Opus Dei: Reality, Experiences and Myths

Dora del Hoyo: a very important person for Opus Dei

2012-01-19T22:47:00.000-08:00

Dora del Hoyo, said the Prelate of Opus Dei, "was a woman of faith. Because she was the very first numerary assistant, she had to be able to trust in what God, through St. Josemaria, was asking of her.

She lived the virtue of hope, knowing that Opus Dei would grow and expand, becoming what we see today. She was able to trust and hope in this way because her love of God was so great that she forgot about herself; she lived for the Lord and for the others. We have a great intercessor, to whom we owe gratitude. She learned from our Founder that what is most important is always to serve: to serve the Lord and to serve souls.”

Dora del Hoyo Alonso was born in Boca de Huergano (Leon, Spain) on January 11, 1914. Her parents were exemplary Christians and raised her to be a good daughter of God.

On March 14, 1946, in Bilbao, Spain, Dora asked for admission to Opus Dei. From the beginning, she knew how to correspond faithfully to her divine vocation. Outstanding among Dora’s characteristics were her devotion to the Holy Eucharist–the Holy Mass was the center and root of her interior life– as well as her tender love for the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph and her confident recourse to her guardian angel. Dora moved to Rome on December 27, 1946, at the invitation of St. Josemaria, and remained there until the end of her life.

Dora knew how to seek holiness and apostolic meaning in every task, even those that appeared most trivial, combining a spirit of service with professional competence. From Rome, she assisted with the formation of women from around the world, and contributed to the apostolic work of Opus Dei carried out all over the world and at every level of society.

Dora died on January 10, 2004. On that day Bishop Javier Echevarria, the Prelate of Opus Dei, made these remarks,

“Dora was very important for Opus Dei because of her faithfulness and her work well done, always humbly desiring to pass unnoticed, to ‘do and disappear.’ She took the Blessed Virgin Mary as her teacher, as Saint Josemaria Escriva had encouraged her, and because of this she was effective to the very end of her life. She wanted no glory or recognition, and she gave one hundred percent throughout her entire life."

Her remains lie in the crypt of the Church of the Prelature, Our Lady of Peace, Bruno Buozzi 75, Rome.

===

I remembered Dora in the garden in the month of August, at the age of 89, watering the pumpkins she would use to make the last cabello de angel of her life, to fill the ensaimadas. “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well,” she would always say–and so she collected the seeds, planted them, and took care of the seedlings. Finally, she filled jars and jars with her cabello de angel for the many people who would enjoy this treat, made with the love of a grandmother. She made marmalade and candy. She enjoyed anything that had to do with spreading the warmth of hearth and home. She didn’t talk about this–she just did it, and that was enough.

“She loved life and delighted in carrying out the familiar, lovable traditions of each holiday, and she spared herself no work in this regard. She created the extraordinary by doing ordinary things with perfection: the peace which comes from living the virtue of order, from finding everything in its proper place, a simple but well prepared meal, and a spotless table set with good taste and simplicity. She was always working but she did so calmly, seeking to serve the others, taking care of the clothing, the garden, all the details of the meals, the cleaning, making sure that “the cold things were cold and the hot things were hot,” as she liked to repeat, doing all of the things which she had learned from Saint Josemaria himself, in order to be a sower of peace and joy.

“In life we get to know a lot of people, and we value and remember them. But there are some people who are unforgettable because, doing things that no one notices and without calling attention to themselves, they make a deep impression on us. We ask ourselves what it is about them…and we begin to discover the heroes of the world, the ones who know how to make us happy in little things, the saints, who show us the wonder of creation, the goodness of the world, the importance of caring for others, one by one, cheerfully, enjoying what they are doing.

“I was reading a novel recently and I came upon a passage which immediately made me think of Dora. The author was writing about a Hungarian immigrant working for a lady in North America at the beginning of the twentieth century. ‘They liked to make delicious and plentiful meals, and see the others enjoy them; they liked to prepare soft, clean beds and see the children sleeping in them…both of them had in their depths a kind of overflowing joy, a pleasure in life which was delicate but invigorating.’

“Dora, following the example of the Blessed Virgin, took care of the others like a mother or an older sister and sought their good in the beauty of the work she carried out. In those details, apparently unimportant, she demonstrated her love for God and for the transcendent life to which He had called her.”

Isabel García Martín
Rome (Italy)

From: http://doradelhoyo.org/

Listening to people’s hearts

2012-01-01T21:30:00.000-08:00

Fr. Ron Gillis provides spiritual direction for many
By Lisa Socarras | For the Catholic Herald

Born and raised in Boston, Father Ron Gillis calls 1967 the year of “The Impossible Dream” because the Red Sox won the American League Pennant and because the youngest of eight children in the Gillis household was ordained to the priesthood.

“My father was in seventh heaven,” he said, reflecting on his vocation. “I regard it as a miracle, the whole expectation that you could be called by God to give everything. I looked at the crucifix and said, ‘Lord, You did all that for me. What should I be willing to do for You?’”

Today, 44 years later, Father Gillis serves as chaplain at both the Reston Study Center and Oakcrest School in McLean, and as a spiritual director at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., a position he has held for the past 30 years. Some years, he has given ongoing spiritual direction to more than 40 seminarians, driving twice a week from Northern Virginia to listen, advise and guide those in priestly formation.

As an Opus Dei priest working in the Washington, D.C., area for the past 38 years, Father Gillis has administered the sacraments, taught courses, preached, and provided spiritual direction and evenings of recollection for hundreds of married men and women as well as students. He always has been selfless and ready to help others on their personal path to sanctity, part of the universal call to holiness.

Opus Dei, a personal prelature of the Catholic Church, was founded in Spain in 1928 by St. Josemaría Escrivá, who taught that work and the circumstances of ordinary life are occasions for growing closer to God, serving others and for improving society.

Even as a young man, Father Gillis had a strong sense of purpose for his life and never had any doubts about his vocation.

“It was impossible to grow up in Catholic Boston and not have a strong sense of vocation because vocations were abundant,” he said. “It was a very common question for Catholic young people to ask, ‘What is my vocation?’”

“We were surrounded by the Faith and by the sense of dedication, also present in our parents, who raised large families. They were working-class people, very committed to the Faith,” said Father Gillis.

He attended Catholic elementary and secondary school where his teachers sensed he had a vocation to the priesthood.

“The nuns were after me in the eighth grade to go away to junior seminary,” he said, adding that he was not ready at that young age to make the commitment.

Later, while a junior in high school, Father Gillis said a friend “dragged me along” on a retreat at a Trappist monastery and it made a profound impact on him.

“It was in August and it was the feast of St. Bernard,” he said. “I always remember that it was like going to heaven. It was so beautiful, the peacefulness, the spirituality, the whole thing was magnificent, the Divine Office, the Liturgy. Then we were helping to make the hay with the monks. The silence, I remember thinking this is really the peace of God. This is really wonderful, but I don’t want to stay here.”

He asked himself how one could bring this sense of the presence of God into the midst of the world.

“I don’t have a monastic vocation. I like being in the middle of the world. When I encountered Opus Dei, that’s what happened. I saw that these people are involved in things, but they take spirituality very seriously. I was struck by this kind of formula that we need to bring Our Lord to so many people who are good people who live in the middle of the world,” Father Gillis said.

Following his freshman year of college at the University of Toronto, he became a member of Opus Dei and then transferred to Boston University because there was no Opus Dei center in Toronto. After earning a bachelor’s in history, he went to Rome in 1964 to study for the priesthood as a seminarian at the Roman College of the Holy Cross. While in Rome, he had the opportunity to learn from St. Josemaría Escriva himself.

“He was a great coach and a tremendous leader of men,” said Father Gillis. “Ashttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif the founder, he was strong and enormously affectionate.”

He instilled in the seminarians that the only thing that really matters is personal sanctity, that we be saints. Always ready to admit his own challenges, the saint taught that determination to persevere, even in times of tremendous trial, is the journey of the soul toward holiness. To begin again is man’s goal because of our fallen nature we will have failings.

“The spirit of St. Josemaría is that the important thing is the struggle,” said Father Gillis. “The struggle is the sign of holiness. A saint is a sinner that keeps trying.”

To read the rest the article, see here.

Josemaria's Way

2011-10-17T02:56:00.000-07:00

By Robert Moynihan, an excerpt from Catholic Culture

In one of the most important gestures of his pontificate, Pope John Paul II on October 6 canonized St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei. With that gesture, he placed the full weight of his papal authority behind Escriva's "Work"

"To be holy does not mean being superior to others; the saint can be very weak, with many mistakes in his life. Holiness is this profound contact with God, becoming a friend of God: it is letting the Other work, the Only One who can really make the world both good and happy."

— Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, remarks on the canonization of St. Josemaria Escriva, from the L'Osservatore Romano, Special Issue, October 6, 2002

"Heroism, sanctity, daring, require a constant spiritual preparation. You can only give to others what you already have. And in order to give God to them, you yourself need to get to know him, to live his life, to serve him." — St. Josemaria Escriva, The Forge, no. 78

The 20th century ended, for the Catholic Church, on October 6, 2002. It ended precisely 40 years after the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962.

It ended on a warm, blue autumn day in Rome with John Paul II's canonization of Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei, as a saint.

In so doing, the Pope presented sanctity as the vocation of every baptized person, and so reiterated the central message of the Second Vatican Council. (This year marks the centenary of the birth of Josemaria Escriva, on January 9, 1902, in Barbastro, northern Spain. He died in Rome on June 26, 1975.)

The 20th century was the century that brought the medieval world to a definitive end.

That old world was "Christendom" (admittedly in considerable disarray from the French Revolution onward), dominated politically by at least nominally Christian kings and kaisers and aristocratic elites, dominated militarily and economically by Western Europeans, who colonized the world.

The First World War saw those elites slaughtered in the trenches of France, ushering in the Communist, Fascist and Nazi periods.

The Second World War saw the final destruction of the old European order, as Western European cities were bombed, the continent's Christian tradition was rejected and ridiculed, and its Jewish population murdered or expelled. Out of that war came the United Nations, the creation of the state of Israel, the general de-colonialization of the world, and, after a decade or so, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

The essential historical purpose and effect of that Council — as it now seems from a vantage point of 40 years — was to prepare the Church for a new world order : the order which is now nearly upon us.

No longer would the world be Europe-centered; the age of "globalization" could already be sensed in the era of intercontinental ballistic missiles (the Cuban missile crisis occurred in the month the Council opened, in October 1962) and international communications.

No longer would the Church be primarily organized in small, separated communities (parishes, dioceses) of people who lived most of their lives in one place, in one cultural context; the Church would increasingly be organized as one world-wide community, a less canonically and jurisdictionally structured social body than a world-wide order, or organism — like the new Church movements . . . or like a personal prelature (the group founded by Escriva, Opus Dei, is for the moment the only personal prelature in the Catholic Church).

The 20th century was marked by vast and pitiless persecutions of the Church. The Communists and the Nazis made clear to the Church that state power in the emerging "modern" world could seek out, crush and physically eliminate unwanted religious groups. (There were more Christian martyrs in the 20th century than in all previous centuries.)

But, if the post-World War II "new world order" were also to be un-Christian, perhaps in a veiled way but with even more sinister and effective means of control and persecution, because more advanced and comprehensive, what chance would the Church have to survive and prosper?

Having experienced the 20th century, the solution seemed evident: the Church needed to "go to ground" — to de-clericalize, de-hierarchicalize, and to have its members intermingle in all aspects of ordinary human life, indistinguishable in any outward way from other members of society, except in the excellence of their work, engaged in as a vocation . . . a vocation to sanctity in the midst of the world. And so, at the Second Vatican Council, the Church made the extraordinary leap, the epochal transformation, from a Church organized along lines that had worked well enough in the medieval age, hierarchical and clerical, to a Church organized to survive and flourish and live out the faith in a "new age," an age of a looming "new world order."

And this was the deep meaning of Pope John Paul II's words when he said, after canonizing Escriva, that the message of the Opus Dei founder is to stand up to "a materialist culture that threatens to dissolve the most genuine identity of the disciples of Christ."

The Holy Father pronounced the formula of canonization for the Spanish priest at 10:23 a.m. in St. Peter's Square. And so, in a certain sense, we may say that we know the exact minute that the old century and the old world ended: at 10:23 a.m. in Rome on a sunny October morning in the year 2002.

Some 300,000 pilgrims, many of them members of Opus Dei, who filled St. Peter's Square, applauded at that moment.

Read the rest at Catholic Culture.

Strong criticism from former members of a religious organization: What experts say

2011-09-27T23:46:00.000-07:00

By Raul Nidoy in Reason

The departure of a member in a religious organization can cause pain and big problems for both the person who formerly committed his entire life for the organization and for the organization itself.

One such problem is the existence of extraordinarily fierce criticism made by these ex-members towards the former organization they once showed devotion to.

Cardinal Christoph Schonborn discussed this phenomenon: departure or dismissal may ... occur after someone has already made a final commitment. Some of those who have left a community keep in friendly contact, following their own way by mutual agreement. Of course, communities approved by the Church will - in case of conflict - offer their members and ex-members the opportunity to approach the appropriate Church authorities.

Some ex-members cannot come to terms with their negative experiences and make them known from the platform of the media. People living together will experience their limitations and weaknesses. It is, however, unjustified, to present personal difficulties within a community as if they were a general experience. On the whole, negative experiences of individuals are painful for the whole Church community.

Massimo Introvigne, a sociologist of religion who wrote an Encyclopedia of Religion, defines three types of narratives or stories constructed by former members of new religious movements:

Type I narratives are from defectors. The narrative assigns responsibility to the failures of the leaver. He expresses regret and acknowledges the organization's high moral standards.

Type II narratives are from ordinary leave-takers, a phenomenon that happens everyday. They lose interest and commitment, and goes to a new one. They hold no strong feelings concerning their past experience in the group, and usually feel no need to justify themselves. They may make "comments on the organization’s more negative features or shortcomings" while also recognizing that there was "something positive in the experience."

Type III narratives are from what is technically called apostates. These ex-members dramatically reverse their loyalties and becoming a professional enemy of the organization they have left. These apostates often join an oppositional coalition fighting the organization, often claiming victimization.

Bryan R. Wilson, Reader Emeritus of Sociology of the University of Oxford and honored as "one of the most distinguished sociologists of the 20th century" who has exercised "a crucial influence on the sociology of religion", stated that apostates of new religious movements are generally in need of self-justification, seeking to reconstruct their past and to excuse their former affiliations, while blaming those who were formerly their closest associates.

Wilson, thus, challenges the reliability of the apostate's testimony by saying that the apostate "must always be seen as one whose personal history predisposes him to bias with respect to both his previous religious commitment and affiliations, the suspicion must arise that he acts from a personal motivation to vindicate himself and to regain his self-esteem, by showing himself to have been first a victim but subsequently to have become a redeemed crusader."

He also asserts that some apostates or defectors from religious organizations rehearse atrocity stories to explain how, by manipulation, coercion or deceit, they were recruited to groups that they now condemn.

While these experts say this, it does not follow that religious organizations are beyond reproach and are perfect. The Catholic Church wants to continue purifying itself and its members want to continue purifying themselves, re-converting to Christ. But so too the whole of humanity should continue purifying itself, especially from modern-day errors such as atheism (no God), secularism (no dedication to God and to religion), relativism (no truth) and hedonism (no moral standards, only pleasure). And instead turn back to Christ as one society.

As Cardinal Schonborn put it:

In our time, a new desire is arising in different countries of the world, in spite of all human frailty, to live up to the message of Christ and to serve the Church in unity with the Holy Father and the Bishops.

Many see new charisms as a sign of hope. Others experience these new awakenings as something strange; for others they are a challenge, by others again they may be experienced as an accusation, against which they vindicate themselves sometimes reacting with reproach in turn.

Some promote a kind of humanism that has less and less to do with its Christian roots. But we should not forget: "If the Second Vatican Council speaks of the 'ecclesia semper reformanda', it speaks not only of the necessity to think anew about the structures of the Church, but more about the constant renewal of the life of the Church and about questioning some long-established and treasured ideas which may be too much in keeping with the spirit of the age."

For further study:

Schonborn: http://www.ewtn.com/library/CHRIST/ORSECTS.HTM

Introvigne: http://www.cesnur.org/testi/Acropolis.htm

Wilson: http://www.neuereligion.de/ENG/Wilson/

Proper understanding of the Eucharist is where we need to begin to restore the Body of Christ.

2011-09-05T01:01:00.000-07:00

By Jim Cope in RenewAmerica

We Catholics go to Mass dressed worse than when we go to the dentist. I guess it all starts from a lack of understanding of Who resides in the tabernacle. Of course, many churches have placed the tabernacle somewhere outside the sanctuary or even the church proper. He is in something of a holy broom closet or a chapel in another part of the building.

The fact that the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ is not well known among the laity — and sometimes I think our priests don't know it either. Proper understanding of the Eucharist is where we need to begin to restore the Body of Christ.

I remember being very deeply touched by the Opus Dei priests at evenings of recollection during exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament. The priest turned to the monstrance before speaking and said, 'With your permission, Lord Jesus Christ.' I wish all Catholics could witness that once; it would be life-changing for them.

Why World Youth Day is Cool

2011-09-05T00:29:00.000-07:00

By Chiqui Agoncillo in Inquirer

On August 16, just a few days from now and counting, hundreds of thousands of young people from all over the world will meet with each other and the Pope in Madrid for World Youth Day 2011 (WYD).

The worldwide celebration happens only every three years in different host countries. WYD celebrations had been held in Rome, Argentina, Spain, Poland, USA, Philippines, France, Canada, Germany, and Australia.

Although it is a Catholic event, all youth are called to join the pilgrimage, regardless of religion.

It was started by the late Pope John Paul II in 1985 to encourage young people everywhere to grow in love for Christ.

The theme of every WYD celebration is traditionally based on a scriptural verse, which is particularly relevant to the time the event is held. This year’s theme comes from St. Paul: “Planted and built up in Christ, firm in the faith.”

Cool pilgrimage

Many young people look forward to WYD because it is a time and place to get in touch with their spiritual side in a new, fun, and cool way. Aside from the pilgrimage, they get to meet people of different backgrounds, exchange souvenirs with them, attend youth festivals and culture programs every day and night for a week.

