The Cursillo (cur-see-yo) movement originated in Spain in 1947. The official name, Cursillos in Christianity, means "a short course in Christian living."

Founder Bishop Juan Hervas states, "The cursillo movement is aimed at Christian renewal and to bringing to the Church a group of Christians dedicated to living the life of Grace and working with all their strength to bring others to live it."

The movement encourages evangelical-sounding words (born again, salvation experience, receiving Christ) without the biblical basis for salvation, the completed work of Jesus Christ on Calvary. Those who attend cursillos (they are called "cursillistas") are encouraged to live their "Christian" lives within the sacramental framework of Romanism; they are usually fervently involved in the sacraments.

Terminologies Roman Catholics learn in cursillos confuse their evangelical friends, who don't realize these terms have a different meaning for Roman Catholics. In some cursillos, evangelical are recruited to share this experience with their "Catholic brothers", and some are now being conducted almost solely for Protestants as an ecumenical ploy.

The lay involvement promoted in cursillos has greatly strengthened the Church.

This movement is creating a "climate of tolerance" which supposes that religious people can meet together in "love and unity," regardless of totally different beliefs regarding Christ's finished redemption.

The national Cursillo movement has began a pilot program of evangelization of non-Catholics called Arise. It is directed to the unchurched and to members of other churches. The Arise program used a three-day weekend of prayer, community experience and presentations by a team of two priests and 14 laymen to examine the Catholic Church's history and doctrine.

After a Cursillo, cursillistas get together for a bi-weekly Ultreya, where they talk about their spiritual lives.

The Cursillo Movement is a program within the Roman Catholic Church to bring "renewal" and work as an instrument of "evangelizing" non-members. The May 20th issue of the Vatican's L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO reported the pope's reminder to its participants of the inseparable link between "evangelizing" and submitting to the Roman yoke: "To evangelize means bringing the Good News of Christ 'into all the strata of humanity' ... But there is no new humanity if there is not first of all new persons renewed by Baptism and by lives lived according to the Gospel. The Cursillo weekend retreats appeal to Catholics and non-Catholics alike so a word of warning must be given to its basic purpose -- Catholic evangelization and indoctrination (M.H. Reynolds, Jr., Fundamental Bible Church Bulletin, Los Osos, California, June 2, 1985).

The Cursillo movement is one of the newest of Rome's successful plans to fool sleepy Protestants and others. The Roman Catholic Church has replaced the mailed fist approach to non-Catholics with the Trojan horse of infiltration by guile, intrigue and deception. The Cursillo Movement is an example. A pamphlet from their Louisville, Kentucky, office says, 'Although it is Catholic in origin and setting, now Protestants and Catholics can have an encounter with Christ together.' This retreat revival weekend is called a Cursillo.

So today's priests are being trained to use expressions like born again, salvation experience, salvation history, encounter with Christ, baptism of the Holy Spirit, salvation from a non-divine existence, receiving Christ, charismatic experience, kerygma, etc. They are attending evangelistic crusades, learning the hymns, the messages, the terminology. They are going forward at invitations, being interviewed in the inquiry rooms by counselors and personal, workers, filling out cards indicating the church of their choice as Roman Catholic. Priests and nuns are being trained to attend Full Gospel meetings and to copy the actions and motions of others. Priests are joining local councils of churches, YMCAs, speaking in Pentecostal, Methodist, Baptist and other so-called Protestant churches.

One priest, Cursillo Director in Louisville, told me the Baptist minister welcomed him as a brother in Christ because, he said, we both believe in Jesus. This priest boasted to me that he was conducting a revival in a Methodist Church. Fundamentalists, beware!

Modernists are not the only ones being fooled. The FGBMI, for instance, has published a booklet, ROMAN CATHOLICS AND THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. It contains testimonies of priests, nuns and laity telling how they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and now they attend Mass more regularly, are more devoted Roman Catholics and say, "We appreciate the liturgy more fully." The Roman Catholic Church is doing away with the old catechism books. It is not denying the contents contained in them; it's just phasing them out for its new program of the Trojan Horse. Now they have modern catechisms. They now admit that the old catechism classes were drab, dull and repetitious.

Modern catechists are to teach the liturgy as the saving actions of Christ made present to God's people today. Christ's purpose was "that they might accomplish the work of salvation which they have proclaimed by means of sacrifice and sacraments around which the entire liturgical life revolves." And again they say that Christ is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, especially under the Eucharistic Species.

Expressions appealing to Protestants, such as salvation, appear often. On the one hand they are trying to accommodate themselves to Protestants, even fundamentalists, by speaking of salvation as a gift of God not to be merited. On the other hand, under all the camouflage there is still the Roman pope, the blasphemous Mass, the idolatrous devotion to Mary, salvation by sacraments, the new birth by water baptism and the same old purgatory -- all denying the efficacy of the blood atonement of Jesus Christ.

Yes, it is the same old Romish attack on the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ hidden inside the Trojan Horse of Protestant expressions and activities. In modern catechisms we read that all of creation is evolutionary and the dynamism of God's creativity points to man as the crown of creation. Hence salvation is the final step in this creative process, and is the divinizing of creation in the person of man.

And some Christians, even pastors, are snowed by such verbiage and effervescence. We need to read and study passages in the Word of God that warn of crafty teachers, deceitful workers, and Satan and his ministers coming as angels of light (Luke 20:23; Eph. 4:214; 2 Cor. 11:13; Mt. 24:4,5,24; Acts 5:3; Rom. 16:17-18; Eph. 5:6; 2 Cor. 11:26; 2 Peter 2:1; Luke 21:8; 1 Cor. 6:9; 2 Tim. 3:13; Rev. 18:23; 2 John 7).

Then warn truly converted persons against being fooled by Rome's espionage agents. Instead, in the love and power of the Holy Spirit, pierce their disguise with the word of God, the sword of the Spirit. Bring them under conviction of sin. Expose their counterfeit Christ (2 Cor 11:14). Show them how to be truly converted according to the Christ of the Bible, the Christ Who saves fully and completely from sin and hell by faith alone in His substitutionary blood sacrifice. Then lead them out of Roman idolatry into a Christ-centered, Bible teaching, missionary-minded, evangelistic, fundamental, separated, New Testament Christian church. Turn the tables on the devil (Bill Jackson, Christian's Guide to Roman Catholicism, Copyright 1988). [Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service. These articles cannot be stored on BBS or Internet sites or sold or placed by themselves or with other material in any electronic format for sale, but may be distributed for free by e-mail or by print. They must be left intact and nothing removed or changed, including these informational headers.