You're a murderer. (No offense intended.)

By Diogenes in Catholic Culture. April 07, 2010 9:53 AM

In a "news" story greeting the appointment of the city's coadjutor, Archbishop José Goméz, the Los Angeles Times provides some background on the prelate's membership in Opus Dei:

Opus Dei was founded by Saint Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer in Spain in 1928. Escriva held that sainthood could be achieved by anyone by carrying out everyday tasks extraordinarily well.

Superficial, but you don't expect profound spiritual reading in a daily newspaper. Let it pass. The story continues:

The movement, which enjoys a unique status at the Vatican, was depicted as a murderous cult in Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," which Opus members and the Vatican have denounced as defaming the church.

There are only two possibilities here. Either Opus Dei is a murderous cult, or Dan Brown's portrayal is defamatory. To say that "Opus members and the Vatican" object to the portrayal is to suggest that other people-- more objective people-- don't see a problem with the depiction.

Just a bit of harmless entertainment: I'm going to tell the world that you belong to a murderous cult. You won't object, will you? C'mon, be a sport! Where's your sense of humor?

St. Josemaria: Fight social injustice

Easter Homily of St. Josemaria: "Christ's Presence in Christians" found in the collection of homilies titled Christ is Passing By. He said that "it is not only a matter of being a considerate, loving person, but of making the Love of God known through human love."


It is easy to understand the impatience, anxiety and uneasiness of people whose naturally christian soul stimulates them to fight the personal and social injustice which the human heart can create. So many centuries of men living side by side and still so much hate, so much destruction, so much fanaticism stored up in eyes that do not want to see and in hearts that do not want to love!

The good things of the earth, monopolized by a handful of people; the culture of the world, confined to cliques. And, on the outside, hunger for bread and education. Human lives — holy, because they come from God — treated as mere things, as statistics. I understand and share this impatience. It stirs me to look at Christ, who is continually inviting us to put his new commandment of love into practice.

All the circumstances in which life places us bring a divine message, asking us to respond with love and service to others. "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.

"Then the King will say to those at his right hand, Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the King will answer them, Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me."

We must learn to recognize Christ when he comes out to meet us in our brothers, the people around us. No human life is ever isolated. It is bound up with other lives. No man or woman is a single verse; we all make up one divine poem which God writes with the cooperation of our freedom. (...)

When a Christian makes Christ present among men by being Christ himself, it is not only a matter of being a considerate, loving person, but of making the Love of God known through his human love. Jesus saw all his life as a revelation of this love. As he said to one of his disciples, "He who has seen me has seen the Father."

St John applies this teaching when he tells Christians that, since they have come to know the love of God, they should show it in their deeds: "Beloved, let us love one another since love comes from God, and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.

"He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we love God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."

Opus Dei seeks to make everyday life holier

Members attend daily Mass and set aside prayer time. Not all engage in corporal mortification, and those who do say it's nothing like in 'The Da Vinci Code.'

April 06, 2010|By Carla Hall in Los Angeles Times

Julia Boles, 46, lives in Arcadia with her lawyer husband and their nine children, ages 5 to 20. She also manages to attend Mass daily, set aside two times a day for prayer and, with her children, pray the rosary.

"People say, 'Nine kids? How do you handle that and go to Mass?' I say, 'How could I do this without the Mass?' "

Boles is a member of one of the most talked about, least understood Catholic organizations in the world: Opus Dei, which means "work of God" in Latin.

Although the face of Opus Dei in "The Da Vinci Code" is a murderous masochistic monk -- a fiction, the group's members say -- it is Boles who typifies the group's American demographic: She's a woman. The majority of the 190 members in L.A. are women, as are slightly more than half of the 3,000 members in the U.S.

There are no monks. And only 2% of the organization's nearly 90,000 members worldwide are priests, one of whom was Jose Gomez, the newly named successor as archbishop to Cardinal Roger Mahony. Gomez is the only priest to come up through Opus Dei who has been made a U.S. bishop.

Seton Hall law professor John Coverdale said the organization's goal is to offer lay Christians a path toward a holier life, without becoming a priest or a nun. "People would see their work as a professor or a journalist or mother or whatever they are as something to offer to God and something that they need to try to do well," said Coverdale, 69, a lay member of Opus Dei.

"It's not a bunch of pious things," said Boles, whose husband and two eldest children (UCLA students John and Ginny) are members too. "I'm chasing after kids, I'm trying to get meals on the table. . . . All of those things are precious in God's eyes if they are done with love. If you try to do it as well as you can, for God's glory, with concern for your neighbor and mine, it's wonderful."

To read the entire article see Los Angeles Times

Bishop Jose Gomez: You will be my witnesses

On Archbishop Jose Gomez's pastoral letter, You will be my witnesses. From Catholic Online.

Archbishop José H. Gomez of San Antonio issued his third pastoral letter, urging the laity to embrace the task of evangelization, calling it "the duty of every believer." The task of evangelization is all the more necessary because of the "de-Christianized" American culture, he said.

"We have a duty," stated Archbishop Gomez, "to bear witness to God. It is a duty of delight, a duty we carry out with joy and thanksgiving. We want the world beginning with those nearest to us, to share in what we have been given – the free gift of God's grace and the joy that comes with knowing the truth that sets us free."

