Dialogue Ireland

UCKG near you? Who are they?

dialogueireland — Sun, 19 May 2013 01:20:43 +0000

www.uckg.ie

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/universal-church-of-the-kingdom-of-god-uckg/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/uckg-all-ireland-final-croke-park-christ-for-cash/

Filed under: Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG)

UCKG All Ireland Final Croke Park ~ Christ for Cash?

dialogueireland — Sun, 19 May 2013 01:08:46 +0000

One of our readers had this leaflet put through her door?

These are the concerns she expressed!

Leaflets have been dropped in letter boxes around the north Dublin area regarding the “I believe you can event” at Croke Park this Sunday. The small print indicates this is UCKG.
It is a very clever leaflet targeting the vulnerable. They have pictures of people claiming they were saved from “years of addiction, family problems, ulcerative colitis (!!),spiritual problems, loneliness & unemployment.”
How many people will innocently get sucked into this tomorrow unaware of what it is ??

We have been receiving reports for over 8 years about this Church. They are clearly very active in Phibsboro where they have a rented building near Doyles Corner.

They have these glossy adverts but seem to be very focused on tithes and offerings and getting people to become obsessed in working for them which = working for the Kingdom of God.We would value people to comment about their experiences and we offer the UCKG the right of an uncensored reply. We also provide articles for people to make up their own minds including this recent one!

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/uckg-edir-macedo-brazils-billionaire-bishop/

We always provide the web site of the group we are looking at:

www.uckg.ie

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/universal-church-of-the-kingdom-of-god-uckg/

Filed under: Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG)

Liberal elite’s double standard hard to bare ~ Kevin Meyers

dialogueireland — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:10:38 +0000



Liberal elite’s double standard hard to bare 

The Sunday Times / 12.05.13 / p. 11

Pdf of Article:

Kevin Meyers 1

 By Kevin Meyers

How much was the commercial failure of the Broadway production of Colm Tóibin’s The Testament of Mary due to the actress Fiona Shaw appearing completely naked on stage as the mother of Christ?

No reviewer seems to have criticised the nudity, which did not feature in Tóibin’s original script. But then, what reviewer’s credentials as a member of the liberal elite could survive such egregious prudishness? A publicly nude BVM is surely the height of modern, secular chic.

Well, it might be for critics. But while I’m all in favour of female nudity on the stage, I’d hate to be part of an audience watching a naked Mary. Such a display of nudity – especially in this, her traditional month of May – violates some deep taboo, not merely for an ex-Catholic like myself but even, apparently, for those cosmopolitan New Yorkers.

Needless to say, there’d be nothing to shun had the production been about Khadijah, Muharnmad’s wife. Since even a fleeting glimpse of her cheekbone might have merited a beheading or 10, and a Fiona full-frontal would probably have earned the Islamic equivalent of a Tet Offensive, such a production would not have survived afirst reading by even the keenest of liberals. Rather appropriately, Salman Rushdie was present for Testaments opening night. He knows how Islamic censorship worksfrom the fatwa that caused him to go into hiding for nine years and took about 40 lives across the world, to the murderous absurdity of the Danish cartoons and theritualised butchery of Theo van Gogh. Curiously, such violence repeatedly causes our liberal elites to declare Islam is uniquely a religion of peace. Nobody who knows about Northern Ireland, Spain or the Balkans would say the same about Christianity. Ditto Buddhism and the religio-military junta that ran Burma for 40 years. Hinduism, with its Kshatriya warrior caste, halts such drivel from the outset. The foundation of the state of Israel, plus the unnerving frequency with which the term “sleweth” appears in the Old Testament, settles the issue for Jews.

Yet the only religion that is in conflict with its neighbours almost wherever it exists in sufficient numbers, even in such improbable places as Norway and Denmark, and which gave the word “jihad” to every main language in the world, is also the only one our liberal elites proclaim to be one of peace. Such nonsense is ‘only possible with industrial quantities of that primary tool of the liberal mind, denial, and its cerebral cousin, cognitive dissonance. The Mary/Khadijah conundrum fits neatly into those conjoined areas of ideological hallucination. To show Mary naked is an expression of artistic liberty, whereas to show a divested Khadijah would be deeply offensive. And which of the following questions is least likely to get you into trouble with the semi-judicial equality quangos that guard the liberal ethos: “I hate Muslim practices”, “I hate homosexual practices”, or “I hate Catholic practices”?

The first is illegal Islamophobia, and the second is criminal bigotry – whereas the third is courageous free speech. Ed West, an English journalist, recently published The Diversity Illusion, a brilliant dissection of the dominant cultural heresy of our times. A tolerant community of mutually enriching fusions – ie, diversity – does not normally follow upon mass immigration. Instead, a generalised fracture into racial and cultural sub-units invariably results. And the English working classes who resented the transformation of their districts caused by mass immigration were swiftly labelled “bigots” by the liberal elite (who of course lived elsewhere), and thus could be safely ignored.

A striking symbol of the transformations that can result was the renaming of St Mary’s Park, the site of the ancient “white chapel” of the Virgin from which the London borough takes its name, into Altab Ali Park, in honour of a murdered Bangladeshi youth. The name of St Mary – yes, she of Testament – outlasted the Reformation, Oliver Cromwell, Titus Oates, the Penal Laws and Goering’s Luftwaffe, but did not survive a single generation of immigration.

Ireland could have learnt from the British experience but, with a sublimely idiotic moral superiority, chose not to. Thus, north county Dublin is possibly about to undergo an irreversible demographic, cultural, racial and religious transformation, with the creation of a huge, Arab-funded mosque and Islamic centre at Clongriffin.

The history of Islamic migration to Europe has usually followed the same cycle of small communities being established, which soon justify the construction of a physically dominant mosque, often with outside funding, followed by Islamicisation of the immediate neighbourhood. You may argue this is a good thing for what is currently a ghost estate, or a bad thing, or a mixed thing, but what it is not is something to be ignored. Instead, the proposed Clongriffin project was approved almost on the nod a first step, perhaps, to Fingalistan. Alarmist? Maybe. But consider what has happened in England. Birmingham is about to become a majority-Asian city, with Leicester soon to follow, and the first public burning of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses anywhere was before a 7,000-strong mob in Bolton. Significantly, there is no balancing countermovement of Christians into Muslim countries; no flowering ofecclesiastical architecture in Pakistan or Indonesia to cope with the religious needs of immigrants. The only societies that permanently admit huge numbers of outsiders of entirely different racial, religious and cultural backgrounds are of Western European Christian stock, either in the EU or the US, where the power of liberal elites is deeply entrenched. China doesn’t do it. Nor Japan. Nor Russia. Nor India, Iran, nor any African or Arabic countries.

We have travelled a long way, surely, from Fiona Shaw’s nakedness? Indeed; but the fundamental issue is not her nudity, I but the cowardly and inconsistent ethos of the liberal elites, which would allow a theatrical presentation of the Virgin Mary’s pudenda, but never of Khadijah’s. So why is it acceptable, in the name of “freedom,”for artists to offend the traditional sensibilities of generations of Christians, who would have been scandalised by such a theatrical production, while at the same time invoking an entirely different set of values, based on “respect,” to protect the feelings of an incoming religion, such as Islam?

Ed West tellingly paraphrases Napoleon on this issue: “A nation that does not respect its own religion will soon learn to respect someone else’s.” Quite so. Hence the public park in Whitechapel, and the private parts on Broadway.

kevin.myers@sunday-times.ie

Filed under: Conferences & Commentaries

Dialogue Ireland blog crosses 1 Million views

dialogueireland — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:30:26 +0000

Today the Dialogue Ireland blog celebrates a milestone, with the total view count crossing the one million mark. In order to mark the occasion here is a special post revealing some of the statistics behind the blog.

Most viewed posts

Boylesports in row over ‘cult’ training course by Aine Coffey ~ Sunday Times June 24, 2012 – 24, 556 views

Is the Tabor Psychotherapy Course going the way of Roebuck? – 13, 707 views

Behind The Thangkas ~ Sogyal Rimpoche ~ The imbalance of power and abuse of spiritual authority – 13, 247

Most visited links (not including Dialogue Ireland or WordPress links)

www.youtube.com , www.irishtimes.com , www.earthbook.tv , http://troismondes.canalblog.com/ , www.independent.ie , www.rte.ie , Facebook , www.sundayworld.com , www.timesonline.co.uk , www.educoworld.com , http://thedorjeshugdengroup.wordpress.com , www.rickross.com and www.wikipedia.org .

The following links were the most visited links contributed by commenters:

www.christinagallagher.org , www.irvinegrey.com , www.clericalwhispers.blogspot.com , http://professing.proboards.com , www.rigpa.ie , http://muslimtents.com/islamindublin/ireland.htm , http://irishmexican43.blogspot.com , http://voiceofourladyspilgrims.com/ , http://maryfinnigan.co.uk/ , http://carbayon.com/ , http://hivinkenya.blogspot.ie/

Most commonly search terms used to find the Dialogue Ireland blog:

dialogue ireland wordpress, tony quinn, dialogue ireland, dialogue ireland tony quinn, boylesports cult, tony quinn cult, sogyal rinpoche abuse, tony quinn dialogue Ireland, mucky messiah, quinn educo, modern mystery school cult, lorcan bale, sogyal rinpoche scandal, modern mystery school, rev william stewart, dialogue ireland boylesports, cults in ireland, abundant life galway, joe and sandy heaney, willi stewart, brendan hade, dialogue ireland word press, susan morrice, jeanette rigney, susan morrice, tony quinn, christina gallagher, rev willi stewart, nicola tallant, dialogue ireland wordpress rigpa, palmarian church, dialogue ireland wordpress quinn, sogyal rinpoche controversy, tabor institute, magnificat meal movement, dialogue ireland abundant life , landmark education

Countries where visitors have accessed the blog (arranged in order of views):

Ireland, United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Finland, South Africa, Netherlands, Belize, India, Switzerland, New Zealand, Italy, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Thailand, Philippines, Brazil, Austria, Singapore, Japan, Bahamas, Norway, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Poland, Malta, Kenya, Portugal, Hong Kong, Guatemala, Vanuatu, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Nigeria, Colombia, Israel, Turkey, Argentina, Iceland, Greece, Republic of Korea, British Virgin Islands, Bhutan, Czech Republic, Croatia, Ukraine, Egypt, Taiwan, Bahrain, Hungary, Vietnam, Nepal, Serbia, Côte d’Ivoire, Chile, Qatar, Jersey, Trinidad and Tobago, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Ghana, Barbados, Estonia, Jamaica, Lithuania, Peru, Gibraltar, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Morocco, Bangladesh, Iraq, Cyprus, Latvia, Mongolia, Mauritius, Uganda, Venezuela, United Republic of Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Botswana, Algeria, Senegal, Cambodia, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Dominica, Namibia, Oman, Honduras, Albania, Kuwait, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guyana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Guernsey, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Ethiopia, Virgin Islands, Tunisia, Jordan, Benin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Isle of Man, Yemen, Sudan, Paraguay, Monaco, Vatican City, Cayman Islands, Armenia, Bermuda, Cameroon, Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic, Georgia, El Salvador, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Macao, Azerbaijan, Togo, Liechtenstein, Guadeloupe, Malawi, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Brunei Darussalam, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Moldova, Faroe Islands, Syrian Arab Republic, Anguilla, Libya, Palestinian Territory, Occupied, Haiti, Madagascar, Maldives, Fiji, Bolivia, French Polynesia, Northern Mariana Islands, Djibouti, Turks and Caicos Islands, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Montenegro, Suriname, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Congo, Mali, Guam, San Marino, Åland Islands, China, Mauritania, Burundi, Gabon, Solomon Islands, Cape Verde, Liberia, Andorra, Uzbekistan, New Caledonia, Gambia, Réunion and Angola

Posts with the most comments (number of comments noted):

Behind The Thangkas ~ Sogyal Rimpoche ~ The imbalance of power and abuse of spiritual authority – 1,246

Lama sex abuse claims call Buddhist taboos into question by Mary Finnigan – 749

The Buddhist organisations that are thriving during the debt crisis by Mary Finnigan in The Guardian – 741

Open letter to Sogyal Rinpoche from Joanne Clark – 621

Is the Tabor Psychotherapy Course going the way of Roebuck? – 454

“Two by Twos” by someone who grew up and out of the movement – 398

The Rigpa Spillover Thread – 392

Knockbridge Church of St Mary, Knockbridge Details – 302

Gary Beesley Buddhist scholar forced to withdraw ‘A Cuckoo in the Peacock Palace’ – 260

Boylesports in row over ‘cult’ training course by Aine Coffey ~ Sunday Times June 24, 2012 – 192

Let us draw you a picture of the House of Prayer – 136

Most prolific commenters:

Note that, for some reason, the WordPress stats system seems to make a hames of this so these figures had to be derived using the email notifications (so take them with a pinch of salt).

BellaB – 998

Sheila – 694

House of Prayer sockpuppets – 678

themadhair – 273

Angie – 272

Pema / Mary Finnegan – 174

Askimet informs us that, from February 2009, the Dialogue Ireland blog has had 253, 171 spam comments removed from the blog, with 46 of those being false positives. Without this excellent spam-removal service this blog would not be able to function, and we cannot recommend their service highly enough: http://akismet.com/

Referrers

This is not a complete list, but I found it interesting to see how some people found our blog. Some unexpected results in here (for example, http://lashtal.com ). All these links are presented without warranty and on a visitor-beware basis.

Filed under: Uncategorized

UCKG: Edir Macedo, Brazil’s Billionaire Bishop

dialogueireland — Sat, 04 May 2013 01:39:01 +0000

Global Economics

Features

By Alex Cuadros on April 25, 2013

Edir Macedo is 5-foot-6, slight, and 68 years old. He has deformed fingers, a sparse crown of graying hair, and more than 5 million followers, whose donations over the last 36 years have made him a billionaire. In Brazil, where he was born and raised, he is a major national figure, the subject of dozens of criminal inquiries, and the owner of Rádio & Televisão Record, a media conglomerate that runs the country’s second-largest television network. He is known to most everyone by the title he created for himself: He is O Bispo—“The Bishop.” Macedo is the founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a Pentecostal denomination specializing in prosperity theology, which links faith to financial success. He preaches twice a week, often in two different cities, and the sermons are fervently watched on church websites, his Facebook page, and the miniature TV sets that Brazilian taxi drivers like to keep on their dashboard. Now and then he holds outdoor events that draw crowds of half a million. In February he addressed 5,000 of his parishioners at one of his churches in Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. High overhead, a stained-glass cross lit by fluorescent bulbs took up most of the ceiling while a theater-size screen blew him up for the pews in the back. He paced back and forth on the stage, explaining the intersection of God and money. “Which is the largest country in the world, economically speaking? It’s America, the United States. Do you know why? Because way back—this is history, you can look it up on the Internet—the colonization was done by men who believed in the word of God. And they were tithers,” he said. “That’s why you see on the dollar bill: ‘In God we trust.’ ”

In Macedo’s teaching, tithing, or giving 10 percent of your income to the church, is a mandate from God. Tithing was never part of Brazil’s Catholic tradition, and, for Macedo, that explains many of the country’s problems. In Belo Horizonte that day, he quoted Malachi, a favorite of prosperity theologians, pointing to 3:10, where the Lord promises to the faithful tither that He will “pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” A man of humble beginnings, Macedo offered his own success as proof. “Our culture is retrograde, a stingy culture, a culture with no view of the future,” he said. “Only you can change this situation. Tithing is you on God’s altar, just as Jesus was God’s tithe for humanity.”

Silvio Luís Martins de Oliveira, a prosecutor in São Paulo, says that Macedo’s promise of riches amounts to fraud. In a 2009 case that is just now being tried, he accuses Macedo and three high-ranking church members of conspiracy, money laundering, and undeclared international cash transfers. “The preachers make use of the faith, desperation, or ambition of [their followers] to sell the idea that God and Jesus Christ only look upon those who contribute financially to the church,” Oliveira wrote in a criminal complaint. In his description, the Universal Church enriches its leaders far more than its faithful.

Macedo is proud of his success, but turns questions about his wealth into questions of the spirit. He declined an in-person interview; in an e-mail, he writes: “From the point of view of my faith in Jesus Christ, I am the richest man in the world.”

Whatever the semantics, he has prospered. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his wealth at $1.2 billion, entirely because of his ownership of Rádio & Televisão Record. The conglomerate’s namesake TV network produces standard commercial fare:telenovelas (sometimes Biblical), sex-infused reality shows, and journalism that dwells on grisly crimes. Record also runs a cable news channel, a handful of radio stations, three newspapers, a film-production company, and even a small bank, as well as cable and satellite units scattered around the world.

Macedo purchased Record, then just a debt-ridden TV network, in 1989 for $45 million. The transaction led to an investigation by Brazil’s tax agency, which found that he’d used interest-free loans from the Universal Church to fund it, and fined him for failing to declare the loans as income. In his defense, Macedo said he’d bought Record on behalf of the church to create the country’s first evangelical TV network. The argument failed to convince tax inspectors and led prosecutors to file suit in 1997, seeking to strip Record’s broadcasting license on the grounds that Brazil’s constitution forbids religious institutions from owning radio or TV stations. In testimony for that case, Macedo acknowledged the loans, while changing tack to say that he had acquired Record for himself. The case dragged on for more than a decade until a federal judge, Leonel Ferreira, ruled in Macedo’s favor in 2011. In his decision, Ferreira wrote that the church’s transfer of cash to Macedo could imply that, far from being frontmen for the church, he and his deputies “control the church absolutely and use it for their own benefit.” But, he said, such speculation fell outside the limits of the case at hand.