The last night, however, is what pilgrims look forward to the most because it is the night everyone camps out together after a vigil with the Pope. Think of it like a sleepover in the Cuatro Vientos airport with more than a million people. It really is no surprise that so many people signed up for WYD this year!

WYD is not all fun and games, though. Previous pilgrims from our school told us they’d be really exhausted by the time they got to bed, and they slept for three to four hours only every night. The food’s not always good, and there are crowds everywhere. But you don’t go to WYD for a vacation—WYD is a journey; it’s ultimately a pilgrimage of self-discovery and the discovery of God’s love for us all.

Narra delegation

People usually register for WYD with their families, friends, or delegations. I, with approximately 44 of my schoolmates in Paref Woodrose School Inc., formed the Narra Delegation for the WYD.

Our school entrusts the spiritual formation of the people in it to Opus Dei, a Catholic institution founded by the Spanish Saint Josemaría Escrivá in 1928. The mission of Opus Dei is to spread the message to everyone that work and circumstances of everyday life are occasions for growing closer to God, for serving others, and for improving society. It is in 66 countries and is growing.

Read the rest in the Inquirer.

Kabataan Club: For Public School Girls

2011-09-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

By MCS PASION, Contributor for Manila Bulletin
September 1, 2011, 4:25am

MANILA, Philippines — Values education and life-coaching are the key elements that distinguish this club that prepares public high school girls for a productive and meaningful work life…

Public education in our country does not enjoy general esteem. Lack of competent teachers, unmanageable student-teacher ratio, pathetic classroom facilities: these are but some of the culprits.

In addition, save for a handful of achievers, the quality of students who go to public schools is not at all remarkable.

With due respect, the Philippine public educational system can perhaps be likened to a dilapidated machine churning out sub-standard merchandise. The Department of Education (DepEd) can be lauded for its continuous effort to address these technical problems. But along the way, attention to character formation –a basic building block of a healthy nation- sadly lags behind.

In this need, Kabataan found its niche. Now on its sixth year, Kabataan counts on 35 woman volunteers who positively contribute to improving the quality of students who come from public schools.

TOWARDS HIGHER ASPIRATIONS

“Dream and your dreams will fall short.”

These words of St. Josemaría Escrivá, author of The Way, a book of modern spirituality, have posed a challenge to Agnes Dayao since she first read them.

With her retirement and her husband’s demise, Agnes found herself with time in her hands. She realized that apart from taking care of her grandchildren, and getting involved in a local girls’ club among the underprivileged sector, it was time to reach greater heights.

To ensure the girls’ continuous character education, she launched the Kabataan Public High School Girls’ Club, together with Nanette Corcuera, another retired professional from Las Piñas City, and other volunteer friends.

Their pilot schools were at Verdant, Golden Acres, Equitable Talon, and EastTalon, all located in Las Pinas.

The program consists of values formation classes and a mentoring program. The vision: help mold public high school girls into women of virtue to complement their technical know-how.

Kabataan teaches the basic human virtues that are the stairwell to a person’s higher aspirations. ‘’Since half of those who attend Kabataan come from dysfunctional families, we primarily aim at forming these girls to be good mothers and good workers” says Nanette.

ONE-ON-ONE LIFE COACHING

Most of the students live in the urban poor areas of Las Piñas, where it is difficult for the most basic human virtues to thrive.

“They need to have a good dose of fortitude to stand up for what they learn in Kabataan which may clash with what they usually experience at home and in their neighborhood” says Agnes. “I know how it is to be poor... but with perseverance you can improve your situation.”

The backbone of Kabataan is the mentoring program where adult lead ers volunteer their time for one-on-one life coaching. With this, they are able to monitor the academic and personal development of the students.

Crysjoy and Eloisa, both alumnae of Kabataan are now enrolled in the twoyear Dual Training Program in the Food & Beverage Services course of Punlaan School and are both presidents of their respective classes.

When asked what inspires her in life, Crysjoy talked about the STRONG virtues (Steadfast, Trustworthy, Respectful, Open-minded, Noble, Gutsy) that she learned in a workshop sponsored by Kabataan. In fact, on a recent visit, the Australian Ambassador was impressed with the storytelling talent of Crysjoy who won first prize in a school contest.

He asked about her background and discovered its roots in Kabataan. A good number of the club’s alumnae make it to the top in their respective schools. With their training in Kabataan, they pursue higher studies better equipped and with stronger convictions.

In 2010, 80 graduates of Kabataan entered college. Eight of them are enjoying scholarships in tourism-related courses at Punlaan School in San Juan and at the Maligaya Institute for Culinary Arts and Residential Services in Manila.

read the rest at Manila Bulletin.

‘Killing Fields’ and ‘Mission’ director makes biopic of Opus Dei founder

2011-04-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

By Josephine Darang in Philippine Daily Inquirer

ROLAND JOFFE, the director of “The Killing Fields” and “The Mission,” is an agnostic. But he’s the director of “There be Dragons,” a movie about St. Josémaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei which is now showing in Spain and will be released in the United States on May 7. The film is based mainly on the life of the founder during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and shows how Father Escriva at that time chose to forgive his enemies who persecuted not only him, but also Opus Dei, which he had founded on Oct. 2, 1928. Forgiving one’s enemies was something Joffe couldn’t understand.

The film director introduced his Escriva film in Rome on March 21. He was quoted in an interview comparing Escriva to Nelson Mandela in their shared love for freedom and forgiveness. The director admitted, “This story forced me to think as much as I ever have in my life.”

‘God is found in everyday life’

In researching for the film, Joffe (as told to Zenit) was struck by Father Escriva’s teaching, “God is found in everyday life,” “How can God be found in war?” Joffe asked.

“But then,” the director added, “the same question can be asked of all the fundamental challenges in life, and how we face them: How we respond to hatred and rejection, or the desire for revenge and justice—all those dilemmas are heightened in wartime. Those dilemmas are, in a sense, the “dragons” of the film—turning points in our lives where we’re faced with potent choices.”

‘Father, I am Jewish’

A video of a Jewish girl talking to Monsignor Escriva in Chile in 1974 inspired Joffe to go ahead with the film.

During that meeting where hundreds of people were present to listen to the Opus Dei founder, the girl told Escriva: “Father, I’m Jewish but I believe in the Catholic religion, and I would like to convert to Catholicism, but I am a minor and my parents won’t let me.”

Monsignor Escriva answered: “Look, I am going to tell you something that will make you very happy. I learned this from this son of mine (referring to Don Alvaro, a fellow priest, in the background). I must tell you that the first love of my life is a Jew: Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth—a member of your race! And the second love of my life is Mary, most holy Virgin and Mother, mother of the Jewish man Jesus, and my Mother and your Mother. Do you like that?

“And then, I must tell you to be very good toward your parents, to be patient, to pray. Don’t make any gestures of rebellion. Is that clear? ”

Escriva then advised the Jewish girl to continue studying for her catechism and assured her that the Lord Jesus would move her parents to let her follow calmly and serenely the path she wanted.

Read the entire article here.

There Be Dragons: A film that shows that forgiveness can change the future

2011-04-07T23:52:00.000-07:00

By Diane Thunder Schlosser in Enerpub

Joffe deftly explains that There Be Dragons is about “bringing love to the world --- the absence of love and what that does. When loves goes it leaves a vacuum – and that vacuum can fill with very many unpleasant things: fear, hatred, despair….This movie is made for all human beings with the sure knowledge that all human beings count – all human beings have value -- and all human beings, as St. Josemaria would say, are capable of being saints…”

Although this is not strictly about recently canonized St. Josemaria Escriva per se, he does figure prominently, and we see vignettes of his life as a young priest and a glimpse of the early days of Opus Dei -- his vision of the Universal Call to Holiness 30 years before Vatican II. In the aftermath and angst over the priest scandals, There Be Dragons sets before us a model of the priesthood that needs to be re-embraced. When was the last time Hollywood produced a movie about a priest – a real priest?

Not a vampire-chasing vengeful priest. Not a sensationalized exorcist. Not a fictitious albino ‘monk’ or even a crooning Bing Crosby priest, but a real priest! This generation is privileged to know of a priest who lived in our lifetime and has been canonized in our lifetime, yet St. Josemaria is not just a saint for members of Opus Dei. He is not just a saint for the people of Spain. He has been raised to the high altars of the Church and canonized a saint for all of us as a model of heroic virtue for the 21st century. As Joffe explains,

“Here is a man who, in a time of civil strife, civil war – when God appeared to be silent – was an example of someone going through a spiritual crisis who never lost the sense that each human being is a saint, that every human being is deserving of love, and he lived that. That is saintliness. Those subjects are worthy of honest storytelling. Josemaria also claimed that ordinary people were quite capable of being saints – and I think this kind of heroic forgiveness is what he was talking about….(it is) what offers room for hope. But the price is high: It takes a deep sense of what it is to be fully human…and, yes, heroic resolve not to be caught up in prevailing hatreds, but to fight them with unremitting love.” (www.mercatornet.com/sheila_liaugminas/view/8815/)

Read the entire article here.

Roland Joffé: There isn’t an Opus Dei party line

2011-04-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

By Stephen Greynadu in National Catholic Register

Roland Joffé, director of The Mission and There Be Dragons, calls himself an agnostic, but he seems to be a remarkably God-haunted one.

At a recent press event in Spain, the British writer-director reflected on what drew him to There Be Dragons — a film set during the Spanish Civil War that has predictably elicited media controversy for its positive treatment of St. Josemaria Escrivá, played by Charlie Cox, and Opus Dei, the personal prelature he founded. There Be Dragons recently opened in Spain; the film comes to the United States in May.

“I have no idea whether there’s a God or not, and it seemed to be a fascinating thing to think about,” Joffé explained to a roomful of sometimes skeptical journalists at Madrid’s Villa Magna Hotel. “I’m not a very spiritual person, unfortunately, being a Brit. We tend to go for humor over religion.”

The self-fulfilling humor of the self-deprecating line notwithstanding, the filmmaker easily uses the language of sainthood, spirituality and grace. His British penchant for humor resurfaced as he recounted the reactions of some of his friends to the news that he was doing a film dealing with Opus Dei. “Oh my God, that’s a fascist organization!” was one horrified response he related. “I mean, they slaughtered hundreds of people!”

Joffé’s deadpan rejoinder — “They have? Really? How do you know that?” — was followed by a litany of similarly preposterous charges: that Opus Dei “controls” the Church; that “hundreds” of cardinals and “thousands” of bishops are members; that their membership is kept secret, and so on.

Provocatively tweaking dubious members of his audience, Joffé continued, “The fact is: Opus Dei itself doesn’t really exist. I hate to break this to you, but there isn’t really such a thing as Opus Dei — in the sense of some kind of society with an opinion about something.

“I investigated Opus Dei, and I began to find a very important thing: Opus Dei is a group of people who come together to work on their spiritual life, to work on their relationship to God. But Opus Dei does not have a point of view, other than to say that what you believe you must stand up for — and you must take responsibility for your choices.”

“Beyond that, Opus Dei does not tell people what to think,” he said. “And, in some sense, that’s very beautiful. It’s also shocking to a culture that’s used to large political and ideological groups. Here you have a group that shares some things, but not everything. It’s very difficult to understand. We know that when you belong to a party, most of the time, you’re being told to toe the party line, in one way or another. There isn’t an Opus Dei party line.”

“That means that some people will not like the conservative members of Opus Dei that they meet, or they may not like the liberal members of Opus Dei that they meet,” Joffé said. “But I can assure you that all those sorts of opinions do exist inside Opus Dei.”

Read rest of the article here.

There Be Dragons: Joffe confirms his greatness as an intense and profound director of the highest quality

2011-03-25T00:52:00.000-07:00

By Austen Ivereigh

In an era of ideological conformity the founder of Opus Dei had the courage to tell people to think for themselves, and like Nelson Mandela in South Africa brought healing to Spain, the British film director Roland Joffé told an audience at the Vatican last night.

Presenting There Be Dragons at a private screening of 150 Vatican officials, he said St Josemaría Escrivá – one of the central characters in the movie, which opens Friday in Spain – “answered the question that his time gave him, which is that when politics was industrialising and the world was splitting into rigid opposing camps a young priest stood up in Spain and refused to condemn.”

The movie is set against the background of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) which left half a million dead and continues to divide Spain. In it the young Fr Escrivá tells his followers in the newly-created Opus Dei that they must forgive and not take sides – even against those who are wrong.

In this way, said Joffé, “Josemaría extended what I would call the warm embrace of the Church to people who weren’t Christian as well … We are all in this world together. That was an extraordinary thing to do, and the power of that message I think is extraordinary and relevant to us.”

Among the audience at the Pontifical North-American College were 11 cardinals, eight bishops, 14 monsignori, and 24 ambassadors, as well as representatives from movements such as Focolare and Sant’Egidio with Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans.

Also in the audience were the writer and director Susanna Tamaro and the film composer Ennio Morricone, who composed the theme to one of Joffé’s 1980s epics, The Mission.

After the screening, Morricone said: “With this film Roland Joffe confirms his greatness as an intense and profound director of the highest quality".

Tamaro described the film as “powerful, very well filmed, and dramatically very effective”. By choosing to tell the story of opposing paths taken by two childhood friends, Joffé “brings out the importance of freedom which God gave us to try to reduce the power of evil in the world”.

Tamaro added that the film had the power “to do great good for the new generations deprived of great figures to admire and emulate”.

Joffé told them “it would be wonderful” if There Be Dragons, which premieres tomorrow evening in Madrid and goes on release in Spain Friday, helped the 21st century to be seen as “the century of reconciliation”, in which “we began once again to discover our innate humanity that exists in all of us” and to heal the wounds of the 20th century wars.

He added: “It’s wonderful that President Mandela was capable of doing that in South
Africa, and it’s wonderful to me that Josemaría Escrivá as a young man fought for the importance of that, and carried the Christian message in such a remarkable way that I who am, I confess, a rather wishy-washy agnostic, found myself standing in total admiration and driven to want to do my best for this movie.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Numerary : regular member of working staff

2011-03-06T23:56:00.001-08:00

An article in Wikipedia which I contributed.

Numerary is a civil designation for persons who are incorporated in a fixed or permanent way to a society or group: regular member of the working staff, permanent staff, or member, distinguished from a supernumerary.

The term "numerary" and its counterpart, "supernumerary," originated in Spanish and Latin American academy and government; it is now also used in countries all over the world, such as France, the U.S., England, Italy, etc.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Characteristics of numeraries in different societies
* 2 Examples of numeraries of different types
* 3 References
* 4 Footnotes

Characteristics of numeraries in different societies

There are numerary members of surgical organizations, of universities, of gastronomical associations, etc.

In medical societies, numerary doctors are those who:

* have a right to vote
* can be a member of the governing body
* can join the activities which the society organizes.

In a graphology society (handwriting analysts), here are the rights of numerary members:[1]

* to get technical advise to face the difficulties that the members might come across in the preparation of their professional reports.
* to be judicially protected in case of any judicial matter that might occur in the practice of their profession.
* to have a Professional License that proves their professionalism and their membership of an association of reliable professionals, in the field of the graphological investigation as well as in the practice of their profession.
* to receive an extensive Bulletin with news of maximum interest.
* to have access to the Association's Library and to technical reports from investigations made by members.
* to be a voting member in Social Meetings, Seminars and Lectures organized by the Association.
* to own the authorized Diploma of Graphoanalyst.

In a university setting, a numerary professor is an ordinary professor.
Toni Zweifel, Swiss engineer, a numerary of Opus Dei.

In the personal prelature of Opus Dei, numeraries are lay people who are available for any apostolic work undertaken by the prelature. Like any other member of Opus Dei, numeraries have the same vocation to sanctify themselves in the middle of the world. Most work in normal, secular jobs (bankers, professors, doctors, lawyers, accountants, businessmen). A few numeraries work full-time or part-time in the work of formation of the prelature. Numerary members of Opus Dei are required to be celibate but are neither monks nor friars (see also clerical celibacy). A number of them work as faculty at Opus Dei sponsored schools.

Examples of numeraries of different types

Jose Ortega y Gasset was named numerary professor of Psychology, Logic and Ethics at the Escuela Superior del Magisterio de Madrid in 1909.

Harvard professor Rafael Moneo, a multi-awarded architect, became Academic Numerary in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid in May 1997.
An extension to the Atocha Railway Station designed by Harvard Professor Rafael Moneo, Academic Numerary of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid

Joaquin Navarro Valls, Vatican spokesman, a professional psychiatrist before he became a prominent journalist working for European newspapers, is a numerary member of the Opus Dei prelature.

Ángel Martin Municio, who was Vice-Rector for Investigation and International Relations of the Universidad Complutense(1982-1986), President of the of Real Academia de Ciencias de España and since 1985 up to the present, President of the Real Academia Española is an Academic Numerary of the Academy since 1969. He was also the Vice-president of the European Academy of Science and Arts (1998)

Cardinal Rodolfo Quezada Toruño of Guatemala is Academic numerary of the Academy of Geography and History of Guatemala starting 1967.

Carlos Pazos Beceiro, born in Havana, Cuba, Recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Peace Award, Vice-President of IPPNW for Latin America, is a Numerary Member of the Cuban Society of Hygiene and Epidemiology.

Antonio Garrido, Director of Instituto Cervantes of New York, is Academic Numerary of the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española, the corresponding academy to the Real Academia Española.[2]

Pedro Laín Entralgo is an outstanding Spanish medical researcher and humanist of the 20th century. He won the Prince of Asturias award in 1989 for Communication and Humanities. He has been a numerary member of the Royal National Academy of Medicine since 1946.

José Gorostiza is a renowned Mexican poet, educator and diplomat. He was a numerary of the Mexican Language Academy.

Enrique Zuazua is a multi-awarded researcher and a Director of the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics. He is a numerary of the "Jakiunde," Basque Academy of Sciences, Arts and Humanities.

Américo Ghioldi is an Argentine educator. He was honored with a numerary membership in the prestigious Argentine Educational Academy.

