The sect of the Cathars spreads throughout Spain and attracts young people

InfoCatholic

RIES Secretariat

June 20, 2017

 

With the title "Neither sex, nor meat, nor social life: this is how the Cathars of the 21st century are", a Spanish digital media published on June 20 a report on the so-called Association for the Study of Cathar Culture, present in Spain . A group that, according to its own website, “studies, recovers and promotes the universal values ​​of Catharism” .

Juan de San Grail, the new messiah

 

Vicente Jara, a lay Dominican and founding member of the Ibero-American Network for the Study of Sects (RIES), wrote  an article a few years ago  that was published in InfoRIES .

“John of the Holy Grail, who is actually called Ioann Bereslavski, had already founded a movement in Russia known as the Derjavnaya Mother of God Orthodox Church with about 3,500 followers in several ex-Soviet republics. The data we have on him is very difficult to find, but we know that he has been present in Spain since 2006 , ” says Jara, who calculated then that the Iberian group should not exceed 200-300 people, mostly of Russian origin.

For the researcher, "it is nonsense that this man has promoted two almost completely opposite movements in two countries" , so "either he has undergone a real change in his faith or we are facing a charlatan who seeks to be idolized as a kind of messiah ” . "A sectarian leader always seeks to create his own movement because of the impulse he feels to expand and adore himself through other people whom he ends up turning into a kind of slave," he adds emphatically.

Sex with the leader, spiritual act

“This man is considered a messiah, an enlightened man or savior of humanity . He always talks about himself as a genius, an expert in languages, someone who has visited all the temples in the world and gained wisdom from him. In addition, he places himself as a unifier of the spirituality of the East and the West" , summarizes Jara, who believes that we are facing "a patient who feeds his egomania" and who describes him as "a very dangerous person capable of dominating the consciences ” .

Another aspect that Jara denounces is sexual. Although the Cathars practice and spread chastity as one of their main values, an inheritance of Gnostic thought, sex with the spiritual leader is considered one of the highest practices . “These groups, in which their leaders believe themselves to be so pure, having sex with them is equated with a spiritual act. In the case of these Neo-Cathars I cannot confirm, but it is possible that something similar may happen” , concludes the researcher cautiously

 https://www.infocatolica.com/blog/infories.php/1706200921-la-secta-de-los-cataros-se-ex