Record grossed $1.1 billion in 2011, a good chunk of which came from the Universal Church. The church buys up to six hours of airtime each day, almost always after midnight, when advertising sales are scarce; during Record’s more profitable hours, the church runs its sermons on other networks. Silas Malafaia, one of Brazil’s best-known televangelists (and the wealthy leader of a different Pentecostal denomination), says he used to buy time at the going market rate in the 1990s, until one day the network raised its price tenfold. “The church pays millions to Record, way more than the programming is worth, so that he can expand his TV network,” Malafaia says. “He uses a legal artifice for something unjust.” Neither party has disclosed how much their arrangement is worth today, but in 1999, Record’s then-chief executive officer, Demerval Gonçalves, told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper that the church provided 15 percent of the company’s overall revenue. The church also pays Record’s publishing arm to print most of the 2.5 million copies of its weekly newspaper.

Douglas Tavolaro, Record’s news chief, says Macedo’s goal is to make the network No. 1 in Brazil, breaking the dominance of Rede Globo, which he sees as a tool of Brazil’s Catholic establishment. Macedo, he says, “thinks Brazil has suffered for decades because of this media monopoly.”

The church owns much of its real estate but doesn’t maintain direct media holdings apart from its newspaper and websites. Documents filed with Brazil’s telecommunications agency and local commercial registries show that high-ranking pastors in Macedo’s church own 12 local TV broadcasters, three dozen radio stations, and a slew of private companies that provide the church security, accounting services, and even health insurance. In a report that forms part of the 2009 case, investigators at Brazil’s finance ministry found that, including Record, these companies received as much as $1.9 billion from the church from March 2002 to November 2003.

Renato Parente, the church’s head of press relations, refused to comment on the pastors’ business interests, referring broadly to a detailed list of questions, including requests to shed light on public documents and Macedo’s own net worth, as “lies.” As proof of Macedo’s indifference to the rewards of this world, Parente says he has never taken a salary or a dividend from Record.

Macedo’s success derives in no small part from a generational shift in how Brazilians practice religion. In 1980 evangelical Christians made up just 6.6 percent of Brazil’s population; in 2010, they made up 22 percent, according to the national census. That’s 42 million people, mostly from Brazil’s poor and working class, and they are a powerful voting bloc. An alliance of evangelical congressmen, several from Macedo’s church, lend their support to the ruling coalition, and in return they get to weigh in on issues like gay rights, to which they’re mostly opposed. “Because we have this very weird multiparty system, sometimes you have these ‘blackmail parties’ that become the balance that tips the scale,” says David Fleischer, a political analyst at the University of Brasília. Macedo’s nephew, Marcelo Crivella, a successful gospel singer and longtime Universal Church pastor, is the minister of fishing and agriculture. Macedo himself travels on a diplomatic passport, a perk previously reserved for Brazil’s Catholic cardinals.

Macedo boasts of having congregations in close to 200 countries, and he’s constantly hopping between them on the church’s fleet of private jets; in his authorized biography, he is described flying on a Dassault Falcon model that can cost more than $20 million. Just in Angola, he has half a million faithful.

Macedo also has a significant presence in the U.S., where he’s built a following of some 60,000, largely among Latin American immigrants, and the church is a regular advertiser on the Spanish-language cable channel Telemundo (CMCSA). In a mortgage petition filed with the New York State Supreme Court in 2007, the church said it had annual revenue of $50 million in the U.S. In Brazil, court records show that the church declared donations of $750 million in 2006.

Macedo’s memoir, Nothing to Lose, finished 2012 as Brazil’s best-selling nonfiction book. That owes a lot to the fervor of his followers, but the church has also lent a direct boost to his sales. At the official U.S. release in February, the line stretched several blocks from the McNally Jackson bookstore in downtown Manhattan, and journalists at Record trumpeted that 72,000 copies sold that day. According to Javier Molea, a McNally Jackson employee, most of those books were bought in bulk by the U.S. branches of the Universal Church.

Over the years, Macedo has faced more than 20 criminal investigations for accusations ranging from slander to using false documents. He has never been convicted and was jailed just once, for 11 days in 1992, on charges of fraud, charlatanism, and curandeirismo, which roughly translates as witchcraft. The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, like most that have been leveled against him. Justice, however, is slow in Brazil: At least five cases exceeded the statute of limitations and were thrown out. The current money laundering case brought by São Paulo prosecutor Oliveira alleges that in the early 1990s pastors began delivering parishioners’ donations to black-market currency operators known as doleiros—a common resource for Brazilians who need to spirit undeclared funds abroad. Two of these doleiros, testifying as part of a plea bargain in an unrelated case, described the bills they handled as “crumpled, torn, taped together, sweaty, and scribbled upon,” sometimes fouling up their counting machines. After taking their fee, they would deposit the equivalent amount in dollars in accounts outside Brazil. From 1999 to 2005, Oliveira alleges, they moved millions through five New York banks, including JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and HSBC (HBC). Both banks declined to comment.

In previous years, the complaint alleges, the cash often traveled to two shell companies the church leadership had set up in offshore tax havens: Investholding in Grand Cayman and Cableinvest on the island of Jersey. Those entities in turn lent the money back to pastors in Brazil. Oliveira declined to comment for this story, but in his criminal complaint against Macedo and his three deputies, he wrote: “This is how money donated by the followers of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God … through deceitful financial engineering, ultimately became shares in radio and TV companies.” Oliveira’s complaint details investigations into loan contracts, payment orders, and bank accounts, building on the work of prosecutors who had failed to convict Macedo. It doesn’t say how much money may have been diverted from the church’s coffers over the years. But in 2007, a former pastor and Rio de Janeiro city councilman, Waldir Abrão, gave a sworn statement saying it was common for the church to report as little as 10 percent of its intake to authorities. Six days after his deposition, he fell down a stairwell and died. No one was charged in Abrão’s death.

The church has also run into legal trouble in the U.S. Last year a Manhattan judge convicted its U.S. treasurer, Regina DaSilva, of lying in applications to take out $22 million in mortgages on church property, a felony. Although she didn’t use the money for her personal benefit, she told the New York State Charities Bureau that local parishioners had voted to approve the mortgages when in fact they hadn’t. DaSilva pled guilty, receiving probation.

Parente, the church spokesman, declined to comment on any of the charges, though Macedo has often chalked them up to a crusade by Brazil’s Catholic establishment, working in concert with the media. In his memoir he compares his persecution to that suffered by Jesus. It’s an important part of his personal narrative: The cover of his authorized biography, O Bispo (written by Tavolaro), shows him reading the Bible behind bars during that brief spell in 1992. And as Macedo is fond of pointing out, none of it has put a dent in his following. “If someone comes to the church and is exploited,” Macedo says in the book, “she would never come back.”

Born in 1945, Macedo was one of seven children. His father had joined a wave of migration from the rural northeast to Rio de Janeiro. His parents weren’t poor by Brazilian standards, but his home didn’t have a TV or a refrigerator, and he quit school at 11 to work at his father’s bar. At 16 he got a job at the Rio de Janeiro State Lottery.

Macedo says he was the ugly duckling of his family. Born prematurely, he was always short and scrawny, with a genetic deformity that left his fingers long and gnarled, almost alien-looking. Sometimes, he wrote, his father beat him. He lost his virginity in a brothel at 16 and went on to pursue dalliances he describes only as “spicy, heated, full of lasciviousness.” But he couldn’t shake a perpetually empty feeling. He found no solace in the loose Umbanda practiced by his family, a Brazilian hodgepodge of Catholicism, religions that were brought over by African slaves, and the mystical philosophy known as spiritism.

He was 18 when he started attending the services of a Canadian preacher at one of the many Pentecostal churches then sprouting up across Brazil, mostly in new working-class neighborhoods, far from the established Catholic churches of the city center. Macedo felt an immediate connection. He baptized himself not once but three times. He describes feeling the Holy Spirit enter him; he danced, sang, and spoke in tongues. “I would leave the service walking in the clouds,” he writes in Nothing to Lose. “The feeling is indescribable. Peace, security, confidence, cheer. … As if a light turned on inside of me, illuminating my whole body.” He wanted to share this feeling.

He met his wife, Ester, at the church. At 30, shaken by his second daughter’s birth with a cleft lip and palate, Macedo quit his job to dedicate himself full time to Jesus. He started hauling sound equipment to a gazebo at a public park and slowly built up a following. In 1977 he rented space in an old funeral parlor, thus creating the first Universal Church. A picture from those days shows him in a pinstriped blazer and white slacks. People called him the bossa nova pastor because of his passionate gestures and then-voluminous hair. His services reflected his influences: the ritualism of the Catholics, the prosperity gospel and miracle cures of the Pentecostals, and a taste of the Afro-Brazilian religions, whose spirits he rebranded as Biblical demons. By the 1980s he was opening two churches a month across Brazil.

Today, Macedo’s churches follow a standard schedule. Each day of the week carries a different theme, with as many as five services a day. On Fridays the theme is liberation, with parishioners arriving to seek cures for aches, pain, infertility, and even cancer. Pastors wear T-shirts that read “The Miracle Hour.”

The main Universal Church in São Paulo takes up most of a city block. With stained-glass windows two stories tall, lit from inside by fluorescent bulbs, it is a beacon amid the bleak cement of a working-class neighborhood not far from the stinking, black Pinheiros River. At a recent liberation service there, under an expansive stained-glass cross much like the one in Belo Horizonte, one of Macedo’s deputies led the hall in songs and prayer when shrieks erupted from the back. An overweight, middle-aged woman was led to the stage to undergo an exorcism. The pastor held a microphone near her mouth, and she spoke in a low growl she claimed to be the voice of a demon. Then an assistant grabbed her head with both hands, shaking it violently back and forth as 6,000 parishioners stomped their feet and called for Jesus’s help. Eventually the woman’s arms slackened, and she relaxed in the assistant’s arms. The exorcism had apparently succeeded. Afterward, she looked dazed.

The most popular night is Monday’s Congress of Winners. It begins with testimonials. One by one, crisply dressed parishioners describe a litany of humiliations: how they used to slide under the turnstile, or ate discarded food, or failed to provide milk for their children. Some speak of debts that had piled up to $100,000 or more. But they took what little they had left and gave it to Jesus, by way of the Universal Church.

On a Monday in February, Shanilda, a dark-skinned woman with dyed-blonde hair, took the stage to describe arriving from the northeast with nothing but the clothes on her back and enduring abuse as a dishwasher at a local bar. Now, she said, she owns the bar. It’s never clear how exactly these people climb from rock bottom to prosperity, but in O Bispo, Macedo explains why the transaction works. “An offering is an investment,” he says. “He who gives everything receives everything from God. It’s inevitable. It’s toma lá, dá cá”—a give-and-take with the Lord. Three times in a service of an hour and a half, the pastor called on the faithful to “honor God.” This is the cue to donate. As parishioners lined up, volunteers in brightly colored ties took cash donations in velvet sacks. Others carried portable credit-card machines for those who preferred to charge their offering.

Andrew Chesnut, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who has studied Brazil’s Pentecostal movements, tells a joke about the Universal Church that was going around in the ’90s, when he lived in the country: “The tithe is no longer 10 percent,” the joke went. “It’s 10 for the father, 10 for the spirit, and 10 for the son.” Still, Chesnut says, Macedo introduced a brand of common-sense instruction that resonated with poor Brazilians. “There are a lot of people who feel they have been able to turn their lives around, and they gladly donate or tithe,” says Chesnut. For others, the pressure to donate can prove ruinous. A 2000 bankruptcy case in the U.S. showed that a parishioner in Brooklyn had handed over almost $80,000 in three years—40 percent of her gross income during that time.

In O Bispo, Macedo describes an unusual gift. One day in the mid-1980s, a woman came to his church in Rio de Janeiro with a 14-day-old baby in her arms. She offered the child to Macedo and his wife, who legally adopted the baby, giving him the Biblical name Moisés. He remains mostly out of public view, though in 2008, Folha de S.Paulo reported that Moisés had sung the vocals for songs featured in Record’s current telenovelas under the stage name Mikefoxx. For the most part, Macedo’s family is intimately involved in his life’s work. Both daughters are married to high-ranking pastors who own stakes in radio and TV broadcasters. His eldest daughter and her husband, Cristiane and Renato Cardoso, also present a couples-therapy program on Record and co-authored a book, A Bulletproof Marriage, which has lately been on sale during the church’s so-called Love Therapy services on Thursdays.

Jorge Coelho da Cunha became a Universal Church pastor in the mid-’80s. Speaking by phone from his home outside Rio, where he now has churches of his own, he says Macedo’s drive to expand turned into an obsession with increasing revenue. “He’s one of these people who is never satisfied with what God has given them,” Cunha says. As a lead pastor in Brazil’s northeast, part of Cunha’s job was to close down “unprofitable” churches that spent more than they brought in. He says Macedo started offering bonuses of as much as $10,000 for pastors who met revenue targets during special “campaigns”—say, $500,000 in a single day. He even gave out cars as prizes. “It wasn’t about saving people and bringing them to God anymore,” Cunha says. “It was about extracting as much as possible from people.” He quit a decade ago and is now suing to recover investments in radio stations that he claims were transferred to current church leaders without his knowledge after he left. He declines to say where he got the money in the first place. It’s one of a handful of similar suits.

The church’s aggressive fundraising has long been notorious in Brazil, but never more so than in July 2005. That month, João Batista Ramos da Silva, a high-ranking pastor in the Universal Church then serving as a national congressman, was aboard one of the church’s private planes in Brasília when police demanded to search the aircraft. Inside, they seized suitcases stuffed with about 10 million reais ($5 million). Although he was never charged with a crime related to that cash, Batista is now one of three others fighting money laundering and conspiracy accusations with Macedo—“the same old reheated charges,” as he puts it.

Like Macedo, Batista is a diminutive man. He’s 69 years old, with white hair, and wears a button-down shirt tucked into his jeans. Trained as an economist, he served as Record’s chief executive in the 1990s and later as the church’s administrative president. He’s still part of the church’s inner circle. Sitting in the small, spare office he keeps as a city councilman in a São Paulo suburb, he offers rare perspective on Macedo’s journey from pastor to billionaire.

“The Universal Church is like a company for saving souls,” Batista says, describing Macedo as its chief executive officer. The secret to its global expansion is that Macedo entrusts great responsibility to his deputies, allowing him to focus on the big picture. He’s also rough on the competition. After acquiring Rio de Janeiro’s Radio Copacabana in 1984—the first brick in his media empire—Macedo’s first step was to cancel the programs run by evangelical pastors of other denominations, Batista says. More recently, in a video posted to a church website last year, Macedo staged a public exorcism, channeling a demon that said it was working through a former pastor, Valdemiro Santiago, who had set up a copycat denomination: the World Church of the Power of God. Record followed that up with a half-hour exposé on the ex-pastor’s personal wealth, allegedly built on the tithes of his followers, and public prosecutors opened an investigation into the claims. Santiago denies the allegations.

On the wall of Batista’s office is a sun-faded certificate commemorating the pilgrimage he took to Jerusalem years ago. The experience inspired him to team up with another pastor and invest in Monte Sinai Turismo, a tour agency that takes Universal Church pilgrims to Israel. Of this and the other companies set up by his fellow pastors, he says: “Why pay outside people to do something that we could put together?” Batista is sanguine about the church’s seeming luxuries. “In the 21st century, if Jesus were here today, he’d be wearing fine leather shoes,” Batista says. “He’d have a shirt of French silk, perhaps, or Japanese, with a suit of the best quality, a Pierre Cardin or whatever. And he’d travel by helicopter or private jet. And all of this—for what?” he asks. “To better preach the word of God.”

Prosecutor Oliveira argues that the Universal Church, Record, and the businesses orbiting the two are all part of the same conglomerate, controlled by Macedo. Batista’s vision isn’t all that different, though he might add what he calls the church’s “battalion” of politicians. And for him, the returns are not economic, but spiritual. As proof, he points to the church’s greatest single project yet: a replica of the Biblical Temple of Solomon, now under construction in São Paulo and built in part with stones imported from Israel. The four main pillars have already been erected, and each one is taller than Rio de Janeiro’s iconic Christ the Redeemer statue. The total cost is projected at more than $150 million. Even the seats are expensive—each of the 10,000 that will fill the hall costs $1,100. “If Macedo’s thing is money, why invest in this temple?” Batista asks. “Why throw money away?”

On a Wednesday night in February, Macedo is leading the services at the Universal Church’s current flagship in São Paulo, and a computer graphic of the massive project plays on the wall behind him. Right now, Macedo says, they need to put the roof on this temple. “I don’t even know how much that’s going to cost, but it’s a lot of money,” he says. So the faithful line up to donate. After each parishioner makes her offering, she walks across the stage, and The Bishop places his hands on her head in blessing. “I want you to be rich,” he says. “Just don’t let money be your master. Let it always be your servant.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-25/edir-macedo-brazils-billionaire-bishop

Filed under: Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG)

Glenn Greenwald responds to Andrew Sullivan

dialogueireland — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:59:16 +0000

We recently published an article by Andrew Sullivan which you can read here. In that article Andrew quotes Glenn Greenwald, whose original article you can read here.

Glenn has issued the following comments in response:

Andrew Sullivan, back in his fight-the-jihadis mode, proclaims that – unlike President Obama – he knows exactly why the Tsarnaev brothers attacked Boston. “Of Course it Was Jihad”, he declares in his headline, and adds that it was “an almost text-book case of Jihadist radicalization, most likely in the US.” He then accuses me “veer[ing] into left-liberal self-parody” for suggesting today that the evidence is lacking to make this claim.

