She had gone on a trip to find herself and we were expecting her to come home eventually. She was a bright light in our family – a sharp mind and a wonderful joyful sense of humor. Our family always gathers for special occasions such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, special birthdays, picnics, camping expeditions, family holidays as well as for special spiritual events such as baptisms, first communions and, of course, for marriages. Our daughter never returned from that trip. We grieve continually in a similar way to families who have someone missing. She is alive but has been taken from us for no reason. Whenever we meet together for any occasion, we know that one of us is no longer available to us, except for two days a year.
There is no great joy when the 2 days come because she is different
and cannot really enter into the spirit of things with the rest of us. It is NOT because she is holier than us. It is not because she is serving God in some special way. If she were working for Mother Theresa’s order of nuns in Calcutta, we would have some sense of there being a purpose for her absence from our family. Is she an evangelizer as she thinks or a brainwasher as some of us believe? Is she a teacher or is she becoming a manipulator?
We concluded some time ago that there is no question that Regnum Christi is a CULT that serves an elite group of people to achieve power and money for them. I believe that they operate as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Just as the sexual abuse committed against the original children who had put their trust in MM was about power and not sex, there continue to be new victims who lose their free will and their ability to live normal lives and have friends and live in a loving family environment so that the heads of RC can have more power politically and in a spiritual environment. They say Catholic things and associate with Catholic leaders and they profess Roman Catholicism to give them respectability. The brainwashed members sometimes achieve things that serve the Church and give them some legitimacy. But underneath, I feel that there is no real difference between what RC does and what Scientology or the Moonies do. They promote elitism, they isolate, they are manipulated into idolization of the phony image of a false megalomaniac pedophile saint
, they don’t have health insurance, they use a buddy system
, they use spiritual direction as a weapon of control, they deceive, they control behavior (through rules), information, thoughts and emotions the same way other cults do.
Most unfortunately, I feel that the Roman Catholic Church, which proclaims itself to be the one and only true apostolic Church that provides justice internally has some rotten apples in the barrel that have been successful in sustaining this life destroying cult as an integral part of the Church. To me it is like a festering gangrene on the Body of Christ that must eventually be cut off if the Church is to remain healthy. The current reform
by the Church including elimination of the secret vows, reducing their targeting of younger teenagers, etc., will not make a significant difference. I think this would be like the government going to the Mafia and getting them to stop selling drugs to 12 to 14 year olds. If they comply, they would still be the Mafia. A total reorganization of RC including replacement of the entire leadership and a new spirit – a new mission (no longer parallel to but in harmony with the Church) and run by truly dedicated experienced people with some limitations on their personal power and money they could extract from it. In the meantime, our grieving for our lost daughter goes on as key leaders in the Church continue to turn a blind eye.