References

* Entry in Dictionary.com
* Entry in Freedictionary.com
* Messori, Vittorio. Opus Dei: Leadership and Vision in the Catholic Church. 1997.

When Thinking Of Opus Dei Forget The Rich Attack

2011-01-18T16:23:00.000-08:00

By Robert Steven Duncan in Spero News

One of the most outrageous claims repeated against Opus Dei is that its members are rich - or that it's an organization for the wealthy.

I suppose that claim is based on what some people have noted: That many people who are "members" of Opus Dei are professionals. With that observation then there is the somewhat logical assumption that since these people are professionals (read: supposedly high-paying jobs), then that must mean they are rich.

But there is a major fallacy in using any such argument, especially when talking about Supernumeraries: Most of the people who are assuming that Opus Dei members - and here I am really writing about Supernumaries - are rolling in dough forget the simple fact that many of these people have large families. This means that realistically they are scrimping and trying to figure out how to make ends meet. In other words, they are just like many other Catholics who have large families - or for that matter any other large family parents.

Secondly, if a person is offering their all, their skills, their education, to God, there is a pretty good chance that person will rise in whatever profession they practice. Think about this. If you believe that you have something to offer God, are you going to want to offer Him second best? If you want, go ahead and call this - as some people mistakenly claim - a "Calvinist effect."

But the fact is that if you are offering your all to God, you will be concerned about the little things and doing a job well-done. In a general sense, it doesn't matter the occupation, as all can be offered to God, and could be running a laundry, or being a taxi driver, or a journalist, or even an attorney.

And this often leads to a secondary effect: A person that does a job well-done tends to rise in the business world. It's not the reason, nor the drive, but it's the effect of doing a job well-done. And mind you, if that doesn't happen (the social or economic recognition) that is fine - after all this is about offering your work as a means of Sanctification, and this is where an Opus Dei "work ethic" differs from Calvinism and predestination-economic theories.

In this sense, it's a private affair between a person and God. If the recognition comes, well then that is thanks to God, and glory to Him. And if it doesn't, then all the Glory to God too! God in his greatness sees all. This isn't about the individual. This is about what can be offered.

Thirdly, there is a generational effect happening. If parents are Supernumeraries, there is a pretty good chance that they are instilling in their children the belief of doing a job well-done. That doesn't mean all the children will become Opus Dei automatons as some would argue - or members - but it does mean that members may have learned from a young age the importance of studies. At the risk of sounding heretical here, or at least politically incorrect, it reminds me of some studies in the US on second generation Asians that excelled in studies. It was found that this was due to the importance that the parents placed on studies.

And there is something else about having large families, that despite what people think, and Hollywood seems to tell us - most normal families don't have maids, but are struggling to just make it to the end of the month. I don't know how many times I have been asked if we could "loan" our maid for a weekend. I have to explain that we don't have that luxury, and that we don't even make it financially to the end of the month - just like most other large families. Of course, the people asking me this favor are usually parents and colleagues with only one child.

All of this is related to what Saint Josemaria taught. That no matter what wealth a person has, they should use those funds as if they were the parent of a large family. It's about responsibility. It's not yours - it's Gods. The reason St Josemaria said this should be quite obvious - because parents of large families know how to make the money stretch, they know what is important, and what isn't. They become masters of finance, knowing the ins-and-outs of bridge financing, and paying the bills.

Besides, money isn't everything anyway. Somethings are worth much more, no matter how trite that sounds. If somebody asks me "are Supernumeraries rich," the answer is would have to be a guarded "yes," but in the sense that they realize that their families are the Domestic Church.

To explain further. Yesterday was Valentines. On my way home I realized that I didn't have anything for my wife. I checked my pockets and could only find 30 cents. Nothing more - and no, I wasn´t going to break out the VISA card for a gift. Instead, I went to a local candy store and asked if they could sell me three pieces of hard chocolate candy. The number is significant, as I know my wife.

On arriving home, I apologized to my wife that I didn't have anything more for her, but I told her that I loved her, that she was all to me. And gave her the three chocolates and a big hug.

My wife in turn hugged me back, and gave me a kiss, told me that she loved me and that I had made her day. And then she gave the three chocolates to our three oldest children for a dessert (the baby cannot have dessert yet).

Now that is a powerful message that our children learned. It's about love, sharing and being family.

Robert Steven Duncan is a consultant and a widely published foreign correspondent who lives in Spain. Besides having articles appearing in WSJ, Barron's, Smart Money, Newsweek, the National Catholic Register and many other places, he has held various leadership posts in the communication sector. He publishes the "RSD Report" at http://www.robertstevenduncan.com

125 Years of Catholicism in Eastern Nigeria

2011-01-06T21:49:00.000-08:00

By Mr. Chike MADUEKWE, a lawyer in Poten and Partners.

SINCE the day Reverend Father Lutz from France stepped his feet on the soil of the ancient city of Onitsha in 1885, the history of the people of Eastern Nigeria has not been the same.

Our history changed for the better. I do reflect, from time to time, on the heroism of European missionaries who left the relative comforts of their homes to come to Igboland and the rest of Eastern Nigeria from the 19th Century in order to bring the Good News to our people. Some died on the high seas. Some died of diseases like malaria endemic in the tropics.

Some were killed by our people who innocently thought that they were strange and dangerous beings because the Europeans looked totally different from them. Yet, the Christian missionaries persisted because of their immense love of God and humanity.

Father Lutz, Bishop Joseph Shannahan, Bishop Joseph Heery and other early missionaries are a perfect example of what the Bible calls agape love, or sacrificial love. May their souls rest in the bosom of the Lord.

These authentic men of God did not just bring us the Gospel. They spearheaded the abolition of improper cultural practices like the killing of twins and the"osu" and "ohu" caste system. They brought us modern healthcare. The impressive hospitals they established in places like Onitsha, Ihiala and Adazi, all in Anambra State, several decades ago still provide our people with quality services.

The Holy Rosary Hospital at Emekuku, Imo State, and St Luke's Hospital, Anua, Akwa Ibom State, are among the numerous medical facilities established by the Church in Eastern Nigeria which have been of immense benefit to our people. Many people abandoned by their families and communities because they were afflicted by diseases like leprosy were treated in hospitals like these ones free of charge.

I hesitate to imagine what Eastern Nigeria would have been without the Church. If not for Caritas, the Catholic charity, millions of our people would have perished during the civil war due to acute hunger. The Federal Government imposed an economic and food blockade against Eastern Nigeria because, as it argued, "starvation is a legitimate instrument of war".

Caritas cargo planes were strafed relentlessly, day and night. I personally benefitted greatly from the tones of dried milk, corned beef, salt, egg yoke, dried milk and other critical things made available by Caritas.

The contribution of the Church to the educational development of Eastern Nigeria remain unparalleled. The missionaries used their limited resources to build schools all over the place, and products of these schools were competing favourably with their counterparts anywhere in the world. Generations of our best teachers, professors, lawyers, medical doctors and other professionals were trained in places like Christ the King College, Onitsha. I am a proud Old Boy of the great CKC.

Up to 1970, many of the schools in various places in the Southeast were either established or managed by the Church. Like in other parts of the world, it has always been a thing of pride to associate with a Catholic Church owned or run school.

Without the Church, there is no way Eastern Nigeria could have made the stupendous progress it has recorded in education, especially from 1945 when the Second World War came to an end.

The Yoruba people of Western Nigeria, for instance, have a historical head start over the Igbo in education principally because major Yoruba towns and cities like Lagos are located on the coast; the white people who brought formal education to Nigeria came through the sea. Yet, within only two decades, the Igbo, to use Professor Chinua Achebe's language, "had wiped out their educational handicap in one fantastic burst of energy". By 1965, the Igbo were competing favourably with the Yoruba. In fact, there were more Igbo PhD holders among the Igbo than among the Yoruba, though the Yoruba had more professors.

It is regrettable that the government took over Church schools in Nigeria, beginning with, of all places, East Central State (today's Southeast). The forcible acquisition practically sounded the death knell of sound and solid education throughout the country. Hitherto, we received a kind of education which combined high academic standards with high morals and discipline.

This was in line with the tradition of Catholic education everywhere in the world. It is, therefore, with joy that we note that some state governments have begun to return some of these schools to their proprietors. We look forward to having schools like CKC, Onitsha, and College of Immaculate Conception, Enugu, as well as St Patrick's College, Calabar, return to their days of glory.

We also note with delight that the Catholic Church has demonstrated great keenness on the development of higher education, particularly since the liberalisation of the ownership and management of tertiary institutions in Nigeria. It has far more private universities than any organisation.

Some of the higher institutions it owns directly or indirectly are Madonna University which is the first private university in the country, Catholic University of Nigeria, Tansian University, St Augustine University, Renaissance University, Bishop Godfrey Okoye University, etc.

It does, indeed, gladden the heart that the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja, which in the mid 1990s established Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja, the most competitive secondary school in Nigeria, is working hard on building a Jesuit university in the Federal Capital Territory. The role of Opus Dei, a prelature of the Church, in the establishment and management of such famous new institutions as The Lagoon Secondary School in Lagos and The White Sands Secondary School, also in Lekki, Lagos, as well as the Pan African University in Lagos, is well appreciated.

Read the entire article here.

Any influence Opus Dei may have at IESE is understated

2010-12-18T00:22:00.000-08:00

Letter to the Editor of Financial Times. December 13 2010 05:25 | Last updated: December 13 2010 05:25

From Mr Chris Daniels.

Sir, I read with interest your article on the University of Navarra’s Iese Business School and its links with Opus Dei (“A matter of faith”, FT Wealth, Winter 2010 edition). However, I was rather disappointed with the lack of balance about Opus Dei’s influence that came across.

I am head of Iese’s UK Alumni Association, a voluntary position nominated by Iese Business School. Yet I am not a member of Opus Dei, nor even a Catholic. I chose Iese because it is a great business school with an interesting mix of people and a strong ethical stance.

In my two years there, at no stage did I get any pressure to be involved with Opus Dei – in fact quite the contrary – the international students asked for a talk on Opus Dei after the first term because its presence was so unpronounced and we wanted to find out what all the fuss was about!

As for the chapel being in the centre of the Barcelona campus – it took me a year to discover this fabled building, tucked away below ground level. I am sure Opus Dei has an influence on Iese, but all I saw of it was that it was understated, and
I only saw a positive in that it may give the school an extra ethical dimension.

It was great that the article did mention a lot of the unique and world-leading aspects of Iese, but to spend the majority of the article on something that was rather incidental to most MBA students, particularly those from outside Spain, seemed to lack the balance that the FT is famous for.

Chris Daniels,

London NW1, UK

Twins Celebrate 100 Years in the Priesthood

2010-12-15T19:24:00.000-08:00

The theme for the celebration is: "100 Years in the Priesthood, Saviors With Jesus."

The interview with the Molaro brothers, of the Archdiocese of Parana, was suggested to ZENIT by Father Leandro Bonnin. He asked the twins about their vocational call, the secret to their perseverance, and other insights they have gained over the past 50 years.

Q: You have both had the occasion to take part in Church scenarios beyond the diocese, and experience the universal nature of the Church. What aspects of these experiences would you like to highlight?

Father Raúl: I have been greatly impressed seeing the multitudes that gather for the Pope's audiences in Rome, flocking with so much faith and love towards Christ's Vicar.

Also, I am impressed how the Holy Spirit has inspired numerous ecclesial movements of spiritual rebirth and apostolate that are renewing the Church, in the midst of so much trouble and of brothers who break away from God and the Church. These movements are the new yeast that is transforming the dough.

In relation to this last point, there is a very significant and important fact in my priestly life: the inner call of the Blessed Virgin to join the Institute of Diocesan Priests of Schoenstatt for many years now. This has marked my life deeply.

Father César: Relating this to the difficult years after the council, in Santa Elena, although at first I prayed a lot (I was there from 1965 to 1978), after 1968 or 1970, I stopped praying due to my activity, and I felt a great inner emptiness. In September 1976, I went to a retreat called by Monsignor Tortolo, which was preached by an Opus Dei priest: Father Fernando Lázaro. After that, he used to come every month from Buenos Aires to visit me and many other priests of the diocese. He invited me to join Opus Dei.

Over the years, I have seen that Opus Dei looks after you and looks after the priesthood. Once a week, you have fraternal conversation (spiritual direction), confession, and a formation meeting. It does not impose anything on you, while demanding more and more from you in your spiritual life, with all its requirements. There is no double obedience: to the bishop and to Opus Dei. One continues to be a diocesan priest and not a religious (Opus Dei priests are not religious), and one owes obedience to the bishop only.

In 1992, I had the grace of attending the beatification of Father Josemaría Escrivá. Although I wanted to, I was not going to the canonization because I had undergone a stomach operation on May 17, 2002, and the canonization was on Oct. 6. Opus Dei paid for my entire trip and lodging; on board the plane, there was a priest looking after me, while, at the canonization, the vicar of Opus Dei in Argentina, himself, was by me, looking after me.

Really, as the founder of Opus Dei used to say, it is a good place to live and to die. It pleases me to remember that I was able to go twice to Rome and see the Pope and the prelate of Opus Dei, in the center of Catholicity, to experience the universality of the Church: faithful from all over the world, taking part in the beatification and canonization.

Q: A lot of young people, immersed in the instability of present day life, are doubtful whether it is possible to remain faithful to a state of life for many years. What are the keys to fidelity and perseverance?

Father César: Nowadays, more than ever, there is that instability among young people, who do not want to undertake a lifelong commitment. They consider perseverance and fidelity very difficult.

However, thanks to God, there are still married couples who celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, and people who remain faithful. And marriage is more difficult, because he or she can fail. In the priesthood, there is one who does not fail, and that is Jesus. In other words, a priest has 50% assured.

If one remains faithful to the norms of piety, if one is obedient, and accepts one's crosses in an endeavor to follow God's will, with his grace, one perseveres in fidelity. I am pleased and I thank God, when some of the faithful say to me: "Thank you for your fidelity."

Father Raúl: These are certainly very difficult times, and more so for the young.

I think one key point is to know what one wants and where one is going; in other words, to have a very clear personal ideal in life. To ask the Lord, in prayer, that he show us his paths, what he wishes of us, his will. And then, trusting in the Lord's help, to decide to live that inconditional surrender, "without looking back," trying to be faithful in the small-great things of everyday life.

For perseverance, what has sustained me is having a considerable amount of personal prayer with the Lord every day, trying to discover there the "God of Life." To listen to what the Lord says to me, what he expects of me.

Without prayer, it is very difficult to persevere in self-surrender. Additionally, having a life group where, fraternally, we can help each other with our brothers in the priesthood.

Q: What could you advise the current candidates to the priesthood, and young people discerning their vocation?

Father Raúl: That if they are doubtful, for them not to continue! Vocation is a personal response, in love and self-surrender, to the Lord and to the Church, like someone getting married, who acquires the commitment with someone else to love them forever.

That they should believe that the Lord will not fail; he is always faithful! He does not abandon the task he has undertaken. We, poor sinners, can fail, but Jesus does not withdraw his love.

If you feel the Lord's call to love him and to give yourself to him, do not hesitate to take the plunge, and you will succeed in swimming.

Father César: That they should consider the fact that if they are in the seminary it is because Jesus "looked at them and loved them," and that he is calling them for this great vocation: the priesthood. It is an enormous gift and the light that illuminates the path.

That one is freer when, relinquishing everything, one wants to follow Jesus. One gains the hundredfold return and eternal life. What more can one ask for? Come on, and go ahead!

Q: Both of you have been very close to the Blessed Virgin during your ministry. What role does Mary play in the life of a priest, and what role did she play in yours?

Father Raúl: She is the mother and educator of Jesus the priest; she is also, according to the Lord's will, the mother and educator of the priest, who is another Christ.

As St. Pius X stated previously "the shortest, easiest, safest path to Christ is Mary." She is her Son's right hand in the work of salvation, and God wants her to be the right hand of those who are "other Christs," priests, in their priestly ministry.

Personally, I have to point out how much my alliance of love with the Blessed Virgin, within the Schoenstatt Movement, has meant in my personal life and in my life as a priest.

Father César: After Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary occupies an essential place in the life of a priest.

She is Jesus' mother and our mother, who cares especially for her sons in the priesthood.

If one gives oneself to the Blessed Virgin, one may go through troubles, but the Virgin does not neglect one. How important it is to trust in her!

On Oct. 12, the day of Our Lady of Pilar, it was 54 years since my vow of servitude of St. Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort. I was finishing the first year of theology. I have always felt that being in theology means that you are convinced you are going to be a priest. You cannot study theology if you are not sure of your priestly vocation.

I remember that once, at least, I went to the basilica of Our Lady of Lujan, to pray to the Virgin for my priesthood. I had occasion to touch and be very close to Our Lady of Lujan when Pope John Paul II came for the first time, in the midst of the Falklands crisis. Every day I rediscover how important the three Hail Marys are, the praying of the holy rosary, the scapular, in other words, that we should feel that we are Mary's sons.

Source: http://www.catholic.net/index.php?option=zenit&id=31178

Lay Catholics in Asia: A sleeping giant that is waking up

2010-09-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

By Asia News in SperoNews

Seoul - Lay Catholics in Asia have been likened to a "sleeping giant", held back by too many commitments within the clerical structures. It is now time to awaken them to their specific mission, which is to live in the world like a leaven, transforming it, showing the diversity of their life of faith so as to arouse admiration and questions in those who are non-believers . This is a summary of the contents of discussions and conversations held today, the second day of the Congress of Asian Catholic laity here in Seoul which has stressed the present moment as one of transition to an all encompassing lay mission, in family life, the workplace, media in politics.

An authoritative support for this thrust towards the world was founding the intervention of Mgr. Josef Clemens, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. Thanks to his personal experience as a close collaborator of Josef Ratzinger until his election as Pope (he was his personal secretary), Mgr. Clemens highlighted many of Ratzinger's interventions in defense of a lay commitment "not in church structures, but as leaders in society", in contact with the world

He also outlined the continuing relevance of the Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici asking for its implementation, 22 years on from its promulgation.

But the contributions that have aroused most interest were those of the first two Asians to speak to the Congress.

