______________________________
The pravoslavie.bi website reported that a centre for the protection of family and personal health is being set up in Belarus. It’ll give systematic counselling and rehabilitation to the victims of unhealthy forms of religiosity (destructive cults and sectarian distortions of traditional religions) and quasi-religious groups (for example, commercial cults with pyramid marketing), to their families and relatives. According to the St Joseph of Volokolamsk Information and Counselling Centre of the Minsk Diocese, 398 organisations connected with new religious movements are active in Belarus, of which 101 organisations fit into the sect and cult category. Apart from this, 297 so-called “consumer cults” are active in the Republic. Only thirteen new religious movements have official registry in Belarus as religious organisations. At the same time, on average, fourteen new religious movements appeared in the country each year since 1988. These new religious movements distribute 421 periodicals, of which 96 originate in Belarus. Moreover, 258 “healers”, fortune-tellers, psychics, sorcerers, magicians, chiromancers, and 28 astrologers advertise their services in the Belarusian media.
Oleg Nagorny, the new project’s coordinator, said, “The centre for the protection of family and personal health, which is being set up with the support of the St Joseph of Volokolamsk Centre, is called on to carry out fully-fledged work connected with counselling cult followers and their relatives on issues of overcoming cult dependency and the consequences of ‘cult trauma’. The approach, which has been developed through private counselling in the light of Russian, Ukrainian, European, and North American experience, is based on personal counselling”. Psychological counsellors attached to the centre, clerics, and paraprofessionals will give help in solving specific problems of psychological, spiritual, and social life for victims of cults. The centre’s counsellor on spiritual and theological questions is the Rector of St Nicholas of Japan missionary parish church in Minsk, Fr Pavel Serdyuk. His approach gently includes the victim in a system of healing relationships with his or her relatives or with an affected group.
22 April 2013
Pravmir.com
Orthodox Christianity and the World
http://www.pravmir.com/center-to-help-the-victims-of-destructive-religious-sects-to-be-set-up-in-belarus/
Editor’s Note:
Evangelicals, Mormons, JWs, Pentecostalists, and Adventists aren’t “nice people”… they’re deluded cultists. That’s one reason why the Church has to get out of the so-called “Pro-Life Movement”… it’s shot through with cultists and their crank distortions of Christianity. We’ve nothing in common with such movements… also, reflect on this… these cultists attack our Mother Churches in the Orthosphere. Why fraternise with such heretics? That’s crackbrained… it’s like cosying up to a rabid dog. If you’re bit, there’s hell to pay. We should listen to our good-sense… but shall we?
BMD
4 May 2013
