"The Mouse that Roared": A Short Summary of the French Parliamentary Report of June 1999 on Cults' Finances

A note by Massimo Introvigne

Formally dated June 10, a new French Parliamentary Report addresses the question of cults' finances. It is a 322 pages document signed by MP Jacques Guyard (the author of the 1996 report) as president of the commission and by MP Jean-Pierre Brard (one of the most extreme members of the official Mission to Fight Against Cults) as main writer. The parliamentary commission and the Mission to Fight Against Cults are two different bodies and should not be confused, although both Guyard and Brard are members of both.

The report is divided in three parts. The first deals with the present situation of cults ("sectes" in French), and how they are organized. It states that the list of cults of the 1996 report is still valid but new "cults", originally excluded because they were (mistakenly) declared non-dangerous, should now be included, most notably Anthroposophy and the Rosicrucian order AMORC. It tries to outline the "typical" structure of a cult (including an international organization, an association for the pseudo-religious activities, and a different organization for commercial activities such as selling books or seminars). In France, the report states, most cults are organized either as associations (law of 1901) or "association for ritual and religious activities" ("cultuelles": law of 1905); some are also organized as political parties (Transcendental Meditation, and the Humanist Party, a front for an Argentinian cult). Cults recognized internationally as NGOs may now benefit of the European convention for mutual recognition of NGOs of 1986, an extremely dangerous possibility according to the report. The report proposes to make more strict the requirements for associations in general, to deny uniformly to cults the statute of "cultuelles" since they are against public order, and to limit the access of small political parties with no parliamentary representation to free TV appearances and public funds. Finally, the first part discusses whether cults are co-ordinated by a single hidden structure. Here, the usual paranoid and cospirationist reference to CESNUR is also included. The commission calls for further "study" whether it may exist an "inter-cultic structure in fact co-ordinating and defending all the movements". CESNUR may in fact be such a hidden structure, although it may also have been superseded by Omnium (a small religious liberty group in France).

The second part deals with how cults make money and mentions various fields: education, health care, and seminars offered to corporations and businesses. Measures are proposed to exclude cults, and even individual cultists, from these fields. There is also a financial typology of cults, from the richest (Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientology) to the comparatively poor. A good way to make the rich cults less rich, the report suggests, would be to tax their "manual" donations at sixty per cent, as was recently done to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Here, names are named. Budgetary and financial information of an obviously confidential nature (including not a few names of private individuals) are offered to the general public. They have been gathered from tax records (although, the report says, not all tax authorities have co-operated), secret service investigations, compulsory answers to a questionnaire sent to sixty groups and equally compulsory attendance at secret hearings (no-shows were threatened with fines and jail, as were those who would divulge the content of the hearings). Any other individual or association, anywhere in the world, would simply sue for infringement of their privacy and win. In France parliamentary commissions are exempt from any legal liability, and the privacy of "cultists" is obviously regarded as expendable.

In the third part, the commission looks for possible crimes (fraud, social security fraud, national and international tax fraud). Here, the monumental report generates a mouse, since the commission admits that few cults are prosecuted and not many found guilty. The logic of the report, however, is "damn if you do, damn if you don't". If a cult has been found guilty of tax evasion and other financial offenses, it is dangerous. If its accounts and tax records are more or less in order, and there is no evidence of any illegal activity, the cult has "learned how to sail through the legal system" and is still more dangerous. In fact, most activities described by the report would be perfectly normal if performed by any group other than a cult and are common in most mainline churches. Accordingly, we are back to case one of this whole French business: how do you define a cult? Although it should have discussed only finances, the commission mentions other matters too. It recommends continuing the discussion whether an anti-brainwashing statute should be proposed (although it mentions dissident voices among the anti-cultist themselves - it may make prosecution more difficult), and brainwashing remain the crucial element in order to identify a cult. The report also exposes as an objectionable ruse any change of name in a movement (such as the Children of God becoming The Family, Tabitha's Place becoming "La Ferme", etc.).

In the final conclusions, the mouse roars. The report recommends more activity of the Mission to Fight Cults, more co-operation with anti-cult movements such as ADFI, and special anti-cult initiatives by each branch of the government. The level of knowledge of new religious movements as such by the commission is, as usual in similar French documents, abysmal, but the proceedings confirm the most serious concerns about religious liberty in France. The commission is concerned about international criticism of France, but has decided to go on. The rapport has been voted unanimously, although the center-right parties have added to their vote a caution that, while the fight against "cults" should continue, religious liberty should be respected. How these two elements can proceed together remains to be seen.

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