The first, Mgr. Dao Dinh Duc, a professor at the Seminary in Xuan Loc (Vietnam) emphasized that any commitment of the Church that does not include the mission ad gentes (to non-Christians) is not a true ecclesial commitment. This commitment is borne mainly by lay people, who live in daily contact with the world. What is to be feared, he said, is to have lay people who "are only in the structures of the Church and are insignificant in society".

The mission in the world should not rely on abused slogans, but tend to enliven the faith in culture. For this, he added, it is not enough to "serve the poor": we must ensure that the Gospel reaches "even the rich, the powerful, the intellectuals, policy makers, university students because the fate of the poor also depends on them."

The second person, the first Asian layman to make an address, was Jess Estanislao, who was actively involved in the world of politics, as a member of the Philippine government and former entrepreneur. A member of Opus Dei, Estanislao presented the scope of lay mission: professionalism and perfection in the workplace, commitment to family and life (he still battles alongside the Filipino Church against the law to control population that the government in Manila would like to see approved); freedom and personal responsibility in social decisions, fighting so that priests do not engage directly in political life, friendship with all; cultivating friends in the media. In this regard, as an example, he spoke of how important it is to maintain good relations with the authors of the television soap operas in the Philippines, full of sex, ambiguity and ignorance towards Christianity. "Only through these friendships - he said - can we help these authors to change their work and fill it with new values."

Every intervention stressed the importance of formation of the laity, placing of value on study and understanding of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.

Read the rest of the article at SperoNews.

Sandra Cassidy: It's an easy way of knowing you are doing penance

2010-09-01T19:51:00.000-07:00

By Rebecca Hardy in Daily Mail

Sarah Cassidy is the sort of no-nonsense, capable woman you might expect to find as headmistress of a primary school. But Sarah doesn’t do children, and she doesn’t do husbands either.

No. Sarah is 43, single and celibate — and determined to remain so. Each night she fastens a wire chain, known as a cilice, around her upper thigh.

The device has sharp prongs that dig into the skin and flesh, though generally it does not draw blood. To most women, it sounds a peculiarly masochistic practice.

Yet Sarah says it serves a very different purpose: suppressing her desires and atoning for her sins.

Quite what those sins might be it is hard to imagine. For Sarah is not just good, but very, very good. She doesn’t drink, abhors drugs and has never had sex.

More than that, she is a senior female figure in Opus Dei, one of the most controversial forces in the Roman Catholic church. Portrayed as shadowy and sinister in Dan Brown’s international bestseller The Da Vinci Code, the group has been accused of obsessive secretiveness, elitism, misogyny and criticised for its methods of recruitment.

But it is the ‘mortification of the flesh’ — a ritualistic form of self-harming practised by many Opus Dei members — that has attracted most widespread condemnation.

Now, in a bid to correct false impressions, Sarah has agreed to meet me to discuss what it is that attracts women like her to what seems such an austere and, frankly, painful expression of faith. I meet her with fellow Opus Dei member Eileen Cole at the group’s £7 million London headquarters on Chelsea Embankment, where Sarah now lives.

First, though, some background. Opus Dei — Latin for ‘Work of God’ —was founded in Spain in 1928 by the Roman Catholic priest St Josemaria Escriva. Its doctrine focuses upon the lives of ordinary Catholics, who are neither priests, nuns nor monks yet who believe that everyone should aspire to be a saint.

Today, the organisation claims to have 87,000 members worldwide, about 60 per cent of whom live in Europe — among them, former Labour education minister Ruth Kelly.
Membership is divided into different categories.

About 70 per cent are so-called ‘supernumeraries’ — married men and women with normal careers. They contribute financially to Opus Dei, and though they are not formally required to practise ‘mortification’, many choose to do so.

The cilice is an easy way of knowing you’re doing penance. I wear mine above my thigh. If you go swimming, you don’t want to leave a mark from where it has been'

More committed, though, are ‘numeraries’ like Sarah and Eileen, who pledge to remain celibate, generally live in special Opus Dei houses scattered around the world, and often work directly for the organisation.

Mortification is part of their daily routine, including use of the cilice and periods of fasting.

So every evening, just before she does the washing up, Eileen, 51, straps her strand of barbed wire round her leg and leaves it there for two whole hours, scratching at her skin and digging into the flesh.

It sounds agony, but she insists it’s ‘less painful than a bikini wax’. And besides, pain is the whole point.

‘It’s an easy way of knowing you’re doing penance,’ says Eileen, who lives in an Opus Dei centre in Ealing, West London. ‘I wear mine above my thigh. If you go swimming, you don’t want to leave a mark from where it has been.

‘To be honest, it’s the fasting I find most difficult.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1308090/Shes-respectable-intelligent---does-Sarah-attach-painful-barbed-chain-leg-hours-day.html#ixzz0yKwVGusv

Sainthood cause of Opus Dei priest opened in Boston

2010-08-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

By Jim Lockwood in The Boston Pilot

BRAINTREE -- Rosemary Cook, of Pembroke, was driving in her car on a snowy day nearly 30 years ago when she passed a priest trudging through the snow.

Toting his suitcase, he was in the midst of a roughly five-mile walk from a bus stop to Arnold Hall Conference Center a North Pembroke retreat house.

The mother of nine was driving alone and asked the priest, whom she knew through her involvement with Opus Dei, if he would like a ride.

Cook estimated that when she saw the priest, he was about one mile from Arnold Hall. She said the priest refused the ride, saying he preferred not to get into a car with a woman driving by herself.

"I just remember being so impressed by that," Cook, now 71, said.

The priest was Servant of God Father Joseph Muzquiz, whose cause for canonization is now being opened by the Archdiocese of Boston.

Cook met Father Muzquiz when he came to the Boston area in 1981. She recalled his humility and pastoral presence.

"He was so incredibly wonderful but so unassuming and so quiet," Cook said.

"He did so much and you never would have known it," she also said. "There's no way he would ever put the spotlight on himself."

Cook's daughters, when they were teenagers, went to then Father Muzquiz for spiritual direction. They also worked at Arnold Hall during their high school years.

"He was like a grandfatherly type," Cook said.

"It's great to have your daughters, when they are in high school, getting spiritual direction from someone like him," Cook said.

Today, Cook prays for Father Muzquiz's intercession.

Father David Cavanagh, an Opus Dei priest from Cambridge and who is the postulator of Father Muzquiz's cause for canonization, said that he has prayed to him and received favors, like others he knows.

"We keep track of these," he said. "That's all pertinent."

However, Father Cavanagh said he is not aware of any first class miracles that can be attributed to him yet.

"This is normal," Father Cavanagh said. "The process is just getting underway."

In order to become a saint, a person must have two verified first class miracles attributed to them -- one to be beatified and another to be canonized.

Father Cavanagh discussed the process towards canonization, noting that Cardinal O'Malley has accepted Opus Deis' petition to open Muzquiz's cause. Bishop Emilio Allue, vicar of the archdiocese's Hispanic Apostolate, is spearheading the effort on behalf of the cardinal.

To read the rest of the article, see The Boston Pilot.

The story of Ray Santos

2010-08-12T19:44:00.000-07:00

By Ray Santos. A story of a security guard and his vocation to Opus Dei, delivered at the International Congress "The Grandeur of Ordinary Life" in Rome, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of St. Josemaria Escriva, January 9th 2002. The speech received one of the warmest and longest standing ovations during the entire conference. Slightly edited to update blessed to saint.

My name is Ray Santos, a true blooded Filipino. But my name is a combination of English and Spanish. Ray means beam of light in English and Santos means Saints in Spanish. My name is just one of the ordinary Filipino names but lately I discovered the reason why God gave me this name. Whether this is by coincidence or not, I do not know but it sounds interesting to relate to you.

I am married to a simple woman and blessed with one lovely daughter. I spent most of my life working as a Security Guard for an Agency in the Philippines contracted to provide security services to companies of various sizes. Just to give you an idea of how much a Filipino security guard earns, my monthly salary is just enough to cover daily food, minimum clothing and basic public school education. I cannot afford to rent a house or apartment, so I stay in a 30 square meter house in a “ squatter area” at the heart of Metro Manila. Most of my neighbors are either unemployed or under-employed. I am lucky to be employed so I am grateful despite my meager income. In our country, more than thirty (30%) of our population live below the poverty line. Our neighborhood is just one of the hundred similar places in various parts of Metro Manila. For those of you who have visited the Philippines, your memories of our country will surely include squatters and street children all over.

My first encounter with the teachings of Saint Josemaria Escriva was when I worked in a big multinational company producing wires and cables named Phelps Dodge. The President happened to be a supernumerary member of Opus Dei. His surname was also Santos. The complete name was Ramon B. Santos. True to his name, he is another aspirant to become a “saint”. His dream is, just like any son of Saint Josemaria, to make sure, if possible, all of his employees will try to understand the value of sanctification in ordinary work. According to him, when the time comes that the first employee he meets at the gate greets him [with a special greeting of members of Opus Dei], then it would be a clear indication that that employee is one of the thousands happy followers of Saint Josemaria. That employee will surely “contaminate” with cheerfulness and sanctity the rest of his colleagues.

For this to happen, Phelps Dodge included in its corporate-wide human resource development program: doctrine classes, retreats, recollections and work values seminars. This type of development program was unique. It was a company benefit that was non-monetary and the positive effect on the employees and their families were real, albeit non-quantifiable.

To augment my income, I had to accept the special assignment of driving the officers and employees attending out-of-town activities such as retreats and work values seminars when my security shifts would allow. Mr. Santos, the President, trusted me a lot for this special assignment. His trust was not based on our similar surname. He never said a word but I could feel that he was proud of me being another hard working Santos in the company.

With the special formative activities as part of the benefit package, the company was blessed with many employees receiving a vocation to Opus Dei. Most of them were managers. This made me conclude that Opus Dei was only for the rich and for managers. I guessed that I should not even aspire to belong. I just performed my normal duties as best as I could.

As security guard-driver, I had no choice but to wait for the activities to end no matter how long they would take. So instead of doing nothing, once, the retreat coordinator encouraged me to attend and listen to the talks, meditation and classes.

As I listened, I started to discover my wrong doings. I realized that I had to change. With a small opening, the ray of light comes in. My name Ray--a beam of light--started to have a new meaning. You may call it a coincidence.

I realized that I had to start changing in dealing with my wife, fellow security guards and neighbors. My sudden turnaround was a big surprise for them. The first lesson I learned from Saint Josemaria was that sanctity is not just for the rich and the managers but also for a security guard like me.

Secondly, it was the first time I learned that marriage is not a second class vocation. It is a first class vocation and my wife should be my first apostolate. I admit here in public that my wife and I were separated for one year due to frequent and unbearable quarrels. She must have been the happiest person when I made a complete turnaround. I started to go home early every day. When I say early it means early in the evening not early morning the following day, which was my usual practice. We started to go to Sunday Mass together. Started helping in the household chores. In the Philippines, men believe that if you are the head of the family all you need to do at home is rest and command. Now I cannot afford to rest and I have to follow my wife’s orders. I have to fetch water from the common neighborhood pump. I have to help my wife wash clothes. And most especially, I have to make up for one year of lost time due to our separation.

Many of my friends tried to shy away from me especially when I gave up heavy drinking. Their common observation: “ I was a different kind of Ray now”. I told them, that time will come when they would understand me. I started to pray every day to Saint Josemaria using his Prayer Card for each one of my friends. It took them one year to realize that real friendship is introducing your friend to God since all of us should be friends of God.

In my work, I made it a habit to say spiritual aspirations as I go around inspecting the property. I tried to imitate Saint Josemaria’s practice of spreading Hail Mary’s praying for people all over without them knowing it. When I leave the company premises, I ask Saint Josemaria’s help to guard the whole property while I am out. True enough, one night, I received a radio message at 2:00 in the morning that the guards caught a robber inside the plant. I went to check the situation. Nobody was hurt. Nothing was lost. Saint Josemaria was at work while I was asleep. It has been tried and tested in several payroll hold-up cases in our company that seeking the help of Saint Josemaria always results in safety and security of lives. Robbers and hold-uppers are always alive and safe when caught.

I was promoted to the position of Supervisor of the Security Guards not because I and the President shared the same surname but because of dedication and performance. I had a big edge over the other security guards, especially when God called me to live my life as a supernumerary member of Opus Dei last December 26, 1997. This was God’s best Christmas gift to me. Now I had to be true to my surname Santos. Call it a coincidence, Ray Santos acquired a new dimension when I discovered the light of my vocation to become a saint.

The struggle to live my vocation in the environment where I came from was not easy. Daily life became more exciting because the nature of my job is to be “on call”, and I had to learn to squeeze out time to attend my formation activities and fulfill my spiritual plan of life. Saint Josemaria always took charge when I was out.

Eventually, Phelps Dodge closed down its Manila plant to transfer to Tarlac, 150 kilometers North of the city. Before it was transferred, I took the opportunity to show a big smile and to greet Mr. Santos with a warm hello [and the special greeting of members of Opus Dei] instead of a formal salute when he entered the gate one morning. It seemed like a silent meeting of minds. He knew that I had joined Opus Dei already. He may not have had enough time to convince all his employees to appreciate the teachings of Saint Josemaria because he was about to retire, but at least the first person at the gate, a security guard named Ray Santos now understood that it is possible to sanctify oneself in the middle of the world. According to him, I am another Santos trying to be a saint in the middle of the world.

After Phelps Dodge, I accepted the job as take charge guy of one of the biggest construction barracks in Metro Manila. This time I had to deal with 600 all male construction workers, mason, carpenters, security guards, laborers, steel men and helpers. Many of these workers had left their families in the provinces to earn a living in Metro Manila. My first concern was how to help them make good use of their weekends and rest days. The Catholics among them did not even go to Mass on Sundays.

This time, I was the only son of Saint Josemaria in a more exciting environment. I had to do my part to “re-christianize” that environment despite all odds. Firstly, I conducted Catholic doctrine classes and organized Sunday Masses in the barracks. Secondly, I organized sports festivals, fund–raising activities and credit cooperatives for the sick, injured and financially needy employees. Everybody was happy with the results. I am sure that Saint Josemaria really wanted me to pursue these apostolic works. That was why he worked harder helping me from heaven when I was working in the barracks.

Ladies and Gentlemen, being here in Italy speaking in front of you is another of God’s rewards. Never in my wildest dreams have I thought of traveling abroad. Never in my wildest dream have I thought of having a chance to deliver the stories of my life to such a distinguished audience. It really pays to be a Santos, a struggling saint in the middle of the world. God takes care of the rest.

There Be Dragons: You will not regret seeing this film. Not one tiny bit

2010-08-12T06:29:00.000-07:00

By Marcel LeJeune, MTS

I am currently at the Theology of the Body Congress in Philadelphia. It is a gathering of many who believe in the power of the message of John Paul II's Theology of the Body. There are some real influential movers and shakers here including academics, leaders, catechists, priests, religious, bishops, laity, etc. from around the country and more than a dozen countries.

We were privileged to get see the first screening of There Be Dragons outside of LA tonight. It is a new movie which will be released in theaters this fall. It is a major motion picture and is currently in post-production, so we saw an unfinished version of the movie. Because of a confidentiality agreement, I can't give details, but suffice it to say - this one isn't your run-of-the-mill "Catholic" film that doesn't have the budget to put together a nice production. Rather, it is a major motion picture with a message for us all.

The film is based upon the life of St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei (who, if you aren't familiar with him - he is a rock star of a Saint you need to get to know). It really brought St. Josemaria alive for me in a new way. It moved me. Once I am able, I will give details about the film. But, you should know this - you will not regret seeing this film. Not one tiny bit.

Roland Joffe is the director of the film. He also directed one of my favorite films of all time - The Mission - as well as The Killing Fields. He was nominated for the Oscar for best director for both films. He is top-notch and There Be Dragons nears the same level of film making.

More about the film from a recent press release:

New major motion film reflects on the life of Opus Dei founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá

View a trailer at www.ThereBeDragonsFilm.com

Hollywood, CA, July 28— Academy Award nominated director Roland Joffé returns to Hollywood with an epic film that explores the nature of humanity in his latest movie “There Be Dragons.” The famed director of the deeply Catholic film “The Mission” returns to a spiritual plot in his latest film, a powerful story of forgiveness and reconciliation woven around the figure of St. Josemaría Escrivá during the Spanish republic and Civil War in the mid 1930s. The film combines action, adventure, passion and romance with the extraordinary drama of human tragedy and Divine redemption.

Recently, more than 68 million Catholics in the United States and more than 1 billion around the world marked the feast day of St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. Without question, this controversial religious organization and the entire Catholic Church have been the subjects of much criticism and conspiracies. Yet, even during these challenging times, the life of this intriguing Catholic figure has inspired the making of a $35 million major motion picture.

Opus Dei: for the rich and the poor

2010-07-31T00:08:00.000-07:00

Comments at Pinoy Exchange Forum. By Ziggyboy from Sydney. This is a slightly edited version of the original posts which can be found here and here.

I also studied in a PAREF school back in grade school and some years in high school. I did not graduated though ha ha.

Opus Dei is actually a "Personal Prelature", which is almost synonymous to a diocese; and definitely not to be compared to El Shaddai. It's actually the only personal prelature in existence. They have a bishop who heads them but that's for the whole of Opus Dei in the world. Unlike a diocese which is bound by geographical borders, a personal prelature has only their members as their limits. In effect, Opus Dei members worldwide recognize the Opus Dei bishop also as their bishop and not just (for example) the Cardinal of Manila.

Actually, there is a reason why Opus Dei somehow focuses on prominent people (although they would deny they do--they also have programs for the poor--they run a school for farmers too! Not to mention the Southridge Night School!). Opus Dei believes that one can achieve becoming a true Christian by just doing what you normally do without doing anything extraordinary...because everyday life can be a prayer in itself!

Somehow we get the notion that when you are rich, you're supposed to give away our riches to fully follow God; and when you're poor, you're more likely to enter Heaven. Touching the hearts of the rich and making them do what is moral and just will make more impact to more people because they are influential. For example: There is a cruel rich man with 50 workers in his factory. Evangelize the workers and they might end up sacrificing more or complain less, but evangelize the cruel rich man and you will also help the 50 workers as a result.

