Is Catholicism a cult? That accusation falls apart fast. In this episode, Trent Horn shows why the word cult is often used in a sloppy, self-defeating way, and why many anti-Catholic arguments about obedience, canon law, and Church authority collapse under closer examination.

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Joe Heschmeyer’s response to Fr. Moses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ5fZl2RajI

Jimmy Akin’s article on trouble accepting Church teaching: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/having-trouble-accepting-a-church-teaching

Trent Horn (00:00):

There’s lots of insulting labels that are thrown at Catholics like papist or Romanist, but there’s one that non-Catholics should avoid because it undermines what they believe and that is calling Catholicism a cult. Here’s the problem. It’s almost impossible to define the word cult in a non-arbitrary way that doesn’t also make your own religion or church a cult. The Latin word cultists referred to care, cultivation, adoration, or worship. It forms the root of the word culture, meaning what a group of people values. For most of history, the English word cult just meant a system of religious worship. It could be used, for example, to describe the cult of mythras in ancient Rome. In the 19th century, it expanded to include excessive devotion outside of religious context, like the growing cult of Shakespeare in the 19th century. But it wasn’t until the 1960s and ’70s that the meaning of the word cult shifted to refer to new kinds of religious systems that were considered dangerous.

(00:57) Events that shifted this opinion included the 1969 murders committed by the Manson family cult and the 1978 Jonestown massacre where over 900 members of Jim Jones’ people’s temple took their own lives or were murdered as part of the cult of Jim Jones. Among evangelicals, the word cult came to be synonymous with non-Christian religions that claim to be Christian. As can be seen in Walter Martin’s 1965 book, The Kingdom of the Cults. Martin was even interviewed about Jonestown in a 1978 news report.

New Report (01:27):

Why did they stay? Why did they submit to a Jim Jones? Why did so many die at Jonestown?

Walter Martin (01:34):

Now, the person is conditioned into this gradually, isolated, indoctrinated, made dependent, and then taught that everybody who contradicts this is indeed their enemy. They developed what could be called a religious paranoia in which everybody’s against us, so we all hang together.

Trent Horn (01:55):

Martin’s book focused on so- called Christian groups that deny core Christian doctrines like the deity of Christ or the Trinity. So under Martin’s view, Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses were cults, whereas Catholics and seventh day Adventists were not cults. Kenneth Samples, who is a Protestant that’s very critical of Catholicism, said Catholicism is not a cult because cults tend to be splinter groups of recent religions molded by a single leader that exhibits totalitarian control over the members. I don’t find the term cult to be useful, but if I had to use it, I’d apply it in a similar way to groups that use psychological techniques to isolate people from families and keep them around a charismatic leader and preventing the person from leaving the place or group that has isolated them. But Catholicism is not like that, especially given the horror stories I hear in OCIA about people saying they really wanted to become Catholic and they called their Catholic parish, but never got a call back from the parish.

(02:52)
Or the priest even told them that maybe they should just remain in Protestantism and make their own church better. In a true cult, it is really easy to join and very hard to leave. In Catholicism, it’s not really easy to join as can be seen in the lengthy OCIA process that prepares people to be received into the church, but it is easy to leave as can be seen in the fact that 13% of US adults, about one in eight people is a former Catholic. And yet this hasn’t stopped some people from saying Catholicism is a cult. In Dave Hunt’s charmingly titled book, A Woman Rides the Beast, he says in Catholicism that quote, “We have as clear a denial of individual moral responsibility as can be found in any cult.” Because according to Hunt, the church’s code of canon law shockingly says that, “The Christian faithful, conscious of their own responsibility are bound by Christian obedience to follow what the sacred pastors as representatives of Christ declare as teachers of the faith or determine as leaders of the church.” Apparently, this means to hunt that, quote, “When it comes to faith and morals in the way of salvation, Catholics must check their minds at the door and accept whatever the church says.” The Eastern Orthodox priest, Father Moses McPherson, makes a similar argument about Catholicism being a cult.

Orthodox Fr. Moses McPherson (04:10):

They have this kind of no questioning policy. They’re not allowed to see anything in the church, quote unquote, church that is beyond questioning. They’re forced to kind of see everything through this model of everything is perfect. It’s you that is imperfect. And if you see something that doesn’t add up, that’s on you. That’s not on the Catholic church.

Trent Horn (04:36):

Except that the Catholic Code of Canon Law says not only can the faithful bring up issues to their pastors, in some cases, they have a duty to bring up those issues. Let’s look at Canon 2:12, which Dave Hunt only cites a part of. Conscious of their own responsibility, the Christian faithful, are bound to follow with Christian obedience, those things which the sacred pastors, in as much as they represent Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or establish as rulers of the church. The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the church their needs, especially spiritual ones and their desires. According to the knowledge, competence and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.