Marking his fifth anniversary as Archbishop of San Antonio, the prelate said that he wanted his letter to continue the archdiocese's "reflection on the Christian life by talking about our duty as disciples to bear witness to Christ and his Gospel."

Recognizing that this is the Year for Priests, Archbishop Gomez said he intentionally wanted his pastoral letter to focus on the laity and "the priestly soul of the lay apostolate." Evangelization, he wrote, "is not an option or obligation reserved for priests, religious and bishops. It is the duty of every believer."

Moreover, the archbishop explained, every person in the Church "shares in Christ's priesthood" and everyone who has been baptized "has a priestly soul."

"As lay people, you are called to offer your daily work and prayer as a spiritual sacrifice of praise to God. You are called to live and work for God in a spirit of love, with a desire to serve him in all things and to do everything you can to help the souls around you."

When it comes to evangelizing, the San Antonio archbishop said it begins "in the heart," and that the experience of knowing "God's mercy and love" is what prompts the faithful to "testify to the great difference that Jesus Christ has made in our lives."

Arcbishop Gomez explained that he is issuing the call to evangelize because our culture is "de-Christianized," since "powerful interests have been at work for some decades now, patiently erasing the influence and memory of our nation's Christian heritage from our laws and public policies, from our arts and literature, from our schools and media, our language and customs, from our entire way of life."

"The result of this deliberate strategy of secularization is that more and more of our brothers and sisters today live without any awareness of their need for God," the archbishop said, noting that even "believers face the stark reality that in order to participate in the economic, political, and social life of our country, we are increasingly compelled to conduct ourselves as if God does not exist."

In light of this, evangelization is ever more imminent, Archbishop Gomez insisted.

"My brothers and sisters, I urge you: we need Catholics who are living their faith and proclaiming it in every profession and walk of life. Through you we can take the truths of the Gospel to every corner of our culture – to the world of arts, politics, and media; to the areas of business, science, and technological research; even to the fields of sports and popular entertainment," he wrote.

"Proclaiming Christ in these areas does not mean 'proselytizing,'" clarified the prelate."It means performing your work in these fields to the highest possible standards and with a Christian perspective. It means demonstrating, through your work and friendships with your colleagues, the harmony between faith and reason, and the new insights that are possible if we think of creation and discovery as something we do in partnership with our Creator."

Archbishop Gomez also reiterated that "all of us in the Church are called to testify to the God-given sanctity and dignity of the human person from conception to natural death. In our evangelization efforts as individuals and as institutions, we must defend the family, the vital cell of society, and the divine institution of marriage as between one man and one woman, which is under attack in our culture and legal system."

Among those who have a special need for evangelization, the San Antonio archbishop addressed the "millions of Hispanic immigrants in our midst" who are "in danger of drifting away from the Catholic faith to other religions or to know religion at all." Archbishop Gomez also stated his concern regarding "baptized Catholics who have fallen away from the practice of their faith and from the sacraments of the Church."

Pointing out that Catholics "cannot preach the Gospel to others unless we have first experienced its good news in our own lives," he wrote that "evangelization flows from our love of Christ" and that "proclaiming Christ is more than handing on a set of doctrines or a philosophy of life."

"Proclaiming Christ means bringing men and women into a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. It means bringing people to Jesus and Jesus to people. It means telling people who Christ is, what he teaches, and how we can come to know him better in our lives."

Archbishop Gomez concluded by saying that "Only the heart that has been converted can lead other hearts to conversion. So we need to pray always for the grace of a new, deepened, life-changing conversion. Conversion is not something that happens only once in our lives. Every day, we have to make a new effort to turn our hearts once more to the Lord."

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Bishop Gomez also said: "My approach and understanding of these matters owes a great deal to my appreciation of the spirituality of St. Josemaría Escrivá. I continue to find St. Josemaría’s teachings on sanctity and apostolate to be both profound and practical" (no. 33).

He quotes Friends of God:

Don't take the easy way out. Don't say, 'I'm no good at this sort of thing; there are others who can do it; it isn't my line'. No, for this sort of thing, there is no one else: if you could get away with that argument, so could everyone else. Christ's plea is addressed to each and every Christian. No one can consider himself excused, for whatever reason: age, health or occupation. There are no excuses whatsoever. Either we carry out a fruitful apostolate, or our faith will prove barren.

Besides, who ever said that to speak about Christ and to spread his doctrine, you need to do anything unusual or remarkable? Just live your ordinary life; work at your job, trying to fulfil the duties of your state in life, doing your job, your professional work properly, improving, getting better each day. Be loyal; be understanding with others and demanding on yourself. Be mortified and cheerful. This will be your apostolate. Then, though you won't see why, because you're very aware of your own wretchedness, you will find that people come to you. Then you can talk to them, quite simply and naturally — on your way home from work for instance, or in a family gathering, on a bus, walking down the street, anywhere. You will chat about the sort of longings that everyone feels deep down in his soul, even though some people may not want to pay attention to them: they will come to understand them better, when they begin to look for God in earnest.