Well some of the ideas here are my personal point of views especially the last ones, so please, don't flame Opus Dei.

Opus Dei has programs for the poor, and the Southridge Night School is an excellent one. They offer scholarships for the top students of public schools only. Did you know that the night school actually has a better passing rate at the University of the Philippines more than the day school (the free night school has a higher rank in DECS NSAT compared to the day school and Woodrose, http://www.decs.gov.ph/topnsatncr.htm they are ranked number seven! They do better than Ateneo and Xavier high schools. But the Night School cannot operate without the existence of the day school because it is the "expensive tuition" of the day school that finances them. So by actually studying in Southridge you indirectly sponsor a night school student.

Night high school students use the same facilities and have the same teachers as day school and...for FREE! The only problem is that their grade requirements are very high and you have to come from a public school. Let's see a lowly financed school offer that quality of education to public school students. Would you think it would be possible to do all these without the help of the rich? To have most of their programs for the poor would shoo away the rich and will have dramatic loss of money. Who would fund the newly started programs for the poor? Remember that rich people would only fund organizations they do not benefit from only once in a while. But those they are a part of would benefit greatly from their generosity.

Let's see Ateneo, LaSalle GH/Zobel, Colegio San Agustin, Assumption, Poveda, St. Scholastia's or any religious-run high schools produce great public school student graduates and give it to them for FREE! To me, the night school of Southridge is the best chance that a public school student can ever have in this whole country!

Like parents of a large and needy family

2010-07-27T01:02:00.000-07:00

By Wendy Petzall at Opusdeitoday. She replies to a query at Opus Dei today forum.

Question: I read in another website that Opus Dei numeraries give their income to the Work and receive a stipend. Does this also entail that they must surrender private property and accounts as well or do they own private property like other lay people?

Many numeraries choose to give all they earn for the upkeep of the house (and family = other members of the Work who live in that house), just like any parent in a family would do. And that should not surprise anybody.
At the same time, whatever money that particular person needs, s/he can use, again as any parent would in a "numerous and needy family" (the usual recommendation of St Josemaría to all who want to practise the virtue of Christian poverty): with great care! This means, thinking carefully of the needs of all members of the family BEFORE spending a dime on oneself, looking for bargains and sales, and giving up a lot of things in order to take care of the family, just as any parent would do, and putting all the money in the "common pot" [I really, really don't understand prenuptial agreements between Catholics!]

On the other hand, in one's own professional life, one is in charge of whatever resources are needed for that work. This might mean being the owner of a business or company, or of shares in a company, or the administrator, or... etc., etc., etc. And each one does with one's own money whatever one wants, with the limitations any person would have: if you do not own the company you work for, you have to keep and give account of whatever you use, as anyone would be expected to do...

I hope I'm not confusing the issue, but money has never been a problem for me in my 38 years as a numerary in Venezuela.

All the best,

Wendy

A feast for the soul

2010-07-27T00:39:00.000-07:00

By Pablito de la Cruz. He is a pediatric neurologist in Terre Haute, Indiana, who came in contact with the Work in the Philippines while in med school at the University of the Philippines College of Medicine. He has four children.

I admire the members of Opus Dei. The spirituality they evoke is very human and very ordinary--you might miss it entirely just by looking. However, it is as old as the early Christians and they genuinely practice it in their lives. The members of Opus Dei may seem elitist--I know many who are professionals-Doctors, businessmen and people in places of authority--but they practice their faith in the utmost humility. If you have a center of Opus Dei near you, I would highly recommend attending their retreats--it is a feast for the soul!

His usually spiritual joy: Fr. Ramon Salas, vicar of Opus Dei

2010-07-25T23:33:00.000-07:00

By CNA/EWTN news

Coadjutor Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles has written a letter bidding farewell to Fr. Ramon Salas Cacho, an exemplary priest who tragically died in a car accident on July 9. In his letter, the archbishop expressed his sympathy and hope in God, praising the courageous testimony of Fr. Salas and the priest's total commitment to his mission.

“For those who have faith, we know, as St. Paul says, that everything happens for the good of those who love God (Romans 8:28). There are events in our lives, however, episodes that remind us that accepting this truth is not always easy,” the archbishop wrote. “One of them has been the departure to Eternal Life of a priest friend, whose entire life was an affirmation of the Year of Priests we have just brought to a close: Fr. Ramon Salas Cacho, who completed his journey among us on July 9.”

The priest, who was the vicar of the prelature for Opus Dei in Mexico City, died at the age of 57. He had served as a priest for 25 years.

“Ramon, how are you?’ I would often ask him each time I had the chance to visit Mexico City,” the archbishop continued in his letter. “‘Will you come with me to the Villa to celebrate Mass at the Basilica of Guadalupe?’ I would invariably ask him. And the generosity of his response was equally invariable: ‘Absolutely! I’ll pick you up at the airport and we’ll go pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe.’”

“The last time we were together at the feet of Our Lady, he turned to me with his usually spiritual joy and said, ‘It’s so great to pray with Our Lady of Guadalupe',” the prelate recalled.

“His more than 25 years of priesthood were marked by a profound life of prayer, the devout celebration of the Holy Eucharist and untiring attention to the spiritual needs of so many men and women who came to him to be reconciled with God through the sacrament of Confession or to seek out counsel and wisdom through spiritual direction,” Archbishop Gomez noted.

The rest of the article is here.

My ideal is so great that only the sea could hold it

2010-07-24T01:21:00.000-07:00

By Sergei, a 28 year old Russian Orthodox. He is a cooperator of Opus Dei.

The immense gift of life that God has given us is just the beginning of our journey. On our way to the Kingdom of God we are all the same, whatever family we were born into. That’s why it’s so important for us to ask, “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?”

One day a friend told me: “When I finished my degree I thought that soon I would be an important person, that before long a big car would drive up and the head of some major firm would greet me, ‘We’ve been waiting for you; welcome to your new job!’ But as the days went by, no car showed up and many months passed before I found work. And then it wasn’t the job I had prepared for.”

Something similar happened to me. When I finished my studies in history, I found some part-time work for several years while writing my doctoral thesis. A few months before defending the thesis, I discovered the Christian faith. Since then I’ve been lucky to find steady work and can say that life hasn’t gone all that badly for me.

In any case, I realized that something was still missing. Rarely did I find any real satisfaction in my work. I thought to myself: “I can do greater and more interesting things than this, but my bosses don’t see it that way.” This dissatisfaction couldn’t last forever, so I started looking for something that could help me escape from this dead-end street and truly find myself.

One day, on the Internet, I came across some passages from a book by St. Josemaría. It was only a few lines, but it was enough to catch my attention and make me react. I had the impression that those words had been written especially for me: “That young fellow wrote to me: ‘My ideal is so great that only the sea could hold it.’ I answered: And what about the Tabernacle, which is so ‘small’? And the ‘lowly’ workshop in Nazareth? It is in the greatness of ordinary things that He awaits us!”

I’ve noticed with pictures of some people that the person’s eyes seem to be looking directly at you, and that if you change your position the eyes seem to follow you. That’s what happened to me. St. Josemaría didn’t write his books “for everyone,” but “for each one,” “for me.”

Finding meaning in any activity, even when boring or routine, could seem an obvious truth that’s been known for a thousand years. But when you read words like: “Before God, no occupation is in itself great or small. Everything acquires the value of the Love with which it is carried out,” then that truth becomes surprisingly relevant right here and now.

Once I changed my attitude to work, the quality of my work and the way I approached it started changing too. But most importantly, my understanding of “why” I was doing it changed. As I read more deeply in St. Josemaría’s books, it became impossible for me to work in a slipshod way or to do something just to get it done, since we are working for God. As Escrivá says, “It is no good offering to God something that is less perfect than our poor human limitations permit. The work that we offer must be without blemish, and it must be done as carefully as possible, even in its smallest details.”

This is how St. Josemaría has helped me to “find myself” and discover the meaning of my activities, and to carry out my work with peace.

Immersed in God: Josemaria Escriva, Founder of Opus Dei As Seen by His Successor, Bishop Alvaro Del Portillo

2010-07-23T01:29:00.000-07:00

In The Best SEO Checklist

This book is well worth its price. It brings to life Blessed Josemaria Escriva through the eyes of the man who was at his side for over 40 years. When reading the writings of Escriva one feels that they are indeed pious things to reach for, but this book shows that Escriva actually practiced what he preached.

How apt the title of the work is: Immersed in God. It paints a true picture of who Escriva was. Everything that he did, he referred to God. When reading this book you will discover this. When they had games to guess a number in the Father’s head, it would always be either 3 or a multiplication of 3, in honor of the Holy Trinity. When he used to read the newspaper, he would be praying for all the people and events to the Lord. When he would greet someone he would first mentally greet his or her guardian angel. He would always give up a better seat for someone else. He was a man who used every moment of his life as a sacrifice to offer to God. He was indeed a saint-he is the definition of one. Read this work--you will find yourself imitating him.

The First Priest of Xavier School

2010-07-21T01:03:00.000-07:00

Interview with Fr. Jimmy Liao, Xavier School, posted 14-Jun-2005 8:20 AM

Fr. Jimmy Liao was the first Xaverian who became a priest. He graduated from Xavier School in 1966 and pursued BS Commerce in Accounting in De La Salle University. Then, he became a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in 1970. Even though he had great qualifications in the field of Business, he still decided to follow his vocation and join the priesthood. He was ordained to the priesthood in Madrid , Spain in 1977, and soon after, he enrolled in the Doctorate in Sacred Theology program of the Universidad de Navarra in 1979 soon after his ordination.

What lessons, if any, did you absorb from Xavier School? I can never repay Xavier School for inculcating in me: seriousness in studies, religious piety, and service to others. I always remember Xavier’s motto: “Luceat Lux”, to let the light shine, specially the light of faith. The Jesuit formation values not only reason and logic, but also fosters high ideals.

As a priest for almost 30 years, are you happy with your vocation? Definitely very happy, with no regrets to being a servant of God.

How does your schooling in Xavier influence you to be a priest, if I may ask?

I would say that Xavier School prepared the ground for me to receive a vocation. The seed of the vocation to Opus Dei, a Personal Prelature composed of lay people and secular priests, was planted when I was at La Salle . My training and work as a CPA gave me a perspective to pursue spiritual bookkeeping and come up with income statements that show a spiritual profit. Material profits are transitory and ephemeral, while spiritual profit is lasting and forever. Material profits can never be equal to the spiritual profit of closeness to God.

What are your fondest memories of Xavier School? Fr Louis Papilla and the Sodality. Fr Papilla touched my life quite profoundly. In fact he was the one who endorsed me to be a scholar at La Salle , where I was introduced by a Xaverian classmate, Tony Chua, to Opus Dei’s activities and eventually joined it as a Numerary lay member in 1968.

What is your thought on minimizing conflicts between Islam and Christianity? I am not a deep thinker. But for my two cent’s worth, my opinion is: Love each other as I (Jesus) love you. Fr Rafael Cortina told one of our classmates that a Xaverian, a medical doctor and also a deacon of the United Evangelical Church, could be considered a good Christian since he visited quite often the Jesuit priests who were sometimes sick in the Jesuit House. This type of behavior of Christian love will certainly reduce conflicts among religions.

Off the record, how do you react as a priest to temptations of the flesh? Prayer, mortification, apostolic zeal and hard work. I remember what Fr Daniel Clifford advised us sometime in 1965 during Religion class: “For 1 minute of pleasure, why should you sacrifice eternity?” I would modify the above: For 1 minute of pleasure, is the risk worth it?

Given that all those belonging to batch 66 are likely in the age range of 5:30 , what advices can you give for them to face depression and mortality? I myself am already 56 years old. Another 10, 20 or 30 years, either I will be attending funerals of other classmates or my classmates will be attending my funeral. Life is short. Jesus died because of love for others. Some people died for money. Others for fame. Even not a few died without knowing why. How about dying for love? Given the shortness of life, my 1 peso worth of opinion: 1) What you do now, ask yourself: when you stand in the eternity of time, would you do it? This viewpoint of eternity of time will change one’s perspective, values and decisions; 2) I strongly recommend doing physical exercises to promote blood circulation, and also to protect the temple of God .

When you decided to become a priest, how did you handle the objections of your parents? Though they did object to my vocation, I prayed very hard and stayed firm in my decision. I missed their presence on the day of my ordination in Spain in 1977. Soon after, through the dealings of some Opus Dei members with them, my parents came to understand my calling and appreciate it a lot. In fact, my late father began to take up catechism classes and, upon my return from Spain in 1979, I baptized him with the name of Josemaria, as a sign of my devotion and gratitude to St. Josemaria Escriva, Founder of Opus Dei.

Pastoral Ministry of Father Jimmy Liao

1977-79 Chaplain of Club Indar, Vitoria ( Spain ) while pursuing Masteral and Doctorate studies in Pamplona; 1979-81 Chaplain of Samar Study Center , Q.C., Philippines; 1981-85 Chaplain of Shiu Fai Cultural Center, Hong Kong; 1985-91 Chaplain of Cheng Jung Study Center , Taipei ( Taiwan ); Spiritual Director of Taipei Minor Seminary ( Taiwan ); 1991-96 Chaplain of Samar Study Center , Q.C., Philippines; 1996-2003 Chaplain of Tak Sun Kindergarten and Primary School, Hong Kong; 2003-2006 Chaplain of Heshan University; Residence, Taipei ( Taiwan; Professor/Spiritual Director of Taiwan; Regional Major Seminary, Taipei ( Taiwan ); 2006 - Present Chaplain, Stella Orientis Chapel, University of Asia and the Pacific, Pasig, Philippines

A remarkable path to Opus Dei: John Paul II and the Shins

2010-07-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

By John Allen in Opus Dei

People find their way into Opus Dei in a variety of ways, but within that diversity, Louisa Shins, a Dutch supernumerary, followed one of the more remarkable paths. She was born in the south of Holland, where she attended a school for women looking to do domestic work. She met her husband while at school, and the two were married in 1961. They moved to Italy, where her husband pursued a career as a nuclear technician. They lived about forty miles north of Milan, in a town on Lago Maggiore. They had three children, two boys and a girl, all of whom went to international schools and grew up speaking Dutch, Italian, and French.

When their oldest son turned eighteen, he decided to go to Amsterdam for university studies. After about a year, the son called home and said he had found an international residence that he liked very much, where he could be with young men from Spain, France, and Italy, as well as the Dutch. That residence, it turned out, was operated by Opus Dei. Then their second son headed off to Amsterdam and repeated the pattern. After one year he phoned his parents saying he too wanted to move into the Opus Dei residence. Shins said she didn’t know much about Opus Dei at this stage, merely that she had asked a Dutch Benedictine who had given Opus Dei a clean bill of health. After a while, however, she said she noticed changes in her boys, for the better. They didn’t argue with each other, and they seemed more focused, more responsible, more adult. Finally the daughter left for Holland, and she decided not to mess around, moving directly into an Opus Dei residence for university girls.

Not long afterward, the Shinses took a family vacation together in Spain. Louisa said she knew something had changed when one of her children proposed going to a weekday Mass, and the next day another proposed saying the rosary. Moreover, Shins said, she began to see changes in her daughter. She smiled more, she seemed content, and was always willing to help out around the house. “What a beautiful thing,” Shins recalls thinking. At that stage she began attending Opus Dei retreats and get-togethers in Milan, despite having to travel some forty miles over foggy, dangerous roads.

At some point, she said, her children revealed to her that they planned to join Opus Dei as numeraries. She said she cried a bit and did not tell her husband because she didn’t want him to know yet that the children would not be coming home. At this stage, she said, she wasn’t quite sure what to make of Opus Dei, and her husband hadn’t shown any particular interest. Then, out of the blue, in 1987, one of the children phoned and proposed that the following weekend all five of them meet in Rome. Louisa got off work from her teaching job, and her husband, already retired, was ready to go. When they met in Rome, two of the children took Louisa and her husband sightseeing, but the third said he needed to stay by the phone, because he had to call someone every hour. Shins thought that a bit odd, but didn’t make much of it. When they got back, the son announced: “Tomorrow we’re going to Mass with the pope.” Louisa said she didn’t sleep well that night with excitement, but wasn’t worried ... she had told the hotel manager that if they didn’t wake her at 4:00 A.M., she wouldn’t pay the bill.

The family went to the private Mass, and afterward everyone lined up to meet John Paul II. A Vatican aide told them they could make a bit of chitchat, so Louisa’s husband decided to ask a question out of professional interest. “Holy Father,” he asked, “what do you think of nuclear power?” It probably wasn’t the usual postliturgical fare, but John Paul was unfazed. “Research is always for the good,” he said. “We have to do a great deal of research. If something is clean and affordable, then it’s a good thing.” Her husband, Louisa said, was content with the response.

Then it was her turn, and Louisa decided to “pop the question.” Pointing to her children, she said: “Holy Father, we have three children in Opus Dei, and we don’t know much about it. We’ve heard some people with different opinions, some positive, some negative. Tell me what you think, because yours is the only opinion that really counts for me.” The pope looked at her and said, “These are your children?” Louisa said yes, and the pope turned and began speaking with the three of them. He chatted for a few moments, obviously developing a positive impression, then returned to Louisa and her husband.

Looking at the parents directly, the pope smiled and said: “And you’re not yet members?”

It was all downhill from there.

As a footnote, the next day the Shin family was in an audience with Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, the prelate of Opus Dei. Again, they were told they could ask a question, and so her husband decided this would be the ultimate test. Addressing himself to Portillo, he asked: “Father, what do you think of nuclear energy?” When Portillo responded with virtually the same words that John Paul II had used, Shins decided that Opus Dei was good enough for him. He and Louisa became supernumeraries shortly thereafter.

We have a Father. We must not forget it

2010-07-05T01:03:00.000-07:00

By Bishop Finn

Dear Friends,

Once again we come together in praise and thanks to God on this Feast of St. Josemaria Escriva, to thank God for the prayers and example of this simple priest – a man of our own time, who nonetheless is a saint for all ages.

I know that one of the primary things that has attracted me to St. Josemaria is his humble devotion, his fidelity to the Church at a time when there was much upheaval, and his simple plan to help us see all of our most everyday tasks and efforts, our daily work, as a path to holiness.

