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Post by guillaume on Sept 26, 2011 17:59:32 GMT
Just to remind you there is tonight, Monday 26 Sept @ 9pm on TV3, a program regarding "Ireland's Secret Cults" featuring, among others, House of Prayers and anti-papal cult. Maybe worth watching....
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 27, 2011 16:58:18 GMT
How did it go?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2011 23:19:59 GMT
Scientology was lambasted. Regarding us the Palmarians were discussed, the fact that even though the the leaders look like bishops they are not in union with us was not really clarified. The House of Prayer was on too, really presented as the scam that it is. Fr. McGinnity was shown acting up during Mass, sort of having mini epileptic fits as he was saying Mass, apparently due to darts of love from the Holy Spirit. Nasty stuff indeed, very Deep South stuff charismatic.
According to the programme Cardinal Brady called in Fr. McGinnity who reassured him that he wasn't involved in the finances and was let go to continue working with them and that the reason he hasn't been given his marching orders is because the Pope is probably coming next year and Cardinal Brady doesn't want to rock the boat. I don't understand why Fr. McGinnity hasn't been sent to Coventry as it was pointed out, correctly in my view, that a priest who is in good standing supporting her lends credence to the claims she makes. The Virgin Mary apparently told Christine that she needs donations from us so that she can live secluded from all the media pressure. She was in debt but now sells so many pictures of Our Lady that she's making a mint again. I would imagine if Cardinal Brady came down hard on them he'd get a lot of support instead of allowing it to continue.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 28, 2011 11:48:00 GMT
I'm surprised that the programme did not make it clear that the Palmarians are not in communion with us. Did it not mention that they have their own Pope? Cardinal Brady's reluctance to act against Fr McGinnity pre-dates any mention of the Pope visiting Ireland. (John Gallagher's expose IMMACULATE DECEPTION comments on it and there have been claims that archbishop Neary is not too happy with the Cardinal's attitude). The likeliest explanation seems to be that Fr McGinnity's having been victimised for raising questions about Mgr Ledwith means that the Cardinal is reluctant to seem to victimise him again, for whatever reason. The problem is not just that he is a priest in good standing but that he is seen as having been a victimised whistleblower and this gives him a reputation for integrity.
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Post by guillaume on Sept 28, 2011 16:06:33 GMT
Yes, they mentioned couple of times that the Palmarians has "a pope". The whole program focused on the trap that those sects are : Gallagher stealing money from naive faithful, Palmarians taking away a person never seen by his family since, and of course the Scientology who charge thousand of Euros for the process of "purification" as we all know.
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Post by guillaume on Sept 28, 2011 16:07:10 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 28, 2011 19:16:39 GMT
Thanks for this, Guillaume. Certainly interesting (this is the first I'd heard of Christina Gallagher's house in Britain or the E250 picture scam) but I think it tried to cram too much into one programme and by focussing on the issues of money and control it doesn't really go into depth about what attracts people to these groups. (Both the Palmarians and Christina Gallagher started by operating more openly, then became introversionist once they had established a loyal "clientele".) They might have done better to focus on Gallagher and Palmar, or even on one of them, which would have allowed for more depth. A couple of minor points; according to Franco Noonan (see the Palmar thread) the "Holy War" stuff was associated in particular with Clemente Dominguez's last years (this fits a well-known pattern; the cult leader projects his own fantasies of omnipotence and as he becomes more conscious of his own mortality he ratchets up the claims to compensate, which in turn leads the cult to splinter and the hardest of the hard-core faithful to become more and more isolated) and Noonan suggests that if Dominguez had not died suddenly he might have ended up producing a Jonestown type mass suicide. Corral the successor seems to have been more cautious, whether the new man will revert to the Dominguez pattern is another matter. I'm surprised they don't go into the spectacularly squalid and demented behaviour of Dominguez, which would be funny if he hadn't ruined other people's lives to gratify his own ego.
The "darts of divine love" claimed by fr mcGinnity are actually a well-known mystical phenomenon - I think he sees himself as an Irish Padre Pio and is caught in a sort of folie a deux - he is deceived because he wants to be deceived. (This is part of the cultic bargain - people want to feel they are special, that they know what is really going on and that they have a way through the storm). [Addendum - on looking at IMMACULATE DECEPTION again I notice it quotes Gallagher supporters comparing Fr McGinnity to Padre Pio. Of course this is part of his messiah complex given that Padre Pio was also falsely accused and later vindicated.]