But in trying to negate my point, Andrew instead demonstrates its truth. The only evidence he can point to shows that the older brother, Tamerlan, embraced a radical version of Islam, something I already noted. But – rather obviously – to prove that someone who commits violence is Muslim is not the same as proving that Islam was the prime motive for the violence (just as the aggressive attack by devout evangelical George Bush on Iraq was not proof of a rejuvenation of the Christian crusades, the attack by Timothy McVeigh was not proof of IRA violence, Israeli aggression is not proof that Judaism is the prime motivator of those wars, and the mass murder spree by homosexual Andrew Cunanan was not evidence that homosexuality motivated the violence). Islam or some related political ideology may have been the motive driving Tamerlan, as I acknowledge, but it also may not have been. You have to produce evidence showing motive. You can’t just assert it and demand that everyone accept it on faith. Specifically, to claim this is terrorism (in a way that those other incidents of mass murder at Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine were not), you have to identify the “political or social objective” the violence was intended to promote: what was that political or social objective here? Andrew doesn’t have the slightest idea.

But this proves the point: “terrorism” does not have any real meaning other than “a Muslim who commits violence against America and its allies”, so as soon as a Muslim commits violence, there is an automatic decree that it is “terrorism” even though no such assumption arises from similar acts committed by non-Muslims. That is precisely my point. (About the younger brother, Andrew asserts that “the stoner kid [] got caught up in his brother’s religious fanaticism” but he has no evidence at all that this is true, and indeed, his friends say almost uniformly that he never evinced any religious fanaticism).

The most bizarre statement from Andrew is also quite revealing: “but does Glenn wonder why Tamerlan thought it was ok to beat his wife, whom he demanded convert to Islam?” In case Andrew doesn’t know, domestic violence in the US is at epidemic levels, and the overwhelming majority of men who abuse women have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. Yet with this claim, Andrew simply assumes that any bad act done by a Muslim – even a bad act committed mostly by non-Muslims – must be caused by Islam, even though he has no evidence to prove this. This irrational, evidence-free assumption of causation that Andrew so perfectly illustrates here (any bad act committed by a Muslim is, ipso facto, motivated by religious or political Islam) is precisely what I was describing and denouncing. And it only rears its ugly head when the perpetrator is Muslim.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Cultism not Religion is key and it is neither Left nor Right!

dialogueireland — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:58:00 +0000

Commentary on Andrew Sullivan’s article,

“Religion, the motive the left refuses to see amid the carnage of Boston.”

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/left-refuses-to-see-motive-amid-the-carnage-of-boston/

There are several things we cannot confidently say about the motives of Tameran Tsarnaev in bombing the crowd at the finish of the Boston marathon. We do not know all the details of his psychological profile; we do not know the identity of a figure called Misha, who was apparently instrumental in Tsarnaev’s radicalisation; we do not know why he chose the marathon as his target; we do not fully know the role of his younger brother or his wife, who claims total surprise at the events. Any act as violent as his is “multi-determined”, as my shrink unhelpfully puts it. Every individual is a unique blend of DNA, experience and psychological complexity. It’s worth keeping that in mind before we reduce someone to a caricature.

We can agree with this section as in all things there are many factors in a decision and the course of action taken.

But we do know this: Tsarnaev was a fanatical, extremist Muslim – and his brother has testified that “defending Islam” was the motive. Tsarnaev’s YouTube page is crammed with Islamist conspiracy theories, apocalyptic myths and violent Islamist imagery. He disrupted his own mosque’s services by ranting that it was wrong to honour Martin Luther King Jr because he wasn’t a Muslim.

Here Andrew conflates Islam with Islamism which is its cultist version. Already he points to the fact that Tameran Tsarnaev as an Islamist cultist was at variance with his own Muslim faith community. Later he seems to confirm this point:

“Stigmatising the 99% of US Muslims who are appalled by terrorism and far better integrated than in Europe is another way to turn a tragedy into a catastrophe.”

I would say his classification as an issue of Religion aids that stigmata! By the way as a Cult Expert one of the most important lessons to learn is that as a theologian I tended to misdiagnose the phenomenon.

The Russian intelligence services alerted the CIA and FBI to what they detected as dangerous Islamist extremism even before he had spent six a months in the country. His uncle described Tsarnaev’s shift toward extreme devotion. “I was shocked when I heard his words, his phrases, when every other word he starts sticking in words of God.”

As a rejection of the Bush project it is likely that the Obama administration has weakened the analysis of Islamism by confusing the issue with that of freedom of Religion. There is politically correct fear of Islamophobia which weakens Islamism awareness. Obama’s extra judicial killing of Osama Bin Laden and his drone attacks makes him unassailable from the right, and keeps the left at bay. The recent action on Israel and the stage managed rapprochement with Turkey is showing his goal which is withdrawal the USA from being a frontline defender internationally.

Tsarnaev gave up the sport he won prizes in – boxing because of Islam. He gave up drinking. He complained about the loss of values in modern society. He hit his girlfriend and persuaded his American wife to become a Muslim – now covered from head to toe. Of course the Boston bombings were an act of jihad.

We would note similar reactions to people joining New Age, Scientology, Evangelical or Catholic groups. Jim Jones had very violent results. Also Timothy McVeigh shows the violent streak still found in Christianity and the day after the attacks on Boston we had the prospect of a connection to the twentieth anniversary of Waco. There is currently cultist Buddhist violence against Muslims in Burma. These characteristics are not an expression of a religion but of cultism. In Africa we have had the Lord’s Resistance Army and the mass murder or suicide of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda. Fortunately a lot of the New Age Groups give end of world warnings like the recent one about the December 21 last and the Mayan Calendar which turn out quite benign except for you bank balance. I visited Bugurach in Southern France where such an event was to take place, but the only ‘aliens’ the mayor commented on were those of us visiting to study the phenomenon. On the day itself it was an international joke. In fact to quote TS Elliott the world ends not with a bang but with a whimper. However those that benefit from these scams merely rearrange the story and continue to gouge an unsettled, floating and vulnerable public. Others like the Solar Temple, The Children of God, Jonestown or Heaven’s Gate end in violence.

http://www.dialogueireland.org/dicontent/resources/video/heavensgate.html

http://www.dialogueireland.org/dicontent/resources/video/ricky.html

We will address some significant insights Andrew makes on this point later on.

To read writers such as The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald desperately searching for some other motive – “some combination of mental illness, societal alienation, or other form of internal instability and rage that is apolitical in nature” – is to despair of some left-liberals’ naivety.

Not being a left liberal I would have to say that conservative radicals or the generally moderate family person has no idea how to address the phenomenon of the changes in personality the atomisation of the person who comes under undue influence to a single individual or group. In most cases they do not have lethal consequences but the consequences emotionally are horrendous, but currently Islamism is the most violent expression we know.

History is crammed with violence committed in the name of God. From the Crusades to the Reformation to the religious conflicts of the 17th century in Europe, we have seen how Christianity although founded by a radically nonviolent guru – can become murderous. How much more plausible is the idea of violence coming from a religion founded by an explicitly political conqueror.

Of course we have had up till the present in N. Ireland and in Sri Lanka the sectarian expressions between Religions like Hinduism/Christianity and Buddhism and the intra Christian sectarian conflict between Christians of the Catholic Confession and Protestants. These are born not of pure religion but the intersection between ethnicity and Religion. What Conor Cruise O’Brien called two tribes of imaginary Jews. Interesting enough in Belgium we have people who are generally of the same Christian Confession Catholicism but ethnically divided. In the former Yugoslavia, we have people who speak the same language are generally ethnically similar but involved in the post communist era in that sectarian conflict where religion creates a fatal cocktail. Here it is inter-religious as between Christian and Muslim and intra Christian as between Orthodox and Catholic.

The motive for the bombing was religion, stupid. But it was also, of course, only one strain of religion – the most extreme and total form.

Stupid no, but not religion but cultism, which by definition is the virulent tendency and attitude which defies reason and humanity at all costs.

Over the centuries Christianity largely tamed itself.

In order to address this statement we must first look at the later claim made by Andrew.

Whereas Christianity became imperial under Constantine, Islam began as imperialist and thereby political. Unlike Judaism it also claims universality.

It is not just that Christianity became imperial, it was the formation of Constantinianism the nexus of what Joyce described as Caesar and Christ being hand in glove that radically altered the message of Jesus.

Battle of the Milvan Bridge, Clonliffe College, Dublin.

The symbol of Christianity namely the cross a sign of weakness and self giving is transformed as you correctly point out into means of power and coercion.

Also Christianity refines itself in terms running society rather than being an alternative to power. This redefinition led to Christendom and through the Protestant Reformation to the Protestant Nation States which tended to conflate their existence with the export of its values as if they represented Christianity. However, this prostitution of Christianity then unleashed a dynamic which led to the Holy Roman Empire, Byzantium and the mirror image of power expressed in the rise of Islam. We tend to jump from the early days of Jesus before the fall of the Church at the Battle of the Milvan Bridge to comparing this ideal state with the Islamic experiment. However, they express mirror images of each other. Also Tom Holland is now trying to show that there was in reality no Islam but that the Prophet was co-opted by the forces that we now see as Islam. He makes the comparison in his latest book between that Constantinian project and the Islamist Empire.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/in-the-shadow-of-the-sword-global-empire-and-the-rise-of-a-new-religion-by-tom-holland/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/islam-the-untold-story/

Over the centuries Christianity largely tamed itself.

Returning then to this point is it not more that as the this Christendom model began to decline under the Enlightenment the French Revolution brought not enlightenment but as Delacroix shows further death and destruction.

Liberty Leading the People (28th July 1830)

The Religion of Reason turned out to be very unreasonable as a Secularist France destroyed and killed in the name of liberty, Equality and Fraternity? We saw the same in Soviet Russia and in Communist China. The Catholic Church still holds onto its piece of real estate the Vatican and wants to be followers of Christ but also use Caesar’s diplomatic pouch. So I would argue that the Christianity not so much tamed itself but the combination of secularism, attacks by ideologies of the left and being allied to power led to a steady decline. Here is a more nuanced view of Secularism:

http://www.irishcatholic.ie/20130411/news/struggling-with-secularity-S32379.html

In the USA though because of the separation of Church and State this decline is not as pronounced but these forces are just as clearly delineated. What is quite strange is seeing the State Department from a country where the State has no position on religion to be out producing reports on religious practice and breaches of religious rights in European countries when at home it is constitutionally barred from such involvement. We have the strange experience of Tom Cruise being at the forefront of trying to compare Germany as treating Scientology like the Nazis did as part of delegation to Europe during the Clinton Presidency? The USA because of its neutrality has allowed totalitarian groups like Scientology to even achieve charitable status remarkably even after the founder’s wife was put in prison for breaking into the IRS? Christianity is still connected to power but it is true that they are slowly recognising this has nothing to do with their foundational texts.

One wonders what would have happened if Scientology was successful in achieving state power?

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/john-sweeney-revisits-scientologistan-in-n-korea/

For many centuries Islam-was more peace-able than Christianity, especially when it commanded an imperial presence over infidels in the Ottoman Empire.’

When you have obtained power and smashed all dissent it is easier to be peaceful as you have pacified the opposition. Also in that period it did not allow a narrow view of the Koran to stop scientific investigation. Religion and science are friends like we see with Francis Bacon, but when dogma takes over society reverts to a closed system. Dogma over reason is the formula.

The tendency to take religion to its extreme, even violent, form is not the exclusive province of his any faith. But what it is important to grasp is that this is not a deviation from or perversion of faith; it is its ultimate, most impassioned as form, often seized on by an individual to appease personal conflicts and overcome confusion and bewilderment. It is faith without doubt and without humility. It is past reason. It is a form of total surrender of the self to something other and greater. It knows no restraint.

This is I believe a good description of cultism, but it is not inherent in the religious tradition as your earlier point shows. It is where influence totally takes over.

So do Tsamaev a favour and take him at his word. He was not crazy. He was just terrifyingly consistent. If this life is but a blip compared with eternity, if God controls everything and if you believe your adopted country and culture are at war with that God, why is it not your duty to defend God’s law?

This type of thinking can be found in all cultist groups, but the violent dimension is now firmly connected to Islamism. Though in Islamism it takes the form of the person becoming the missile themselves. Irish Republicans on the other hand do not follow this view and their bombing campaign is not connected to suicidality, in fact the hope is to stay very much alive to be able to succeed in future missions. Due to mistaken notion of paradise in Islamism death is sought as a means to fulfill one’s religious identity and future destiny. A Republican bomber coming from a Catholic background is more concerned about hell than heaven in the execution of his mission. Though the Pizza bombers in Israel is interesting as the one who died went to Paradise but the unsuccessful one was destined to a more grizzly end.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/islamism/

Yes, there also seem to be strains of modernity in Tsarnaev: a penchant for driving a Mercedes, a macho swagger, possible drug-dealing, all-American branded baseball caps and a very modern lust for celebrity. But that helps to explain the recourse to extremism. The 9/11 murderers, after all, were not without internal conflicts. They went to a strip bar before preparing themselves for eternity. Osama bin Laden was once a trust-fund kid cavorting around the West. This is emphatically not to say that Islam is the core problem. As you can see from Tsarnaev’s mosque, from the disgusted reaction of his Muslim relatives, from the 99% of American Muslims who share a faith of non-violence and humility and charity, Tsarnaev is an extreme exception, not the rule.

This is a useful description of the disconnect between the ideological belief system and the human frailty of doubt. So just as in war soldiers like to frequent bars and prostitutes before going into battle, here there is big disconnect between the high ideals and their human weakness. Also a kind release sanctioned by their higher calling.

But it is also true, it seems to me, that Islam has an acutely difficult relationship with modernity. It cannot moderate doctrinally because its founding text is believed to be literally the word of God speaking through his prophet and can never be altered or reinterpreted in the light of history or reason, let alone be subject to objective scholarship.

This is true, but I would have thought the following piece which I addressed earlier is not the counter weight to the points above. Rather the Jewish historical method which has been explored since 1948 is very simple read the bible and get the archaeologists to go and visit and dig up the evidence. The bible and history are not in dispute. The incredible studies that are going on bring the biblical narrative alive. Since the biblical revolution in the C19 we do not treat the biblical texts as a linear flat book, but as the Word of God in the words of human kind. Each writer is unique and we do not so much have a book as a library. It is not so much that Islam has a problem with modernity as it has a problem of authoritarianism. You can’t have a culture of scientific investigation in Gaza, or in Iran or under the Taliban. Also the culture of Salifist Saudi Arabia is not going to produce scholarship when the freedom to think is denied. In Mecca and in Afghanistan rather we see the criminal destruction of antiquity, and it was not by accident that Cambodia was ruled by the French. Guess where they imbibed their destructive tendencies. From the people that destroyed Cluny et al.

Whereas Christianity became imperial under Constantine, Islam began as imperialist and thereby political. Unlike Judaism it also claims universality.

We already looked at this sentence earlier in a different context.

Which is why the Tsarnaev brothers are in some ways more frightening than organised terrorist groups. All you need is a sense of bewilderment and alienation in the modern world, a need for total certainty and an internet connection . . . and you have a religious motive for violence.

What this technological revolution on line means for the shaping of culture is hard to fathom. How we can reflect on anything with depth and not be tortured by the next email or link to this or that is hard to imagine. Marshall McLuhan prophetically talked about the medium being the message.

Also you wrote a piece on this issue of the online world a few weeks ago. We are not sure where this will lead us?

As the modern world increasingly defies all the constraints that ancient religion imposed, some will find a reason to strike back. Returning the favour, as in the invasion of Afghanistan or the occupation of a Muslim country such as Iraq, doesn’t help. It only threatens to intensify the blowback from online loner fanatics.

This atomisation is part of the proliferation of end of world scenarios, alien landing and general relativism that inhabits our world. The despair by the children of those who have tasted integration and a normal life is part of the scream for meaning and the escape from reason our culture represents.

Stigmatising the 99% of US Muslims who are appalled by terrorism and far better integrated than in Europe is another way to turn a tragedy into a catastrophe.

We looked at this very early on…….

We are stuck with hoping that some day Islam will relearn what Christianity finally learnt: non-violence is the better path.

The cure to Islamism is moderate Islam; however that journey is like to your explanation of the causes of the problem – multifaceted. Education, formation and finding a way to break from the addictive power of violence and cultist beliefs and influence. Has Christians said good bye to power in our western world, I do not yet see that we have yet broken with those powers to be able to be a sign to Islamists.

In other words, to describe this terrorist act as religiously based does not mean one is a bigot; just a realist. Fanaticism is as old as humanity -~ and now empowered on a global, internet stage.

The only answer is stoicism, vigilance and religious humility. And time.

The way Jesus looked at death as an enemy when faced with the death of Lazarus is a good model. He was like a snorting war horse. Not stoicism but fighting with disarmed weapons. An eye for an eye and the whole world is blind. Love is the way, vigilance yes in knowing that when you see people under influence act, do not hope it will get better it won’t. Humility to recognise that as we admit weakness we are in fact strong. Time leads to clarity and is the opposite of the tweet world of unreflected communication.

Filed under: Cultism, Islamism, Religion

Left refuses to see motive amid the carnage of Boston

dialogueireland — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:43:25 +0000

THE SUNDAY TIMES 28.04.13

Religion, the motive the left refuses to see amid the carnage of Boston

“TO SAY THIS ACT

WAS RELIGIOUSLY

BASED MEANS

ONE IS A REALIST

NOT A BIGOT”

By Andrew Sullivan

ON AMERICA

PDF of article:

Religion, the motive Andrew Sullivan

There are several things we cannot confidently say about the motives of Tameran Tsarnaev in bombing the crowd at the finish of the Boston marathon.

We do not know all the details of his psychological profile; we do not know the

identity of a figure called Misha, who was apparently instrumental in Tsarnaev’s

radicalisation; we do not know why he chose the marathon as his target; we do not fully know the role of his younger brother or his wife, who claims total surprise at the events.

Any act as violent as his is “multi-determined”, as my shrink unhelpfully puts it.

Every individual is a unique blend of DNA, experience and psychological complexity. It’s worth keeping that in mind before we reduce someone to a caricature.