You know so well, you who have read the Way, the Furrow, the Forge, that these little bits of sage wisdom – always consonant with the Gospel, represent a thousand little ways to holiness in the midst of the world. St. Josemaria, as a young priest, prayed fervently, “ut videam!,” Lord, that I may see! And he was given such a profound God’s-eye view of the way that ordinary men and women, lay faithful, family men and women, and diocesan priests as well, could be holy in accord with God’s plan: not by leaving the world but precisely by living close to God in the world – and offering all that happens, and all they do as a gift to God for the end of sanctification.

The unique insight of our saint was that he knew quickly and with a supernatural resolution that all were called to holiness. We need not go to a monastery – though some may indeed be called by God to go there. We need not become ordained, though we ought not resist if God calls us to the clerical state. We can reach heaven surely and safely by being contemplatives in the middle of the world. This is so important because, in fact it is the vocation of probably 95% of humanity!

Yes, understandably we give a lot of prayer and attention to the vocations of priesthood and consecrated life. Please don’t stop praying for these vocations. But what is God’s plan for the spiritual transformation of the world? It is for all of us to live a way, a path, a ‘plan of life’ which constantly reminds us of God’s presence, steeps us in prayer, many small mortifications and loving sacrifices, interior conversion, sound direction, growth in virtue, life of the Sacraments, good reading of Sacred Scripture and other holy books.

Emblematic of the simplicity and depth of St. Josemaria’s vision for holiness is the truth that God is our Father. You recall perhaps the story of St. Josemaria, traveling on the streetcar after a long day with many challenges,

“In mid-October, 1931, while in a streetcar ‘I felt the action of God, bringing forth in my heart and on my lips, with the force of something imperatively necessary, this tender invocation: Abba! Pater! (‘Abba! Father!’). Probably I made that prayer out loud. And I walked the streets of Madrid for maybe an hour, maybe two, I can’t say; time passed without my being aware of it. People must have thought I was crazy. I was contemplating, with lights that were not mine, that amazing truth. It was like a lighted coal burning in my soul, never to be extinguished.’”

Dear friends, Jesus, of course, gave this to the world. One of His greatest revelations was that He has a Father, and that we can call Him “Our Father.” But in this moment the power of this light struck the Founder, and He could never be the same. But this truth is not for a few. It is for all the sons and daughters. It is for you and me. WE have a Father. We must never forget it. We must, again and again, surrender ourselves onto His lap, into His arms.

One of the virtues that St. Josemaria talks about frequently is “naturalness.” It is not exactly in St. Thomas Aquinas’ list of virtues, but it is a combination of humility and joy, detachment and generosity. We should live and work within the world, not thinking it evil, but desiring to make it holy. We don’t want or need any extravagant things, but always beautiful and well-ordered. We don’t cultivate any idiosyncrasies. We don’t want to appear odd or flamboyant. We are just quietly at home in doing our work, in caring for others’ needs, in reaching out in apostolate, in being cheerful and not giving in to self-pity or sadness.

Think about how you can grow in this virtue of naturalness so that God can use you without drawing any attention to yourself. In our holiness we must have zeal and piety, but never in such a way that we want to draw attention to our self. We are, as St. Josemaria said, Like God’s donkey, quietly pulling the load and doing the work.

Pope Benedict has used this same image in the bear tamed by St. Corbinian. An ancient tradition tells that the first Bishop of Freising, St Corbinian (died in 730), set out for Rome on horseback. While riding through a forest he was attacked by a bear that tore his horse to pieces. Corbinian not only managed to tame the animal but also to make it carry his baggage to Rome. Bishop Joseph Ratzinger placed this image on his coat of arms, saying he himself was that bear. The pack saddle is the burden of his Episcopate. You and I must be willing to carry the load for love of God and love of the Church. We are God’s pack animals, his donkey, St. Corbinian’s bear.

Our gathering for Holy Mass this morning is a joyful praise to God for a Godly man who taught so many everyday folks a way to work for God. His name “Josemaria” makes us think of the Holy Family, Joseph and Mary, who, in obedience to God’s plan, made a home for the Savior of the world. With the prayers of Mary and Joseph and of our patron St. Josemaria Escriva, may we persevere in whatever God asks of us. Let us renew our joy in doing always the Work of God.

St. Josemaria, pray for us!

Saint of ordinary life

2010-06-30T04:32:00.000-07:00

By Eric Sammons in The Divine Life: Why We Were Created. Eric began his study of the Catholic faith in 1991 as an Evangelical Protestant, converting to the Catholic Church in 1993. He serves as head of evangelization at St. John Neumann parish in Gaithersburg, MD, and is cofounder of Little Flowers Foundation, a non-profit whose mission is to assist Catholic families seeking to adopt children with special-needs.

June 26th is the feast of St. Josemaría Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei. St. Josemaría died on June 26th, 1975 (thus making him the most recently deceased canonized saint) and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

St. Josemaría is of course best known for founding Opus Dei, but paradoxically that fact has in some ways worked to make him less well-known among “ordinary” Catholics, the very people he was most trying to reach. In my experience, many Catholics seem to think that you have to be a member of Opus Dei to have a devotion to St. Josemaría, or that you have to support every single thing Opus Dei has ever done. But the truth is that St. Josemaría is a wonderful teacher for all Catholics, and his teachings and spirituality are perfectly suited for Catholics of all stripes.

The reason St. Josemaría is a great saint for today is that he calls us to strive for holiness in the midst of the modern world. Forty years before Vatican II declared a universal call to holiness, St. Josemaría was preaching this belief throughout Spain, insisting that every man and woman can become holy in – and through – everyday, ordinary life. I am not a member of Opus Dei, but I have found his teachings and spirituality to be quite helpful in my own pursuit of holiness and I encourage everyone to learn more about this great modern Saint.

I am currently in the preliminary stages of writing a book about St. Josemaría and his spirituality that is intended to be directed towards non-Opus Dei members.

Escriva's Legacy to Opus Dei and to the World

2010-06-30T04:18:00.000-07:00

By Prof. Bro. Dave Ceasar Dela Cruz, CCS in νέος λειτουργοὺς.

Liturgy is the source and summit of Christian life, it also points to the life of the Church. Spirituality is always rooted in the liturgy.

Saint Josemaria, during his priestly ministry, celebrated the liturgy in the most perfect way he can. He believed that when we celebrate liturgy, the spirituality of a Christian is enriched so that his life may be patterned on how the Church worship... perfect, holy - just as our Father in heaven is perfect and holy.

Many criticized the liturgical celebrations of the prelature as if they are so conservative or traditional. I can say, "hahaha". They may be conservative to the point that they really follow the liturgical norms. Traditional because they do what they already practiced before in their own local Church.

Opus Dei preserved the beauty and sanctity of the liturgy in the very best way we can. This is a challenge for the local Church and in every parishes.

If you will attend liturgical celebrations of the prelature, you can say that Christ is present because the liturgy is so solemn and perfect because Christ himself solemnly work on our lives and makes perfect everything on earth for the glorification of the Father. How I wish that every liturgical celebration be like that in our diocese and in our country.

Another thing I want to point out is their love for the beauty of the vessels and vestments. Our professors in liturgy, my classmate priest during his homily on the 1st Mass of a new priest of their order, and even some liturgical authors professed that the beauty of the vessels and of the vestments reflects the dignity and beauty of the liturgy and of the sacraments which they received.

I remember one time in my former work place, I pity all the sacred vessels because they are rusted and dirty... Never ever I used such vessels. The vestments, Oh my! Horrible! In every major celebrations of the institute were I work before, I tried to brought out every collections of antique vestments and vessels in my house for the use of the celebration. In every liturgical celebration, you teach the people on the beauty of the liturgy on earth that reflects the liturgy in heaven! Much more with the kids, while they are young, let them see beauty of the liturgy for it is the foretaste of heaven on earth!

Now that I am moving to my new and own house, one room is dedicated to be an oratory for my private use and for visitors of the office of the Vice Postulation. I really made a point that everything in the oratory be perfect and beautiful. It doesn't only reflect my love for liturgy, being a liturgist, but the presence of the perfect and holy God when I pray the liturgical prayers...

The Prelature of the Opus Dei and of the Holy Cross and the whole Christendom will celebrate the feast of Saint Josemaria on Saturday, June 26. I am very grateful for the spirituality that El Padre taught me through my spiritual fathers of the prelature. Never ever will I abandoned the teachings of El Padre for I knew his great love for the Church, the love that led him to sufferings, trials, and misunderstanding as a way of purification.

May Saint Josemaria be an inspiration for us all!

Opus Dei has been very unfairly maligned over the years

2010-06-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

By CV in Perspective. CV replies to accusations against Opus Dei.

For those who believe that Opus Dei is a "right wing cult," just a little reminder that St. Josemaria Escriva is a canonized saint.

I have more than 10 years of personal experience with this organization. I participate in occasional retreats and evenings of recollection and have benefited a great deal, although I feel no personal vocation to "join" by becoming a lay supernumerary.

I'm here to tell you that the only thing Opus Dei is concerned with is helping lay people pursue the universal call to holiness (that's straight out of Vatican II, and St. Josemaria was championing that notion several decades before VII). In the retreats and evenings of recollection, you'll be encouraged to pray more, receive the sacrament of confession, try to attend mass more often (beyond once a week that is), and say the rosary. That's it, and that's simple Catholicism.

For a fair and balanced look at Opus Dei through the eyes of an outsider, I recommend John Allen's recent book. He writes for the National Catholic Reporter, which can hardly be considered a "right wing" publication.

While I admire Fr. James Martin's writing and think he's done a great deal to communicate the faith well, I really think he did a disservice to Opus Dei with that article he write many moons ago for America.

And hey, for what it's worth, I'm a registered Democrat :-) Go figure.

----

Well, I'm no expert on the Spanish Civil War, which was the climate in which Opus Dei took root and grew, but I'll just point again to what reporter John Allen discovered. This is from America magazine's review of Allen's book:

"..An illustration of Mr. Allen’s technique can be seen in his examination of the charge that Opus Dei’s founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá, was a pro-Franco fascist. Mr. Allen describes the accusations and fills in the historical background. “[I]t’s worth noting that in the context of the Spanish Civil War, in which anticlerical Republican forces killed 13 bishops, 4,000 diocesan priests, 2,000 male religious, and 300 nuns, virtually every group and layer of life in the Catholic Church in Spain was ‘pro-Franco.’” The author goes on to note that despite this fact, “there is no instance in which [Escrivá] either praised or criticized the regime” throughout its long reign. “In the 1930s and 1940s, when the overwhelming sentiment in Catholic Spain was pro-Franco, Escrivá’s silence was therefore often read to betoken a hidden liberalism; by the 1960s and 1970s, when Catholic opinion had shifted, that same silence was interpreted as masking a pro-Franco conservatism,” he writes. While he concedes that Opus Dei members served in Franco’s ministry, he notes that this was unusual—only eight served over the course of 36 years, in Mr. Allen’s careful account. He also describes how many Opus Dei members joined the anti-Franco opposition. “The overall impression one gets is that Escrivá strove to maintain neutrality with respect to the Franco regime, even if privately he felt some sympathy for a leader trying by his lights to be an upright Christian,” Mr. Allen concludes. “A charge of ‘pro-Franco’ cannot be sustained, except in the generic sense that most Spanish Catholics were initially supportive of Franco.... The most one can say is that Escrivá was not ‘anti-Franco’ either.”

Here is a good Q & A with Allen regarding Opus Dei:

http://www.zenit.org/article-14916?l=english

Regarding the role of suffering, by which I presume you mean corporal mortification practices, in Opus Dei, it's worth noting that these practices have been part of Catholic tradition for about 2,000 years. Opus Dei didn't invent these practices, and very holy people such as Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta were also known to appreciate the value of corporal mortification.

That said, in a society like ours, most people are inclined to strenuously avoid suffering in any way shape or form (myself included). Unless of course, it is suffering for personal gain or development such as running a marathon, or denying oneself ice cream and carbs, or undergoing plastic surgery. Then it's considered to be the kind of self-sacrifice to be admired.

I guess people who see the value in corporal mortification (fasting, for example) would say that the value of "no pain, no gain" applies to the spiritual life also.

I am sure I sound like an apologist for Opus Dei, but I speak as someone who had serious reservations about this group early on when someone close to me became involved. Since then, I have read every scrap of information I could find, positive and negative. I've read the ODAN website and books by St. Josemaria. Most importantly, I've had close contact with many, many extraordinarily humble and holy Opus Dei people, from priests to lay people (and I should also mention I've never been pressured to join, give money, etc. Some cult.)

Bottom line, IMO, they have been very, VERY unfairly maligned over the years, especially St. Josemaria.

.02 from a former skeptic.

Thoughts on Fr. Willie Doyle, by Saint Josemaria Escriva

2010-06-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

In Opus Dei Today

Today the Church celebrates the feast of St Josemaria Escriva. Instead of a message from Fr Doyle, we have a message from a saint, ABOUT Fr Doyle. From point 205 of St Josemaria’s The Way:

* We were reading — you and I — the heroically ordinary life of that man of God. And we saw him fight whole months and years (what ‘accounts’ he kept in his particular examination!) at breakfast time: today he won, tomorrow he was beaten… He noted: ‘Didn’t take butter…; did take butter!’
* May you and I too live our ‘butter tragedy’.

Yes, that’s right: the heroically ordinary “man of God” was none other than Fr Willie Doyle.

Alfred O’Rahilly’s biography caused something of a stir on its release, and all before the age of blogs and facebook and twitter and all the easy ways of manufacturing celebrity and hype that we have today. Within a few years the book had been translated into German, Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch and Polish (and perhaps translations I don’t know about?). This heroically ordinary Jesuit priest from Dublin seemed to have quite an appeal for people from very different cultures.

St Josemaria read a Spanish copy of the book and was obviously deeply impressed if he held up Fr Doyle as an example of holiness for members and friends of Opus Dei. St Josemaria’s The Way first appeared in 1934 under the title Consideraciones espirituales. Over the years, more than four and a half million copies have been sold, and it has been translated into 43 different languages. That’s an incredible level of popularity for this book, and, even though he is only a very small part of the book, it’s an incredibly powerful anonymous influence on the part of Fr Doyle. How many people have copied his example of small mortifications thanks to this reference from St Josemaria?

Perhaps this is a fitting place to include some references from O’Rahilly’s book on the matter of Fr Doyle and his diet. In all of this it is very clear that Fr Doyle didn’t find these mortifications easy; they were, as St Josemaria said, a tragedy:

* He was systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points; every day he did many things for no other reason than that he would rather not do them; so that, when the hour of need and big-scale heroism drew nigh, it did not find him unnerved and untrained to stand the test. For most assuredly he was a man who daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. “Other souls may travel by other roads,” he once wrote, “the road of pain is mine.” He developed a positive ingenuity in discovering possibilities of denying himself. Thus he was always striving to bear little sufferings and physical discomforts were it only the irritation of a gnat without seeking relief; he tried to imagine that his hands were nailed to the cross with Jesus. He gave up having a fire in his room and even avoided warming himself at one. Every day he wore a hair-shirt and one or two chains for some time; and he inflicted severe disciplines on himself. Moreover, between sugarless tea, butterless bread and saltless meat, he converted his meals into a continuous series of mortifications. Naturally he had, in fact, a very hearty appetite and a keen appreciation of sweets and delicacies; all of which he converted into an arena for self-denial…

* We find him pencilling this resolution on the first page of the little private notebook he kept with him at the Front: “No blackberries. Give away all chocolates. Give away box of biscuits. No jam, breakfast, lunch, dinner.”
* …Just after giving a retreat in a Carmelite convent, he records: “I felt urged in honour of St. Teresa to give myself absolutely no comfort at meals which I could possibly avoid. I found no difficulty in doing this for the nine days. I have begged very earnestly for the grace to continue this all my life and am determined to try to do so. For example, to take no butter, no sugar in coffee, no salt, etc. The wonderful mortified lives of these holy nuns have made me ashamed of my gratification of my appetite.” That he by no means found this mortification easy we have many indications. Thus on 5th Jan., 1912, he writes: “During Exposition Jesus asked me if I would give up taking second course at dinner. This would be a very great sacrifice; but I promised Him at least to try to do so and begged for grace and generosity.”
* “A fierce temptation during Mass and thanksgiving,” he records a year later (18th Sept., 1913), “to break my resolution and indulge my appetite at breakfast. The thought of a breakfast of dry bread and tea without sugar in future seemed intolerable. Jesus urged me to pray for strength though I could scarcely bring myself to do so. But the temptation left me in the refectory, and joy filled my heart with the victory. I see now that I need never yield if only I pray for strength.”
* On the subject of butter there are many resolutions in the diary. Materially the subject may seem trivial, but psychologically it represents a great struggle and victory…It is in such little acts that man rises above the beast and fosters his human heritage of a rational will. So Fr. Doyle’s butter-resolutions are not at all so unimportant or whimsical as they who have ever thoughtlessly eaten and drunk may be inclined to fancy. “God has been urging me strongly all during this retreat,” he writes in September 1913, “to give up butter entirely. I have done so at many meals without any serious inconvenience; but I am partly held back through human respect, fearing others may notice it. If they do, what harm? I have noticed that X takes none for lunch; that has helped me. Would not I help others if I did the same?” “One thing,” he continues, “I feel Jesus asks, which I have not the courage to give Him: the promise to give up butter entirely.” On 29th July, 1914, we find this resolution: “For the present I will take butter on two mouthfuls of bread at breakfast but none at other meals.” To this decision he seems to have adhered.
* …This relentless concentration of will on matters of food must not lead us to suppose that Fr. Doyle was in any way morbidly absorbed or morosely affected thereby. For one less trained in will or less sure in spiritual perspective there might easily be danger of entanglement in minutiae and over-attention to what is secondary. All this apparatus of mortification is but a means to an end, it should not be made an end in itself…This persistent and systematic thwarting of appetite helped Fr. Doyle to strengthen his will and to fix it on God. He never lost himself in a maze of petty resolutions, he never became anxious or distracted.

