Except you don’t call something a cult unless it’s also a fringe movement.
Maybe this guy is trying to create a cult. The only missing ingredient is to make it a fringe movement. Got to get the membership and credibility down. Then you can instill a persecution complex in the fanatical few.
Ok, we call the pope’s organization Roman Catholics.
I don’t think that the terminology Catholic is as much protected as the word pizza or hamburger.
Everyone can call himself a Catholic and most people won’t care, but you can’t call a hamburger pizza.
Also I am not going to make a religious study out of it.
Bit more to it than that. The Catechism explicitly states that the Catholic’s first duty is to the Church. No Church, you ain’t a Catholic. That’s why excommunication was such a powerful thing back in the day.
You’ve got to hand it to the originators of this one: as a means of achieving enormous political and social power, it’s bulletproof. I don’t think it’s ever been rivalled for sheer effectiveness. The Mullahs can only dream about having that sort of reach and influence.
Interesting that they refer to it as surreal. Whereas the only surreal part of it really is that it is getting called out. Everybody knows, as mister Cohen would have said.
The surreal part is that it’s becoming a political hammer within the church. Francis isn’t popular with conservative elements of the church. He’s had political issues with the main accuser here before, he’s the guy who met Kim Davis. Cardinals seem to be lining up on political lines on the issue. Some might have thought people who claim some special moral standing might be a bit more nuanced, but true, that is totally illusory. Maybe we could have an old school schism