The Approach to the Question of the Cults in France

The Approach to the Question of the Cults in France

An article by André Tarassi published in the review Reflets (http://www.revue-reflets.org/) in April 2012

French laïcité tends to be exclusive. Issuing from a rupture with religion from the French Revolution onwards, then with the law of 1905, it has allowed to grow progressively an epidermic and irrational tendency to reject purely and simply the “religious fact” and spiritual approaches, or in any case to seek to control them.

One of the most flagrant expressions of this aversion of France towards spirituality is found in the functioning of a body like the MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and Combat against Dérives Sectaires). This “mission”, entrusted by the Prime Minister to bureaucrats in active liaison with anti-cult associations subsidised by the State, acts from the postulate that the greater part of the expressions of spiritual search, outside the recognised religions, ought to be treated as though they were diseases or parasites (a minister spoke specifically of a “delicate pathology”[1]). To such a point that even the sociologists initially invited to take part in the work of this body ended up leaving, slamming the door more or less loudly, faced with the superficiality of the approach of this “State mission”[2].

Today, the MIVILUDES functions more like a militant grouplet than like a body respecting democratic debate, the adversarial principle and freedom of conscience. As soon as it was deserted by the academics, it quickly revealed itself disconnected from the spiritual and sociological realities of our civilisation.

Of course, the argument given to justify the repressive approach of the MIVILUDES is that it is not a matter of attacking “spirituality” but “dangerous cults”. Yet, in the facts, the French anti-cult approach is as incapable of explaining what a cult is as of understanding the meaning of spirituality. The word “cult” is consequently used in “every sauce” to stigmatise the most diverse currents, independently of real offences. In fact, it is spirituality in all its expressions (with the notable exception of Freemasonry) which is targeted and attacked without respite and “a priori”.

Let us be clear: one may legitimately worry about “excesses”, but why should one do so to the detriment of an intelligent approach which would take into account the reality of universal human waywardness, rather than pinning micro-associations as though they had invented criminality? Might we not be facing a contemporary expression of the scapegoat method? Can we assert in all honesty, as the media do in echo of the MIVILUDES dossiers, that the said “cults” are a new, unique, significant scourge, dissociated from the social body, having invented unusual forms of violence, and which would be a greater menace to public order than, for example, certain highly reprehensible acts of a few politicians in charge of our society? Would an interministerial mission of vigilance against the excesses of politicians be more absurd or more useful than the one that fights against “cults” whose nature and existence the law explains to us it is impossible to define, to the point of wondering whether anyone knows what one is fighting against?

Concretely, the excess of this mission against ill-defined excesses manifests itself in the diffusion of figures supposed to demonstrate the size of the scourge it must curb. Its president, Georges Fenech, intervenes frequently in the media to hammer into listeners fluctuating numbers whose use seems to have the objective of frightening rather than informing. Thus, while a parliamentary commission in 2006 revealed that there were no more than 8 children a year who risked being subjected to a menace of the “cult” type[3], M. Fenech, in interviews, gives figures ranging from 15,000 to 80,000 children in danger, according to his mood of the moment. While in 1995, at the first official listing of the “cults” in France, only 172 “cult movements”[4] had been found (of which a certain number were questionable and questioned[5][6], if only in view of the methods of their census[7]), M. Fenech, without ever explaining where this new figure comes from (and ironically, like an involuntary demonstration of the absence of effectiveness of his action), declares that there would be today at least 500[8]. On other occasions, he has also asserted that about 500,000 French citizens are subjected to cults[9], without explaining how such a membership could have been determined, since we do not know what a member of an undefined entity is.

How has our country arrived at an approach so superficial, so emotional, so devoid of perspective and of the slightest curiosity towards human aspirations? Would we not have an interest in studying this enthusiasm for spirituality, for iconoclastic explorations, in the manner of certain courageous sociologists and ethnologists? Even from the point of view of the necessity of preserving public order and protecting citizens, must one really consider the general public as a horde of the mentally ill or of irresponsible people incapable of discernment in their choices? Paulo Coelho, in his work The Zahir, asks: “As if people knew how to choose everything, schools, universities, toothpastes, cars, films, husbands, wives, lovers, but, in the matter of faith, let themselves be easily manipulated”. When offences are proven, would it not be more judicious to study their circumstances in a scientific manner, and over a significant period, in order to conclude objectively on the question of the harmfulness of spirituality, or on the more probable fact that human beings have made errors, independently of their belonging or not to any group?

It is necessary to make our Franco-French approach to the spiritual question evolve, in order to call into question its impulses to regiment the thought of citizens on the basis of a politicians’ morality which is not even really secular[10].

From the point of view of public order, many jurists and neutral observers have recognised that the law was sufficient to repress offences, when they occur (and not when one anticipates that they could occur, one day, on the basis of erroneous data mixed with irrational fears). From the point of view of spirituality, it is not healthy to want to purge practices and theories of whatever might be eccentric, as though we were capable of defining universally a “clean” spirituality suited to everyone. From the point of view of the notion of “mental manipulation” (which is moreover not recognised by the human sciences[11]), it is obvious on the one hand that the “cults” did not invent this powder, and that if manipulation is a scourge it should be treated beyond the cleavages and stigmatisations of the anti-cult fight, and on the other hand that the damage objectively caused by a few associations in the French landscape, when there is a proven offence, is insignificant compared with what is practised in institutions where power is real and consequential, including on the part of the government towards the people. From the point of view of the rigour implied by the serious critique of a phenomenon as old as the world (the religious fact), it is urgent to entrust the care of evaluating the spiritualities (their place and their incidence on public order) in our country to an observatory made up of neutral figures competent in the domains of the human sciences and the religious fact at least as much as from a legal or militant point of view.

It is important to see our society grow, to spare it the violence, the abuses it makes its citizens undergo, but this “mission” will not succeed by creating artificial interior enemies and by making tens of thousands of our fellow citizens undergo defamations, noisy harassments and silent ostracisations, without possibility of reparation, as we have often observed.

Our association, CICNS, works towards an information which, far from defending excesses, suggests the means to “understand”, to tolerate and to “heal”.

André Tarassi, for CICNS – April 2012[1] http://www.cicns.net/PathologieDelicate.htm[2] http://www.ccmm.asso.fr/spip.php?article938[3] http://www.cicns.net/Auditions_Commission_Parlementaire_2006.htm#7[4] http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/rap-enq/r2468.asp[5] http://www.rose-croix.org/Documents/livre.html[6] http://www.unicaen.fr/puc/ecrire/revues/crdf/crdf2/crdf0203gast.pdf p.57[7] http://fr.wikipedia.org/[8] http://lci.tf1.fr/france/societe/2009-05/quelles-sont-les-nouvelles-niches-des-sectes-4887958.html[9] http://www.miviludes.gouv.fr/faq (paragraph “Is there an estimate of the cult phenomenon in France?”)[10] http://jeanbauberotlaicite.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/01/29/la_laicite_c_est_quoi.html[11] /library/cicns/manipulation-mentale-resume/