After losing a lawsuit in France filed by former members, and barely escaping being outlawed there for its extortionist tactics, the strange “religion” of L. Ron Hubbard is now being charged with pressuring inner circle members of its elite “order” of the Sea Org to have abortions. If you want to “clear” the world of all its negative “engrams,” devoted Sea Org crusaders were told, you can’t be bogged down with children. To convince members that its OK to have an abortion, when the organization was supposedly anti-abortion, pregnant Sea Orgers were shown unpublished writings of Hubbard where he taught that babies didn’t receive their own spirit until birth. For the greater good, they were told, they ought to sacrifice rearing children. If they did chose to have a baby they were demoted from their rank. The members of the “order” were brainwashed into working all kinds of labor for long hours and little pay. Their earnings ended up with the organization because they were pressured into buying everything Scientology had to sell, including tickets for expensive and long workshops and seminars. Every member, of course, just had to have an updated version of Hubbard’s patented invention (actually invented by his ardent disciple Volney Mathison), the electro-psychometer (E-Meter), if they wanted to get “cleared.” Naturally the device could only be purchased from Hubbard Association of Scientologists. “The E-Meter sees all, knows all. It is never wrong,” Hubbard wrote in his Electropsychometric Auditing Operator’s Manual, 1953.78. That’s another story. So is the history and theology of the ersatz religion, which was woven out of the author’s original science fiction novels. Actually it was only later in his workbook, I believe, and not in his famous book Dianetics, that Hubbard began to call his school of fantasy a “religion” and that was in order to qualify for tax exemption. If I am wrong about this maybe someone will correct me.
Randy Sly examines the sect’s latest problems here in his Catholic Online article. Definitely worth a read if you know anyone involved with Scientology.