This programme illustrates one reason why I warn against conspiracy theories and apocalypticism most of all because they are untrue (or rather gross exaggerations) - but also because they lead very easily to the creation of a cultic mentality in which the "prophet" - be that sedevacantists, fatima types, Illuminati-hunters, faheyites, etc - closes off the followers from all other sources of understanding and leads them into an idolatry based on the cult leader alone.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2011 9:46:09 GMT
Yes they did mention that the Palmarians had their own pope but they didn't mention that they have sod all to do with us. A friend of mine thought that they were Catholic because the men were dressed like bishops, I just don't feel it was explicitly stated and could have led to confusion, well it did in my friend's case.
I do wonder about Fr. McGinnity and Gallagher. Presumably they both started off with faith or still have some. The whole thing is a scam, how can they not be afraid of meeting their maker having tried to dupe so many of His sheep like that? Herself especially, she knows what the craic is, it's horrific to think of how entwined she is with love of money to lead people searching for Christ astray. I do wish that Cardinal Brady would protect his flock here and step in but they (Fr. McGinnity in particular) needs prayer. We do need to pray for our priests more.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 29, 2011 10:30:58 GMT
The book IMMACULATE DECEPTION explicitly accuses Christina Gallagher of being a deliberate fraud who is only in it for the money. (The descriptions of her behaviour by former associates are absolutely terrifying - she seems to regard her followers as a shark does its prey.) Fr McGinnity is harder to read - my view is that he really thinks she is genuine because she flatters his credulity, vanity and self-importance.
I agree that the Palmarians needed more treatment than they received. The programme was all about "this cult acts oddly and leads its followers to behave in strange and harmful ways" but not about why they act like this or what they actually believe or how they developed. They lured in people by seeming to be orthodox Catholics but once they sucked them in they got them to accept all sorts of monstrosities. It didn't mention, for example, how they started out appealing to traditionalist Catholics and followers of the Tridentine Rite, but a few years after Clemente started calling himself Pope they ditched the Tridentine Rite for the so-called Palmarian Rite which consists only of the words of consecration. One definition of a cult, as distinct from a sect, is that a sect has a core of beliefs which cannot be changed (eg. the Free Presbyterians are not suddenly going to start believing in transubstantiation or the SSPX in double predestination) while a cult is so centred on a leader that it will change or reverse its beliefs at will if the leader so orders (e.g. the way the Children of God cult went from strict sexual ethics to sexual antinomianism under the slogan "Hookers for Jesus" at the behest of their leader). By the time of his death Clemente Dominguez alias Gregory XVII was unilaterally rewriting the Gospels on the basis of his alleged revelations to "correct" their "mistakes", and predicting that he would be universally recognised as both Pope and Emperor, then crucified on the Mount of Olives. This sort of pattern of escalating megalomania to compensate for fear of powerlessness is very characteristic, the scientologist founder L Ron Hubbard had it as well. It can lead to suicide a la Jonestown as the final assertion of the false prophet's power over his life and his followers.
Does your friend think that Anglicans are Catholic because their bishops wear mitres and carry croziers? The Palmarians BTW do claim to have valid episcopal orders, derived from an eccentric Vietnamese bishop whom Clemente and Manuel Corral fooled into ordaining and consecrating them on the basis that Our Lady was ordering him to do so. Whether their orders are in fact valid at this stage is very questionable given their other divergences from orthodoxy. BTW they consecrate all their priests as bishops - this like the Palmarian rite of Mass is a good example of how they reduce everything to sheer assertion of power and status, clericalism run mad.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 30, 2011 1:20:41 GMT
www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2011/09/27/who-is-the-new-pope-of-the-palmarians/Here is a brief account of the Palmarians by a group called the Olive Press, who co-operated in making the documentary. Their account suggests that Corral (the second Palmarian Pope) was the moving spirit of the group all along and it is his megalomania as much as Clemente Dominguez' which drove their escalating apocalyptic rhetoric. (Franco Noonan, as you may see on the Palmar thread, took a different view - that Corral was a conscious scam artist and it was Dominguez who was the truly demented megalomaniac).