Alfred O’Rahilly concludes his discussion of Fr Doyle’s eating habits with some wise advice for the reader:

* The armour of Goliath would hamper David. There are those whom elaborate prescriptions and detailed regulations would only strain and worry. And these best find the peace of God in a childlike thankful acceptance of His gifts, without either careless indulgence or self-conscious artificiality.

One amusing concluding note: Some translations of The Way refer to sugar instead of butter because the original translator couldn’t understand how anyone would want to give up butter on their bread. It’s unclear whether he thought the matter too trivial or too hard. In any event both translations are correct – Fr Doyle fought, and won, his battle against both butter and sugar.

Bo Sanchez: A story that inspired me so much

2010-06-27T19:29:00.000-07:00

By Bo Sanchez

Let me tell you a story that inspired me so much.

One day, Lina wasn’t feeling well.

When she went to the doctor, they diagnosed her to have an acute rheumatic heart disease. Her heart valves were damaged so much, she needed an immediate heart surgery.

After what appeared to be a successful operation, she woke up with a terrible headache.

Thinking it was just an effect of the anesthesia, the doctors gave her oral pain killers. But the pain didn’t stop. The doctors gave her injectable pain relievers but they didn’t work too.

The headache persisted. This worried her doctors and ordered her to have a cranial MRI to find out what was causing the pain.

To the horror of her family, the doctors found a tumor in her brain.

Imagine this: After her open-heart surgery, Lina went home to prepare for a brain surgery!

Through all this time, Liza told me how much she prayed for her sister Lina. Her sister, Liza, texted all 500 names in her cell phone. She asked her friends in Opus Dei to ask for the intercession of Jose Maria Escriva.

Soon, Lina went back to the hospital to check if her heart was strong enough for a brain surgery. As she was being prepared for the operation, she noticed that she no longer had headaches.

On the day of the operation, doctors performed a few more tests and MRI’s. The operation was scheduled to start at 7am. But at 9am, the operation had not yet begun. “There are some complications,” the doctors explained to the family.

After lunch, the doctors called the family to tell them that all the tests showed that the tumor had disappeared! They couldn’t explain it. There was no need for an operation.

Ex-protestant ordained minister (a woman) attends Mass in honor of St. Josemaria

2010-06-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

I read this post by Sandy Marshall, a convert to the Catholic Church, who was formerly an ordained minister in protestant churches. She converted along with her husband and daughter. She said that they "remain blissfully happy with our move."

The first paragraph of her post reads:

On Saturday, we attended a Mass at Christ the King parish. The mass was offered in honor of Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei. Bishop Kevin Farrel presided and preached with a dignity that could not mask his passion for this remarkable man. The music was exquisite, the interior of the building lovely, and all told it was a glorious morning. Because it was the 5th anniversary of our coming into the church, the mass had a particular significance for us, which we later remarked upon around the dinner table with friends.

Read the rest of her blog here.

G-20’s promises and deficits

2010-06-25T02:34:00.000-07:00

By Fr. Antonio Cecilio Pascual in Business Mirror

‘There is no room for complacency,” so reads the draft G-20 document, as reported by Reuters, as the global recovery is “uneven and fragile.” This weekend in Toronto, the leaders of the developed economies are expected to come to an agreement on, among other things, reducing huge government deficits.

The World Bank has urged them in no uncertain terms to focus on long-term growth, “to help developing countries which rely on revenues from commodity exports, worker remittances, foreign direct investments and aid.”

For a while there, it sounded like they were all aware of, and pondering about P-Noy’s foreboding inheritance of a deficit in millions of pesos. In fact, if P-Noy’s plan of unearthing the real costs of debt and aid that the Arroyo administration incurred in her nine years yields larger figures than the estimates he is getting now, our country rating will probably take a worse turn than the current BB, even before his first 100 days are over.

Traveling around the nation, visiting government projects to see for myself their impact on the lives of our poor prior to the “Pinoy Ako” informercial I taped as part also of my last few days as private-sector cochairman of the Flagship Programs Committee of the Arroyo administration, I couldn’t help but feel the restlessness in the countryside. Agricultural lands being converted for commercial uses, rivers reclaimed for condominiums. “Alam n’yo po, Father, mabuti pang mamatay kaming lumalaban kaysa mamatay sa gutom.”

It made me recall one of the most important G-20 promises last year that Caritas Internationalis documented: 0.7 percent of their incomes are to be spent on overseas aid. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has been tracking this and had earlier reported that overseas aid was actually short of $21 billion in 2009 of pledges made. Estimates for additional public financing for food security that will be further affected by climate change—like Ondoy and Pepeng—is already at $195 billion a year by 2020 to support only the poor countries to mitigate food crises and to develop sustainably. And then what to do with the commitment to keep global warming to below 2 degrees Centigrade when, to shrink budget deficits, we will most likely see unbridled industrialization—the better and faster to sell commodities to rich nations, while paying higher taxes.

Executive director Michael Casey of the Development and Peace/Caritas Canada said, “Faced with hunger in many parts of the world, Caritas believes that agricultural policies must promote the small farmer and local food production. G-20 countries must show the necessary leadership to reverse disastrous food policies of the past. Aid commitments must also be met. We need more aid, better spent. And we need to see effective action on climate change.”

The credo of Robert K. Greenleaf, founder and advocate of servant leadership, comes to mind: “This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person to person, now most of it is mediated through institutions—often large, complex, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.”

We need not just servant leaders, but servant leaders who can turn institutions into institution-servants—neither institution-regulators who seek compliance at any cost, nor institution-witchhunters who ferret out culprits at any cost. Would a corrupt-free institution be possible? A deeper question: Would a corrupt-free institution be a caring institution, a true institution-servant?

Stephen Covey, sheds some light on how institutions can transform to institution-servants: “You’ve got to produce more for less, and with greater speed than you’ve ever done before. The only way you can do that in a sustained way is through the empowerment of people. And the only way you get empowerment is through high-trust cultures and through the empowerment philosophy of leaders that turns bosses into servants and coaches. Based on practice, not talk, [it] will be the deciding point between an organization’s enduring success or its eventual extinction.”

Today, as we also celebrate the feast of St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, I recall how in the 1950s, the Holy See approved the idea of the Opus Dei accepting non-Catholics and non-Christians as cooperators to assist in projects and programs without being members. For decades, we saw the mushrooming of agricultural-training centers, hospitals and clinics, primary, secondary and professional schools.

The deficit problem is really an attention-deficit disorder: we have not focused attention on the heart of the global recovery; we cannot let other countries and sectors of populations to grow at the cost of asking other nations and sectors to step on the brakes or tighten their belts to their bones. The truth of this path that St. Josemaria has lit up is the fact that we are all in this together—and because we are, more good becomes possible.

Let us reflect, with Pope Benedict XVI, as he calls attention to the chalice and paten in every Mass: “Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.... As we proclaim the Cross of Christ, let us always strive to imitate the selfless love of the one who offered himself for us...the one in whose person we speak and act.”

José Manuel Casas Torres, eldest member of Opus Dei, deceased

2010-06-04T20:32:00.000-07:00

A translation and posting by Encarnita Ortega Pardo in Opus Dei Today.

Professor José Manuel Casas Torres, 93, creator of modern Spanish geography and a professor at the Universidad de Zaragoza and Universidad Complutense in Madrid, passed away on May 30, in Madrid. He was also a professor at the Universidad de Navarra. In his lectures he promoted the “region” as a space linking the State and the province, and had a key role in modernising Spanish cartography.
Casas Torres was born in Valencia on October 26, 1916. He dedicated most of his life to teaching and research, and many of his students consider him one of the masters of Spanish geography.

He was a Director at the Institute for Applied Geography [Instituto de Geografía Aplicada] of the Superior Council for Scientific Research [Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas] and also the Geography Departament at the Universidad Complutense, where he worked from 1965 to 1983. He combined his retirement with research and a generous availability to his students. He was a member of Opus Dei since 1939, and the eldest living member of the Work at the time of his death.
He met St Josemaría Escrivá in July 1939 and became a member of Opus Dei on July 14, 1939. St Josemaría’s teachings about the universal call to sanctity, the consideration of work as a means of service to society and of helping people reached him, and he felt the call to this endeavour in Opus Dei.

At the Universidad de Zaragoza he created the studies in Geography, and was the founder of the Geographica review, at the same time heading the Department of Applied Geography and being the Vice-Director of the Institute for Pirenaic Studies [Instituto de Estudios Pirenáicos].

He specialised in applied Geography, and in local, urban and population Geography, and occupied the first tenured position in that speciality. Manuel Ferrer Regales, who was one of his students at the Universidad de Navarra, stressed “the generosity of his teaching and research, and his concern for the anthropological and doctrinal content of his topics, which led him to concentrate his studies in population and demographics”.

I'm not a member of Opus Dei but I know many people who are

2010-06-04T20:17:00.000-07:00

Comments on the article titled "Gilles Duceppe owes an apology to Catholics" in the National Post.

I find it interesting that those who are ignorant of the facts are also the most intolerant of those who have different views. Perhaps if they did their research and met with members of Opus Dei, they would find them to be very hardworking, generous and happy people, who are trying to live their Christian faith in the ordinary circumstances of their family, social and professional lives.

I look at all the wonderful work that the Catholic Church, of which Opus Dei is one of many lay movements, is doing around the world and in Canada and I say "THANK GOD!!" (By Jo K)

I'm not a member of Opus Dei but I know many people who are. I'm always impressed by their devotion to their faith, family, work and society in general. They have an energy and a willingness to put themselves at the service of others which is remarkable. I also think that many people comment about Opus Dei in ignorance. They really know nothing about it except what they have heard in the media or read in third rate fiction. (By Rachel Clare)

I have known Opus Dei for the better of part of my whole life (now 41 y.o. age). I once thought I was being called to be a celibate member of Opus Dei, but was told that that way was not for me (which my husband and my now 5 kids would agree with). It is rare indeed to find people who truly wish to help each individual find God in their own circumstances and help them courageously give meaning to all they do while rendering service to all those whom they come into contact within their daily lives. (by Anonymous)

Why is it OK to pick on Christians?

2010-06-04T20:06:00.000-07:00

By Ezra Levant, National Post. He has been described here as "one of the foremost fighters on the Canadian scene for recovering fundamental civil rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. When publisher of the now defunct Western Standard, he was one of the few in North America who had the courage to reprint the famous Mohammed cartoons. For his trouble, he faced human rights complaints from a Calgary imam that he fought and won, but not without it costing about $100,000. Ezra is also quick to defend Christians who have been taking a beating in the public square, most recently the Catholic lay movement Opus Dei."

I have never told him this, but I was tremendously disappointed when I first met Monsignor Fred Dolan, the Canadian vicar of Opus Dei.

It was about six or seven years ago, around the time The Da Vinci Code was published, and frankly I was hoping that he would be a dark and conspiratorial figure -- someone who would fit the words "ultraconservative" and "shadowy." I didn't quite want him to be an assassin, like the Opus Dei priest was in the book and film, but I surely wanted someone who was mysterious and secretive and powerful.

Like if the Pope had a CIA agent.

I admit it: I wanted an Opus Dei friend so I could shock the liberals in my life, and perhaps seem like I had a few exotic secrets of my own. And I thought it would be nice to have a friend who was more right wing than me.

To my regret, Msgr. Dolan is just a mild-mannered priest and worse, Opus Dei doesn't have any secret handshakes or midnight meetings. I don't want to sound lazy or selfish, but joining Opus Dei sure looks like a lot of do-goodery and just plain work (I asked Msgr. Dolan for a brochure and I read it carefully, even looking for hidden clues). I already had enough pro bono commitments and I didn't need any more. (As a Jew, I could join Opus Dei as an associate member).

I've stayed in touch with Msgr. Dolan since then and we're friendly. I admire his charity and his ecumenicalism. He sends me notes from time to time, about Passover or Holocaust remembrance, and he always asks when I'll be in Montreal again. In seven years, he's never tried to put the shadowy moves on me, and I'm starting to worry that he never will.

Pat Martin worries, too. Oh, does he worry.

Mr. Martin is the NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre. And his secret sources told him that Msgr. Dolan met with a dozen or so MPs in the Parliamentary dining room last week. (Actually, every MP received an invitation, and not even in invisible ink.)

Mr. Martin didn't attend. But he sought out reporters to tell them that Opus Dei members "give me the creeps."

That's fine, if rude. Though someone ought to tell Martin that The Da Vinci Code is not a documentary.

But then Mr. Martin went further: he criticized MPs for even meeting with Msgr. Dolan. "I can't imagine why a member of parliament would invite [Opus Dei] for a meeting on Parliament Hill," he said. "I certainly wouldn't attend anything associated with them."

Mr. Martin wasn't the only one worried that Msgr. Dolan might wave a wand and turn him into a newt. Gilles Duceppe, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, actually asked about it in Question Period. Duceppe named two Conservative party volunteers who apparently are members of Opus Dei, noted that "a Conservative" invited Msgr. Dolan to the dining room and demanded that the Prime Minister "admit that his policy is influenced" by such people.

Neither of the women named by Mr. Duceppe works for the government in any way, and neither was known for their religious views-- until Mr. Duceppe took it upon himself to discuss their private lives in Parliament.

A reporter asked Mr. Duceppe if he wasn't being "a little Mc-Carthyite"; Mr. Duceppe brushed off the accusation and went further: Opus Dei members should not be allowed to participate in political life--even as volunteers --if they identify "as a group."

Stop for a moment and try that sentence out again, substituting the words "gay" or "Jewish" for "Opus Dei members." Jews shouldn't be allowed in politics if they "identify as a group." Sikhs shouldn't be allowed in politics "if they identify as a group." How does it feel?

Mr. Duceppe then went a little Dan Brown himself, claiming Opus Dei "have people in place ... so a lot of things prove that something's going on." He really said that.

Try our substitution experiment again. Gays "have people in place." Gays have "something going on." How does that sound?

Sounds to me like Mr. Duceppe is channelling a bit of Jacques Parizeau's "money and the ethnic vote" xenophobia again.

So what do we have here?

The obvious: Anti-Christian bigotry remains an acceptable form of intolerance in Canadian politics, and this bigotry has infected the parties of the left.

The mainstream media, and indeed the rest of the political establishment, ignores or even approves of this (CBC's Evan Solomon being a noteworthy exception).

Like Marci McDonald's book about Christians, Mr. Duceppe's comments are error-ridden and hysterical. For example, Duceppe implied that the meeting was for Conservatives only. But one of the MPs who attended is Mario Silva -- a Liberal MP who just happens to be gay. Lemme guess: That just proves how diabolical Opus Dei's master plan must be!

It's one thing for Messrs. Martin and Duceppe and Ms. Mc-Donald to dislike Christians. But what's new -- and disturbing -- is that this once-passive intolerance is becoming active: There is a concerted effort to name Christians and drive them out of office, to delegitimize the very idea of Christians participating in public life.

It's an attack on Canada's pluralism and religious freedom. It's unfair and it's un-Canadian. We'd never accept it if it were targeting any other religious group. So why is it OK to pick on Christians?

The Little Football Team that Could

2010-05-18T18:51:00.000-07:00

In News Today

“I-think-I can, I-think-I-can,” puffed the little train as it labored with all its might, pulling up a mountain the load that other, bigger engines had refused. We all know the happy ending to the popular children’s tale, “The Little Engine that Could,” a story often used to teach the virtues of hard work and optimism in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. A similar story with a modern twist might be called “The Little Football Team that Could.”

On April 17, 2010, the Western Visayas Elementary Football squad led by Westbridge players RR Portigo – Team Captain, Carlo Dalisay, Lord Irvin Jimena, Migui Chavez, Paolo Divinagracia, John Palacios, Michael Inocencio and Andro Untal, together with Jekar Sullano, Jesse Dianala and Exiamirum Sierra, Jonas Oren, Paul Bernil, Charlone Lapating and Robert Supremo from various schools in the region, won the coveted Palarong Pambansa Championship in Tarlac, beating out NCR 3-0 in the finals.

The victory becomes even sweeter when one realizes that Westbridge is a school with only 147 students in its elementary department, has no athletic scholarships, and runs a very limited budget for its football team. The championship comes at the end of a long road of dedicated practice by the students, determined support by the parents, incessant value-formation by the school, and relentless training by Westbridge Coach Armand Heria.

Even more notable is the team’s composition, which includes several honor students, some student government officers, and a multi-awarded singer in interschool events. Academic and extra-curricular demands did not stop them from attending arduous practice rain or shine, vacation or no vacation. As the students gave their all in practice, the championship caravan of supportive parents followed with food, energy drinks and even tents to out-of-town games, and raising funds for tournaments in Manila and Bacolod.

Team Captain Renz Richard Portigo with his proud parents, Dr. Ric and Tina.
Team Captain Renz Richard Portigo with his proud parents, Dr. Ric and Tina.
The school, too, living up to its motto, “Duc in Altum” – Launch Out into the Deep”, entered its fledgling footballers in tournaments with soccer powerhouses like Barotac-Tamasak and the Makati Football Club.

Never mind the losses, the team was told, the important thing was to try hard and do your best, echoing the sporting determination encouraged by St. Josemaria Escriva, patron of Paref-Westbridge. At the same time they were reminded to give due importance to academics and other pursuits that would further develop their personalities. Recognizing the valuable attitudes of the boys, their parents, and the school, Coach Armand was confident in setting high standards of discipline and training, standards high enough to extract the team’s potential and win them a championship.

And win they did. The team, composed first won the Mayor’s Cup trophies. Next came the PRISAA wins: three in a row. Their wins against Barotac, something unthinkable a few years ago were followed by the Mizuno Cup top spot. Their quest led to the Palarong Pambansa Championship, and ultimately the gold.

Perhaps the Westbridge victory can be best described in the words of Italian soccer coach Giovanni Trapattoni: “Josemaria Escriva has taught many athletes that their efforts in training and in competition, their companionship with team-mates, their esteem for their opponents, their humility in victory and good spirit in defeat, are a specific path for reaching God and for serving others.”

Well done.

If Mass is boring

2010-05-02T00:21:00.000-07:00

Interview with the Prelate of Opus Dei by Jesus Colina of Zenit

Holy Mass is about love, reminds Bishop Javier Echevarría Rodríguez, prelate of Opus Dei, when asked for advice for those who are sometimes bored by the Eucharistic celebration.

