops
have let him know about the dark side of the movement (page 133).
The
Neos carry on as if they were a parallel Church and
their priests tend to mostly neglect parishioners who are not members (page
135). Clergy who are non-members are
even called Pharaohs (page 137). Moses
the so-called man of God was antagonised by Pharaoh which is the meaning of
this. There are testimonies from even
Catholic bishops that the cult does not really respect Episcopal authority as
much as it boasts (page 137).
Focolare judges the clergy as if it were the supreme authority (page 138). Focolare has
contempt for the clergy because it thinks it is the true Church. Priests tend to be left out of intimate union
with the cult. Focolare
is evilly deceitful. The Church approval
the movements have got has been won by deceit.
John
Paul II advised all the laity to join the movements in Christifideles
laici in 1987.
Focolare like the Roman Church herself chooses leaders who are orthodox and
useful. Their holiness is not as
important (page 150). Focolarinos give their salaries to the superior and cannot
buy or meet anybody without their permission or do anything that is not geared
towards missions and the movement (page 153).
Everything they do is recorded even down to the names of the people they
speak to. The leaders would tell them to
walk out of their job and leave their boss stranded (page 154).
The
pope in a letter to Mar Cordes wrote that he
recognised the Neos as being good for the Church
(page 159). The letter has errors in it
which show that it was not corrected by the pope’s aides who always make his
corrections. And it was not mentioned
until September 1990 though it should have been mentioned before that. And then a ridiculous footnote claimed that
the pope did not mean to give unqualified approval! This implies that not everybody at the
Page
171 does not give us much confidence in the pope. Paul VI laicised 30,000 priests and let them
get married in Church but John Paul II makes them wed out side the Church and
then apply to be laicised. And he then
regards marriage outside the Church and the forcing of a person to sin as a
terrible sin! When the pope was bishop
of
The
pope declared that the movements are necessary for growth in holiness inferring
that anybody who does not join is not a great Catholic or fully Catholic (page
185).
During
the papal visit to
The
cults like Romanism despise and condemn sexual sin the most (page 219). That is a very dishonest and uncaring and
unfair approach.
Focolare is strict in its rules about the segregation of the sexes (page
222). The practice of keeping men and
women apart in case they have sex will fail for it will make men fancy men and
women fancy women! The message is that
it is fine to make heterosexuals go that way for a while or whatever presumably
because they will be disgusted with themselves and hate themselves
forever. Focolare
encourages childish behaviour and thinking (page 224). Marriage is thought to be inferior to
celibate virginity. Focolare
pressures married couples to serve it more than they should (page 230). Feelings of affections are banned for God is
to be loved with the love that should bind man and wife (page 230). Arranged marriages have been engineered by
the movement (page 232).
Chiara told a homosexual that she would rather have it if he were killed by a
car than if he committed a homosexual act (page 237). People were made for faith then and not faith
for people. It is wholly vindictive to
harbour a belief like hers for there are countless nicer things she could have
believed. The movement wasted much money
on trying to “cure” this man. She told
him he was not to blame for his orientation which was insincere for she really
thought that he could be turned heterosexual.
What about Romans 1 where God’s mouthpiece Paul says that gay people all
want to be gay and that homosexuality is a punishment for sin?
The
Neos will command the break-up of a marriage for
religious reasons - when there is a partner who does not want the other to
practice her or his Catholic faith (page 245).
They want married people to love God alone instead of being in love with
their partners (page 250). Marriages
won’t be hard to break up if that is the case.
Teachings like this imply that only very spiritual and religious people
should get married. The movement is only
concerned with converting others and neglects to relieve suffering (page 275).
We
read that the movements do not like interest in material things and yet their
leaders are all interested in wealth and buy expensive items (page 297).
Arguello, the founder of the Neos, declared that God
wants people to be rich instead of being poor (page 299). They even try to get their hands on their
victims’ wealth (page 300). People have
been invited to secret weekend classes and when they are over they are forced
to pay dearly. One man and his wife were
harassed until they gave up £160 though they could not afford to (page
301). If not enough is collected in the
collection they will pass the bag or whatever around again.
Tithes,
one tenth of the income, are even extorted from promoted members and how the
money is spent is something that is kept from everyone (page 302). Members are expected to sell all and the
pressure to do this could not be stronger (page 302). Loads of cash is given out to bishops and
priests probably to deter them from exposing the dangers of the cult.
Focolare does oppose people having possessions (page 304). Members are expected to live like parasites
and just take all the time (page 305).
Members still have a life of comfort and can stay for nothing in
glorious holiday resorts (page 307). Yet
they make an ideal of poverty.
Obviously, Chiara and her movement are just
thieving. She has several swish houses
and holidays all the time (page 308).
This system ensures that members will stay in the movement rather than
leave with nothing.
In
1949, Lubich had the first of several visions near
The
movement claims that its heretical Guidelines volume was given to
Arguello claimed that the Church did not really exist until he founded the
movement and that it alone is the fulfilment of
It
is opposed to reserving the Eucharist in Chruches for
it is argued that if Jesus meant that to be done he would have turned stone
into himself for that does not rot (page 358).
And it seems to be held that Jesus leaves the Eucharist when the mass
finishes. Neocatechumenal priests trampled on
Holy Communion in St John Lateran in
It
does not like people doing anything for the world (page 361).
Arguello also claims to have visions (page 369).
He thinks he saw Jesus and Mary.
The revelations may have given him his doctrine that the door of
salvation is closed.
The
movement regards anybody who leaves as a traitor who has abounded the faith
(page 371).
Focolare does not give good news about lost members (page 373). It was often implied that those who left were
as bad as the Devil for leaving Heaven.
However, it does not treat them as lepers like the Neos
do (page 396).
Urquhart asserts that the pope must know of the accusations against the
movements (page 418). That is correct
for the pope meets all his bishops.
For