The Interior Ministry's Conflict with the Cults Advice Sheet

The Interior Ministry’s “Conflict with the Cults” Advice Sheet

This “Advice sheet” is found on the site of the Ministry of the Interior under the heading “Your security” and the sub-heading “Your family”. It is not a hoax.

Read the sheet on the site of the Ministry of the Interior

Conflicts with the cults

You have a problem with a cult which is causing you prejudice or harming one of those close to you.

Not all cults are dangerous.

Some however can harm the moral, financial and family equilibrium of their members. But there exists no specific regulation concerning them.

These organisations have rights.

Most often, they are associations governed by the law of 1901.

They therefore benefit from freedom of association and religious freedom.

But they also have duties.

They must notably respect the law: tax law, accounting law, labour law, social security law, criminal law, the protection of minors. The legal actions you can bring against the cults will most often be for the following offences: failure to assist a person in danger, illegal practice of medicine, breach of the legislation on narcotics, financial offences, offences against morals, breach of labour legislation, breach of social security or pension law.

If you have knowledge of these doings, notify the police or the gendarmerie. The laws protecting minors are the most effective for fighting against the doings of the cults. But they protect only minors: abduction of a minor, educational assistance measures, respect for compulsory schooling, etc.

If no direct action against the cult is possible, or if you do not wish to use it.

Try to dialogue with the person who belongs to it and who is close to you.

If this person cannot be reasoned with, and if she makes a significant financial contribution to the cult, you can have her placed under guardianship, curatorship or judicial protection.

If these measures are not applicable, you can have recourse to the protection of the adult of sound mind provided for by article 488 paragraph 3 of the civil code.

For more information, apply:

to the Association de Défense des Familles et Individus (ADFI), 130 rue Clignancourt 75018 PARIS Tel: 01 44 92 30 14.

Centre de Documentation, d’Education et d’action contre les Manipulations Mentales (CCMM), 19 rue Turgot 75009 PARIS Tel: 01 42 82 04 93.

See also

Site of the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and Combat against Dérives Sectaires

Commentary:

If you are truly conscious of what the word “cults” means today, the explanations below are not addressed to you; you will simply have taken note, as we have, of a new advance in the effrontery of a policy of persecution which dishonours France.

If the self-evidence of this assertion is not apparent to you, we would like to make you take the measure of the human prejudice this sheet constitutes and of the insult it makes to all the texts guaranteeing respect for human rights ratified by France.

Everything hangs on the meaning of the word “cult”. To remove any ambiguity, links figure at the bottom of the sheet and refer to the sites of UNADFI and of the CCMM. The word “cult” acquired its letters - not of nobility but of villainy - under the impulse of anti-cult activists for whom the new spiritualities, that is to say all the spiritual movements which for some forty years have been renewing the Western landscape of the religious in the broad sense, are social scourges, homes of delinquency and perdition whose members are either sordid profiteers (gurus) or mental defectives in a state of blind submission (followers).

This term is resolutely pejorative. The proof is that nobody claims it for themselves any more today. It is therefore a sheet which could be entitled, once the mask of respectability is removed, “Conflict with the dangerous new spiritualities”.

In the same way that “witch”, in bygone times, meant “the demon”, and its use led to the stake for women guilty only of marginality, gifts of healing, knowledge of plants or other behaviours that disturbed public morality or the established powers, the word “cult” is today synonymous with perversity and criminality and condemns innocents to public opprobrium and to persecution by the State.

A few lines under the title, we can read “Not all cults are dangerous”. This, in 2006, on the site of a ministry, is as cynical as the warning “Careful, there are good witches…” would have been in the mouth of an inquisitor.

The chapter “The cults also have duties” is in reality a legal instruction manual whose objective title would be “How to harm a natural or legal person who disturbs you by using the levers of the law”.

As for what follows this paragraph…:

“If no direct action against the cult is possible, or if you do not wish to use it. Try to dialogue with the person…”

we are not far from “With the cults, shoot first, parley afterwards”.

And to finish:

“If this person cannot be reasoned with, and if she makes a significant financial contribution to the cult, you can have her placed under guardianship, curatorship or judicial protection. If these measures are not applicable, you can have recourse to the protection of the adult of sound mind provided for by article 488 paragraph 3 of the civil code.”

In other words: “if the judges do not find in your favour, you can have your relative passed off as mad. And if the doctors do not follow you in your approach, we remind you of the existence of the paragraphs of article 488 of the civil code”, voted in 1968 (!), intended among other things to protect adults against their “idleness”, their “intemperance” or their “prodigality” (2), terms whose subjectivity leaves one wondering.

In conclusion, this text is the admission that in the eyes of the State there exist in France sub-citizens designated by the word “cult”. It is a clear message to the “good citizens” saying that if they are disturbed by the existence of a community or an association with a new or minority spiritual connotation (whose exact list they will be able to find by following the links at the bottom of the page (1)), they can count on the support of the State to assert the precedence of right-thinking citizens or good believers.

It goes without saying that CICNS does not place these new spiritualities above the law or above other citizens; they have indeed the same duties as they. They could in that case claim the same privileges for others, and one would then see on the site of the Ministry of the Interior an advice sheet, for example, “Conflict with the philatelists”, “Conflict with the firefighters”, “Conflict with the doctors”*… and why not, “Conflict with the anti-cult associations”?

*These social groups are given as examples of respectable human groups generally well regarded by their fellow citizens.

(1) The UNADFI say they have a list of 800 “cults” and, like the CCMM, denounce pell-mell gentle medicines, Buddhist groups, spiritual movements of Eastern inspiration, but also Catholic and Protestant churches and, more generally, everything that departs from “commonly accepted” practices and theories.

(2) Article 488 of the civil code.

(Law no. 68-5 of 3 January 1968 art. 1, Official Journal of 4 January 1968, in force on 1 November 1968)

(Law no. 74-631 of 5 July 1974 art. 1, Official Journal of 7 July 1974)

Majority is fixed at eighteen years accomplished; at that age, one is capable of all the acts of civil life.

Nevertheless protected by the law, either on the occasion of a particular act or in a continuous manner, is the adult whom an alteration of his personal faculties puts in the impossibility of providing for his interests alone.

May likewise be protected the adult who, by his prodigality, his intemperance or his idleness, exposes himself to falling into need or compromises the execution of his family obligations.

Source: http://www.vie-publique.fr/documents-vp/Cciv_art_488.shtml