You have both worked hard to derail this thread. PLEASE STOP! What kind of person would ignore such a request? You both have no purpose in any of your posts other than to disrupt the topic.

nm.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2010 11:36AM by Christa.

dsm, Oerlikon is not a spammer and I am not a troll. It is extremely offensive for you to throw those terms around in this most inappropriate fashion.

Oerlikon posts interesting links in many threads; I find that very helpful, and from the feedback he gets, so do many other people. People who don't like his links don't have to click on them.

It is also common practice on these boards to post information in the body of the post, as well as to provide the link, as I did when I posted this forum's rules. I did so for the sake of convenience, and I don't feel my post is overly long. Whether or not it is, my point is correct: it is a violation of this forum's rules for you to try to restrict who can post in a thread.

As to your accusation that I attacked you in another thread, here is the interaction you refer to:

Quote

dsm
Unfortunately, most cult damage does include relapse at a future time, but fortunately, you can be better prepared to keep the relapse brief and minimize the harm if you have a written record in journal or letter form that can remind you of the path you already have trodden.


Christa
Do you have evidence to support the statement above? I haven't seen any, and I can't think of any reason why it would necessarily be true.

People relapse (or cult-hop), especially those who don't get effective counseling or who don't have access to the resources on this site. But it doesn't have to happen.

dsm
You are right, Christa, it doesn't have to happen, but it often does. It is part of human nature, after all, that we are vulnerable to cults and the recovery from one cult experience does not include a cure of our human nature.

But as I said, getting good therapy can leave you with the tools so that the next time your "cult buttons" get pushed, you don't fall as hard or as far.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Asking for evidence is not attacking, and from your response to me, "You are right, Christa..." I conclude that you both agreed with me and didn't feel attacked at the time. So I'm not sure why you're now claiming that I attacked you.

I'm also not sure why you continue to defend your attempts to limit participation in this thread. This is a public forum guided by the rules the forum owner established. Those rules do not state that only ex-members of a group, or co-religionists of an OP, can post in a thread. If that's what you want, this is not the place. You are not the owner of this forum, and you do not make the rules.

Quote
dsm
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.

The rules clearly show that it is not up to you to decide who is concerned with a topic. Your comments also indicate that your understanding of the words "troll" and "spammer" is hazy at best. Unless you are deliberately and disingenuously misusing these terms.

Quote
dsm
You have both worked hard to derail this thread. PLEASE STOP! What kind of person would ignore such a request? You both have no purpose in any of your posts other than to disrupt the topic

.

My initial purpose in posting was to point out that you cannot limit this thread in the way that you want. It is not derailing a thread to point out that the OP has violated board rules. I was also unpleasantly surprised that you asked another board member his religion, and that you are setting up a religious litmus test.

My purpose now is to show that what you are saying about my posts is not true, and to note that I find what you say offensive. You cannot just say whatever you want on a public message board and expect it to go unchallenged. If you want total control over the parameters of a discussion, check out a place like Yahoo Groups.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2010 11:44AM by Christa.

I had a brief exchange with dsm in another thread, under 'Destructive Churches' and concluded that dsm is a skilled provocateur who likes to exercise that skill in a personal manner against respondents.

I don't read these boards to engage in that kind of time-wasting so declined further engagement. I think that dsm has some interesting things to contribute but find the attempts at exclusion and the obvious personal provocation being employed to outweigh any benefits.

To whom it may concern:

Every thread is open to anyone within the stated guidelines.

A thread cannot be restricted by a member of this message board.

But the posts should be on the topic and not violate the rules.

Thank you, moderator. the "On Topic" part is what I was trying to re-inforce with my opening post and I did not intend to restrict anything as to persons, so I apologize for any misunderstanding.

I will start the thread over, and I will also ask that the topic be respected, which is to track a specifc set of cults that exploit the Catholic Church community both against its members and against society at large.

People are not permitted to disrupt threads about the various buddhist or hindu meditation cults with general articles about those general religions other groups, political candidates in other countries, etc. and that is the simple courtesy I am asking.

This is a serious subject. I am talking about one of the most violent cults to threaten a large portion of society, the Santa Muerte cult, and it is absolutely clear that this violent cult is affecting whole cities in Mexico and large parts of cities in the USA.

The Santa Muerte cult is dependent on its ability to fool Anglo Catholics as well as all non-Catholics. It has gathered support from the NatLFed-influenced Call-To-Action cult that is an internal Catholic cult and this has been part of our problem, because Call-To-Action has strong mainstream membership in the USA Democrat-Left and has disrupted parishes, but now it is being excommunicated and so it is beginning to be possible to criticize it without repercussions.

If we can give people a chance to understand these particular cults and how they feed off each other, we can stop a lot of their recruitment among our youth (because Santa Muerte is spreading way beyond its ethnic start) and we can also discourage the violence that results from people believing false propaganda about who is and is not a bishop and which church is or is not Catholic. Just as it is important for me to be able to read that a certain guru is fake (because I do not have the heritage to discern one Hindu or Buddhist from another) it is important for others to have the information to see that a certain so-called "catholic" group is fake, since they are not likely to have the Catholic heritage to see that from the outside.

Actually dsm, I think the links posted by Oerlikon were indeed useful for the newcomer/unaware/unaware Catholic about the drug criminal's worship of the Mexican Saint of Death.

The links serve the purpose of educating the uninformed about this bizarre cult.

