Mexican Cult has Partisan Motives, Catholic Trappings

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, August 9, 1998—A cult begun by a former Catholic priest who split with the Church over Vatican II treats its members cruelly, said a major San Francisco Examiner investigative article, but the government refuses to intervene.

The reason: the cult runs the town of Nueva Jerusalén, which faithfully votes for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, said the article. Village leaders, followers of Nabor Cardenas — “Papa Nabor” — enforce a strict code that jails men for talking with women after the town's daily rosary, or for missing daily Latin Mass, the report said.

Villagers follow what they are told, from faith in the leader's supposed visions, or from fear of the private police force which carries forbidden military-style heavy weaponry and controls the town's substandard but much-used jail, said the report.

Mexican authorities refuse to intervene on the people's behalf, the report said, and in fact have given the town special privileges because it dependably votes for PRI in a Province that the Party might otherwise lose. Exiled villagers said that at each election they would be told that town leaders had been talking with “the Virgin,” who wanted them to vote PRI.

According to the article, the cult believes Pope Paul VI is still alive, held hostage in the Vatican basement by conspiratorial thugs, but that he will emerge before the world ends in the year 2000 in order to save mankind.

Christ's Head is Not in Scotland, Says Church

BRITISH BROADCASTING CORP., August 11—Christian thinkers from St. Paul to Pope John Paul II have reminded us that Catholic belief requires supernatural faith — but that it also ultimately depends on historical fact. If Christ did not actually rise bodily from the dead, then all of our faith is in vain.

That's why, when an anthropologist claimed to have found Christ's head, a Scottish Church official considered his theory important enough to disprove, which he did in an August 11 BBC report.

Dr Keith Laidler has written a book, The Head of God - The Lost Treasure of the Templars, explaining that there was a cult of heads in the Middle Ages, and that one chapel in Scotland had a claim to the greatest of all: Jesus Christ's. Theories of its transport to Scotland from Jerusalem involve Mary Magdalene in one version, and a Knights Templar who visited the Holy Land in another. It is still buried beneath the 15th century Rosslyn Chapel, Laidler says.

Father Danny McLoughlin, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland, turned to history to address Dr. Laidler's claim: “The Templars disappeared in Scotland in the 13th century and that chapel was not built until 300 years later, so there seems to be a slight problem there, to say nothing of the other problems we would see,” he is quoted saying.

Catholics in Tasmania Protest Explicit TV

NEWS LIMITED, August 10—In the United States, “1-900” phone ads have become a staple of late-night advertising. Catholics in Tasmania hope to prevent the same thing from happening there.

A group called the Tasmanian Catholic Schools Parents and Friends Federation is objecting to the authorities about sexually explicit advertisements. The group's president, Ian Dalton, said that while the group was particularly concerned about television ads — which he says are now aired during major sporting events that kids like to watch — the federation also objects to such ads in the print media, said the report.

“It needs to be stringently monitored,” if not banned altogether, Dalton is quoted saying.

The group hopes to be successful in its efforts by showing a broad concern about community issues. The federation also voted to speak to government officials on behalf of the education budget and traffic safety issues, the report said.