But we do know this: Tsarnaev was a fanatical, extremist Muslim – and his brother has testified that “defending Islam” was the motive. Tsarnaev’ s YouTube page is crammed with Islamist conspiracy theories, apocalyptic myths and violent Islamist imagery. He disrupted his own mosque’s services by ranting that it was wrong to honour Martin Luther King Jr because he wasn’t a Muslim.

The Russian intelligence services alerted the CIA and FBI to what they detected as dangerous Islamist extremism even before he had spent six a months in the country. His uncle described Tsarnaev’s shift toward extreme devotion. “I was shocked when I heard his words, his phrases, when every other word he starts sticking in words of God.”

Tsarnaev gave up the sport he won prizes in – boxing because of Islam. He gave up drinking. He complained about the loss of values in modern society. He hit his girlfriend and persuaded his American wife to become a Muslim – now covered from head to toe. Of course the Boston bombings were an act of jihad.

To read writers such as The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald desperately searching for some other motive – “some combination of mental illness, societal alienation, or other form of internal instability and rage that is apolitical in nature” – is to despair of some left-liberals’ naivety. History is crammed with violence committed in the name of God. From the Crusades to the Reformation to the religious conflicts of the 17th century in Europe, we have seen how Christianity although founded by a radically nonviolent guru – can become murderous. How much more plausible is the idea of violence coming from a religion founded by an explicitly political conqueror.

The motive for the bombing was religion, stupid. But it was also, of course, only one strain of religion – the most extreme and total form.

Over the centuries Christianity largely tamed itself. For many centuries Islam-was more peace-able than Christianity, especially when it commanded an imperial presence over infidels in the Ottoman Empire.’ The tendency to take religion to its extreme, even violent, form is not the exclusive province of his any faith. But what it is important to grasp is that this is not a deviation from or perversion of faith; it is its ultimate, most impassioned as form, often seized on by an individual to appease personal conflicts and overcome confusion and bewilderment. It is faith without doubt and without humility. It is past reason. It is a form of total surrender of the self to something other and greater. It knows no restraint.

So do Tsamaev a favour and take him at his word. He was not crazy. He was just terrifyingly consistent. If this life is but a blip compared with eternity, if God controls everything and if you believe your adopted country and culture are at war with that God, why is it not your duty to defend God’s law?

Yes, there also seem to be strains of modernity in Tsarnaev: a penchant for driving a Mercedes, a macho swagger, possible drug-dealing, all-American branded baseball caps and a very modern lust for celebrity. But that helps to explain the recourse to extremism. The 9/11 murderers, after all, were not without internal conflicts.

They went to a strip bar before preparing themselves for eternity. Osama bin Laden was once a trust-fund kid cavorting around the West. This is emphatically not to say that Islam is the core problem. As you can see from Tsarnaev’ s mosque, from the disgusted reaction of his Muslim relatives, from the 99% of American Muslims who share a faith of non-violence and humility and charity, Tsarnaev is an extreme exception, not the rule. But it is also true, it seems to me, a that Islam has an acutely difficult relationship with modernity. It cannot moderate doctrinally because its founding text is believed to be literally the word of God speaking through his prophet and can never be altered or reinterpreted in the light of history or reason, let alone be subject to objective scholarship. Whereas Christianity became imperial under Constantine, Islam began as imperialist and thereby political. Unlike Judaism it also claims universality.

Which is why the Tsarnaev brothers are in some ways more frightening than organised terrorist groups. All you need is a sense of bewilderment and alienation in the modern world, a need for total certainty and an internet connection . . . and you have a religious motive for violence.

As the modern world increasingly defies all the constraints that ancient religion imposed, some will find a reason to strike back. Returning the favour, as in the invasion of Afghanistan or the occupation of a Muslim country such as Iraq, doesn’t help. It only threatens to if, intensify the blowback from online loner fanatics. Stigmatising the 99% of US Muslims who are appalled by terrorism and far better integrated than in Europe is another way to turn a tragedy into a catastrophe. We are stuck with hoping that some day Islam will relearn what Christianity finally learnt: non-violence is the better path.

In other words, to describe this terrorist act as religiously based does not mean one is a to bigot; just a realist. Fanaticism is as old as humanity -~ and now empowered on a global, internet stage.

The only answer is stoicism, vigilance and religious humility. And time.

andrew.sullivan.com

Filed under: Cultism, Islamism, Religion

Appeal against Clongriffin Mosque – Tommy Broughan TD

dialogueireland — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:56:04 +0000

Dialogue Ireland will be giving an update on the developments in regard to this project. Our adviser has been researching the background to those who are apparently funding this project. We would see the development of this mosque being the result of the Arab Spring and the changing power dynamics in the region. The Clonskeagh mosque is now firmly in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Maktoums no longer see the need to pay insurance in Ireland to maintain safety at home. Also they do not represent the strict Salifist trend in Islam, but rather horse riding and power in the UAE.

It is very isolated whereas at least Clonskeagh was in a very developed area and had UCD nearby. One has the feeling there are going to be a number of private buses coming from all over Ireland to feed the numbers to make this more than another Celtic Tiger building project?

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/why-did-it-all-go-so-wrong-for-yahya-al-hussein/

Also the problem for those who wish to maintain control over their youth is that between Primary and Third level there is a major problem for those with an Islamist agenda. A lot of the Muslim youth become integrated at second level. The Saudis soon after they opened an Embassy suggested they would like to see a secondary school here.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/saudis-to-establish-school-in-dublin/

This new project opens up the possibility of a seamless move to third level where groups like Fosis can recruit them into a more clearly Islamist direction.

There have been a number of reports of third level students who have fought and died in Syria.

Already the move to Clonskeagh from the South Circular Road did not create a living community in the area around the mosque. Rather Clongriffin represents an even more remote area where a kind of parallel society might emerge. There is a danger that this represents a kind of Nama society, more about selling an idea for profit than having living people in a community connected to it.

THOMAS P. BROUGHAN T.D.

Thursday, 23 March 2013

Appeal:
Re: Plan No. 3325/12 (5/10/2012) for a Mosque, Cultural Centre,
Conference Centre, Primary & Secondary Schools at Panhandle
Park, Clongriffin, Dublin 13

Dear Secretary,

On behalf of constituents in Clongriffin, Donaghmede and Dublin North
East/Dublin Bay North, I wish to make the following observations on the
above proposal.

The Planning Permission Granted by Dublin City Council Failed to
invigilate Any of the Key Planning Issues Raised By Local Citizens

My Earlier Submission

The permission granted by Dublin City Council on March 7 the‘ last (and
subsequently amended on March 8th‘) failed to examine serious planning
issues raised at the local authority planning stage.

See PDF: Objection Thomas Broughan TD

Filed under: Islamism

John Sweeney revisits Scientologistan in N Korea

dialogueireland — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:38:29 +0000

North Korea Undercover

Here we were reminded of the visit and the revisit of John Sweeney to the Industry of death exhibition on Psychiatry a few years ago. The cult allusions were all over this documentary:

The filming by the N Koreans of John was similar to that of the Scientologists, who photograph you photographing them. The cult like propaganda and brainwashing of the general population reminds us of the way this happens in the Scientology world of mind control. Also the deification of Kim Il Sung and his tombs remind one of the places where they have life like statues of L R Hubbard. Also the concentration camps are reminiscent of the Rehabilitation Project Force camps in Scientology, though obviously the scale of this is not yet realised at the state level.

Imagine if LRH had succeeded in getting his project to ‘clear the planet’ in place in South Africa or Rhodesia? The best he could do was wander around the Mediterranean in the Apollo with his fantasy crew who were abused. If he had succeeded North Korea would be a good look a like for Scientologistan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01s1mfw/Panorama_North_Korea_Undercover/

John Sweeney revisits the “Church of Scientology”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9032000/9032278.stm

In 2007, while investigating the Church of Scientology for Panorama, reporter John Sweeney had a dramatic on-camera confrontation with a church spokesman named Tommy Davis. The church was accusing the reporter of bias and it attempted to stop the documentary from being broadcast – a campaign backed by Scientology A-lister John Travolta. Sweeney has returned to investigate the church again.

Pushing John Sweeney’s ‘bigot’ button

I never meant to shout.

Strangers had been on my tail. Scientologist Tommy Davis and his colleague Mike Rinder – my handlers – had been on my case, day in and day out.

They had taken me to an exhibit called ‘Psychiatry: Industry of Death’ on Hollywood Boulevard, where a Scientologist told me psychiatrists set up the Holocaust. I feared I was being brain-washed.

And then I lost it – big time.

The Church of Scientology put out my impression of an exploding tomato onto the internet which millions had a laugh at courtesy of YouTube.

It was no way for me to behave. I apologised then and I apologise now.

Shortly after that programme, Scientology & Me, aired in 2007, I received a tip-off that Mike Rinder had left the church.

Three years on and my old adversary came to me to shed some light on what had been going on behind the scenes in the days leading up to my infamous meltdown and screaming session in Los Angeles.

Now an independent Scientologist, Mike is critical of the church and of its leader David Miscavige, who was actor Tom Cruise’s best man at his wedding to Katie Holmes.

Mike, 55, wanted to meet and talk about his life in the church, which he was a part of from the age of six.

’Freed’

He began by telling me about the moment when he decided to get out: “I knew as I was walking out – that was the last time I would ever talk to my wife, my children, the rest of my family. I couldn’t take it anymore. When I left I felt I had been freed.”

Mike was subjected to what the church calls disconnection. His wife, daughter, son, brother and mother have cut him out of their lives.

Mike was one of a number of people we met who effectively grew up in the church and have since left.

Those who speak out say they can be deemed by the church to be enemies and subjected to disconnection – when all ties to family and friends are severed.

John Sweeney filming in America

The Panorama team were followed while filming in America

The church acknowledges some Scientologists choose to sever communications with family members who leave. The church says it is a fundamental human right to cease communication with someone. It adds disconnection is used against expelled members and those who attack the church.

During our investigation in 2007, black SUVs with tinted windows appeared to be following our team as we carried out interviews. A mystery man who we suspected was from the church also appeared to be keeping tabs on us at breakfast in our LA hotel each morning.

At the time, I put my suspicions of being under surveillance to Tommy Davis. He responded: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It seems to me you’re getting a bit paranoid.”

Mike Rinder has since given me a different answer.

”Was I being paranoid?” I asked him when we met again.

”No, you were being followed. No doubt whatsoever,” he told me.

Mike said he should know as it was he and Tommy Davis who were doing some of the covert surveillance.

Mike said he and Tommy were reporting back on our movements to David Miscavige’s office every few minutes or so.

Through its UK lawyers, the firm Carter-Ruck, the church deny spying on us and reject Mike Rinder’s version of events dating back to 2007.

Celebrity members

The public face of the church is as a force for good, perhaps most familiar to the public for its offers of free stress tests at its shopfront centres in major cities.

Its star members include Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and Juliette Lewis.

When I interviewed Alley in 2007 and put the question to her that many believe Scientology to be a sinister brain-washing cult, she replied: “Would you ever sit with a Jew and tell them that their religion is a cult?”

When I asked the same question of Juliette Lewis, star of the film Natural Born Killers, she replied: “Some people say women are really stupid and shouldn’t have the vote.”

Panorama Archive: Scientology and Me

The church said it is a religion and is recognised as such in America for tax purposes. It denies emphatically that it is a cult and has maintained that I am biased.

Many ex-Scientologists disagree with the celebrities who defend the church.

Amy Scobee, now in her mid-40s, is a former member who said she believes it is “a dangerous cult”. She was a member from the age of 14, much of her time in the church was spent as part of what is known as the Sea Org – the highly-disciplined wing that effectively runs the church’s day to day operations.

Private details

When Ms Scobee left and began to criticise David Miscavige and the church, intimate details of her sex life before she was married leaked to the St Petersburg Times in Florida newspaper.

The church admits sending the newspaper material about Ms Scobee’s sex life, but said it was acceptable because the information was contained in an affidavit signed by her. They say it was not confidential.

Ms Scobee said she had disclosed those details but she believed they would remain confidential.

During our time in America for the latest Panorama, we were once again followed by people filming us, this time more openly than before. When we approached the people with cameras to ask them who they were with and what they were doing, they refused to answer our questions.

That is why I was somewhat grateful to Scientology’s UK lawyers at Carter-Ruck when they sent the BBC photographs of me hugging Amy Scobee at the end of a long and at times harrowing series of interviews about her experiences.

The photographs were meant to demonstrate to my bosses at the BBC, once again, that I must be biased against the church as I was overly familiar with its critics.

This was, oddly enough, welcome proof that the people who had been following and filming us in the States were indeed working for the Church of Scientology. As Mike Rinder had said, I was not being paranoid – I was being followed.

The Secrets of Scientology: A Panorama Special, BBC One, Tuesday, 28 September 2010

Filed under: Cultism, Scientology

A Course In Brainwashing by Tracy Moran

dialogueireland — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:20:51 +0000

Catholic apologetics:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/BRAINWAS.TXT
Catholics across the country are alarmed at the increasing 
popularity of a New Age phenomenon known as "A Course in 
Miracles," a system of spirituality proponents claim is the "Third 
Testament" of God to His people.

Even more alarming, critics say, is that the movement is gaining a 
foothold among some Catholics.

"A Course in Miracles," a 1,249-page study manual, was authored by 
the "inner voice" of research psychologist Helen Schucman between 
1965 and 1972. Schucman, a professor at Columbia University and a 
self-described atheist at the time, claims the "voice" was that of 
Jesus Christ.

In 1977, New Age guru and best-selling author Marianne Williamson 
discovered "A Course in Miracles" and helped spread its message 
internationally, reeling in stars such as Oprah Winfrey and 
Shirley MacLaine along the way.

Today, the course has sold more than 1 million copies, and more 
than 2,000 groups in the United States meet to study the course, 
which Williamson calls "a self-study program of spiritual 
psychotherapy."

But a former disciple of "A Course in Miracles" who returned to 
the Catholic Church calls it a course in brainwashing. Moira 
Noonan, once a New Age minister and psychic, was introduced to the 
course 20 years ago. Upon returning to the Church, she was shocked 
to find that "A Course in Miracles" is sold in some Catholic 
bookstores and that many fellow believers are studying it.

"They say in the course that the Holy Spirit wants us to have 
these new thoughts, a new reality," Noonan explained. "It says 
right in the beginning of the course to question everything.... 
The course is Satan's mockbible," she said, adding that its 
disciples "want people to think it's a religion, but it's not."

The Foundation for a "A Course in Miracles," based in Roscoe, 
N.Y., is not affiliated with any church or denomination. Dr. 
Kenneth Wapnick, the foundation's director, was a Catholic 
seminarian about to enter the monastery when he met Schucman and 
read the manuscript for the course.

A clinical psychologist, Wapnick claims the course teaches that 
the way to recover one's buried knowledge and memories of God is 
by "undoing" guilt through forgiving others. It aims to remove 
"the blocks to one's awareness of love's presence," which is every 
person's natural state of mind.

Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa, who has written on New Age religions, 
sees how such language can resonate with Catholics, luring them to 
study the course.

"The key problem is the [course's] pseudo - Christian vocabulary 
and ideas," said Father Pacwa. "People don't know the Catechism, 
they don't know their faith.... The course strongly rejects the 
use of reason and thinking.... This is precisely what makes the 
course feasible. Once you get rid of reason, you get rid of 
discussion."

Noonan explained the course's attraction to Catholics by noting 
that "in our culture, we want a quick fix. [The course] teaches 
that you can claim a miracle. It's part of the individualistic 
attitude we have in this society."

Noonan said some Catholics pick up the course thinking: "I never 
really liked or understood the Bible anyway, so why don't I read 
this? The language is easier for me to understand."

Led astray

Critics of "A Course in Miracles" warn that Catholics who try to 
incorporate its principles into their faith will severely 
compromise their beliefs because the two theologies are completely 
incompatible.

Father Pacwa said the course repeatedly misquotes the Bible and 
"presents a false Jesus." Even though Jesus supposedly dictated 
the course to Schucman, the course's Jesus "does not like the 
Crucifixion," Father Pacwa said. "One of the things said 
repeatedly and forcefully in the course is that sacrifice has 
nothing to do with love-they are incompatible."

The "Jesus" of "A Course in Miracles" is not really the Son of 
God, never really had a physical body, and hence never really 
suffered on the cross. He even rephrases the Lord's Prayer, 
replacing "hallowed be thy name" with "Our holiness is Yours," 
Father Pacwa pointed out.

With such glaring differences between Christianity and the course, 
it is no wonder Father Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., another critic, 
said the movement "has become something of a sophisticated cult." 
And he should know, having studied at Columbia University under 
Schucman.

In his book, "A Still, Small Voice," Father Groeschel recounts his 
"utter astonishment" when he was told in 1969 about Schucman's 
alleged encounter with "the Son of God." According to Father 
Groeschel, the course that resulted from this encounter is 
"centered on a Son of God who at times seems to be the Christ of 
orthodox Christianity and sometimes an avatar of an Eastern 
religion."

Father Groeschel said that among clergy and Religious, "There's a 
lot of suspicion about the course right now."

And suspicion seems warranted, considering that the course denies 
the existence of suffering and sin, claims the Holy Spirit's main 
purpose is to heal people's unconscious thoughts, and reinterprets 
the word "miracle" into psychological terms.

According to a recent book promoting the course, the "purpose of 
this system . . . is to draw our minds into a completely different 
way of thinking.... Education on this level is clearly re-
education, which demands, first of all, unlearning."

Moreover, "A Course in Miracles" purports to be a "purifier of 
Christianity," as explained in the book: "Echoing the Bible, [the 
course] thus presents the image of a contemporary revealed 
scripture, a modern-day message from God to mankind."

