The Cathars—condemned as diabolical heretics by the Roman church—are often hailed as a manifestation of a separate, ‘primitive’ brand of Christianity. A brand that could be termed as Proto-Protestants or even enlightened harbingers of social and sexual equality.*
They’ve also been roped into the resurgence of southern French—or Occitanian—cultural identity. If you travel to towns like Toulouse, Albi, and Carcassonne today, you’ll see signs proclaiming the Pays Cathare, ‘Cathar country’ with prominent displays of the gold-and-red Cathar cross, which is misleading since they didn’t worship the cross.*
Like many other secret orders down through time, the Cathars have been spun, co-opted, and mythologized, which makes sorting out who exactly they were and what they believed almost impossible.*
Indeed, like many secret societies, the Cathars leave open doors at both ends. They appear and disappear with no definitive evidence of creation or destruction. Still, as a religious movement—one that must have had hundreds of thousands of followers—how can Catharism be called a secret society?*
As always, that comes down to inner doctrines as opposed to outward appearances. The name Cathar comes from the Greek term katharos, or ‘pure’. It’s the same root as our modern term ‘catharsis’, meaning cleansing or release. But the Cathars never called themselves such. Instead, they referred to themselves simply as Bons Chrétiens, ‘good Christians’; or Bons Hommes, ‘good men’.*
Despite the heretic label, Cathars regarded themselves as Christians—the true Christians. An alternative name was Albigensian, taken from one of their main strongholds, Albi. Cathars believed that a good god rules the world of spirit, whereas the material world is a spiritual prison ruled by the evil god.*
https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/cathars-the-medieval-progressives/
heretic [ˈherəˌtik] NOUN a person believing in or practicing religious heresy.
synonyms: dissident · dissenter · nonconformist · unorthodox thinker · [more] a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted.
#That sounds so familiar!
I can think of someone that knows all about this too!