What do I have to say about my expiriences of the last 8 months?

Well, considering the lack of professionalism; exploitation of religion; enforced breaking of friendships; breaching of personaly disclosed information; and turning everything possible(included a sacred union of persons) into and advertizing gimmik, I must say I am not impressed with how things went.

I was told I could trust that my personal testimony would be kept confidential. That it was simply to help us all get to know eachother better.
However, not only did the disclosing of my personal information (thank God I only spoke of 10% of it) led to the school authorities holding information about my past over my head in an attempt to guilt me; but they even went so far as to offer to give forth that information to other people who simply did not need to know.
I thank those people for having enough respect for me to refuse that information; and to warn me, that I might avoid giving those who would betray my confidence more ammunition to work with against me.

One such authority of the "school" enjoyed refering to himself as our "big brother in Christ!" However, it was later brought to my attention how much that seemed to parallel with the popular phrase "Big Brother is watching!" Considering how he would constantly be keeping watch over us; calling us on every move that didn't align with "the duty of the moment", that phrase quickly became my watch-word for the situation.

The "duty of the moment" claim brings further issues up with me. What really was their view on this "duty of the moment"? They say that it consists of whatever is on our schedual. Whatever the people in charge of the "school" say we have to do becomes our "duty of the moment."
I have had moments when I had very dear friends of mine in a postion where they needed me to talk them through an urgent situation they were in... but I was scorned for responding to my friend's need, as opposed to following the schedualed games session that was taking place in the field.

Oddly enough, their reasoning for this; after I told them that I felt my friend needed me alot more than some silly game; was that I shouldn't bother trying to be in communication with people "outside of the community." I was expected to completely abandon all connections outside of the "school" in order to focus 110% on what we were being told to do.
But the last I had checked, the name of the school is "St Therese: Catholic College of Faith and MISSION"! One would think that a part of mission would be reaching out to people OUTSIDE the community!
But of course they like to talk about how St Therese is the patroness of missions even though she never left her convent.
The logic these people use doesn't make much sense.
Yet another thing they would try to force upon us of "St Therese's spirituality" was the idea of accepting false accusations as opposed to standing up for yourself. You were NOT allowed to stand up for yourself no matter what you were accused of. Total submission to authorities was demanded of us. And yet we were told not to kneel during the Consecration during Mass; something ROME says we are supposed to do. And last I checked, Rome(specifically PP BXVI) was our topmost authority; above anyone at the "school".

Another thing I have heard was that one director of the school claimed that the healing programme set up was the ONLY way of receiving healing. Suggesting that the sacraments instituted by Christ Himself as a source of healing arn't good enough that we need to resort to a man-made system to receive true healing.
Several sources of mine; some who have talked to the people running the healing sessions, some who have actually expirienced them; have told me that the whole thing is merely a way to get information about you and your family. Information they can easily bring up as leverage over you; either to learn what sort of weaknesses in your personality-type can be exploited, or simply to hold things over your head to make you feel as though you're incabable of making the right choices in a given situation.

I know that I for one have expirienced the second of such maliceous attempts of mind manipulation. As I had alluded to earlier; they regularly made use of the information from my testimony to try to convince me that I wasn't properly suited to make my own decisions. That I needed to have them, with their "unbiased" opinions, make my decisions for me.
Lucky for me; my "questionable past" ended up helping me out of that situation. I had spend some deal of time studying manipulation tactics used by cults and media, and my knowledge of such things prepared me to defend myself from their psychological attacks.

I managed to neutralize one such occation simply by telling the director what he wanted to hear. We wrestled with the idea of me completely abandoning my friends and stop planning what I'm going to do once I'm finished at the "school"; but after an hour and a half of getting nowhere, and REALLY needing to use the restroom, I simply BSed my way out of it. I said "I honestly don't understand a thing you're saying about this; but I'm going to trust you..." and as soon as I had finished saying those words; the inquisitioner's face illuminated with a broad smile, and you could see the look of joy in the percieved victory.
At that point, I knew that the director was simply power-hungry. Desiring to have everyone bow in awe as he lorded over us. Something I made sure to keep note of as I avoided further confrontations with him.

Many more things occured while I was present at the "school" that troubled me very much; but none of them could compare with what I endured after I had left.

After I had finally gotten fed-up with dealing with the "school", I left.
After a month, I came back to the town, but not to the "school". I tried to contact several friends of mine who were still there, and requested to meet back up with them. A few of them agreed; though other's simply ignored my invitations, or made excuses about me not being reasonable.
The few who did meet up with me treated me to a wonderful time of catching up... but after the one night we spent together; they too stopped reaching out to me as friends.
After some time, I noticed that they would even avoid eyecontact with me when I saw them at Mass each week. They treated me like I didn't exsist.

This brought to mind something else that I had expirienced while I was still part of the "school".
I had tried to maintain communication with the other students who had left; but was told by the directors that I shouldn't be talking to them anymore as they had "left the community"... So I suspect that these "friends" of mine were told the same thing about me. The difference is, I completely disregarded what I was told, thinking that my friends were far more important to me than following these people who only wanted to manipulate me for whatever end... Sadly, I don't think my "friends" felt the same way... and so they distanced themselves more and more.

I hope they all have wonderful lives; but I really hope that no one else gets hurt by this place that so very closely resembles a cult. This place that doesn't give a damn about your salvation; unless you're loaded financially of course. Then they'll do everything in their power to "save you".~

God bless and keep them all... far away from me.