Yet, ironically, perhaps the strongest argument against wedding 
Christianity with the course comes from Wapnick himself. In the 
book "A Course in Miracles and Christianity: A Dialogue," 
published by his foundation, Wapnick and Jesuit Father W. Norris 
Clarke map out the sharp differences of the two theologies, 
defining them as "mutually exclusive."

Wapnick writes that "to attempt reconciliation between [the two] 
must inevitably lead to frustration at best and severe distortion 
at worst.... 'A Course in Miracles' directly refutes the very 
basis of the Christian faith, leaving nothing on which Christians 
can base their beliefs."

Whatever the course's true intention, however, Father Pacwa warns 
that the course "presents a false Jesus, false Spirit and false 
Gospel, and therefore it deserves simple rejection."

And even if the course  attempt to "purify" the Gospel, its 
effort is fruitless, as Father Clarke points out in the 
"Dialogue":

"Traditional Christianity maintains that human beings have really 
sinned and turned away from God, hence [they] have the burden of a 
genuine (not merely neurotic) guilt.... Then Jesus took on the 
burden of our own sins and truly suffered and died on the cross to 
make reparation for them. He then truly rose from the dead, with a 
real, though transformed or glorified body, and is forever united 
with His Father now in glory." 

Moran writes from San Diego, Calif. For more information on "A 
Course in Miracles," contact Moira Noonan at: P.O. Box 232716, 
Encinitas, CA 92023

This article was taken from the June 2, 1996 issue of Our Sunday 
Visitor. To subscribe write Our Sunday Visitor, Inc, 200 Noll 
Plaza, Huntington, In 46750. 

Our Sunday Visitor is published weekly at a subscription rate of 
$36.00 per year. 

Copyright (c) 1996 EWTN Online Services.

-------------------------------------------------------

   Provided courtesy of:

        Eternal Word Television Network
        PO Box 3610
        Manassas, VA 22110
        Voice: 703-791-2576
        Fax: 703-791-4250
        Web: http://www.ewtn.com
        Email address: sysop@ewtn.com

-------------------------------------------------------

Filed under: A Course in Miracles (ACIM)

A COURSE IN MIRACLES by Edward R Hryczyk

dialogueireland — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:16:02 +0000

Catholic apologetic:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/COURSE.TXT
The text of the book "A Course in Miracles" is the product of seven
years of trance spirit channeling of a Mrs. Helen Schucman.The spirit that channeled a "new gospel" to Mrs. Schucman claimed to be
Jesus Christ. The "spirit" made contact with her to correct errors
in Sacred Scripture, and the teachings of the Church. The "spirit"
that channeled through Mrs. Schucman wrote that Sacred Scripture was
in error in teaching us that sin separates us from God, and that
Jesus Christ did not die on the cross for our sins. The book "A
Course in Miracles" contains a Text (the dictation's of Mrs.
Schucman), a Student Workbook, and an Instructors Manual (1).

Mrs. Schucman, a Columbia University professor and psychologist, was
an acquaintance of Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R. (seen on EWTN).
Fr. Groeschel gave a eulogy at her funeral. Fr. Groeschel wrote (2),
"This woman who had written so eloquently that suffering really did
not exist spent the last two years of her life in the blackest
psychotic depression I have ever witnessed." Fr. Groeschel is a holy,
practical, wise, no nonsense priest, and psychologist. During an
October 1994 lecture on "Discernment" given at Holy Cross Church,
Rumson, N.J., Fr. Groeschel stated that he believed that Helen
Shucman's experience with the channeled "spirit" was possibly a true
diabolic manifestation. Fr. Groeschel's experience as a psychologist
and priest included being called upon by his Bishop to investigate
reported diabolic manifesta- tions in his New York City diocese. In
the lecture Fr. Groeschel de- scribed one experience - called as an
exorcist - where he witnessed objects unexplainably being thrown
about a room. At the end of a lengthy discussion he attributed that
particular experience to paranormal manifestations - but not diabolic
in nature (3).

Fr. Groeschel is not easily inclined to attribute any experience to
the diabolic. The possible diabolic origin in the spirit channeling
of Helen Schucman was one exception given by Fr. Groeschel. Fr.
Groeschel's suspicions find support in Sacred Scripture. Helen
Schucman's "chan- neled spirit" denies that our Lord Jesus Christ
came to the earth in the flesh. An abstract of "the Course" can be
written based solely on two lines of the "spirit" channeled writings.
Chapter 8, Section VII, para- graph 7, page 152 states:

"The Bible says, "The Word (or thought) was made flesh." Strictly
speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the
translation of one order or reality into another."

Contrast the "spirits" channeled words to the inspired words of St.
John (1 John 4:1-3):

" Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see
whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into
the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which
confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and
every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the
spirit of anti- christ, of which you heard that it was coming, and
now it is in the world already."

To further stress the assertion to a "student" of "the Course" that
Jesus Christ was but an illusion the accompanying Manual For
Teachers, page 87, Clarification of Terms, Section 5, "Jesus-Christ",
paragraph 2 states: " The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a
man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered
God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but one
with God. The man was an illusion, for he seemed to be a separate
being, walking by himself, within a body that appeared to hold his
self from Self, as illusions do."

The "channeled spirit" was not from God.

On page 186 of the Text the "spirit" writes, "I do not bring God's
message with deception, and you will learn that you always receive as
much as you accept."

One does find truth in the writings of "the Course." The following
quote would be humorous if it were not for the sad ending of Mrs.
Schuc- man's life, and the influence "the Course" has had on
thousands of individuals. Chapter 9, Section IV, paragraph 8, of the
Text, page 170 states: "Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must
be totally insane himself." Chapter 25, Section VII, paragraph 8, of
the Text, page 533, again states: "It would be madness to entrust
salvation to the insane."

The writing style of "the Course" is very confusing - but at the same
time in some way intellectual and emotionally seductive. The
writings may start with a beautiful, seemingly inspired truth and
than will slowly drift to confusion - logically ending up with
conclu- sions that are contrary to Sacred Scripture and the teachings
of the Church.

The course is "Gnostic" in teaching and practice. The writings deny
the reality of physical creation (4). The course acknowledges the
need for a novice student to receive training in "the Course" by a
teacher that has already received some enlightenment by studying "the
Course." A separate teacher's guide forms part of "the Course." As
with all "New Age" teachings, seminars are provided - for a fee - to
help the individ- ual advance in spirituality.

Some of the beliefs, as written in "the Course" are:

a. REALITY: Reality is illusory.

(1.) From Manual, page 85, "The world you see is an illusion of a
world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as
Himself" (Manual, p85).

(2.) "And therefore all your sins have been forgiven because they
car- ried no effects at all. And so they were but dreams" (Manual,
p87).

(3.) "Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies in looking beyond
error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you" (Text,
p169).

b. CREATION/TRINITY: The writings teach that God and His creation are
one.

(1.) "There is no separation of God and His creation." (Text, p147)

(2.) "If you are part of one you must be part of the other, because
they are one. The Holy Trinity is holy because It is One. If you
exclude yourself from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity
as sepa- rated" (Text, p146).

(3.) "Creation is your will because it is His" (Text, p196).

c. JESUS CHRIST'S ORIGIN: The writings state that Jesus Christ was
created (made not begotten).

"God would not have us be alone because He does not will to be alone.
That is why He created His Son, and gave him the power to create with
Him" (Text, p150).

d. SALVATION: We do not need a savior. Salvation is nothing more than
right mindedness. We are the source of our own salvation.

(1.) "Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the
Sonship is your Self. As God's creation It is yours, and belonging
to you It is His. Your Self does not need salvation, but your mind
needs to learn what salvation is." (Text, p200).

(2.) "My holiness is my salvation." (Workbook, Lesson 58, p97)

(3.) "My salvation comes from me. It cannot come from anywhere else."
..."My salvation cannot come from any of these things. My salva-
tion comes from me and only me."....."My salvation comes from me.
Nothing outside of me can hold me back. Within me is the world's
salva- tion and my own." (Workbook, Lesson 70, p120)

(4.) "Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at
salvation." (Text, P142)

(5.) "We cannot be separated. Whom God has joined cannot be
separated, and God has joined all His Sons with Himself." (Text,
p150)

(6.) "Yet all loss comes only from misunderstanding. Loss of any kind
is impossible." (Text, p152)

(7.) "He will teach you how to see yourself without condemnation, by
learning how to look on everything without it. Condemnation will
then not be real to you, and all your errors will be forgiven."
(Text, p168)

e. GOD: God is your identity, you will be like God.

(1.) " The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. There
is no separation of God and his creation." (Text, p147)

(2.) "God's Name is holy, but no holier than yours. To call upon his
Name is but to call upon your own." (Workbook, p342)

(3.) "My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful
as mine. If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal." (Text,
p145)

(4.) "Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God
Himself, as holy as He is." (Text, p150)

(5.) "God Himself is incomplete without me." (Text, p177)

(6.) "God is not jealous of the gods you make, but you are."
(Text,p186)

f. SELF: We are sinless and are like God.

(1.) "My true Identity is so secure, so lofty, sinless, glorious, and
great, wholly beneficent and free from guilt, that Heaven looks to It
to give it light." (Workbook, Lesson 225, p403)

(2.) "You do not know yourself, because you do not know your Creator.
You do not know your creations because you do not know your brothers,
who created them with you.... He is the co-creator with God and you."
(Text, p137)

(3.) "Glory to God in the highest, and to you because He has so
willed it." (Text, p141)

(4.) "What God and His Sons create is eternal, and this only is their
joy." (Text, p148)

(5.) "God does not contradict Himself, and His Sons, who are like
Him, cannot contradict themselves or Him. Yet their thought is so
powerful that they can even imprison the mind of God's Son." (Text,
p149)

(6.) "God gave you the function to create in eternity." (Text, p168)

g. LAST JUDGMENT: Have no fear of God's Judgment

"Do not fear the Last Judgment, but welcome it and do not wait, for
the ego's time is "borrowed" from your eternity."..... "The Second
Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return." (Text, p170)

In dealing with individuals who teach and follow "the Course" one
must realize that they probably believe they are truly seeking God in
their studies of "the Course." Those trying to follow the teachings
would consciously reject all evil. Unfortunately, their beliefs are
"Gnostic" and they probably consider a Catholic's devotion to the
Faith , given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, as unenlightened
medieval superstition to be rejected by all in this enlightened "new
age." The teaching's in "the Course" are particularly attractive to
individuals who have fallen away from the faith and find themselves
seeking some- thing to fill their spiritual void.

Reading Sacred Scripture is nourishment for the soul, since the words
have been inspired by the Holy Spirit. Taking the words of "the
Course" into one's heart will lead to a slow spiritual death. It is a
book to be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately celebrities such has
John Denver have been taken in by the book and have spread its
influence.

NOTES:

(1) The quotations are taken from "The Course in Miracles", published
by the Foundation for Inner Peace, P.O. Box 1104, Glen Ellen, CA
95442, second edition, second printing, August 1992.

(2) Page 79 of, "A Still, Small Voice, A Practical Guide On Reported
Revelations", by Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R., Ignatius Press
1993

(3) For an good discussion of the para normal see Fr. Groesch- el's
video series "Religious Experiences", distributed by the Daugh- ter's
of Saint Paul.

(4) The Spiritual Counterfeits Project, SPC Journal, Vol 7, No 1,
1987 analyzes the teaching found in "the Course" in an article by
Dean C. Halverson, "A Course in Miracles, Seeing Yourself as
Sinless." The SPC claims to be a non-denominational evangelical
Christian organization; the organization has demonstrated an
anti-Catholic bias in its recent publications.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Provided courtesy of:
Eternal Word Television Network
5817 Old Leeds Road
Irondale, AL 35210
www.ewtn.com

Filed under: A Course in Miracles (ACIM)

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) sceptically speaking!

dialogueireland — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:06:12 +0000

http://www.skepdic.com/cim.html

A Course in Miracles (ACIM)

All you need is love….love is all you need. –the Beatles

A Course in Miracles [ACIM] is the name of a book, allegedly dictated by Jesus to Helen Schucman (1909-1981), a research psychologist. ACIM is Christianity improved: Jesus wants less suffering, sacrifice, separation, and sacrament. He also wants more love and forgiveness.

ACIM is a minor industry. To find out what Jesus really had in mind when he came to save the world, you can buy ACIM or one of a dozen similar books from the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP).* About 1.5 million copies of ACIM were sold worldwide between 1976 and 2002. FIP also sells audio and videotapes, and conducts workshops, seminars, and discussion groups.* Its sister organization, The Foundation for A Course in Miracles (FACIM), has an academy where you can get the Holy Spirit to help you understand the real message of Jesus. You may then return to your everyday life situation with a deeper appreciation for the difference between appearance and reality, illusion and truth. The academy is known as “The Institute for Teaching Inner Peace Through A Course in Miracles” (ITIP).

Why should anyone believe that the words of Helen Schucman are the words of Jesus? She was a clinical psychologist by training (she received a Ph.D. in 1957 from New York University). She claims that from 1965-1972 an inner voice dictated to her the three books that make up ACIM. She was assisted by a colleague, William Thetford (1923-1988). In 1972, another psychologist and his wife, Kenneth and Gloria Wapnick, assisted Schucman with her work. The Wapnicks are the ones who started FACIM.

Why is it called A Course in Miracles? According to Schucman, the voice said to her: “This is a course in miracles, please take notes.”¹

ACIM got a big boost when Marianne Williamson,² one of America’s most popular New Age spirituality writers, began promoting her version of it in the 1990s. The teachings of ACIM are not new. They have been culled from various sources, east and west. That does not make them false or worthless. But to claim that they were dictated by someone who has been dead for 2,000 years is a bit much to swallow. Did she really hear voices or didn’t she want to take responsibility for what she thought?³

—–

Notes

¹According to Joe R. Jesseph, Ph.D., Coordinator, Miracle Studies,

Essentially, in ACIM, the term “miracle” refers to that change of mind that makes it possible for the Love of [Abraham's god] to be somehow expressed in the world. This expression of love is referred to as forgiveness in the Course and it is reasonably accurate to say that the miracle spoken of in the Course (and indicated in its title) is forgiveness.

²Williamson might be called Oprah’s patron saint. She’s all about love and healing, yin and yang, being wounded, and using love and prayer to heal all wounds. A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course In Miracles (1992) was number one on the Publishers Weekly non-fiction best-sellers list for eleven weeks. Williamson promoted her book and ACIM when she appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, an episode that received more pro viewer mail than any other show for 1992. She also plugged the book and the course when she was interviewed by Barbara Walters on the ABC television news show 20/20.

³If the former, I have nothing to add. If the latter, however, I must say that I am much more sympathetic to the approach of someone like Leo Buscaglia (1924-1998), another psychologist who taught love and forgiveness. He took responsibility for what he claimed and seemed to say: This is what I’ve learned; take it or leave it.

See also Edgar Cayce, The Celestine Prophecy, channeling, New Thought, and Ramtha.

reader comments

further reading

books and articles

Gardner, Martin. Weird Water & Fuzzy Logic : More Notes of a Fringe Watcher (Prometheus 1996).

Gardner, Martin. “Marianne Williamson and ‘A Course in Miracles,’” The Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1992.

websites

Course In Miracles A Biblical Evaluation by Russ Wise

A Course in Miracles or in Brainwashing? by Ali Sina

The Watchman Fellowship on ACIM

A modern Miracle Or: The ruthless logic of A Course in Miracles Anton van Harskamp, Bezinningscentrum Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

A Course in Miracles and Christianity: A Dialogue

Filed under: A Course in Miracles (ACIM)

Is a Course in Miracles a cult? by Sean Reagan

dialogueireland — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:56:07 +0000

A Course in Miracles: Cult?

by Sean Reagan on January 25, 2011

http://seanreagan.com/a-course-in-miracles-cult/

Is a Course in Miracles a cult? One of my students asked me this other day. His question was genuine, but troubling. After all, the word cult has nothing but negative connotations (unless you’re a fan of this band, of course).

Generally, we understand a cult to be a group with rigid (usually in stark contrast to traditional practices and beliefs) belief systems that are religious or spiritual in nature. They are authoritarian – you have to follow the group, the leader of the group, and in the process surrender your identity. You don’t have a lot of choices in a cult. For these reasons, they are seen as exploitative and dangerous.

The other aspect of cults is that they tend to involve – in practice or in perception – some degree of mind control. And what does A Course in Miracles call itself? A Course in mind control.

But that’s a simplistic rendering of a complex idea. A Course in Miracles restores our right mind – in this, it has similarities to Buddhism and even Christianity. The goal is right thinking, forgiveness, being able to perceive what is actually there, Truth, instead of the lies and illusions perpetuated by our ego, or wrong minds.

That can seem like cutting it quite fine, I suppose. I mean, if you’re in a cult and you’re defending it, you’re going to try and define things in a favorable way. Semantics can be quite powerful.

But A Course in Miracles really has no centralized leader. There is certainly the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (FACIM) headed up by Ken Wapnick and his wife Gloria. The Foundation aims to help students understand and bring to application the course. And while I think it does aim to be definitive, it is hardly coercive. There are a lot of people running around doing stuff with ACIM that wouldn’t pass muster at the Foundation.

There are teachers – Marianne Williamson, Gary Renard, Tara Singh and others – and each of them has their following. I suppose some of them are more popular than others, with more ardent followers. That’s natural.

But the Course – while its sole goal is to help us work better with our minds, restoring us to sanity – is also clear that it’s not the bottom line. It’s not the only way to heal, to come into contact with God. Revelation – contact with God – is highly personal, according to the Course.

