First of all, before getting into the subject here, PLEASE DO NOT POST UNLESS YOU HONOR THE PURPOSE OF ROSS FORUMS.

That purpose is to discuss cults and how they have affected YOU directly, either by damaging you or damaging loved ones, directly. Discussing larger political issues such as pro-life marchers or groups you have read about for your own entertainment is not the purpose of these forums. Your own collection of links about apparitions is not important. If you lost a loved one to a pilgrimage group then that is important, let's talk about the specific leader of the pilgrimage group and how it happened, but a general opinion about religious beliefs you see depicted in the media is not important. Any general depiction of the Catholic Church itself as a cult is no more accurate than to depict Buddhism or Hinduism or any major political party as a cult. Every group is a "cult" in a general sense of shared beliefs, but the "cult" definition honored here is limited to the [url=http://www.culteducation.com/faq.html#Destructive Cult Recruitment]destructive kind[/url].


NOW, having said all this, to those who are still reading, let's talk about this Santa Muerte Cult.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Santa Muerte" is being promoted by certain Anglos more than by Latinos inside the Catholic Church. I will use the word "Latino" because there are different Hispanic groups related to this cult and thus the other Hispanic designations are specific when used. I don't know why "Latino" feels more accurate for my purpose than "Hispanic", but it does and so I will go with my gut. I am using "Anglo" to refer to most monolinguist non-Hispanic Americans regardless of original ethnicity and even regardless of race because the dominant American culture is Anglo.

I have had direct contact with this Santa Muerte cult as an artist affected by a militant group of Anglos who were promoting it as an authentic Mexican Catholic practice and who silenced even Latino critics with accusations of racism. I have written about my personal experience elsewhere and I am not interested in concentrating on it here, but it is part of what motivates my interest. The death of a friend in law-enforcement who investigated crimes involving this cult also motivates me.

But mostly I am motivated by my belief that this general belief-cult is being heavily promoted as a tactic of low-grade terrorism by genuine destructive cults in the gang war that has spilled over the southern US border. It is being used to prevent effective neighborly relations between American Latinos (especialy Mexicans) and non-Hispanic Catholics. It is part of a strategy that began to appear in the early years of the establishment of "Culture Councils" with NEA money in the USA. I was an appointed member of one of the original such councils, before the emergence of the death-cult, and so I was able to watch its emergence. I eventually worked as a consultant on several projects that involved Santa Muerte-related art.

To start with, please read this completely innocent blog-account written by a student who gives this subject a perfect introduction: [url=http://generationunderrated.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/fun-with-mexican-death-cults/]"Fun With Mexican Death Cults"[/url]

A quote from Janna Brancolini's blog:
[i]
Although my first instinct is to dismiss the Catholic Church’s description of Santa Muerte’s followers as a “cult,” I believe there are cult-like characteristics of the practices. Last fall, I wrote an article for the USC newspaper about a presentation on cults given by a USC professor, so I did some pretty extensive research and interviews on the topic. The professor said that “cult” is a loaded word in general, and that the term “high-demand group” is usually a better descriptor. She said one common characteristic of high-demand groups is that they don’t let members leave. Santa Muerte’s followers say that once you pledge your devotion to her, you must continue to worship her for the rest of your life; otherwise, a family member is likely to become ill and die. So although nobody is physically forcing followers to stay in the group, there might be an element of psychological terror involved. They are literally told that people they love will be struck down if they stop worshiping Santa Muerte, who I already mentioned is considered a vain and jealous saint.

The topic of cults inevitably leads me to consider the Catholic Church’s other big accusation: that Santa Muerte movement leaders trick impoverished Mexicans into following the Skinny Girl because they think they’re practicing something related to Catholicism.[/i]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2010 03:53AM by dsm.

[anthonykail.weebly.com]

[anthonykail.weebly.com]

Oerlikon, are you Catholic ? Has your school, family or neighborhood been affected by this cult? Is there a reason for posting those links?

Your links are very interesting but please allow us Catholics the ability to use this forum to discuss our experiences. There are millions of links with information about Santa Muerte, it is not my purpose to entertain people with isolated links. If you have nothing to contribute from your direct and personal experience, please do not post links. I had to start this thread over because the repeated posting of lists of links along with another user's personal attacks crippled the other threads.

It is my purpose to enable Catholics and other directly-impacted individuals to discuss their experiences with this cult and its active companion-cults inside our communities.

Here is a link to a news story about David Romo, the so-called "High Priest" of Santa Muerte.

Now, if what all the propaganda in the Anglo literature online were true, that Santa Muerte is nothing more than an indigenous folk-practice, it would not have a so-called "High Priest" named David Romo.

[www.calcatholic.com]

What is very interesting about this is the way it is connected to Brancolini's discovery that most of the shops she looked at, that sold Santa Muerte skeletons etc, were not run by Mexicans. When she did dig into the full Santa Muerte culture, she did not venture far because of her own limitations in language.

Also, this Santa Muerte thing, according to Mexicans I have talked with, is not the same as the candy-skull "Dios de Los Muertes" day that is more like what American Halloween USED TO BE, (before the rise of the death-cults) which is a brief celebration limited to only a certain time.

I am in my fifties and I can tell you absolutely that before the 1980's seasonal holidays were limited to their seasons, and Halloween was a very short one. Among Catholics it was clearly bounded within a realm of "folkway" and not religion. Today, Halloween is taught in the public schools as if it is a religion. This is a very modern phenomenon.

