A Former UNADFI President Writes the Preface: Janine Tavernier on the A.M.O.R.C. Injustice

Preface by Janine Tavernier, Former President of the UNADFI, to Serge Toussaint’s Book

Published in Serge Toussaint’s work Sectes sur ordonnance* (May 2006), the preface by Janine Tavernier, president of the UNADFI** from 1993 to 2001

PREFACE

If I have agreed to write the preface to this book written by Serge Toussaint, Grand Master of the Ancient and Mystical Order of the Rose-Cross, it is because his reaction in the face of the injustice of which A.M.O.R.C. is the victim allows me to express myself on what was one of my essential preoccupations during my term as president of the UNADFI, namely not to attribute the qualifier “cult” wrongly and indiscriminately, or to any organisation that departs from “single-track thinking”…

From the end of the 1970s, one witnessed the creation of numerous “new age”, pseudo-religious, religious, etc. groups. Very quickly, the UNADFI sensed that certain of these groups, under deceptive names and behind reassuring masks, could be dangerous and could trap people in search of a certain spirituality or a certain well-being: church, temple, cult, cenacle, foundation, community, family, fraternity, etc.

If the UNADFI alerted various bodies and public figures about these groups, it nevertheless specified that if there were among them destructive cults, with files and proofs in support, there were also movements having nothing cultic about them, even if, sometimes, there were slip-ups, as in every human group. This qualification was not retained; it was easier to put the same label on these new structures, namely “New Religious Movements” (NRM). By proceeding thus, it was allowed to be supposed that all New Religious Movements were cults, which is absolutely not the case. Through a lack of rigour, one therefore came to confuse inoffensive groups with others that presented a real danger and engaged in proselytism to recruit new followers. This vagueness, this imprecision, mean that today one is plunged into the most total confusion. Things being what they are, some see cults everywhere.

In the statutes of this company, there is the word “holistic”… Watch out!!!

This person takes homeopathic granules… Mistrust.

This yoga teacher speaks of chakras… Danger!!!

This certified psychologist is a spiritualist… Caution!!! etc.

I have always been alert to the risks of slippage that the ADFIs themselves might have committed. That is why I regularly reminded them of the aims to which I was particularly attached: “We, the ADFI Associations, in the direct line of Human Rights, respectful of every liberty (freedom of thought, the freedom to believe or not to believe or to believe otherwise, freedom of association, freedom of expression), when we qualify any group whatever as a ‘cult’, we take no account of ideologies, of doctrines, of beliefs, of religions, of churches. We consider only the doings and the behaviours that gravely infringe the liberty or the dignity of the human person. In a word, the only criterion we retain is that of harmfulness, of dangerousness: of the violation of Human Rights”. (BULLES bulletin 23 / 1989).

In the editorial of the BULLES bulletin no. 69 / First quarter 2001, on the occasion of the 25 years of the A.D.F.I., I wrote this: ”… We repeat it at leisure: we do not judge the doctrines or the ideologies conveyed by the groups; we refuse to enter into ‘theological’ discussions. What mobilises us, on the other hand, are the facts… Yet, because we are men and women with our convictions, our beliefs, our most diverse philosophies — which, let us underline it again, makes our richness — we could be tempted to judge the groups by the yardstick of our own moral, religious and philosophical references. To let ourselves go down that path would be perilous in many respects”.

One observes that man has always been in search of spirituality, of transcendence. That is why I was shocked one day when I heard a person very involved in the fight against the cults say with much conviction: “The idea of God must be eradicated”. I was left dumbfounded, speechless. In what way is a religious, spiritual or philosophical quest systematically condemnable? In what way is it necessarily “cultic”? How many groups would then have to be put on the index…

Assuredly, one has been witnessing for some time in France a drift which endangers freedom of belief, which I condemn. It is in order to remain faithful to myself, to my convictions, refusing silence and cowardice, that I have agreed to associate myself with this book which denounces the injustice of which A.M.O.R.C. has been the victim in having been classified as a cult. The author’s explanations, his erudition, make it possible better to know and understand the roots of this Order, its evolution, its teaching, its philosophy. Evidently, it has nothing of a New Religious Movement, and still less of a cult. But it was enough for a parliamentary commission, or rather a few deputies of a commission, to put it on the index in a report, for the opprobrium, relayed by the media frenzy, to become a public condemnation.

All the political and other public figures I met when I was a militant and then president of the U.N.A.D.F.I., as well as all the journalists, know well that I have never been indulgent towards proven cults, because I know the danger they represent for the individual, the family and society itself. But it is time that France pulled itself together in the fight that must be waged against such groups, because under the pretext of this legitimate fight, some are fighting religious, spiritual and philosophical beliefs. The injustice suffered by A.M.O.R.C. is in my view a perfect example of this drift.

For some time, much has been said about laïcité in France, perhaps even too much, because the great majority of the citizens of this country hold it to be a definitive acquisition. It should therefore not happen that this essential principle of laïcité, for reasons more ideological than republican, becomes the foundation of a fundamentalism just as dangerous as religious fundamentalism. There again, I think that this book brings this danger clearly to light. Let us therefore take care that the fight against the cults does not itself become a vector of sectarianism!

Finally, to conclude, I call for an official rehabilitation of A.M.O.R.C., wished for moreover by Jacques Guyard himself, president of the parliamentary commission of 1999. Everyone knows that “to err is human”. In the light of this book, may those men and women who have the power to rehabilitate the Rose-Cross do so, if only in the name of article 1 of the Constitution of the French Republic: “France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic. It ensures the equality before the law of all citizens, without distinction of origin, of race or of religion. It respects all beliefs”.

Janine Tavernier

Chevalier of the Legion of Honour

Member of the UNADFI since 1984

* Available online at www.amorc.fr. Publisher’s presentation: “Since the Order of the Solar Temple hit the headlines through the tragedies we know of, France has become the theatre of a veritable ‘witch hunt’. Under the pretext of fighting the cults, one has come to fight the beliefs themselves and to institute a hard-line laicism, a source of oppression and discrimination. Although it is recognised in every country of the world as a non-religious and non-cultic philosophical movement, the Ancient and Mystical Order of the Rose-Cross has itself been the victim of this drift, to the point of having been classified as a ‘cult’. The book published on this site has two parts. In the first, the author explains what the Rose-Cross are, notably through their history, their teaching, their philosophy, their ethics… In the second, he shows, with documents in support, how lies, confusions and amalgams have been maintained against A.M.O.R.C., in order to discredit it and to make the general public believe that it is a cult: A.M.O.R.C. and the OTS, A.M.O.R.C. and the parliamentary commissions, A.M.O.R.C. and the MIVILUDES, A.M.O.R.C. and the anti-cult associations, A.M.O.R.C. and the media… You can obtain this book from your bookseller or from the publisher: Diffusion Traditionnelle – 02.32.35.39.78.

** Union Nationale des Associations pour la Défense des Familles et de l’Individu.