Filed under: A Course in Miracles (ACIM)

A Course in Miracles or cultism?

dialogueireland — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:47:17 +0000

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/cultism/

Dialogue Ireland does not actually take a view as to whether the beliefs of the ACIM represent Religion or a Philosophy. Also whether they are opposed to another religion, whether they are heretical from a Catholic perspective or from an Evangelical point of view they are unbiblical is not our issue. We are concerned when we receive requests for support from families of persons who seem to have lost the plot. Whereas they were emotionally available and could be part of a family and the give and take that involves, now they find the person is withdrawn on another planet so to speak. They are also atomised believing they are no longer an incarnate being, but rather a separate gnostic spiritual individual with no connectedness to their wife, husband, daughter or son. To use an illustration. They were like honey from a honey comb deeply interrelated to those around them in their family or community. They still retained their individuality, but that was not a problem at that point. Now they are like individual marbles which are in a box and the box is dropped and the individual marbles go all over the place. They have no deep rooted connectivity and seem to be victims of a kind of DOS attack.

There seems then to be some influence and people involved seem to lack coherence and grounding in reality?

What is your experience?

Here is their International site:

http://www.facim.org/

Here is their Irish site. Go and look around. Non duality, similar to the School of Philosophy, ascension like the The Mystery School of Religion, and the parallels continue…………

http://acim.ie/

A Course in Miracles-Ireland

A Course In Miracles is not a religion. A Course in Miracles is a non-dualistic spirituality. There is no other spirituality that combines a nondualistic metaphysics with the very sophisticated psychology one finds in this “Course”.

Michael seems to pop up all over the country and again we invite people to comment on his role and to give us feedback on what is going down there in Donegal.

Michael Murray is the facilitator of A Course In Miracles-Ireland, having just recently organized Ireland’s first ever National Conference on A Course In Miracles 2012. Michael is also the website manager of http://www.acim.ie

Below we have a diverse set of links viewing the organisation from a biblical, Catholic or sceptical perspective:

http://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/BRAINWAS.TXT

http://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/COURSE.TXT

http://www.skepdic.com/cim.html

http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.4217745/k.157F/A_Course_In_Miracles__A_Christian_Worldview_Evaluation.htm

http://watchman.org/na/corsebib.htm

http://watchman.org/na/corsfact.htm

http://www.watchman.org/na/corseim.htm

http://watchman.org/na/miracle.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Course_in_Miracles

http://www.cosmicfool.com/discussion/ubb/Forum16/HTML/000016.html

http://richardspeaks.hubpages.com/hub/A-Course-In-Miracles-Truth-or-Cult-A-Student-Responds

http://seanreagan.com/a-course-in-miracles-cult/

Filed under: A Course in Miracles (ACIM)

Boylesports’ customers bet over €1 billion last year

dialogueireland — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 01:26:21 +0000

Boylesports punters bet

a cool billion

New shops and investment hit a key target

Auroras Encore ridden by jockey Ryan Mania winning the Grand National – the 66/1 shot meant that the bookies had a very good day at Aintree. photograph: david davies/pa wire Auroras Encore ridden by jockey Ryan Mania on the way to victory the John Smith’s Grand National

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/boylesports-punters-bet-a-cool-billion-1.1357443

Barry O’Halloran

Fri, Apr 12, 2013, 06:00

Dialogue Ireland commentary under article:

Boylesports’ customers bet over €1 billion with the business last year, marking a breakthrough for the privately-held online and high street bookmaker.The group, which has 180 bookie shops and an internet betting business, had been aiming at the nice round billion turnover target for some time.By turnover, the company means the amounts wagered by its customers. Its gross win margins on this were in the 10 per cent to 12 per cent zone, in line with the industry as a whole.This means that the company retained an average of 10 per cent to 12 per cent of all amounts staked in winnings, or, its customers lost an average of 10 cent to 12 cent out of every euro they bet.The group’s parent, controlled by founder John Boyle, became an unlimited entity in 2008 and it has not been obliged to publish accounts since then, but in the years immediately preceding that, it came close to hitting €1 billion.

Dempsey* says that a number of things got it over the line this time around. First, its acquisition of parts of both the Celtic Bookmakers and William Hill chains during 2011.

Celtic, owned by former government minister and broadcaster, Ivan Yates, went into liquidation in early 2011. William Hill pulled out of the retail market here after fighting a losing two-front battle against the recession and tough competition.

Turnover boost
Interestingly, Dempsey* says that the company boosted turnover in those premises that it took over from its former rivals. In fact, so happy was Boylesports with the performance of the William Hill properties that it took on two more of its former outlets last year.

The company also invested €1 million in its technology systems and infrastructure and revamped its mobile app.

The move paid off last month as it meant that Boyles had no problems during the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival, one of betting’s biggest events, while some of its rivals’ systems went down.

Boyles did not escape one problem during Cheltenham, a run of results that meant the tide flowed firmly in the punters’ favour.

Dempsey agrees that it was tough, but says the festival was good for building the brand and signing up new clients.

Besides, he also agrees that a 66/1 winner of the Grand National at Aintree, just a week after a 50/1 shot took the Irish version, were both good for the bookies, who have never lost the knack of winning in the end.

* There seems to be an error in this Irish Times report:

“Dempsey?”

We have no real idea of what the effects of the Georgina Dolan courses have had on the company. Our primary interest is in “influence” and assisting the those who felt pressurised to do courses. We noted that John Boyle returned to the Sunday Times last June to try to suggest he was in fact not influenced by Tony Quinn’s Educo system which he still extolled on their web site even after this attempt to rebrand this material as a Mindfulness course. Whatever it was it seems to have stopped so we are glad that those affected contacted us.

The group’s parent, controlled by founder John Boyle, became an unlimited entity in 2008 and it has not been obliged to publish accounts since then, but in the years immediately preceding that, it came close to hitting €1 billion.

In 2009 the company was subjected to the same DOS attack as Dialogue Ireland. We are happy that we know from defectors from Tony Quinn the source of this attack, the problem is that though the Gardai were informed it is very difficult prove this. Justice Bannister gave us some insights into what was the likely source of these attacks in his judgement last year.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/judge-bannisters-judgement-read-it-for-yourself/

The company also invested €1 million in its technology systems and infrastructure and revamped its mobile app.

Filed under: Tony Quinn

Scientologyless interviews by Martina Devlin

dialogueireland — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:33:19 +0000

White smiles and puff interviews –

how Tom was in Cruise control

BY MARTINA DEVLIN

http://www.martinadevlin.com/

IRISH INDEPENDENT

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/white-smiles-and-puff-interviews-how-tom-was-in-cruise-control-29188767.html

Ryan Tubridy greets Tom Cruise last week

11 April 2013

TWO television interviews with Tom Cruise last week reinforced the media’s need to reconsider its Faustian pact with celebrities, under which access is granted in return for guaranteed fawning.

Oh, you think maybe fawning is a harsh description? Let me pause, re-play the interviews, and see if anything kinder comes to mind. No, I’ve just sat through both TV appearances for a second time, and I’m cringing still at the gushing, courting and kowtowing before the Great God Cruise.

One interview was on RTE1 and the other on BBC1, so reverential treatment of stars is not simply an Irish problem. Both Ryan Tubridy and Graham Norton, on their respective chat shows, gave Cruise an open microphone to promote his latest action film (let’s not mention its name here because he’s had quite enough publicity already).

There wasn’t a hard question in evidence. Not even a hard question in sheep’s clothing – approaching a tricky subject in a roundabout way, as every journalist does occasionally to try and elicit information. Just: remind us how you came to be so wonderful, Mr Cruise, and let’s run some clips from your fabulous films.

Is it possible Cruise Control stipulated conditions before agreeing to appear? Journalists regularly encounter attempts to limit the terms of engagement – not just in the entertainment sphere, where image manipulation is the alpha and the omega, but in all categories from sport to business. Refuse to abide by these no-go zones, and it’s no dice for an interview.

Cruise’s current publicity tour has seen him benefit from ego-massaging promotional opportunities wherever his entourage touches down. And it’s a disturbing trend, not just in relation to the Great God Cruise, but to other celebrities.

The chat show hosts I watched didn’t even appear to be soft-soaping Cruise as a charm offensive – cosying up in the hopes of a more revealing interview. No attempt was made to penetrate beyond the narrow representation on display. Not interviews, then, because that’s a disservice to plain speaking – but a public relations puff. Audiences need expect no insights from such shameless promos.

Cruise, of course, is famously controlling. Back when he jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch to declare his love for third ex-wife Katie Holmes, he made it look as spontaneous as running a marathon. This week, in Germany, he mentioned the lack of control he felt when Holmes blindsided him with last year’s divorce petition.

All things considered, the chances of him doing a television show without pre-conditions attached are about as unlikely as his Scientologist friends ever proving they have ancient beings inside them called Thetans. Or that these aliens lived for thousands of years on other planets before arriving on earth by spaceship.

As regards his TV appearances in Dublin and London, Cruise was courteous and pleasant, if a little boring, and unleashed those white teeth regularly.

He allowed Tubridy to tease him about his abysmal Irish accent, and played along good-naturedly when Norton suggested calling an audience member’s mother.

I have no problem with interviewers avoiding a guest’s relationship history, and no desire at all to hear confidences about whom they might be dating.

It’s none of our business, no matter how many cinema tickets we buy. As a society – and this is media-led – we take a prurient interest in famous people’s personal lives. High time we stepped back.

But Cruise is closely linked with Scientology, a cult masquerading as a religion, and about which there have been persistent and disturbing allegations. For example, that it micro-manages the lives of members, and abuses them.

Cruise is its front man, arguably its most outstanding asset, and has appeared in a recruitment video produced by the so-called Church of Scientology discussing what membership means to him.

Now, I have zero curiosity about whether he believes there is life on other planets, or is convinced an ancient Thetan is living inside him, or even if he has demi-god status within Scientology. Here’s what I care about.

The Great God Cruise has huge international celebrity status and corresponding soft power, with access to senior politicians. Which he doesn’t hesitate to use. He has lobbied policymakers, both in the US and Europe, to have Scientology recognised as a religion – a move that would afford valuable tax-breaks and boost its reputation.

So, a valid question for Tubridy and Norton to have posed last week: will your current publicity tour include approaches to governments to campaign on behalf of Scientology? Have you set up meetings to further this end? If so, with whom?

Naturally, the star setting was adjusted to charm when he sat in ‘The Late Late Show’ and ‘Graham Norton Show’ studios. Everything was going his way. Not a whisper in the air about L Ron Hubbard, sci-fi writer turned cult guru.

There’s always a warm-up process when an interview starts, with a few baby questions to break the ice. “Tell us about your new project blah-blah.” But neither of the Cruise interviews graduated from there. Granted, if RTE and the BBC had refused him, other broadcasters would have snapped up the actor. Presumably they felt they couldn’t take the risk.

But this media willingness to roll over and present tummies for tickling doesn’t only apply to Cruise, nor does it apply only to RTE and BBC. It’s all-pervasive. The media must stop letting celebrities avail of its platform without the trade-off of legitimate scrutiny.

Couldn’t media outlets reach an agreement to break the stranglehold? The Great God Cruise is far from being the only one who likes to pull the wires.

Some interviews may be lost in the process. But while chat shows are entertainment-driven, they can’t be blind or blinkered – such puffs do the public a disservice.

Filed under: Scientology

Ireland to Build One of Europe’s Largest Mosques

dialogueireland — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 21:56:42 +0000

by Soeren Kern April 2, 2013 http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3654/ireland-mega-mosque

The Emir of Qatar, who has long cultivated an image as a pro-Western reformist, has vowed to “spare no effort” to spread Wahhabi Islam throughout Europe. Wahhabism — which not only discourages Muslim integration in the West but actively encourages jihad against non-Muslims — threatens to radicalize Muslim immigrants in Ireland.

City planners in the Irish capital, Dublin, have given the go-ahead for the construction of a sprawling mega-mosque complex that will cater to Ireland’s burgeoning Muslim population.

The massive €40 million ($50 million) “Islamic Cultural Center” will be built on a six-acre site in Clongriffin, a new and as yet unfinished suburb at the northern edge of Dublin.

According to the Dublin City Council, which approved the project on March 7, the Clongriffin Mosque will consist of: (a) a three-story domed mosque and cultural center with towering minarets; (b) a two-story conference center including a reception foyer, conference room, restaurant, banquet hall, kitchens and ancillary accommodation; (c) a three-story 16-classroom primary school and a two-story 12-classroom secondary school; (d) a two-story fitness center with a gym, sauna, steam room and an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool; (e) a bookshop, library and mortuary; and (f) three four-story blocks of two-bedroom apartments with ground floor shops.

The Clongriffin Mosque will cater to some of the 30,000 Muslims living in Dublin, which is home to around 60% of the estimated 50,000 Muslims living in Ireland.

Although the number of Muslims in Ireland is relatively small (1.07% of the overall population), when compared to other European countries, the rate of growth of the Muslim population in Ireland has surged exponentially (1,170%) over the past 20 years, and Islam is now the fastest growing religion in the country. The total population of Ireland is 4.6 million.

According to Irish census data for 1991, the number of Muslims in the country was 3,875. After 1991, the Muslim population jumped, due to the arrival of Muslim refugees and asylum seekers from Bosnia, Kosovo and Somalia. According to the Irish census data for 2002, the number of Muslims was 19,147; by 2006, that number had swelled to 32,539. In the 2011 census, the number of Muslims was 49,204.

Ireland’s Muslim population is projected to almost triple over the next twenty years, according to the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center. A report entitled, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030 forecasts that there will be 125,000 Muslims living in Ireland by 2030.

The Clongriffin Mosque is being promoted by a Dublin-based Muslim organization called the Dublin Welfare Society Limited, an opaque group that was incorporated in April 2010 and has no formal activities other than to lobby for the mosque project.

The mega-mosque will be developed by a local real estate mogul, Gerry Gannon, on extensive land he owns at Clongriffin. According to the Irish Times, the project is a “coup” for Gannon, who hopes to sell hundreds and possibly thousands of newly built homes to Muslim families using the cultural center.

Clongriffin is located about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of Dublin. Also known as the North Fringe, most of the land on which Clongriffin is being built was previously farmland. In July 2003, the Dublin City Council granted permission to begin developing a new suburb comprising houses and apartments, as well as schools, retail stores, supermarkets and a multi-screen cinema.

But construction in Clongriffin came to an abrupt halt after the Irish property bubble burst in 2009, and the country needed to be rescued in November 2010 with an €85 billion ($109 billion) bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Before Ireland’s real estate crash, Gannon invested millions of euros on developing Clongriffin, including the construction of a railway station linking the suburb to downtown Dublin. With the approval of the mega-mosque project, Clongriffin suddenly has a new lease on life… and so does Gannon.

Planning documents show that the Dublin City Council has approved the construction of 3,678 new homes near where the mega-mosque will be built. Gannon hopes the Clongriffin Mosque will fuel demand for the homes he is eager to sell.

But critics worry that Clongriffin is in danger of becoming an exclusively Islamic suburb on the outskirts of Dublin where Muslims will establish a parallel society rather than integrate.

An Islamist website called “Islamic Vanguards: Spearheading Ireland’s Transition” recently warned that Gannon’s greed would be Ireland’s undoing: “If there’s one thing the west yearns, it is money. For it has worshiped this false god without fail for as long as they have departed from the worship of the true God. And it is this weakness, nay addiction that will see what they hold precious being wrenched from their spindly hands. Already as we speak vast swathes of the London metropolis are in Muslim hands, Dublin is set to follow as the wealth that Allah has blessed His servants with is used to reclaim the land for His glory.”

In any event, the Clongriffin Mosque will not be the only mega-mosque in town: the new mosque on the northern edge of Dublin will compete with another mega-mosque, located in Clonskeagh on the southern edge of Dublin.

The mosque complex at Clonskeagh, which also goes by the name “Islamic Cultural Center,” has been in operation since 1996. Its sprawling four-acre campus was financed by Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler of Dubai.

The Clonskeagh Mosque is home to the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), an Islamist group which seeks to have Islamic Sharia law recognized throughout Europe.

The ECFR is an integral part of the Brussels-based Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), an umbrella group that unites more than 30 Muslim Brotherhood organizations in Europe, and acts as the main vehicle for propagating Muslim Brotherhood ideology in Europe.

The ECFR is chaired by the Egyptian-born, Qatari-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the influential Islamic scholar who is also a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Qaradawi — a spiritual advisor for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas who has defended suicide attacks against Jews as “martyrdom in the name of Allah” — has been banned from entering Great Britain and the United States.

Al-Qaradawi speaks openly about the goals of Islam: “What remains, then, is to conquer Rome. (…) This means that Islam will come back to Europe for the third time, after it was expelled from it twice. (…) Conquest through Dawa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through our Dawa.”

According to a leaked US State Department memo dated July 7, 2006, the Muslim Brotherhood is stronger in Ireland than anywhere in the world outside of Qatar, and al-Qaradawi “runs Islam in Ireland.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, which is heavily influenced by the extremist ideology of Wahhabism, subsidized by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, may be about to tighten its grip over Islam in Ireland even further.

Rumors abound that the new mega-mosque at Clongriffin will be financed by Qatar, which has been engaged in a multi-million euro spending spree to spread Wahhabi Islam around Europe.

Wahhabism — which not only discourages Muslim integration in the West, but actively encourages jihad against non-Muslims — threatens to radicalize Muslim immigrants in Ireland, according to the Irish Times.

Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who has long cultivated an image as a pro-Western reformist and modernizer, has vowed to “spare no effort” to spread the fundamentalist teachings of Wahhabi Islam across “the whole world.”

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3657/europe-mosques

In Ireland, city planners in Dublin have given the go-ahead for the construction of a sprawling mega-mosque complex that will cater to Ireland’s growing Muslim population. The massive €40 million ($50 million) “Islamic Cultural Center” will be built on a six-acre site in Clongriffin, a new and as yet unfinished suburb at the northern edge of Dublin. It will compete with another mosque complex in the southern suburb of Clonskeagh that also goes by the name “Islamic Cultural Center,” a sprawling four-acre campus, financed by Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler of Dubai.