(05:32)
Catholics are called to be obedient, but not blindly obedient. St. Catherine of Sienna is a saint, even though she told Pope Gregory the 11th to return to Rome after he fled to Avinon, France, even saying that the Pope needs to literally man up and do the right thing. She writes, “Most holy and sweet father, your poor unworthy daughter, Catherine in Christ, sweet Jesus, commence herself to you in his precious blood with desire to see you a manly man, free from any fear or fleshly love toward yourself or toward any creature related to you in the flesh.” Finally, Father Moses’ arguments for Catholicism being a cult would also apply to Eastern Orthodoxy, as can be seen in my colleague Joe Heschmeyer’s full response, which you can find linked in the description below. Now, usually when I see people who say Catholicism is a cult, they tend to be Protestants because they have a radically different view of the role of the church and the lives of believers.

(06:27)
Consider this video from the Protestant YouTube channel, Philippians one: nine ministries led by Patrick O’Brien.

Patrick O’Brien (06:33):

A cult is any institution that tells you to submit your mind and your will at the door and accept whatever they tell you is absolute truth. And this is exactly what Roman Catholicism does in the code of canon law. In Canon 752, it says this.

Trent Horn (06:49):

Before we continue, I note that his definition of a cult would make the Bible a cultish book. After all, Patrick would say, “You have to do whatever the Bible tells you. You have to submit your mind and will to the Bible.” Now, he might say that a cult is when you have to submit your mind and will to the teachings of any human being, not the written word of God, which is exempt from his definition of a cult. But any Bible church can easily turn into a cult with this mindset because they would just say, “You have to believe whatever our church teaches because we simply teach what the Bible says.” And in response to that, Patrick might say you should just follow what the Bible teaches and not any church that makes such a claim. But this leads to the reverse problem of the church having too much authority, namely the church having no authority.

(07:37)
You end up having no one with authority to tell somebody that their wackadoodle personal interpretation of the Bible is wrong. All you have is people making a judgment based on who sounds more convincing in a debate on the Bible, and heretics can often be some of the best debaters, which is why they get such a large following. I mean, would it really be so bad to have some believers possess unique authority over other believers? You know, like in Hebrews 13:17 where it says, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as men who will have to give account.” Besides, the Catholic Church doesn’t say you have to believe as a matter of faith every single thing a bishop or even the Pope says. It only seems this way because in the next part of this clip, Patrick will conflate different levels of the church’s teaching authority.

Patrick O’Brien (08:26):

In Canon 752, it says this, “A religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the College of Bishops declares concerning faith or morals when they exorcize the authentic magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim it by definitive act. Therefore, the Christian faithful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it. ” And it states in Canon 7:51 that heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truths which is to be believed by the divine and Catholic faith. And schism is the refusal of submission to the supreme pontiff, the Pope, or of communion with the members of the church subject to him.

Trent Horn (09:14):

To better understand all this, we need to lay out the different levels of authority in Catholic teaching. Belonging to Christ Church means belonging under the authority of the authentic pastors of Christ Church. The Bible never says a person can become a pastor in the church under his own authority. A pastor instead has to receive authority from someone else, normally through the laying on of hands. Today’s authentic pastors are those who are the successors of Christ’s apostles, specifically the priests who are ordained by the bishops who are united to St. Peter’s successor, the Bishop of Rome or the Pope. Now, does that mean that Christians have to do everything the Pope or the Bishops say? No, because not everything they say is meant to be a teaching for the entire church. Just as not everything the Bible says, like certain ritual laws of the Old Testament is a rule Christians must follow today.

(10:07)
And we see that in the different levels of authority in church teaching. At the lowest level of authority, the Pope and the bishops lead the church through exhortations or prudential judgments about issues beyond what the church teaches. For example, recommendations for preserving the environment found in parts of the document Laudato see would be prudential judgments. The faith will give respectful consideration to these judgments, but they don’t have to obey them. However, when the Catholic Church teaches in an authoritative way, by proposing doctrine for belief, the faithful must obey those teachings, which ensures that the church has a living voice with Christ’s authority to guide believers to salvation. This is called the religious submission of mind and will, but the denial of these teachings is not the sin of heresy, which you might think was the case if you just heard the cannons Patrick recited in his video.

