CISNEO June Newsletter
April  |  October
 

Picnic/Program

On Sunday, June 4, at 1:00PM, Cult Information Services of Northeast Ohio (CISNEO) will hold its annual picnic at the Greentown Community Park.  Our program will be a video entitled The Human Behavior Experiments .  This documentary revisits three controversial social psychology studies:  The Columbia Experiments in 1969 on “diffusion of responsibility,” exemplified by the unreported murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964; the 1961-62 Milgram Experiment, in which subjects were told to administer potentially lethal electric shocks to strangers; and, most compellingly, the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971, in which a mock prison quickly became the setting for acts of cruelty reminiscent of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

There will be no Tuesday Meeting in June, July, or August.

Did Benny Hinn heal?
Trinidad & Tobago Newsday, May 23, 2006

 DID American preacher Benny Hinn really heal anyone of their ailment during his recent three-day crusade at Queen’s Park Savannah?

Although our photographers were clearly not welcome as security guards prevented us from getting too close for Mr Hinn’s comfort, Newsday reporters covered the event with an open mind without prejudging the man who was endorsed by the presence of the Nigerian High Commissioner, former president Arthur NR Robinson, and Prime Minister Patrick Manning.

Hinn daily promised the 30,000-strong crowd that they could be healed of all their illnesses, whether physical, psychiatric or spiritual.  We have no knowledge or evidence as to whether any lasting medical healing occurred. What we do know is that after two hours of steady build-up through song, prayer and preaching, Hinn had primed the crowd to, in his own words, “Expect your miracle!”   Hinn said that if people simply believed they would be healed and then called out and/or reached out to God, they would receive their healing. There is no doubt that most people attending had an intense experience of worship, which was so profound that many “felt” they had been healed.   However the question for us is the lack of any hard evidence that any permanent healing of serious illness had occurred. Did he for example simply lift people from a mental depression which was causing them psychosomatic illness? Individuals may have been given a “lift” emotionally by the event which could produce euphoria to temporarily mask their medical symptoms such as pain, but will it last? We have no way of knowing.

Reporters and photographers were not allowed to get close to the persons who were supposedly being healed. We would have thought that Hinn would have welcomed the verification by local media, just as the resurrected Christ himself allowed Thomas to touch his wounds, and just as Christ instructed the lepers he had healed to present themselves in the temple for public scrutiny. Many American media houses over the years have questioned Hinn’s inability or unwillingness to provide medical proof of his healings and his lack of follow-up interest in the “healed” patients.

Moreso, at the crusade individual people are hardly qualified to diagnose their own internal illnesses such as the woman who went on-stage and said she felt she had been healed of a cyst on her ovary. Hinn alluded to the healing of the eleven-year-old daughter of the Nigerian High Commissioner who suffers from sickle cell anaemia.  Most of the “healed” persons presented to the public on-stage said they were healed of illness inside their bodies, a claim impossible to verify without scrupulous, long-term medical checks. We now invite them to do just that, and let us know in a few months from now.   Sadly despite the intensity of their desire to be healed, we saw many disabled persons with malformed legs in wheelchairs, leave the event unhealed.

Benny Hinn has attracted much controversy globally about the efficacy of his “miracle healing” and the non-accountability of his church finances. In light of this background, and in light of the fact that Trinidad and Tobago is a multi-denominational society, questions arise as to the propriety of the participation in the event by public figures such as Prime Minister Patrick Manning.  The only certainty that came out of the event is that people are desperate for some sort of miracle in their lives, whether healing of body, mind or soul.  While some people daily work hard towards creating their own miracles, others were seeking immediate divine intervention. Was Benny Hinn’s visit this miracle? You decide. 
 

Anti-polygamy group criticizes Utah AG's committee
Arizona Republic, May 22, 2006

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The anti-polygamy group Tapestry Against Polygamy has lashed out against the Utah attorney general's Safety Net Committee again and also has criticized Sen. Orrin Hatch for helping get federal funding for it.  "On the Safety Net Committee, he's got pro-polygamists - those are his advisers - including abusers," said Tapestry board member Andrea Moore-Emmett.  "Tapestry is very concerned about money being used that way. There's not one dime they can show us that they've used to help women and children leaving," she said.