Rumors have it that the new mega-mosque at Clongriffin will be financed by Qatar, which recently donated €800,000 ($1 million) to build a mega-mosque in Cork, the second-most populous city in Ireland.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3654/ireland-mega-mosque

Filed under: Islamism

Commentary on the Quinn June Goodlife Con….ference

dialogueireland — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:14:43 +0000

Our visiting editor’s column:

EDUCO cult leader, Tony Quinn, does not possess sufficient self awareness to realise that knowledge of his criminal behaviour will not disappear from the public arena. Apart from benefiting himself with sporadic appearances for Educoists to boost his ego and bank account, he hides from public view in the hope that the ‘noise’ will die a death. This is one request he won’t get as too many were damaged by ‘top brass’ foolish actions in the name of their guru’s money-making scam.

Ex-quinnites, ex-eduoists and INE B shareholders, who have vocalised a total loss faith in their ‘guru’ does not stop the self-proclaimed ‘messiah’ and ‘saviour’ of mankind from gathering his diminishing number of cult members. It would not surprise me if he convinces them, yet again, to give up their right to INE dividends with promises of leading them into ‘the land of milk and honey’; like a chameleon he can take on the role of Moses when it suits him. He promises to draw their energy out (inducing deep hypnosis); ‘life’ takes care of them and they have no need to concern themselves with trivialities such as their shares. He assures them of yearly ‘top-ups’, or has it changed to twice yearly, to enable access to the ‘switch in the mind,’ his abusive hypnotic techniques that turns them into a state of dependency. They have no real knowledge of what he is doing with their money or their mental health.

As Belize EDUCO cult oil business INE, still under the black shadow of Quinn, has taken a huge loss when Sheila McCaffrey, an original director, tenaciously held out for the big payoff and walked away with millions, Tony has consulted with himself (isn’t he the one with all the ‘brilliant’ ideas) and decided, following his bad publicity, that his ‘foolies’ needed reassuring. Mary obliges him by sending out a letter with promises of a new start, a new beginning to ‘making this world a better place.’ She asks educoists to bury their heads in the sand so they won’t hear the ‘noise’ of concern that causes chaos and puts a spoke in the machinations of EDUCO cult thinking.

The superficial ‘love’ that so many were taken in by has long disappeared and the ‘philosophy’ of Quinn far easier understood when you witness his behaviour. It’s all for one and NOT one for all in the self-serving EDUCO cult.

DI Commentary:

Your next Good Life Club Meeting with Tony is on Sunday June 9th at Clontarf Castle, this is instead of the September Meeting.

The likely rationale here is that the settlements now need to be built on, Justice Bannister ignored and September is a long time away. They want to rerun the EDUCO/INE meeting which was a bit of disaster for Susan as she did a runner from the Bewley’s Hotel. It is very important to understand the cultist notion that unites oil and Educo. In proper democratic organisations you have separation of powers. Here when talking about oil it is the same as talking about Educo. That is why the staff at Clontarf Castle told me earlier this year that they understood the seminar to be an oil meeting. Yet it had the feeling of a rock concert with groupies wearing evening wear at lunch time with fake tan and many seemed to have bought into Tony’s bust enhancement fantasy. They might try to do the INE meeting now they have bought silence from many. However, the Bannister judgement won’t go away.

Overwhelmingly the Castle seems to be our most popular venue.

It is also the most intimate place to observe the goings on as I did for two hours. From the point of view of the protest this time we are likely to have a double strategy. Protest at the Castle and outside Government Buildings to raise the awareness of the Irish people to the abuses of Quinn.

You can now go ahead with your travel arrangements.

We certainly are!

We hope you are getting the most out of your local meetings that Tony has designed for your benefit, where you practice both pressing the positive buttons and sharing the results with everyone in the group.

Pressing the positive buttons = recruitment to the next meeting that claims that this meeting is the greatest meeting since the sliced pan etc

Sharing the results with everyone in the group. Which results, what benefits. This the power of influence where people are made to believe they are obtaining benefits whereas they are getting fleeced. The only thing that is free is this Tupperware party.

In turn this will enable you and them to get a better understanding and deepen the good programs, causing everyone to achieve a better life.

Just rationally analyse the sentence above. Note the American spelling of programme!

Participation and sharing your good results and good memories is the key to success.

Which particular good results: Vague generalisations written without reference to any objective criteria of success. In fact whoever Quinn turns to turns out to lose it. Business people with great entrepreneurial gifts become infantilised.

This includes pressing the positive buttons in business, with family, friends, and anyone you know, then you are giving a better life to everyone, instead of problems and negativity. This is what everyone in the world wants and you can actually make it happen for all.

The party will deliver change and the Chairman Tony has decreed apple pie for all. What ever you do not think for yourselves. That is negative and guess what happens you will wake up!

Just before July of last year Tony gave himself a program that he would have the greatest year of his life.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/unofficial-court-transcripts-of-the-tortola-trial-bvi-sm-life-ventures-v-ine-morrice-quinn/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/unofficial-transcripts-part-2/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/unofficial-transcripts-part-3-or-the-amnesia-report-fade-away-dissolve-and-quite-forget/

It is called an enema and it was in front of Justice Bannister where he was reduced to size when he could not answer a straight question. Also he publicly confessed to influencing witnesses. It was a great year and we are going to suggest that we see if he can actually come on stage without hiding in the kitchen of the hotel and take part in a public debate, “Quinn life coach or fraudster? It could precede his seminar. We put the challenge to him!

The results so far have been nothing short of magical.

Not the Merlquinn stuff again, please Tony give us a break!

Watching it all up close was such a mind opener even for me. We are on such a high with it all.

You are on a high because you have suckered your former followers and currently silenced your critics. You are strong due to your ill-gotten gains, but we are not going away.

I know Tony wants to share his results at the June meeting to inspire you, as he likes to put it, to mine from your unlimited treasure.

Basically he wants to to use other peoples money and he wants to exploit your goldmine. Get down there and throw an explosive into your mind shaft

He found it easier than ever to get his amazing results and is so excited and so much wants to share the ‘how-to’ with you.

It was easier this year he has neutralised the sexual assault claims of Maire Lalor, taken out Sheila who has walked away with the Anglo Irish Bank,

and he has managed to get Susan to believe that by helping himself that the Educo Kingdom is near. But this is what he says every year, but unlike Michael O’Leary who has a business that makes a profit, he is an influencer, not a wealth creator.

For anyone wishing to stay over the week end at the hotel, please contact the number below.

Susan will I am sure, hopefully this time she might meet my committee in a safe house in Clontarf?

See full venue details below.

Lots of love,

Mary

Filed under: Tony Quinn

Tony Quinn: Good Life Club Meeting Sunday June 9

dialogueireland — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:15:10 +0000

Good Life Club = INE = Educo = Morrice

There is no separation between the oil and Educo. The only boundary created is by DI.

Published in the public Interest:

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/the-importance-of-justice-hogans-ruling-for-the-work-of-dialogue-ireland/

Commentary and Dialogue Ireland response will follow:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: <goodlife@goodlifeclub.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 9:29 PM
Subject: Good Life Club Meeting with Tony Sunday June 9 at Clontarf Castle
To: tonoddy@gmail.com

This message is intended only for the use of the intended recipient and may contain information that is confidential. Any review, re-transmission, dissemination, publication or other use of this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete this message, including any attachments, without copying, distributing or disclosing same and notify me by email at goodlife@goodlifeclub.com

Dear Noddy

Your next Good Life Club Meeting with Tony is on Sunday June 9th at Clontarf Castle, this is instead of the September Meeting. Overwhelmingly the Castle seems to be our most popular venue.

You can now go ahead with your travel arrangements.

In turn this will enable you and them to get a better understanding and deepen the good programs, causing everyone to achieve a better life.

Participation and sharing your good results and good memories is the key to success. This includes pressing the positive buttons in business, with family, friends, and anyone you know, then you are giving a better life to everyone, instead of problems and negativity. This is what everyone in the world wants and you can actually make it happen for all.

Just before July of last year Tony gave himself a program that he would have the greatest year of his life. The results so far have been nothing short of magical. Watching it all up close was such a mind opener even for me. We are on such a high with it all.

I know Tony wants to share his results at the June meeting to inspire you, as he likes to put it, to mine from your unlimited treasure. He found it easier than ever to get his amazing results and is so excited and so much wants to share the ‘how-to’ with you.

For anyone wishing to stay over the week end at the hotel, please contact the number below.

See full venue details below.

Lots of love,

Mary

Venue: Clontarf Castle, Castle Avenue, Dublin 3

Time: 12 noon sharp to 6pm approx

Date: Sunday, June 9th 2013

Map: http://goo.gl/maps/vT0Q7

Copyright Notice: This message and its attachments () are protected by copyright © Human Potential Research Ltd. 2013. The intended recipient ONLY is hereby licensed by Human Potential Research Ltd. (the ‘Licensor’) to view this material electronically on one private device, and make a single hard copy of this material for personal use only. All other uses, review, re-transmission, copying, dissemination, disclosure or distribution to any third party is strictly prohibited without written permission of the Licensor. By opening the attachment, if any, you are considered to have accepted the terms of this licence. If you do not accept this licence or if you have received this email in error or if you have been given or sent this email in breach of this licence, please delete this email and its attachment and all electronic copies, and destroy all hard copy or copies that may have been made, and inform the Licensor at goodlife@goodlifeclub.com.

Filed under: Tony Quinn

Tom Cruise honoured and Cult Victims dishonoured!

dialogueireland — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 22:09:36 +0000

Irish Government continues to neglect cult victims

The news that the Irish Government will honour Tom Cruise as part of its Gathering Campaign has given cult victims a terrible shock.

http://www.thegatheringireland.com/

How giving an honour to Tom Cruise so closely associated with the Totalitarian Organisation of Scientology is justified is beyond any one who has followed events over the years. From L R Hubbard’s sojourn near Government Buildings in the 50′s to infiltration of the IRS by Scientologists in the late 70′s. With the continued stories of the abuse of its members, it beggars belief that an Irish Government will honour a person associated with this Organisation.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/9272/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/tom-cruise-honorary-roscommon-man/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/mayor-of-roscommon-county-council-listed-in-stubbs/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/tom-cruise-to-be-made-an-honorary-irishman/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/tom-cruise-in-irish-secret-ceremony/

However, it appears it has not noticed over the years the victims of cults who there is no protection for in this country.

Here is a classic Late, Late Show that made the public aware of this group:

http://www.dialogueireland.org/dicontent/resources/video/latelate.html

This programme was broadcasted over 18 years ago and this family still has no resolution and see here how they are coping with a problem still unresolved after 25 years:

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/anne-robinson-speaking-at-the-dublin-offlines-conference/

We have no legislation or agency to protect those who have under gone undue influence.

One had hoped that after a long period of Fianna Fail who could find no way to assist those of us helping those involved, we would find a willing partner in the new Government to reach out to those so badly wounded by these groups.

The early days seemed encouraging as two months into office Paschal Donohue TD for Dublin Central had this question submitted in the Dail:

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/dail-question-addressed-to-the-minister-for-justice-and-equality-mr-shatter-by-deputy-paschal-donohoe/

QUESTION NO: 94

DÁIL QUESTION addressed to the Minister for Justice and Equality (Mr. Shatter)
by Deputy Paschal Donohoe
for WRITTEN on Thursday, 19th May, 2011.

* To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if his attention has been drawn to the danger posed by the development of cults within Ireland; if he has a working group or plan in relation to this issue; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

- Paschal Donohoe

Fundamentally there was no good news for us, but we took comfort from the following legislation:

Existing Irish law seems to be pretty specific. This extract is from the Charities Act 2009:

For the purposes of this section, a gift is not a gift for the advancement of religion if it is made to or for the benefit of an organisation or cult—
(a) the principal object of which is the making of profit, or
(b) that employs oppressive psychological manipulation—
(i) of its followers, or
(ii) for the purpose of gaining new followers.

Following that question we had no response from the Government and we taken up in assisting the victims of groups like The House Of Prayer in Enda Kenny’s native county.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/house-of-prayer/

Also from 2009 we had a battle to the death with Tony Quinn who had managed to bring an oil company under his influence. This included Susan Morrice who was in the courts for most of this period and Dialogue Ireland was harassed by legal stratagems:

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/the-tony-quinn-story-%E2%80%9Cfrom-butcher-to-oil-slick%E2%80%9D/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/summary-of-media-coverage/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/tony-quinn/

Now late last year we did receive a major boost when Justice Hogan gave a solid underpinning to the work we do:

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/final-version-cornec-v-morrice-ors-judgment-by-hogan-j/

Imagine the Shock when we early this year we were sent the following photograph?

Here we have our Taoiseach with a book about the genius Tony Quinn who discovered oil through his great spiritual gifts?

Read further about it here!

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/taoiseach-enda-kenny-receives-book-the-magic-in-you/

DI could get no explanation as to why people associated with Tony Quinn would be in the company of Enda Kenny?

In June there was a major conference on the subject of Scientology with some of the greatest Human rights defenders who have been the victims of the Scientology Organisation.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/dublin-offlines-speaking-out-against-scientology/

You can watch the stories of those who have been affected by this group here.

Just use the term offlines to reach the evidence on:

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/scientology/

Experts in the field regard Tom Cruise as being the second in command to David Miscavige the head of Scientology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Miscavige

It is the North Korea of Cultist groups and it is amazing that our government is going to honour Tom Cruise while consequently dishonouring those affected by this nefarious organisation?

How a country dedicated to the protection of Human Rights would wish to associate with a person who so deeply associated with Scientology is deeply troubling.

We ask our friends in Ireland and around the world to write to our Taoiseach, Enda Kenny to protest this action.

taoiseach@taoiseach.irlgov.ie

Or Will Tom Cruise walk away smiling again:

Filed under: Cultism, House of Prayer, Scientology, Tony Quinn

Irish Government to honour Tom Cruise

dialogueireland — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 20:38:33 +0000

Government to honour Tom Cruise,

says Roscommon Mayor

Actor to get certificate of Irish heritage on visit

for film premiere next week by

Ronan McGreevy

Irish Times

Fri, Mar 29, 2013, 18:37

Tom Cruise poses as he arrives for the world premiere of his movie Oblivion in Buenos Aires this week. He will attend the Irish premiere of the film on Wednesday in Dublin. Photograph: Marcos Brindicci/Reuters

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/government-to-honour-tom-cruise-says-roscommon-mayor-1.1343373

Actor Tom Cruise is to receive a certificate of Irish heritage from the Department of Foreign Affairs next Wednesday when he visits Ireland for a film premiere, the Mayor of Roscommon has said.

Cllr Tom Crosby has said he intends to use the occasion to extend an invitation to Cruise (50) to visit Kilteevan outside Roscommon town, from where the actor’s great-grandmother emigrated in the 19th century.

Cruise’s real name is Mapother, a family with Dorset roots who became established in Co Roscommon in Elizabethan times. The family were prosperous and built a church which is now a community hall in the village.

“My understanding is that the Department of Foreign Affairs is to present a scroll to him to recognise his Roscommon roots though there is a bit of secrecy about it for obvious reasons,” Cllr Crosby said.

A department spokesman had no comment to make it. “You’ll have to ask Tom Cruise’s people,” he said.

Cruise is due to attend the Irish premiere of his latest film Oblivion on Wednesday night in Dublin.

Cllr Crosby said Cruise had been to Roscommon before. “We’re hoping to meet him and extend an invitation to come to Roscommon again.”

Filed under: Scientology

Tom Cruise honorary Roscommon man?

dialogueireland — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 19:40:08 +0000

Is Tom Cruise about to be made an honorary

Roscommon man?

By Conor Heneghan

Forget Chris O’Dowd or Shane ‘Cake’ Curran, the most famous man from Roscommon may soon be probably the most famous man in the world itself.

http://www.joe.ie/news-politics/current-affairs/is-tom-cruise-about-to-be-made-an-honorary-roscommon-man-0035991-1

It is getting suspiciously close to April Fools’ Day so we treated this story with a little caution when we first stumbled across it but according to RSVP magazine, Tom Cruise, or Tom O’Cruise as he shall henceforth be known, will be made an honorary Irishman at a (not so secret now) secret gathering in celebration of his Roscommon roots next week.

Cruise is due in Ireland for the premiere of Oblivion in Dublin next Wednesday and while he’s around, he is expected to head west for the celebration which is being organised as part of the Gathering and which certain Government officials had been aware of, but had been warned to keep schtum about.

According to RSVP, Tom’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side is believed to have emigrated to America from a farm in Kilteevan, Co. Roscommon.

As a child, Tom visited Roscommon with his father and is rumoured to have paid a secret visit to relatives there while filming Far and Away, where he played a character with arguably the worst Irish accent ever heard on the big screen… and that’s saying something.

RSVP also add that he allegedly expressed an interest to buy the land that his ancestors would have worked when it went on sale last year for €300,000 but it ended up being bought by a nearby farmer.

They also quote the Mayor of Roscommon Tom Crosby, who said: “It always struck me that he had very much of an Irish look about him, and west of Ireland in particular. This is a great opportunity for Roscommon. We can even run a brief course on the accent and teach him the typical Roscommon word – ‘How’reya’.”

Any chance of the gathering remaining secret seems to have gone, however, as famous Roscommon man Chris O’Dowd tweeted a link to another version of the story on the Irish Central website and as we’re assuming that every Roscommon person on Twitter follows the Boyle native, if they didn’t already know about it, they do now.

