Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

A Former Nun Speaks Candidly About Pope Francis, Deception, and Mind Control in the Catholic Church

By Ann Marie

Pope Francis is trying to pull Protestants into the Catholic Church. As you will see, several things are helping him accomplish this.

Ecumenism seems plausible because Catholics use words in a way that outsiders don’t understand. Because Protestants don’t understand what Catholics really mean, they think they have a lot of things in common, when in reality, they don’t. For example, let’s look at the word “grace.” According to the Bible, salvation cannot be earned. It only comes from the grace of God. The apostle Paul says:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. (Titus 3:5)

However, according to Catholic doctrine, if people do good works, and they fulfill certain specified requirements, then they can merit a “divine reward” from God.1 This is a doctrine of earning spiritual blessings by doing good works. In addition, the liturgical ritual for baptizing infants includes a prayer asking God to give grace to the water in the baptismal font (the water used to sprinkle the infant).2 For Catholics, “grace” is something that can even be given to inanimate objects such as water.

Here is another example of how Protestants can think they understand Catholicism, when they really don’t. A Catholic priest wrote to me saying that the Catholic Church teaches we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. However, he failed to mention something. According to official Catholic doctrine, we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ—PLUS being baptized, going to Mass on Sundays, receiving communion at least once a year, going to confession at least once a year, believing the official doctrines of the Catholic Church, and dying in “a state of grace.” (In America, Mass on Saturdays can be substituted for Mass on Sundays.)

Pope Francis claims that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God. We do not! Christians and Jews worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Bible tells us to love and forgive. Muslims worship a very different “god,” and the Koran tells Muslims to kill “infidels” if they refuse to convert to Islam.

In June 2014, Pope Francis invited Muslims and Jews to the Vatican for an interfaith service for Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. This is the first time in history that Islamic prayers have been held at the Vatican.3

When listening to Pope Francis or reading his statements, please remember— he is a Jesuit; and Jesuits believe it is morally right to engage in “mental reservations.” This is the practice of saying something with the deliberate intention of deceiving people, but doing it in a way that avoids technically telling a lie. One form this can take is to add more words in your mind that are never spoken, but taken together with those said out loud, the total statement would technically be true.4

Jesuits and Mind Control
The Jesuits practice a form of mind control. It violates a person’s ability to think independently and to follow one’s own conscience. In addition, this can be used to pressure people to obey orders to do bad things. This approach can be seen in the following three rules from the “Spiritual Exercises” of Saint Ignatius Loyola. (He was the founder of the Jesuits.) The “Spiritual Exercises” are divided into sections of four “weeks,” followed by sections of four kinds of rules. These are from the last section of rules titled “Rules for Thinking with the Church.” Ignatius Loyola taught his followers:

Rule 1: Putting aside all private judgment, we should keep our minds prepared and ready to obey promptly and in all things the true spouse of Christ our Lord, our Holy Mother, the hierarchical Church.

Rule 9: [T]o praise all the precepts of the Church, holding ourselves ready at all times to find reasons for their defense, and never offending against them.

Rule 13: If we wish to be sure that we are right in all things, we should always be ready to accept this principle: I will believe that the white that I see is black, if the hierarchical Church so defines it. For, I believe that between the Bridegroom, Christ our Lord, and the Bride, His Church, there is but one spirit, which governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls, for the same Spirit and Lord, who gave us the Ten Commandments, guides and governs our Holy Mother Church.5 (emphasis added)

In addition to these Jesuit teachings, the Catholic Church itself promotes mind control. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the idea of freedom of religion is wrong. Religious belief is said to be “outside the realm of free private judgment,” which means that people are not supposed to use their own personal judgment to determine their religious beliefs.6

According to Canon Law (the official laws governing the Roman Catholic Church), Catholics are required to submit their minds and wills to any declaration concerning faith or morals which is made by the Pope or by a church council. They are also required to avoid anything that disagrees with such declarations.7

The Catholic Church teaches that only the Magisterium of the Catholic Church (the Pope and the bishops in communion with him) has the right to interpret Scripture. People are not allowed to interpret Scripture for themselves. They are supposed to rely entirely on Catholic Church authorities.8 Catholics are supposed to “receive with docility” any directives given to them by Catholic Church authorities.9

A Spirit of Control
The Catholic Church has a strong spirit of control. However, it does not always show it overtly. There is an old saying that when it is in the minority, then it is as meek as a lamb; when it is equal in power with other denominations or religions, then it is sly as a fox; and when it is in power, then it becomes as fierce as a tiger.

Two examples of this are the claim to be infallible and the claim to be able to consign people to hell. I’ll discuss infallibility here, while information about anathemas and consigning people to hell are found in the appendix.