Paul Murphy, Safety Net Committee coordinator, said, "We have a grant coordinator, a case manager, shelters, women being provided with the first month's rent so they can get a place to stay. There's lawyers to help, there's a 24-hour domestic violence hotline.  "I find the assertions from Tapestry that we're not helping women and children bizarre," Murphy said Saturday.  The Safety Net Committee was set up in part with a $700,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. Committee members include representatives of several polygamous groups in Utah and Arizona.  "You build a dialogue. Some of these groups have been taught to fear the government," Murphy said. "We are extending a hand of help." Tapestry Against Polygamy has repeatedly criticized the committee and refused to participate in meetings.

"There are so many who are still falling through the cracks of the Safety Net," Moore-Emmett said Saturday. "The Safety Net is not cutting it and they're still calling Tapestry."  In a statement released Saturday, Tapestry Against Polygamy also took Hatch to task and demanded an accounting of where the federal money has gone.

Calls to Hatch's offices in Utah and Washington, D.C., were not returned Saturday, the Deseret Morning News said.  Murphy said Hatch is to be praised for his support of the Safety Net Committee. He said they hope the senior senator will use his influence to secure more federal dollars to fund it.

During debate last week on a proposed constitutional amendment against gay marriage last week, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy said Hatch has expressed support for polygamy in past years, according to reports in The Salt Lake Tribune and the News.  "I never said that," Hatch was quoted as replying. "I know some (polygamists) that are very sincere ... Don't accuse me of wanting to have polygamy."  Hatch has provided differing views of polygamy over the years.  While Hatch was attending a town meeting in southern Utah in 2003, he was pressed by anti-polygamy activists to take a stand against the practice. Bob Curran, director of the anti-polygamy group Help the Child Brides, said girls as young as 13 and 14 were forced into plural marriages with older men in the nearby twin polygamous communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.  Hatch said, "I wouldn't throw accusations around unless you know they're true.  "I'm not here to justify polygamy," he said. "All I can say is, I know people in Hildale who are polygamists who are very fine people. You come and show me evidence of children being abused there and I'll get involved. Bring the evidence to me."  Hatch said he could not take unsubstantiated claims and enforce law, and he would not "sit here and judge anybody just because they live differently than me. "There will be laws on the books, but these are very complicated issues," Hatch said.

However, later that year, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Texas law against consensual sodomy by homosexuals, Hatch expressed fear that the ruling could invalidate Utah's law against polygamy.
"The legal argument is there," Hatch told the Tribune at that time. "The current Supreme Court ruled that whether a majority of the public opposes a particular practice as immoral, it's not sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting that practice."  

Ex-Opus Dei Members Decry Blind Obedience
ABC News, May 16, 2006  By Charlotte Sector

Opus Dei Outreach Network Tries to Change Minds About Secretive Organization

It's been more than 15 years since Tammy DiNicola left Opus Dei, but she still tries to raise awareness about the secretive and conservative Roman Catholic group.  DiNicola, 37, considers herself a faithful Catholic despite her falling out with Opus Dei, which she joined while she was in college. She stayed with the group for nearly three years. After her painful departure, she founded a support network in 1991 with other families of former Opus Dei members to shed light on what they believe are Opus Dei's true intentions.

With the upcoming release of the movie of "The Da Vinci Code," which casts Opus Dei as the villain, DiNicola's Opus Dei Awareness Network, or ODAN, has suddenly gained more attention.  "I really do feel God let me go through all this so I could be a spokesperson," DiNicola said. "If there was nothing wrong with Opus Dei, we wouldn't need to exist." ODAN isn't out to attack Opus Dei, but it would like to see more transparency. Opus Dei lends no credence to ODAN except to express dismay at members who leave Opus Dei.

