The World’s Most Dangerous Cult Continues to Thrive

The Catholic church qualifies for this title

Is it really fair to call Catholicism a cult? Or does this reflect my growing up in a mostly Protestant small town in rural northern Indiana in the 1940s-1950s?  We were good friends with the Catholics in town, but we were put off by their claims to be superior Christians—and the excessive pageantry their church is famous for. There are quite a few cults in the broad sweep of Christian brands, e.g., the mega-churches pastored by Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland. But there are well over a billion Catholics in the world. 

 

Let me make the case that their church is a cult—and a dangerous one at that.

   

(1)  Belief in demons and exorcism. 

 

The Bible itself provides “evidence” for this superstition. For example, the fifth chapter of Mark’s gospel opens with this description of a mentally ill man:

 

“He lived among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain, for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces, and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.” (vv. 3-5)

 

The New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, provides this headline: Jesus Heals a Man Possessed by Demons. As the story progresses, the demons who control this man’s behavior beg Jesus to transfer them into a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus does this—we can assume Mark meant that Jesus did this by a magic spell—and the pigs rush off a cliff and drown in the lake below. Any mental health professional today knows that there were no demons afflicting this man. There are so many different kinds of mental illness, but in the ancient world this was not understood, hence the belief in demon-possession. 

 

Responsible religions today should work hard to get their followers to reject demons as a working hypothesis for anything. 

 

Yet…the Catholic church doesn’t agree. Just last month, Pope Leo met with the leaders of the International Association of Exorcists, who recommended that exorcists be appointed in every diocese. So here is a major world religion still embracing ancient superstitions. On Christmas Eve in 2012—just ten days after the school massacre at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut (twenty kids, and six adults killed)—I attended a party at the home of a devout Catholic woman. She offered this explanation for the tragedy: “God must have wanted more angels.” If a Catholic priest had been present, he would right away have gone into exorcism mode to remove the evil demon that had invaded her catechism-damaged brain. But in fact, there was no demon involved: the catechism-damage had resulted in major levels of stupidity and ignorance. How could she possibly have believed that her god acquires more angels by murdering school children? That itself if a form of mental illness. 

 

Any church that endorses exorcisms qualifies as a cult.    

 

(2)  They refusal to ordain women as priests. 

 

Just as Pope Francis had done, Pope Leo has offered his opinion that women should never be ordained as priests. They can be given important roles in the church, but the priesthood is not open to them. Such rigid rules are typical of a cult. 

 

(3) The Catholic church remains opposed to birth control and abortion.

 

This in the face of the alarming overpopulation crisis that the world faces. The damage and suffering these policies cause are mindboggling stupid and unnecessary. But their theology seizes the day: it is the cult god who arranged for the sperm to fertilize the egg, so it’s already a sacred being. No matter the circumstances of the conception. No matter the extreme poverty or depression of the women who are forced to have babies they don’t want. 

 

(4)  The Catholic church enthusiastically promotes its own Cult of Mary. 

 

In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared that Mary had ascended bodily into

heaven, and the church claims she also makes personal appearances around the globe. Yet by 1950 the pope was surely aware that the biblical concepts of heaven and earth no longer apply. There is no physical heaven above the earth to which Jesus and Mary could have ascended. So are they somewhere in orbit around the sun between Earth and Mars? Here’s another irony: the church won’t ordain women, yet in this case a woman is elevated to the status of goddess. The church declines to inform its members that virgin-born heroes were common in the ancient world, hence the virgin mother of Jesus is a borrowed concept. The ultimate irony is that we have little if any verifiable information about who the mother of Jesus actually was. Today the Catholic bureaucracy continues in over-drive mode to convince the devout that Mary is the Queen of Heaven. 

 

The church seems to base its adoration of Mary on the opening chapters of Luke’s gospel, which is easily understood as Christian mythology. There is no way whatever to verify Luke’s story of the annunciation: it derived from his theological imagination. All of the gospels were written to promote the early Jesus cult. And today the Catholic bureaucracy continues in over-drive mode to convince the devout that Mary is Queen of Heaven. This prayer no doubt helps confirm her status as a goddess:

 

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. 

Blessed art thou among women,

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, 

Pray for us sinners, 

Now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

 

(5)  The Catholic church thrives on show business. 

 

It enthusiastically embraces elaborate stage settings, extravagant costumes, rituals—and its own brand of magic potions, e.g., at every Mass, the wine and wafers supposedly become the real blood and flesh of Jesus. It looks very much like the promoters of goofy beliefs of the distant past are fully aware that they need flashy spectacles to keep the devout in awe. This is one of the Catholic church’s specialties.    

 

(6)  Here we are almost at Easter Sunday, with Catholics—indeed all Christian brands—worshipping, adoring, their “risen” lord.

 

But cults that believed in dying-and-rising savior gods were common in the ancient world. Here again, there was heavy borrowing by the early Jesus cult. For a very detailed description of this reality, see Richard Carrier’s 2018 essay, Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan Guys. Get Over It. As Carrier states in this essay, “Jesus is just a late comer to the party.”

 

In fact, Easter time is a perfect occasion to counter the Christian enthusiasm about the truth and purity of their dogma and piety. If we could only get the devout to read the gospels, they could begin to see that the Bible itself plays a major role in the undermining of their cherished beliefs. 

 

 

 

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes:

·      Guessing About God (2023)

·   Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also available. 

·    Everything You Need to Know About Prayer But May Not Want to Admit (2025)

 

His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.

 

The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.