Red Meg of Catholic Answers Forum replies to questions on Opus Dei
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rafaela
I am the one responsible for translating the letter of Prelate each month to one of the smaller European languages.
Thank you!!! As one who reads the letter in translation to English every month, I know how appreciated that kind of help is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rafaela
It is just that as an academic, I feel my intellect is being neglected in some elements of the Work. For instance, why does OD center never call it self one? The name is always something like ''Maple woods cultural center for women'' (made it up) but that is the way. Now u may say that it has to do with privacy of people who live there. My question is though why is it needed there in comparison to saying this is ''Monastery of the order of Dominicans''.
I guess the way I've always thought about it is this: a center is, first and foremost, a home. We don't have the custom here in the US of assigning names to individual houses, but my impression is that some parts of Europe do, which is rather charming. But even if we did name our homes here, I don't think my family, Catholic though we may be, would call it something like "St. Gemma" or "A Little Piece of Opus Dei" or anything like that. It would be kind of weird, don't you think? It would strike me as equally weird for a center to be named like that. Particularly when the center is a large residence (I'm thinking of the college kids' place in Boston, now) there will be many residents who are not practicing, or are not Catholic, or are not even Christian. Tacking on some kind of "churchy" name would be off-putting, and could potentially deprive them of what could otherwise be a truly wonderful living experience. Many people think they cannot stand Christianity, yet when they see it lived out, simply, day by day, they understand the appeal.
Does that make any sense?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rafaela
Another point that there is, is that when ever I mention ''cult'' everybody in the Work seem to get unreasonably irritated. Why is that, unless if what I say has some sort of tiny part of truth? You know, originally sociologists, used word ''cult'' to refer to any relatively small religious group.
Last things first-- in English, at least here in the US, cult has taken on an exclusively perjorative meaning. It implies you have "checked your brains at the front door," so to speak, and decided to abandon all pretense of independent thought and freedom.
This whole notion of abandoning freedom is completely inimical to our spirit. St. Josemaria insisted time and time again that we needed to be living out our vocations with total freedom.
Many of us have simply had our patience tested over the last few years with all the Da Vinci Code nonsense. People that, for years, couldn't give a hoot that someone belonged to Opus Dei, suddenly became deeply interested, but not for any spiritual reason, but because of the potential for a freak show. KWIM? I hope you can understand that it can all get a bit tiresome at some point.
This might be a rather silly example, but suppose the notion that a mother couldn't properly care for more than two or three children became widespread and fixed in popular culture. If that happened, I, as the mother of eight, would probably start to get a bit exasperated at some point if many of my acquaintances, even without malice, kept innocently saying, "But surely you can't take care of that many! Some of them must be neglected/underfed/whatever." Yes?
I hope this makes some sense, at least??
Best,
Margaret
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