To get back to Santa Muerte, every article about it seems to repeat the mantra that it is a religion of the poor and the marginalized, something that is promoted as if that is a positive thing, and no explanation is offered of how a population of people that includes many middle-class and working class people within the same families could have two different religions by economic class. Such a uniformity of religion among the poor does not make sense. The poor of Mexico include many different ethnicities and so one would expect that there would be more variation, just as there is among many different Catholic churches in the same city, but the symbolism of Santa Muerte is extremely uniform.

Now as far as the promotion of this by Anglo-americans, you have to notice that the wording is very carefully set up so that criticism will appear to be disrespectful to the poor. It is as if the journalists have been trained, and in fact they have been trained. The language is boilerplate taken from another Catholic cult, the Liberation Theology movement. "Liberation Theology" is Catholic marxism. It has been involved with violence in South America, with even some nuns stylizing themselves as revolutionaries.

The question of Liberation Theology would be a digression, but I had to mention it as an important peripheral point.

Now, to quote David Romo, the Santa Muerte "High Priest", in 2005:

"Cult spokesman David Romo Guillén, who styles himself as a bishop, declared that his group "The Mexico-US Tridentine Catholic Church" or "The Traditional Catholic Mex-USA Church" has temples in Mexico and prayer groups in the US – including Texas, California, and Washington DC. However, a spokesman of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington DC in an email response to Spero News declared that he "had no knowledge" of the cult, while no response was forthcoming from the Los Angeles Catholic archdiocese about St. Death.
"

The term "traditional" in his words is a complete robbery of the "Traditional" Catholics who all adhere very closely to a pre-1960's form of Vatican-based Liturgy and who follow strict Papal authority. You can peruse the postings in almost any "traditional Catholic" forum and see that this is true. There is no way that any folk-tradition of the Santa Muerte nature, even a real one, would be accepted by "Traditional Catholics" such as the many middle-aged and older middle and upper class devotees of the Latin Mass and all its regalia!

Furthermore, why would a MEXICAN folk-priest append "USA" onto such a strange abuse of the Catholic label? I must digress in order to answer this.

In the 1980's, following their successful takeover of the Methodist church social services and all the legal wrangling that followed, NatLFED cadres inside church-charities formed various USA-suffixed churches to run as fronts against mainstream Episcopalians and Presbyterians. If you google you will see claims that the Presbyterian-USA goes back much further, but here is a good source of the actual name: [www.thearda.com]

This one, the Episcopal-USA brand, is harder to pin down online but it clearly has the NatLFed profile from the well-known lists of fronts in its material here, and so I ask tolerance of new readers who might not be aware of the old NatLFEd "Concerned bla-bla" professional front system. There are numerous articles in this forum as well as online so post a question and I will dig up the links, but I don't want to stray too far from Santa Muerte with these peripheral background notes.

Here is the Episcopal-USA link:
[www.religioustolerance.org]

Now, having wandered away from Mexico and Santa Muerte and into Anglo church-land where we bumped into my old nemesis NatLFed, let's take a U-turn back to Mexico and remember, do not forget, but always keep in mind that NatLFed got its start with a handful of crazy marxist gringos who took Hispanic pseudonyms and tried to move the Mexican laborers away from Cesar Chavez, who was a legitimate Mexican-American organizer.

I have to take a break but I hope at least a few board regulars have followed me this far and I promise to any curious Catholics who never heard of NatLFed that your questions can be answered so please ask.

Quote
dsm
Oerlikon, are you Catholic ? Has your school, family or neighborhood been affected by this cult? Is there a reason for posting those links?
SNIP
It is my purpose to enable Catholics and other directly-impacted individuals to discuss their experiences with this cult and its active companion-cults inside our communities.

dsm, I've posted the forum rules below. Rick Ross's intention appears to be that anyone who follows these rules is welcome to participate in any thread on these boards. I'm offended that you want to violate these rules and limit this thread to "Catholics and other directly-impacted individuals." You do not have the right to do that.

If you want a private discussion, and it appears you do, Yahoo Groups might be a better place to go. But trying to limit the participants in a thread to people you approve of violates the rules, the purpose, and the spirit of this public forum.


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Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2010 10:18AM by Christa.

Christa, I was addressing the fact that Oerlikon has spammed discussions with lists of links that are peripheral to the question of cults among Catholics and another person has posted with personal hostility to disable discussions.

Your post here and the other one in another threaqd for example, both clearly are efforts to attack me instead of continuing the discussion. You made your post incredibly long instead of linking to it as a deliberate TROLL maneuver.

You even included the technical program credit for "Phorum". Cute. 2 points on the Troll board for you.

I am asking that the discussion be limited to people who have direct expereince: Catholics and our loved ones, and not be spammed by people who just want to talk about the larger world of politics and philosophy, etc in which the Catholics also have a presence. There is nothing about that which breaks the rules. It keeps the discussion to the forum's purpose, which is to discuss CULTS and help people escape or recover from them, not to just chew the rag about religion or politics.

I agree with Christa. If you are looking for a private, "Catholics only" discussion then this is not the place.

I am looking for a troll-free discussion. It is not at all unreasonable or against the rules to ask that people do not post unless they are actually concerned with the topic.

Neither Christa nor myself are trolls. She's right; if you want a private conversation that you can moderate your way, then that's what Yahoo! Groups is for.

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