The Press Department of the Heralds of the Gospel published on August 28, 2019, an extensive report entitled "Persecution of the Catholic Church in Brazil?", in which the fallacious statements contained in a report entitled "The secrets of Heralds: what hide the walls of castles inhabited by ultraconservative Catholic group", published on August 23, 2019 by the news portal Metropolises.
See the overall response plan here.
8. "Sect": anti-religious slogan
The report ends without conclusion, suggesting that the Heralds of the Gospel would be a "destructive sect". This is another ghostdoria without any foundation.
a) A modern but outdated vehicle
As we know, the term "sect", latin root, originally had the meaning of "follow-up" or "separation". St Paul and the Books of the New Testament employ the term correlative hairesis (from which he derived "heresy"). When the Church achieved, after centuries of evangelization, the abandonment of barbarian and degrading customs of paganism, Christian states began to consider certain religious groups separate d't believe in the faith as representatives of certain danger to society. Such dissidents were classified as "sects", as were the Cathars, the Albigenses, the Protestants born from the preaching of Luther, Calvin or Zwinglio, and others. In the current secular states, separated from the Church, such a notion of "sect" would be unenforceable in any democratic legislation. The Catholic Church itself, after the Second Vatican Council, no longer uses the term to indicate who is separated from it.
Nevertheless, the Portal, which boasts of modern, insists on pre-conciliar terminology to fight a group – now, see – reputed as "ultraconservative". For this, it cites three antisis "experts" antissitas (an American, a Spanish and one Brazilian), who insist on using the term "sect" and the already decrepit pseudoscientific concept of "brainwashing" (with the expression of "mental control").
b) Tell me who you're seeing…
American "expert" Rick Alan Ross, quoted by the report, has already had to answer in court, suffering conviction, on charges of "illegal imprisonment" against those he thought should "release" what he considered "sects", based on unknown criteria of Definition.
In addition, in one of the related videos, another "expert" is an graduate of TFP, "president of the Montfort Cultural Association", a religious group in frank opposition to the Catholic Hierarchy, founded by the late Orlando Fedeli. The latter was called "the Luther of Brazil", by the rupture with the authorities of the Church (pope, bishops, priests, etc.), inciting hatred against numerous ecclesiastical movements, considered monocraticly by his group as "heretics".
Here are the members of the latest court of the inquisition, which is judged with the power to define ex cathedra who should be charged and thrown at the fire.
c) A typical persecutory tactic
The so-called "anti-Siss movement" succeeded in France in 1998, which they considered a victory: the creation of an "interministerial mission" to fight sects. After five years of toil, however, said mission was obliged to declare its failure, and, abolished in 2002, to find that a state of secular law has no competence to define what is a "religion" or a "sect". Using a nominalism patent, they then invented the concept of "sectarian deviations" – as empty of content as "brainwashing" – to designate groups that, according to these passionate "anti-sectarian" spirituality they judge universal.
Finally, as a clarification, the International Private Association of Herald faithful of the Gospel is an Association of Pontifical Law whose statutes were approved by Pope St. John Paul II on February 22, 2001. The Association has the purpose of being an "instrument of holiness in the Catholic Church, so that its members participate actively, consciously and responsibly in the Church's saving mission through the apostolate, acting for evangelization, sanctification and Christian animation of temporal realities" (art. 1). Any charge, therefore, that blatantly takes away from these terms and offended the honor of the institution and its members must be proven, under penalty of defamation.