Don't be upset about off-topic/non-catholic responders. This is an open forum. I started an ex-SGI thread and some comments were all about SGI but not from past or present members. Big deal. At least the comments keep bumping the thread.

I personally don't respond to off-base/off-topic posts (and you shouldn't either, it just gets your blood pressure up)...responding to off base/topic comments is rrmoderator's responsibility, if so warranted.

That being said, I still insist Oerlikon's links were welcome to push the level of understanding of the Santa Muerte forward and seemed to be on topic to me.

I am not Catholic nor raised such. I am sure Catholics who have had run-in's with Santa Muerte will eventually respond.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2010 12:52AM by Sparky.

Sparky, you may be right about Oerlikon's intent but the posting of links without comment and experience in another thread in which he posts long lists of links bothered me. In the other thread I could not get him to stop trying to turn it into a discussion of a political group that is active in Brazil and is not one of the cults we are facing here in the USA. Perhaps I did over-react a little.

The problem with the extremely long off-topic posts by Christa is that they do effectively disrupt the visual flow of the thread and I think she knows that. If she made the same angry ad-hominem attacks on me with just a link to the rules, or just a quote of the specific rule she felt I violated, then everyone could have ignored that and moved on with the discussion. That is why I now have to reconstruct the thread which I will be doing this evening and hopefully it can move along in a more constructive manner, with criticisms being on the topic and not just on my personality or on some other political or general issue outside of this Santa Muerte cult and a couple of the other cults that may be supporting it inside the Church.

I have been accused of "conspiracy" issues. Well, it is a fact that the Catholic Church has always supported disparate groups which openly work together on common issues. Catholics of both extreme left and extreme right are able to get along in the same parish because outside of the weekly Mass, they attend different social meetings and different prayer groups and march in different political causes. They may even recognize each other on opposite sides of the street at a pro-life demonstration for example, because there are also some pro-choice Catholic groups. Thus it is not "conspiracy thinking" to notice if one group is supporting another group inside the church because our church has a possibly unique history of allowing that. It is usually not done in secret. When it is done in secret, then it becomes a cult problem with all the attendent problems of uninformed consent, coercion, etc.

I understand you, dsm. I was involved as an observer only, in the Catholic Charismatic craze of the late 1970's ("tongues", etc. etc.). I can see how the Santa Muerte cult must have some Catholic ties ('Saint' is the giveaway to me).

It also seems to me that Santa Muerte may have Santoria (sp?) connections as well. As you well know Catholic priests/missionaries adopted the pagan beliefs of other cultures (mayan, Voodoo et al) and slowly tried to make them worship a statue of Jesus or Mary instead of whatever god they were (I am not a mexican history buff so I don't know the Mayan gods).

Oops. Now the people pray to Mary but are thinking of some other ancient goddess.

Have you found Santoria ties with Santa Muerte? While Santoria is NOT Mexican as I know, it has certain voodoo elements which almost is the feel I get for Santa Muerte.

Sparky, some of the law enforcement investigations have commented on some common elements in the original ethnic roots between santeria and the Santa Muerte because they both are voodoo-related which has strong elements of involvement with death and "spiritual slavery" (for want of a better term) but I have not seen anything at all that connects the Santeria religious cult with actual organized and well-armed gangs in anything like the murderous cult Santa Muerte has become in Mexico and in some of our own cities.

If people are not educated about this cult, they will blame all Mexican Catholics for any Santa Muerte upheavals in their own cities. Mexicans don't follow American Anglo groups and so when they see any references to "Traditional Catholic Mass" in the USA, (and these Masses are often held quietly and advertised only via small newsletters) they often have no reason to know that it is not the same as Santa Muerte that is killing their relatives. They often see Anglo left wingers in trendy art districts promoting Santa Muerte as a traditional Catholic Mexican thing, and how are they to know that these trendy arty promotions are a different set of Anglos?

In the media it all looks the same. People in different ethnic groups do not talk to each other about these things unless someone forces a discussion.
[blogofthegods.blogspot.com]
[www.cbsnews.com]

Now read the prayer in the ritual described here:
[www.cultcrime.org]
‘Beloved death, From my heart I ask you to take away from my home and my path (name of individual). O my Lady, I ask you that as the candle is consumed, that hatred and ill will against me will be consumed. Thanks Lady for all the favors received.”

This may seem silly to anyone who is agnostic etc but from a practical point of view, no Catholic tradition exists of asking Death to remove a neighbor. Obviously, if you have ever tried to convince a believer in faith-healing that they are expereinceing a placebo effect, you know that strong beliefs will indeed block rational inquiry. Most people will know that a neighbor disappeared because of threats or something worse but they will not speak up against a cult because they will feel outnumbered and also they will be facing the strange jargon of cult belief if they do try to speak up, unless even just one or two others know about the existence of the cult and its distinction from the "normal" Mexican Catholics in the community.

Every single aspect of Catholic doctrine and practice would have you pray for the strength to endure a troublesome neighbor without reacting, to pray that the neighbor would "convert" and become nice, and of course no Catholic doctrine would support being upset about people who are "nosy". You're not supposed to be doing anything that must be hidden, after all.

Race war can easily happen between ethnic groups if a cult like this is not widely recognized to be very distinct from the mainstream church whose name they are stealing. The media needs to become very alert to avoid promoting the false image that regular working class Hispanic catholics have anything to do with Santa Muerte. Young people need to be alert that invitations to Santa Muerte shrines are not Catholic activities. Right now there is very little to let the uninitiated understand the difference.