DR. JEFFREY TIEL

With the recent nomination of a former Handmaid of a Covenant Community to the Supreme Court of the United States, many people are asking for the first time, “What is a Covenant Community?” The following description attempts to provide a deeper explanation using documentation from two major Covenant Communities as well as the experiences of former members who have exited, many after years of participation.

Today I take up the literary and spiritual sword to expose an ongoing (as of June 2026) infiltration of a Catholic parish by a man named John Mullen and the group he leads called The Arena. But like all successful infiltrators, he does not appear with horns and a tail, but instead with a smile and a meat smoker.

Cultic Captivity A cult is an organization whose advocacy of an ideology coupled to behavioral prescription coercively infringes upon personal, familial, political, and/or epistemic liberty. We usually think of cults as religious organizations, but there are non-religious cults, too, such as the so called “executive success programs” business cult, NXIVM, of Keith Ranieri fame (yes, the now-imprisoned leader who advocated branding his initials above the genitals of his femal

The Church has taught from the beginning that there is only one baptism, namely that baptism in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit that Jesus tasked his apostles with spreading to the four corners of the earth.