DiNicola still believes the organization is untruthful in its vocation.  "Everything they do is couched in beautiful terms, sanctifying work and love, but in reality the whole process is deceiving and couched in orchestration," she said.  DiNicola was a freshman at Boston College when she went on her first Opus Dei retreat. Her parents rejoiced that their daughter took the time to deepen her faith while at school.  Without telling her parents, DiNicola joined Opus Dei and in her junior year became a numerary, a lay person who pledges celibacy and devotion to God's teachings. She moved into an all-female Opus Dei residence and slowly broke her ties with outside friends and family.  "I could tell I was a different person," she said. "When I was back home, people were devastated at how distant I was."  Her mother didn't like the change in DiNicola's personality and begged her to consider other options within the church, she said.   It was too late.   DiNicola said she had already fallen prey to what she now considers a controlling organization.   "All choices are made for you when you're in a group. You're not allowed to question anything," she said.   Her mail was read, her salary was handed over and she needed approval before reading anything or leaving the residence, she said.

"If you wanted to shop, you needed permission," DiNicola said.   Opus Dei acknowledges that many members hand over portions of their salaries but says that there is no truth behind allegations of excessive control, and that its only intention is to teach and coach.

She said she was presented with the cilice, a spiked chain that members strap around their upper thigh to prove their devotion. Wearing it "is not presented as an optional thing," DiNicola said.  "I think a few people in Opus Dei just mildly slap it on their back while reciting prayers," Opus Dei spokeswoman Terri Carron told ABC News' "Good Morning America." "Mother Teresa, everybody knows her life, most people wouldn't think she needs penance, but she did practice penance."  Carron also refutes the claims of excessive control.  "You have to understand that people who are giving themselves up — as I do as a supernumerary — the idea anyone would be controlling me is rather absurd," Carron said.

Dennis Dubro, 55, spent 17 years in Opus Dei before abandoning the group, and he disagrees with Carron. In his view, supernumeraries, those in the less-formal category of membership that allows people to have families and live in their own homes — are clueless about the organization's real intentions. "I was in levels of leadership and like an onion, the outer core never finds out about these things," Dubro said. Supernumeraries make up about 70 percent of the 87,000 members worldwide, with the core representing about 20 percent.   Dubro grew close to Opus Dei while he was a student at MIT, and he eventually became a numerary. Opus Dei sent him to Australia to oversee a boys dorm, which is when he started to question the organization.  "As you move into leadership, they test your obedience and see how loyal you are," Dubro said. He likened the experience to loyalty in the Mafia, saying that he became a puppet.   "You are expected to stand up and tell the world that you are acting in your own name when you carry out the secret indications of your directors," he said. Dubro became dismayed by the manipulative elements of the organization, from the complexity of its finances to its lack of transparency. His disloyalty led to his departure, although he said Opus Dei doesn't let its members go freely, despite what it says.  "When you talk to your spiritual director about things like that [leaving], he tells you that you will go to hell if you abandon your God-given vocation," Dubro said.

In DiNicola's case, her parents became more and more concerned in 1989 when she turned down their invitation to come home for Easter. With the help of the local clergy and a psychologist, DiNicola spent hours in counseling.  She recalls the time as extremely painful, but eventually she came to wonder why, if Opus Dei's teaching focused on friendship, it entailed abandoning her family. In addition, she found the constant pressure to recruit new members misleading and contrary to the doctrine of spreading the good word through charitable work.   She distanced herself from Opus Dei and moved in with her sister, readjusting slowly to living independently again.   "I soon realized that Opus Dei had squashed my true emotions, and so every day was an emotional roller coaster ride for months," she said.

Opus Dei's Carron counters that things don't always work out in life.   "You have to understand, this is a lifelong commitment," she said. "Many people go into a lifelong commitment, whether it's Opus Dei or a marriage, and sometimes they don't quite gel, sometimes it doesn't work for them and they get out of it and it's very sad when it ends."   DiNicola interprets her departure another way.   "I feel like I have been healed of the abuse," she said. "I felt God showed me the truth."