(11:00)
Heresy is when you deny a doctrine that has been taught through a solemn definitive act, and so it’s shown to be infallibly taught, like an ecumenical council’s infallible decree, but not all doctrines are infallibly defined. In fact, Cannon 749.3 says, “No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident.” For example, the Catholic Church teaches that in vitro fertilization, IVF, is immoral, but it has not infallibly defined this teaching. So denying this teaching would not be the sin of heresy. However, it would be gravely sinful disobedience to the church to publicly say this teaching is false and to lead people into sin as a result. Only under rare cases could someone privately withhold belief from a non-infallible teaching that requires submission of mind and will. Because these teachings aren’t dogma or they aren’t infallibly defined parts of divine revelation, privately denying them isn’t always sinful.

(12:02)
But even in this case, a person could not publicly object to the teaching and they could not publicly disobey it by doing something like undergoing in vitro fertilization. And as I said, this kind of justifiable dissent is rare and typically reserved to theologians who have extensively wrestled with a non-infallible teaching. For more on when dissent can be done in a non-sinful way in these unique cases, see the article linked below by my colleague, Jimmy Aiken, about what to do if you have trouble accepting a church teaching. Finally, schism is when a person fails to remain in communion with the Pope and bishops in union with him. Obedience to the church involves not just accepting what the church teaches, but also how the church lives out the faith. In the second century, Pope St. Victor threatened to excommunicate a group of churches for celebrating Easter on the wrong date.

(12:52)
St. Irineus believed this wasn’t prudent, but he did not deny the Pope had the authority to do this. In AD 107, St. Ignatius of Antioch said, “See that you all follow the bishop even as Jesus Christ does the Father and the presbytery as you would the apostles and reverence the deacons as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the church without the bishop.” St. Paul even calls out the sin of schism in his letter to the Corinthians, but a Protestant might think schism isn’t a sin, and this is just cult propaganda if he thinks the church has no actual authority because the church is just the invisible bond between true believers and so it can’t be objectively located. And the church is not, as St. Paul says in one Timothy 3:15, the pillar and foundation of truth. Consider this argument ryan@needgod.net made about why you shouldn’t be Catholic based on the church’s right to levy punishments on some members.

Ryan (NeedGod.net) (13:51):

But they still have in their 1983 Code of Canon Law, the following penalties that the Catholic Church could enact upon you if you do something they deem inappropriate or wrong. They could order you to reside in a certain place or territory, so basically like being under house arrest or being exiled, and they could also order you to pay a fine or a sum of money for the church’s purposes. Look at that. The Catholic church could order you to pay a fine to them if they think that you’ve broken one of their church laws. Now, if I was part of a church that told me that they could find me if I broke one of their church rules, I’d be out of there that very day. That’s a sign of a cult to me.

Trent Horn (14:34):

No, it’s a sign that you think the church is really just a building where you meet and not something that has actual authority in the lives of believers to regulate things like the validity of marriages in accord with Christian doctrine rather than minimal state regulation. Also, this part of canon law deals with punishments that are rarely inflicted, but remain on the books when they’re necessary. Kind of like the old warnings on VHS tapes saying that if you copy this, you could be hit with a $250,000 fine in five years in prison. And in most cases, the civil law can cover these issues instead of the church, like requiring financial restitution for damaging church property. But in some cases, civil law can’t do that, and so the church will step in. For example, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was found incompetent to stand trial in a civil court on account of crimes against a minor.

(15:26)
However, prior to his canonical trial, Pope Francis barred McCarrick from public ministry and ordered him to quote, “Remain in a house yet to be indicated to him for a life of prayer and penance so that he can not harm anyone else.” The Pope’s authority to do this falls under the code of canon law that Ryan cited about the church requiring people to live in certain areas. And the wording of these canons are clearly about the clergy, not the laity. Since the subcanons refer to things like power of governance, insignia or titles and voting in canonical elections, the Canon Law Society of America’s commentary on the code of canon law says of this section, but with an older numbering scheme that “some penalties affect only religious according to their constitutions, residents restrictions in one one or clerics, residence restrictions in one one or dismissal in one five.” So I would ask Ryan, does your church have the authority to punish ministers and prevent them from, for example, living in a place where they can harm people if the civil authorities are unable to do that?

(16:29)
Appealing to the church possibly punishing someone unjustly does not refute the prudence of having rules in general that justly maintain order in the body of Christ. In fact, the first Protestants recognize the church must have this kind of authority, which can be seen in John Calvin’s Geneva that would excommunicate people for not attending services. In fact, not all Protestants today believe the church is just an invisible r... Read more on Catholic.com