According to the official teaching of the Catholic Church, Catholic men and women are not allowed to believe what they read in the Bible without first checking it out with the Catholic Church. They are required to find out how the bishops of the Church interpret a passage, and they are to accept what the bishops teach “with docility” as if it came from Jesus Christ Himself. They are not allowed to use their own judgment or follow their own conscience. They are required to believe whatever the bishops teach without questioning it.*10

The Catholic Church also teaches that when the bishops officially teach doctrine relating to faith and morals, then God supernaturally prevents them from making any errors. This is called “infallibility.” It applies to official councils, such as the Second Vatican Council. It also applies to other teachings, as long as the bishops and the Pope are in agreement about them.11

In addition to all this, the Pope is said to be infallible whenever he makes an official decree on matters of faith and morals. According to Catholic doctrine, it is impossible for the Pope to teach false doctrine. Catholics are expected to obey the Pope without question even when he is not making an “infallible” statement about doctrine. They are expected to submit their wills and minds to the Pope without question.12

The “Early Fathers,” and the theologians and canon lawyers of the Middle Ages, never taught that the bishops or the Pope were infallible. This is demonstrated by the fact that in 680 A.D., the Sixth Ecumenical Council condemned a pope as a heretic. It was not until the fourteenth century that the theory of infallibility began to emerge. With the development of this theory came a change in the interpretation of some biblical passages.13

My Experience with Mind Control
I understand such things because I used to be a nun in a convent where we were subjected to some forms of mind control. Our personal identities were taken away from us, and we were given new names. We were cut off from our families. We were not allowed to have any kind of emotional attachment to any person or even to an animal. We had to keep silence, which prevented us from communicating with the other nuns.

We had no free time. Everything was scheduled. We had several services a day to sing the Divine Office (Vespers, etc.). Plus we went to Mass every day. We also had scheduled prayer time in the evening, when there was a strict code of silence. All of our other time was spent doing chores.

In the convent, we owned absolutely nothing. I wore my eyeglasses, but they could have taken them if they wanted to.

Christians are supposed to put on the mind of Christ. We do that through prayer and reading the Bible. In contrast, in the convent, we were taught to put on the mind of the Pope and of the founder of our religious order and also of our mother superior. They were our guides rather than the Bible. We were led by them instead of being led by the Holy Spirit.

In effect, our superiors were our conscience and our brains. We were not allowed to think independently or have our own opinions about things, much less communicate about any questions we might have. We were not to ask questions—just obey.

When I left the convent, the nun responsible for getting me out of there whisked me away in such a fashion that the other nuns never saw me leave. I recall noticing that nuns would disappear from time to time but didn’t understand what that meant until it happened to me.

The nun took me to the bus station and got me a ticket to go back home, which was in another state. While she was at the bus station, she called my parents. I thanked God that my parents were home at that time. They weren’t out of town or away visiting friends. I didn’t have enough money to take a cab from the bus station to the house, and I didn’t have a key to the house. If my mother and dad had not been there, I would have landed helplessly at the mercy of strangers.

When I got home, it was strange talking to people again, and it took me a while to get used to it. It was strange hugging my family because I wasn’t used to touching people.

For months afterward, I always kept my head covered. I always wore a scarf. In the convent, we always kept our heads covered, except when we went to bed at night. It took me months to be able to have my head uncovered without feeling guilty about it. After that, it took many more months before I was able to put on lipstick, and when I did it, I felt guilty.

I got a job as a temporary secretary as I had been a secretary before going into the convent. One day, a man called my boss on the phone, and my boss asked me who it was. I told him I didn’t know, so he told me to ask the caller who he was. I wasn’t able to do that. For years, as a secretary, I had routinely asked callers who they were, but being in the convent, I could not be assertive enough to ask a question like that. Therefore, my boss had to teach me how to do it.

I have some friends who are former nuns. They also went through strange experiences while making the adjustment to normal life. One of them had a woman mentor her. The woman taught her how to ride a bus, how to shop, how to handle money, how to fix her hair, and how to do other things that people take for granted. She had lost all of those skills while she was in the convent.

One friend of mine who is a former nun was trained to whip herself. It took a lot of training to get her to think that it was the right thing to do. But because she trusted and obeyed her superiors, she came to believe it was a good thing. However, she didn’t actually put this into practice because Vatican II came along, and the convent changed its policy; but she was trained for it and was prepared to do it.

Leaving the Catholic Church
Eventually I left the Catholic Church and became an evangelical Christian. It took me a long time to do that, with a lot of Bible study and prayer. Even after I was fully persuaded that Catholicism taught things contrary to Scripture, it was difficult to leave because of the degree of mind control to which I had been subjected.

Getting out of the Catholic Church was one thing, but getting Catholicism out of me was another matter. It was a long, slow, difficult, and painful process because of the level of mind control I had gone through, but I wanted the truth—no matter what it cost me to learn it. Truth is precious, and the Lord Jesus Christ is truth incarnate. He says,

"I am the way, the truth, and the life." (John 14:6)


Continued Part 2