We’re not privy to the content of any speech Cruise might make to mark the occasion, but early rumours suggest it’ll go a little something like this…

Filed under: Scientology

Mayor of Roscommon County Council listed in Stubbs

dialogueireland — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 19:23:07 +0000

Mayor of Roscommon County

Council listed in Stubbs over debt of

€30 000

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/mayor-of-roscommon-county-council-listed-in-stubbs-over-debt-of-30-000-28815004.html

Tom Crosby*, mayor of Roscommon County Council, was named after his failure to pay €30,000 arising from a civil case.

Caroline Crawford – 28 September 2012

A COUNTY mayor is the latest politician to find himself in ‘Stubbs Gazette’ after a €30,000 debt was registered against him.

Tom Crosby, mayor of Roscommon County Council, was named after his failure to pay €30,000 arising from a civil case.

The independent councillor is now appealing an attachment order to his council income for the outstanding debt.

Mr Crosby described such an attachment order against a politician as “unprecedented in Irish law” and said he was appealing the decision to the High Court.

The debt arises from a civil case taken against Mr Crosby and two others. It relates to a dispute involving neighbours to building works on a housing development, Tarmon Harbour Marina Development, in which Mr Crosby was involved.

A Circuit Court judgment in November 2010 directed that Mr Crosby pay Eamon Flanagan and Maresa Prenderville, of Lock Road, Tarmonbarry, Co Roscommon, over €8,000, plus legal costs of almost €25,000.

Although the case was taken against Mr Crosby and others, only Mr Crosby was pursued for costs, of €31,774.

Describing the legal costs as “exorbitant”, Mr Crosby said he had appealed them to the Taxing Master, the County Registrar for Roscommon.

However, the costs were only reduced by €4,285. He then appealed that decision to the Circuit Court but lost.

Property

Mr Crosby said he had since approached his bank for a loan to pay the debt but was turned down.

He said he had also offered to pay the debt by monthly instalments but that this was refused.

The mayor said he had been left with a number of unsold properties at the development and a substantial amount of debt as a result of the housing crash.

“Fortunately, the bank is working with me on this issue and I am continuing to pay the interest owed,” he said.

“Like anybody involved in the property business, I have my troubles but I’m dealing with it as best I can.”

This is not the first time that Mr Crosby has attracted media attention.

He began his career as a Fianna Fail councillor. However, he received a suspended sentence in 1998 for punching the former justice minister Sean Doherty, who was a member of the same party.

Mr Crosby became an independent councillor shortly afterwards.

The incident occurred in January 1998, when Mr Crosby burst into a private meeting at a house in Tarmonbarry.

Mr Crosby, who is also a publican in the village, struck his colleague on the back with his elbow before punching him in the back of the head.

Mr Doherty suffered a slight abrasion.

The mayor of Roscommon, Tom Crosby*, has a lot better prospect with the visit of Tom Cruise. He said “It always struck me that he had very much of an Irish look about him, and west of Ireland in particular. This is a great opportunity for Roscommon. We can even run a brief course on the accent and teach him the typical Roscommon word – ‘How’reya.”

Filed under: Scientology

Tom Cruise To Be Made an Honorary Irishman!

dialogueireland — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:39:40 +0000

Cruise Control: Has Gilmore not got enough problems?

Tom Cruise To Be Made an Honorary Irishman!

RSVP MAGAZINE

Mar 28th, 2013 @ 01:41 pm › James Duggan

Department of Foreign Affairs have plans to make a presentation to the star for the year of the Gathering

http://rsvpmagazine.ie/tom-cruise-to-be-made-an-honorary-irishman/

Tom Cruise is reportedly to be made an honorary Irishman, despite his accent in 1992 film Far and Away. The Hollywood star has roots in Roscommon and is set to celebrate them next week when he visits for the premiere of his new film Oblivion.

Tom is allegedly set to travel from the Dublin to Roscommon on Wednesday 3rd April for a secret ceremony celebrating his roots in the county. Government officials have been sworn to secrecy about the event but apparently the Department of Foreign Affairs have plans to make a presentation to the star for the year of the Gathering

Tom’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side is thought to have emigrated to America from a 33 acre farm in Kilteevan, Co. Roscommon. As a child, Tom visited Roscommon with his father and is rumoured to have paid a secret visit to relatives there while filming Far and Away on the Dingle Peninsula. He also allegedly expressed an interest to buy the land that his ancestors would have worked when it went on sale last year for €300,000 but it ended up being bought by a nearby farmer.

The mayor of Roscommon, Tom Crosby, is certainly looking forward to the visit. He said “It always struck me that he had very much of an Irish look about him, and west of Ireland in particular. This is a great opportunity for Roscommon. We can even run a brief course on the accent and teach him the typical Roscommon word – ‘How’reya.”

Filed under: Scientology

Tom Cruise in Irish Secret Ceremony?

dialogueireland — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:17:56 +0000

Tom Cruise to be honored by Irish

government in secret ceremony

‘Mission Impossible’ and ‘Oblivion’ star set to

reconnect with his County Roscommon roots

during visit

IrishCentral Staff Writers,

Updated Friday, March 29, 2013, 8:57 AM

Tom Cruise rumored to reconnect with his County Roscommon roots during upcoming Irish visit

Photo by Google Images

Action hero Tom Cruise, famed for his horrific Irish accent in the 1992 movie “Far and Away.” is set to be presented with a scroll by the Irish government to honor his Irish roots. The Hollywood star, who traces his roots to County Roscommon, will be travelling to Ireland to promote his new movie “Oblivion.”

According to the Irish magazine RSVP, Irish government officials have been sworn to secrecy and have plans to make the a presentation to the star for the Gathering.

Cruise, whose full name is Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, can trace his roots to Kilteevan, a north of Knockcroghery village, in County Roscommon.

The actor will be attending the premiere of “Oblivion” in Dublin and will travel to Roscommon on April 3 for the secret government ceremony to celebrate his Irish roots.

The mayor of Roscommon, Tom Crosby told the magazine he’s looking forward to the event.

He said, “It always struck me that he had very much of an Irish look about him, and west of Ireland in particular. This is a great opportunity for Roscommon. We can even run a brief course on the accent and teach him the typical Roscommon word – ‘How’reya.”

Cruise, who was born in Syracuse, New York, can trace his Irish roots back to his great-grandfather on his mother’s side. It is thought that he emigrated to America from a 33-acre farm in Kilteevan.

As a child Cruise visited Kilteevan with his father Thomas Mapother III. It’s also rumored that Cruise made a secret visit to the parish while filming “Far and Away” on the Dingle Peninsula in Kerry.

There have also been local rumors that Cruise was interested in buying the land where his ancestors would have worked. It went on sale in 2012 for $384,566 but was sold to a local farmer.

While staying in Ireland Cruise will base himself at the stylish Merrion Hotel in preparation for the premiere at the Savoy Cinema, which is sure to be a mob scene. Cruise, who obviously inherited his gift of the gab on his Irish side, has been known to spend hours outside premieres chatting to fans and taking photos.
- VIDEO
Here’s the trailer for his latest movie “Oblivion”

Filed under: Scientology

Republishing of post on DCI from Fecris Face Book page

dialogueireland — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:27:54 +0000

Mike Garde

http://www.dialogueireland.org/dicontent/resources/dciarchive/tableofcontents.html

This is part of an archive from the former DCI site in Aarhus, Denmark. Our web master is doing sterling work to provide information from this archive to make sure that the great work of Johannes Aagaard will be preserved. We remember his great contribution 6 years after his death!
When Johannes Aagaard retired in 1998 he hoped to bring a massive amount of material into the public domain and to write significant material where he could bring his great genius to realisation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Aagaard

Johannes Aagaard

Johannes Aagaard was a Danish theologian and evangelist. He was a professor of missiology at the University of Aarhus and was active in the Christian countercult movement as the founder of the Dialog

His awareness of the cult phenomenon was unique, and his record of successful court cases against Scientology was impressive!
When in dialogue with Fecris he put forward the view that you can’t understand deeds without understanding creeds or beliefs. Fecris stressed they only looked at deeds. Dialogue Ireland was part of this Christian apologetic movement. However, it has now moved its direction from a Faith based organisation to that of protecting Human Rights.
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/about/

So now being part of Fecris raises no problem for us as we see the issue is not about beliefs but about influence. That does not mean it does not help to understand a movement to look at their beliefs. This seems to be the position of the French Interior Minister Valls.
Fecris is secular but not secularist. Religious organisations assisting victims must retain their faith basis, but it is not about promoting religion. Secularist and Religious believers’ must not just cooperate together but celebrate the unity of purpose we share on Cultism.
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/france-steps-up-struggle-against-religious-radicals-in-jerusalem-post/

Dialogue Ireland Resources

www.dialogueireland.org

These materials were previously hosted on the Dialogue Centre International website. They have been preserved here as an informational archive.

Filed under: Cultism, Education, Religion

Victory Outreach Centre collecting without permit

dialogueireland — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:43:09 +0000

Man collecting in town for drug

centre had no permit

Victory Outreach Centre had been refused

permits previously by gardaí

http://www.independent.ie/regionals/droghedaindependent/news/man-collecting-in-town-for-drug-centre-had-no-permit-27132431.html

25 March 2009

A MAN with a Bray address was given the benefit of the Probation Act at Drogheda District Court after he was cleared of collecting for a local drug rehab centre without a permit.

However, the court heard that the Victory Outreach Centre on the North Road, Drogheda, had been refused collection permits by the gardaí on a number of occasions, prior to this breach of the Charities Act.

Michael Edwards (30), 54 Oldcourt Drive, Bray, was reported to gardaí while he was collecting door to door on the Donore Road, Drogheda, on August 22nd, 2008.

Garda Mark McNulty attended and when he questioned the defendant, he was found to have collected almost € 100 in aid of Victory Outreach, then based at the corner house on the North Road, but he did not have the relevant permit for collection.

Speaking on behalf of his client, Paul Moore told the court Mr Edwards wasn’t aware he needed a permit and ‘the money was destined for the proper place’.

Rehab

A representative of Victory Outreach from Ballyfermot, Mr O’Reilly, told the court they were ‘a not for profit organisation, who had rehab houses in Drogheda, Slane and Navan, and the collections were to raise money for nine-month residential programmes to help drug users’.

He said at the time of the collection, there was a new director in Drogheda and they had ‘sent the lads out to collect without knowing they needed a permit’.

Mr O’Reilly assured the court that they were a registered charity, with a Christian church headquarters, and they would ensure proper documentation was sought in the future. The rehab house had now been moved to Bettystown.

Garda McNulty told the court this organisation had breached the act before and had been refused permits to collect in the town, and also in Dundalk.

The defendant was a former drug addict of 12 years, who had been drug free for two years.

Judge Flann Brennan said he believed the defendant was genuinely collecting for the organisation, but warned him not to do anything like this again.

‘You cannot hold a collection without a permit,’ he told Edwards.

‘They must be properly obtained and you must carry a copy with you.’

The defendant was given the benefit of the Probation Act.

Filed under: Victory Outreach

Scientology Mission Dublin Ltd risks being struck off!

dialogueireland — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:37:39 +0000

This report seems to be with us every year and then suddenly it is all looked after!

Could the visit of Tom Cruise in the near future herald a cheque from LA?

Filed under: Scientology

Irish Catholic on Irish Embassy to the Vatican?

dialogueireland — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:47:20 +0000

The issue of how to interpret the way in which the new Pope Francis is addressing the call of Franciscan simplicity and at the same time having to address the reality of a Constantinian polity which merges Church and State is responded to here by the Director of Dialogue Ireland, Mike Garde.

Photo CNS

Other than symbolic gestures is the Catholic Church going divest itself of the power of Caesar and take the way of separation of the Kingdom of God from the world? It looks like most Catholics have not yet got the message. How does a Church have a Secretary of State?

Photo CNS

Also the claims of theological supremacy are still taken for granted as if there is no issue to be addressed. In other words the welcome of Eastern Orthodoxy at the inauguration was welcome, but it is clear that other Christians are not yet seen as full members of the Christian Church yet. Just as the historical method is looking at the origins of Islam by such people as Tom Holland so this methodology will have to be intensified into the origins of the papal claims which have been written in to Catholicism with retrospection.

Photo CNS

Early hopes for Pope Francis

Pope Francis has a lot of challenges, but also a lot of goodwill writes Michael Kelly

Michael Kelly

http://www.irishcatholic.ie/20130321/opinion/early-hopes-for-pope-francis-S31739.html

Thursday, 21 March 2013

5:00 AM GMT

Pope Francis arrives at the altar to celebrate his inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican March 19. Photo: CNS

I was in Rome for the election of Pope Francis. Much has been written about the new Pontiff since his election last week. Most commentators are in agreement about one thing: his profound humility. But how could it be otherwise for a Latin American Jesuit? Since the moment of his election, he has set a different tone. But then, Popes tend to shape the role in a very different way while retaining the essential elements of the Petrine ministry.

Roman Pontiff Emeritus Benedict XVI deserves huge respect and credit for his courageous decision to resign the papacy. In doing so, he has lifted a burden of office from all of his successors. Of course, no one wants a situation where Popes resign on a whim. But the humility of Benedict to stand down when he felt unable to continue, laid down a marker of simplicity that Pope Francis is, and will continue, to build on.

The Argentinian Pontiff has been careful to reference Benedict in several of his public addresses to date. Leading the crowd in St Peter’s Square in prayer for his predecessor was a poignant touch. It also asserts that while there will be change, there is also continuity in the papal office.

Francis’ election has been broadly welcomed in Ireland. But, you can’t please everyone as Pope, and he certainly won’t. I was surprised, for example, to see a commentator writing in a newspaper about the election and pointing out that the new Pope has what was described as a “hard line” on abortion. Does it come as a surprise that the Pope upholds the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of all human life?

Pope Francis combines a fidelity to the Church’s teaching on key issues with a lively love for the poor and the vulnerable. He has many challenges as Pope: there are issues of governance in the Vatican that need to be addressed. There is also a need for realistic structures of dialogue to bring the voices of laypeople in to discussions within the Church.

Inspire

Above all, however, Pope Francis will have to preach the Gospel message of hope in an often hopeless and jaded world. He will have to inspire Catholics around the world, particularly in Europe, to embrace the new evangelisation with renewed vigour. He will have to inspire pastoral zeal among priests, bishops and religious that will give new hope to many in consecrated and religious life who are feeling quite lost. It goes without saying that he will have to continue the Church’s vital work of ensuring that there are robust child safeguarding procedures in place in every corner of the Catholic world.

People will also look to Pope Francis as a global leader who can prick the conscience of politicians and policymakers.

It was good to see President Michael D. Higgins and Mrs Higgins in the Vatican for the inauguration representing the State. They were accompanied by Minister for Finance Michael Noonan representing the Government.

Relations between Ireland and the Holy See have diminished considerably. Unfortunately, President Higgins was one of the few high-profile guests at the Mass who does not have an Embassy to the Holy See. The election of Pope Francis is an ideal opportunity for the Fine Gael-Labour coalition Government to re-visit the decision to downgrade relations with the Holy See. World powers such as the United States, Russia, France and Britain (to name but a few) understand the vital role that a permanent embassy to the Holy See plays. A Latin American Pope, the first non-European Pope in over a millennium, adds to the importance of the Vatican as a global listening post. Ireland’s overseas aid priorities often run hand-in-hand with the priorities of the Holy See in international affairs. Where Irish Aid resources are deployed in the developing world, it is often the case that the only institution present living with the poor and the vulnerable is the Church. Closing our Embassy to the Holy See has cut off these vital links.

Resources

Soon, Ireland’s Presidency of the European Council will come to an end freeing up personnel and resources. Very few people believe that the Vatican embassy was closed for economic reasons. However, if Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore still maintains that cost is his only concern, the conclusion of the Presidency will give him ample resources at his disposal to prioritise a fresh start in relations with the Vatican.

Extremes

Historian Diarmuid Ferriter has written a book on the history of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Movement (PTAA). Perceptively, he titled the book A Nation of Extremes. Undoubtedly in the past, Ireland’s relationship with the Holy See was characterised by subservience.

The way to remedy that, however, is not a radical break as Mr Gilmore has done. The remedy is to work hard and build warm relations based on mutual trust and respect. In the person of Archbishop Charles Brown, Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland, the Vatican has shown good faith in trying to rebuild such relations. The Government should now seize the opportunity and do the same.

Reply by Mike Garde Director of Dialogue Ireland Trust

Though I agree that the issue of the Embassy is important I agree with the decision of the government to close it down. I likely would disagree with their reasoning, but I would see it as actually going in the very direction this Pope is taking namely disconnecting the Church from the Vatican Empire. Which Empire? Not a major power but the use of the power of Caesar in its relations with the world is counter to the upside down values Francis is trying to lead to.

What values? Those of resisting the temptations Jesus was offered.

Money, power and the avoidance of the cross.

The plan:

1. Surrender the Vatican state and just be the Bishop of Rome in Italy.

2. Donate the Vatican State to the world and have the Church have its HQ there, but also make it a kind of World Peace Centre. Allow it to be a World Heritage Centre. Let the Bishop of Rome live like the Archbishop of Buenos Aries.

3. Ireland has a Catholic Church and the Irish Government can communicate its views through its leaders here. Abolish the Papal Nuncios as State Representatives and have them only as Apostolic representatives of the Church.

4. Focus on a way to move women from being hand maidens to equals in the Church. Examine the ideology of patriarchy which has removed them from the script. To quote the real Mary, “He has put down the mighty from their seats and the rich he has sent empty away.”

In the Sunday Times last week Justine McCarthy raised the issue of the composition of the Church and the exclusion of women from the very heart of the Church.

See her article here:

All traditions which believe the sociology of the First Century must determine the shape of the Church for all time. In Catholicism this is expressed in the idea that God choose men to be his Apostles and this is the way it has to be for all time. This is also the view held by all Conservative Evangelicals as well. In other words to deny this is to question the tradition and the Scriptures themselves.

Filed under: Religion