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 30, 2011 1:27:47 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2011 13:33:07 GMT
The book IMMACULATE DECEPTION explicitly accuses Christina Gallagher of being a deliberate fraud who is only in it for the money. (The descriptions of her behaviour by former associates are absolutely terrifying - she seems to regard her followers as a shark does its prey.) Fr McGinnity is harder to read - my view is that he really thinks she is genuine because she flatters his credulity, vanity and self-importance. I agree that the Palmarians needed more treatment than they received. The programme was all about "this cult acts oddly and leads its followers to behave in strange and harmful ways" but not about why they act like this or what they actually believe or how they developed. They lured in people by seeming to be orthodox Catholics but once they sucked them in they got them to accept all sorts of monstrosities. It didn't mention, for example, how they started out appealing to traditionalist Catholics and followers of the Tridentine Rite, but a few years after Clemente started calling himself Pope they ditched the Tridentine Rite for the so-called Palmarian Rite which consists only of the words of consecration. One definition of a cult, as distinct from a sect, is that a sect has a core of beliefs which cannot be changed (eg. the Free Presbyterians are not suddenly going to start believing in transubstantiation or the SSPX in double predestination) while a cult is so centred on a leader that it will change or reverse its beliefs at will if the leader so orders (e.g. the way the Children of God cult went from strict sexual ethics to sexual antinomianism under the slogan "Hookers for Jesus" at the behest of their leader). By the time of his death Clemente Dominguez alias Gregory XVII was unilaterally rewriting the Gospels on the basis of his alleged revelations to "correct" their "mistakes", and predicting that he would be universally recognised as both Pope and Emperor, then crucified on the Mount of Olives. This sort of pattern of escalating megalomania to compensate for fear of powerlessness is very characteristic, the scientologist founder L Ron Hubbard had it as well. It can lead to suicide a la Jonestown as the final assertion of the false prophet's power over his life and his followers. Does your friend think that Anglicans are Catholic because their bishops wear mitres and carry croziers? The Palmarians BTW do claim to have valid episcopal orders, derived from an eccentric Vietnamese bishop whom Clemente and Manuel Corral fooled into ordaining and consecrating them on the basis that Our Lady was ordering him to do so. Whether their orders are in fact valid at this stage is very questionable given their other divergences from orthodoxy. BTW they consecrate all their priests as bishops - this like the Palmarian rite of Mass is a good example of how they reduce everything to sheer assertion of power and status, clericalism run mad. Yes, she knows who Archbishop Bumblebore is but generally when she hears an Irish accent discussing someone in the garb of a bishop she thinks he's Catholic, unless specified otherwise. There was an article I was reading last week, perhaps in the Independant, discussing TV3's treatment of Irish hen nights. The journalist wrote that the documentary got to the point of reality tv, where there was a voiceover of what the viewer could see. There was little insight into why, how, what result, of the events recorded. TV3 does have a habit of doing that with its documentaries, too much observation and not enough insight, they're very poor on anything beyond the superficial.
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Post by losleandros on Oct 3, 2011 14:13:25 GMT
Without getting into too much specifics, I think the general rule of thumb, as suggested by hibernicus, is the correct one - beware of cults, personal revelations, conspiracy theories. They generally end in tears/disillusion/financial loss, especialy for vulnerable/gullible people. Worse, from a Catholic perspective, they give ammunition to our cynical/secular detractors that we are all naive fools.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Oct 9, 2011 20:41:28 GMT
To throw in an inglorious trad angle re: House of Prayer, Mrs Annette Casey, long time principal of St Patrick's Academy, Islandeady who was very close to the late Fr Wilders, is mentioned in Gallagher's book Immaculate Deception as a director of the House of Prayer.
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lean
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Post by lean on Jul 21, 2012 1:22:21 GMT
It was repeated again on TV3 a few weeks ago. Christina Gallagher did not come out of this with a good and positive vibe. Anyone who has to be investigated by the Gardai and the Revenue Commissioners is very dubious to say the least. OMG her properties one can only look on with envy and there is no way on this earth that she earned the money from the sale of her books? What books ? Plus the footage of some gimp trying to sell some image for E250. Ah hello if God wanted us to have such a sacred or special image it would be given to us for free and not at this excessive sum of E250. Get a grip on reality plllleeeassse. This woman - is from what I can see in it for the money. Notice as well that she is hardly ever present in the House of Prayer - she just sends in her gimps to run it for her and then she has that priest go on radio to defend her. God would never ever ask anyone to defend Him like that.
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