Is it a sect?
We believe the focolare has some sectarian aspects or tendences and we will give the proof of it.
We have studied the focolare organization closely and compared this to a study by G.A. Galanti Ph.D. who investigated the Unification Church (Moonie-sect). Our study discovered over 10 different techniques of mind control that are being used by both organizations. These techniques have been described by Robert Jay Lifton in 1961 in his excellent book “Study of brainwashing”. We are convinced that there is clear prove of the sectarian character of the focolare organization. Let us give you a few examples:
1. Milieu control
The environment where people have their
education is a closed one. We found at least 19 so called new villages
where focolare people live and work together to get a two year education
in the doctrine of the organization. In these cities the group is the only
reality and members take on the beliefs, values and behaviors of the new
culture of focolare.
2. Mystical manipulation
Members are convinced that the group is
working toward a ‘Higher purpose”, to bring the world to God and God to
the world. They believe that they are different because they live their
Ideal instead of only having it. People who join focolare are convinced
that they can make a difference in the world.
3. Sacred science
An aura of sacred science surrounds the
belief system. This is institutionalized in the ABBA-school. The focolare
dogma’s are presented as Truth. This truth has been revealed to the leader
of focolare, Chiara Lubich, and it is not falsifiable.
Soon we will give you more examples on this page.
If you have information that can either prove our point or challenge our statements, we like to hear from you.
Some information that we recieved point out the following problems:
First of all we see the danger to loose your personality by forgetting one's right to express his ideas and by loosing one's critical point of view. This exists in every community.
Secondly we see the possibillity that too much engagement can be dangerous, in the way that it can make you a "stranger" for the world. You also could speak of the danger of beginning to judge other people and the danger to get in a missionarian attitude.
Other kinds of danger that we see are:
- one is to have the tendance to
"flee" from the world, and to try to find a community where everything's
right and nice, with the risk of loosing your personality...
- the other one is the tendance
to become some kind of God's soldier, a pharisee having God on it's
side, judging everybody and everything, trying to win new people, etc.
This is not new... even in the first centuries of the Church, there were the same tendencies...
To conclude we see a tendence of some kind of cult of the person, with Chiara, and also the fact that in the movement, one often forgets to go to the souce (the Gospel) and prefers to read only the comments of Chiara.
We believe that in many aspects the focolare
holds a very conservative view of things. We think that this is an interesting
platform for discussing
If you have ideas about this, please let
us know.
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