Bishop Echevarría, who together with Bishop Alvaro del Portillo was the person closest to St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, has dedicated his latest book, "Living the Holy Mass," to this sacrament.

Bishop Echevarría is a member of the Vatican's Congregation for Saints' Causes and the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature; he is a consultor for the Congregation for the Clergy and an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. His book is an attempt to rediscover love for the Eucharist, "which must be the center of our life," he explains in this interview with ZENIT.

ZENIT: What would you recommend to Catholics who say they are bored at Mass?

Bishop Echevarría: I would recommend that they participate with sincerity in the Mass, seeking and loving Jesus. In "The Way," St. Josemaría wrote: "You say the Mass is long and, I add, because your love is short."

Feelings must not be given too much importance: enthusiasm or apathy, desire or lack of it. The Mass is sacrifice: Christ gives himself out of love. It is an action of God and we cannot fully understand its grandeur, because of our limited condition as creatures. But we must make the effort, not only to be at Mass, but to live it in union with Christ and the Church.

ZENIT: When did you discover the mystery that the Eucharist conceals and reveals?

Bishop Echevarría: Thank God, I try to rediscover it every day: in the Liturgy of the Word -- which helps to maintain conversation with God during the day -- and in the Eucharistic liturgy. We should always be ever more astonished before this reality that surpasses us, but in which the Lord allows us to participate, better said, invites us to participate.

In the Mass, not only is a descendent communication of the redeeming gift of God fulfilled, but also an ascendant mediation, man's offering of himself to God: his work, his sufferings, his griefs and his joys, everything is united to Christ -- through him, with him and in him. I cannot be silent about the deep impact that St. Josemaría made on me when he celebrated the Holy Sacrifice, on contemplating his daily Eucharistic devotion.

It profoundly moves us to think that in the presentation of the gifts, the priest asks God to accept the bread and wine, which are "fruit of the earth (or of the vine) and the work of men." Man can offer his work in any circumstance to God, but in the Mass, that offer reaches its full meaning and value, because Christ unites it to his sacrifice, which he offers to the Father for the salvation of men.

When the Mass is the center and root of the Christian's day, when all his tasks are oriented to the Eucharistic sacrifice, it can be affirmed that his whole day is a Mass and that his place of work is an altar, where he gives himself fully to God as his beloved son.

ZENIT: In his pontificate, Benedict XVI is stimulating a rediscovery of the enormity of this sacrament. What has most caught your attention in the words and gestures of the Pope on the Eucharist?

Bishop Echevarría: Especially important, it seems to me at this time, is his insistence that the liturgy is God's action and, as such, it is received in the continuity of the Church.

The Pope has written that the best catechesis on the Eucharist is the Eucharist itself well celebrated. Therefore, the first duty of piety for the priest that celebrates or for the faithful that participate in the Mass is the attentive, devout observance of the liturgical prescriptions: the obedience of pietas.

Moreover, the Pope also insists that the Eucharist is the heart of the Church: God present on the altar, the close God, builds the Church, congregates the faithful and sends them to all men.

ZENIT: Something more personal. According to your memories, what was the Eucharist for St. Josemaría? What role did it have in his day?

Bishop Echevarría: I served Mass many times for St. Josemaría. At these times he would ask me to pray so that he would not get used to celebrating that very sublime and sacred act. In effect, I was able to verify something he once said: that he experienced the Mass as work -- at times an extenuating effort, such was the intensity with which he lived it.

Throughout the day, he would recall the texts he had read, in particular the Gospel, and many times he commented on it, in a perfectly ordinary tone, as food for his spiritual and human life.

He was conscious of the fact that in the Mass the protagonist is Jesus Christ, not the minister, and that the faithful fulfillment of the prescriptions enables the priest to "disappear," so that Jesus alone shines. Many people who attended his Mass -- also in the difficult circumstances of the Spanish Civil War -- commented later that his way of celebrating Mass had something that moved them profoundly, and that they felt invited to grow in their devotion to the Holy Sacrifice. I am convinced that what moved those who participated -- those of us who participated -- in his Mass was precisely that: that he let Christ appear and not his person.

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

2010-04-14T04:39:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-10T04:51:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-09T23:51:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-09T23:19:00.000-07:00

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."

---

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.

Adventure in Korea

2010-03-29T23:57:00.000-07:00

By Mercé. Mercé is a nurse, although at present her full-time occupation is learning Korean. Along with other women of Opus Dei, she recently moved to Korea to help begin the apostolic work there.

Eighty years ago St. Josemaría unfolded a piece of paper and showed it to the first women of Opus Dei. It contained examples of the projects they would soon be beginning throughout the world: university residences, fashion courses, centers for professional formation….

Today that dream is becoming a reality also in Korea.

A few months ago, I came to help start Opus Dei in Daejeon, one of the Korean cities where the Christian presence is strongest. The first Korean-born priest, St. Andrew Kim Dae Gon, who died a martyr for his faith in 1846, came from Daejeon.

Four other women arrived with me, from Brazil, the Philippines, Argentina, and Australia. Two of them are from Korean families, something very helpful for the rest of us, since they have an acquaintance with the traditions and culture of a country none of us had been to before.

Thankfully, we haven’t had to start from scratch, for a member of the Work has been making occasional trips ever since 1988 to begin spreading the message about sanctifying ordinary life.

LEARNING KOREAN…WITH OUR NEIGHBORS’ HELP

With the assistance of a cooperator who met Opus Dei in Peru, we acquired an apartment in September 2009 and began to set up the oratory and find the furnishings we needed. To pay for all this, one of us is now working, and we also received contributions from people in several countries.

Most of us are devoting ourselves full-time to learning Korean because we want to speak it as soon as possible and begin to share in the concerns, interests and joys of the people we are getting to know.

We have received quite a warm welcome here. Someone always seems ready to lend a hand: to find a bookstore, a dentist, or a store that sells goods at a reasonable price.

I must especially thank our neighbors for their help. Among other favors, this past week they came over every day to help me practice my spoken Korean. Thanks to the help of so many people, I am amazed that after only five months I can now read and understand what a short time ago was nothing but an indecipherable puzzle.

Korea is said to resemble a small village that all of a sudden became a large country. Maybe that’s why I feel at home, even though I’m immersed in a new culture with customs and ways of doing things so different from what I’ve previously known. It’s easy to start a conversation with anyone. More than once people have stopped us on the street to ask us if we were speaking Russian!

I’m learning a lot besides the language: to eat "kimchi" with chopsticks, to bow respectfully, to set the table Korean style, to find my way out of the Metro among the eight possible exits…. It’s all a great adventure!

We arrived in Korea in time for the snowiest winter in a century. For some of us, it’s the first time we’ve seen snow. We’ve learned how to unblock the washing machine when the pipes freeze. And how loudly we laughed when a sweater that had been put outside to dry ended up frozen like cardboard: a true work of art!

SOLVING A PUZZLE

Korea is a land of religious diversity, where it’s common to talk about topics of faith. It’s wonderful to see people who are sincerely seeking the truth. In a short time a sizeable group of women has begun attending the classes we give on Catholic doctrine. They take note of points of special interest to pass along to their families and friends. One woman told me: "Faith is like a big puzzle that I’m finally starting to figure out."

Some of these women are beginning to appreciate the spirit of Opus Dei—offering up their work and doing it for love of God. For example, a voice teacher told me that even before hearing of the Work she had already discovered that teaching singing to her students could be a path to God. She had "understood" Opus Dei without having met it.

A few days ago I spoke with a student of English literature while on the bus to the university. When I explained to her that an hour of study well done is, as St. Josemaría taught, an hour of prayer, her eyes opened wide and she kept repeating: "Chincha? Chincha?" (which means, Really? Is that so?)

We go often to Seoul, the capital, where some women have begun helping out in various ways in the Christian activities the Work is organizing, and who attend the means of formation. In December we had a retreat that some of them attended with their friends.

On our way to Korea we stopped in Hong Kong. There I met one of the first three women who brought the Work to the Philippines. Among other things, she told us: "You’ll see that God is the one who will do it all." And that’s already becoming a reality!

Nurse in Haiti: work as an opportunity to serve others

2010-03-27T01:29:00.000-07:00

2010/03/08
http://www.opusdei.ca/art.php?p=37877

This was my fourth trip to Haiti to run a small mountain clinic for a week with four other nurse practitioners, most of them from the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC). These trips are also service-learning experiences for nurse practitioner students from UIC, whom we team up with and teach as we see patients. Our entire team is part of Little by Little, a non-for-profit organization that focuses on improving the health of children and families in Haiti. Through Opus Dei I have learned to always see my work in health care as an opportunity to serve others. Being able to use my work to serve the poor in Haiti has been a special privilege for me.

This year, we saw over 1,000 patients in five days from January 7-12 in the little village of Gramothe on the side of a mountain just outside Port-au-Prince. Many Haitians we saw walked over a day’s distance and spent the night in the open air waiting for us to see them.

Our final day for the clinic was January 12. We saw our last patients by 4pm, cleaned up and left. Most of us decided to walk home, relax in the sun, stop to see some children from the village one last time and just enjoy our final day before our flight Wednesday morning. We made it down the mountain, walked some distance along the dry riverbed filled with white rocks and boulders, and started trekking up the winding road on the next mountain past some very simple homes and several long cinder block walls. At 4:53, just after passing one of the walls, the ground starting shaking, almost knocking us down, and a very loud rumble started.

At first we didn’t know what was happening. Once we realized it was an earthquake, we ran back to the house as fast as we could. Everyone was outside, safe but very scared. Our immediate thought was for the people in Gramothe. Six of us hopped on three all-terrain-vehicles (ATVs) and headed down our mountain, across the riverbed, and back up the other mountain towards the village and clinic. Most of the people in the village were outside; no one was seriously hurt, and although their homes were damaged, the damage was not severe.

Willem from our group took a little girl we found injured from a falling rock to a small nearby hospital. He discovered the hospital had just one doctor and several nurses. By that time, over a hundred injured people were starting to fill the hall and spilling out onto the parking lot. He rushed back to bring us to the hospital to start helping in any way we could.

It was not until this moment that the magnitude of what had happened started to sink in. Two people took a truck up to our own little Gramothe clinic to pack whatever supplies we had left up there. The rest of us hopped on a second truck and someone suggested we start praying. We prayed most of the way to the hospital. I had a prayer card of St. Josemaría with me and through his intercession I asked God many times to give us the strength we needed to handle whatever faced us that night. At the hospital we formed a human chain to be able to get in the doors and down to a room at the far end. It was shocking to walk past so many injured people, most of whom had had some part of a building fall on them.

We saw and stabilized more than one hundred severely wounded patients that night, working well past midnight. The injuries are indescribable but I will never forget the faces of the patients and families we saw. They were faces searching for hope – any kind of hope – and help for themselves and their loved ones. We were very short on supplies but used anything we had: cut-up scrubs were used as bandages, tourniquets and slings, pipes were used to splint fractures, and pieces of T-shirts were used to wash wounds. After we saw everyone who had been waiting, the first large aftershock rocked the building and we left and went home. The church in Gramothe was still lit up and singing voices could be heard in the dark, praising God in the midst of the tragedy.

Over the next two days, we set up a mini-clinic in the yard of our host family and continued to treat many wounded Haitians who walked to us or were carried into the yard on old mattresses. Many of these wounds needed to be treated in an operating room in the United States, but we did the best we could. On Thursday as we saw patients, we could hear songs from the Gramothe village church: it was the funeral of the first little girl we helped in the riverbed after the earthquake.

We returned to the States on January 16. I have settled back into life in Chicago and am back at work as a pediatric nurse practitioner. I continue to pray for the people in Haiti in such desperate need, and thank God for giving us the opportunity to help them as much as we could both before and after the earthquake.

Oscar Romero on Opus Dei: a secure orientation for living as sons of God in the midst of daily family and social obligations

2010-03-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

A letter written to the Pope by El Salvadorean Bishop Oscar Romero on July 12, 1975, requesting the opening of a cause for St Josemaria’s canonization. Bishop Romero was killed while celebrating Holy Mass on 24 March 1980, 30 years ago.

"Most Blessed Father,

I regard the still-recent day of the death of Monsignor Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer as contributing to the greater glory of God and to the well-being of souls, and I am requesting of Your Holiness the quick opening of the cause for beatification and canonization of such an eminent priest.

"I had the good fortune of knowing Monsignor Escriva de Balaguer personally and of receiving from him support and fortitude to be faithful to the inalterable doctrine of Christ and to serve with apostolic zeal the Holy Roman Church and this land of Santiago de Maria, which Your Holiness has entrusted to me.

"I have known, for several years now, the work of Opus Dei here in El Salvador, and I can testify to the supernatural sense that animates it and to the fidelity to the ecclesiastical magisterium that characterizes the work.

"Personally, I owe deep gratitude to the priests involved with the Work, to whom I have trusted with much satisfaction the spiritual direction of my life and that of other priests.

"People from all social classes find in Opus Dei a secure orientation for living as sons of God in the midst of their daily family and social obligations. And this is doubtless due to the life and doctrine of its founder.

"In this stormy world overrun by insecurity and doubt, the superb doctrinal fidelity that characterizes Opus Dei is a sign of special grace from God.

"Monsignor Escriva de Balaguer was able to unite in his life a continuous dialogue with Our Lord and a great humanity; one could tell he was a man of God, and his manner was full of sensitivity, kindness, and good humor.

"There are many people who since the moment of his death are privately entrusting him with their needs.

"Most Blessed Father, I humbly repeat my petition for a quick opening of the cause for the beatification and canonization of Monsignor Escriva de Balaguer, for the greater glory of God and for the edification of the Church.

"With filial affection and submission, I kiss Your Ring."

A parish priest of the Adur Valley in West Sussex also reported in a blog that "I was told by an Opus Dei priest that on the very day he was shot, Romero had been spending a day of recollection with them."

James R. Brockman, S.J., in "The Spiritual Journey of Oscar Romero", writes:

Romero remained an auxiliary bishop of San Salvador until October of 1974, when he was named bishop of Santiago de Maria, a rural diocese. He remained in Santiago until named archbishop of San Salvador in February of 1977, at the age of fifty-nine. During these five years, his retreat notes show him continuing to work on the problems of getting along with others and trying to organize his life better, as he had in earlier retreats. At least two of the retreats he made were preached by priests of the secular institute Opus Dei, and during these years and perhaps earlier his ordinary confessor and spiritual director was one or another priest of Opus Dei. While he was bishop of Santiago de Maria, he wrote to Pope Paul VI to appeal for the beatification of [Escriva].

Making Space for God in a Communication World

2010-03-24T04:48:00.000-07:00

Zenit

Father Manuel Tamayo admits that being on Facebook means he sometimes has to endure "rather irreverent jokes." But he says the most gratifying part of evangelizing through the media is hearing someone say they've converted or found clarity reading his words.

The Peruvian priest said this in an interview in which he reflected on Benedict XVI's message for this year's World Day of Social Communications, which focuses on priests' use of the media.

Father Tamayo says he remembers being a student when he heard that St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, encouraged youth to study journalism.

"He encouraged young people to follow this career, because he wanted young people with a Christian concept of life to [...] be able to spread Christian doctrine through every means," Father Tamayo recalled. "The Church cannot stay behind and must use these means to reach the people. Hence the Holy Father's concern in encouraging priests."

Cardinal Schönborn: Freedom is precisely what Christianity has to offer modern Europe

2010-03-24T04:44:00.000-07:00

By Kirsten Evans

WASHINGTON, D.C., FEB. 4, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Ice and snow did not keep them away. Amidst the flurry of a winter snowstorm, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, addressed an auditorium over-flowing with students, faculty, clergy and lay faithful at the Catholic University of America (CUA)...

Of heaven and earth

Alluding to St. Augustine, Cardinal Schönborn went on to explain, "Here in lays the distinctive and unmistakable strength of Christianity: her dual citizenship. At once earthly and heavenly, it invites one to a loyal participation in society, taking on responsibility for the city of man without wanting to overthrow it in order to create some utopian society. This engagement with the temporal is founded on the fact of a peril-less citizenship in the city of God."

Cardinal Schönborn made clear that the Christian's claim to belong not only to an earthly citizenship, but to a heavenly one, is what makes Christianity hated by totalitarian systems, most especially notable in the 20th century. "The Christian is free," he says. "Free with respect to the state, because he is never only a citizen of the state. Never before has this Christian freedom been more clearly expressed than during the time of fascism, communism, and Nazism during the last century, when authentic Christian witness resulted in millions and millions of martyrs."

The cardinal believes that this foundation of freedom is precisely what Christianity has to offer modern Europe. "It is freedom from the demands of the mainstream, from political correctness, or simply from the pressure of the latest fashions. Christian freedom," Cardinal Schönborn described.

Radical freedom

As testimony to the power of Christian freedom, Cardinal Schönborn recalled the great spiritual movements that became cultural movements in Western history. "This year marks exactly 1,100 years since the monastic reform of Cluny," he remembered. "This monastic reform brought Europe over 4,000 monasteries in a period of 200 years. A fantastic network all over Europe, with an enormous economic, social, artistic and spiritual energy."

The cardinal explained that when Cluny began to decline another great spiritual renewal was sparked with Bernard of Clairvaux, then again with the Cistercians, and history repeated itself again with the mendicant orders of Francis and Dominic. Each of these spiritual renewals made enormous contributions to the cultural and civil societies of their time.

"Has enough consideration been given to the freedom made possible by these renewal movements and how much Europe has been influenced by these movements?" he questioned. "From its inception, Christianity allowed people to step outside of their temporal and political order. The idea that man must obey God before he need obey man brought an enormous element of freedom into society," he continued.

The cardinal argued that throughout the centuries the freedom to radically follow Christ set free enormous creative energy throughout the Western world, and is "one of the permanent sources of European vitality."

Cardinal Schönborn also expressed his joy over the resurgence of spiritual movements in today's Church. "Why should history not repeat itself today?" he asked. "Why should we not have the kind of surprise, undreamt-of surprise, ahead of us that Francis of Assisi brought to Europe 800 years ago?" He described the lay movements in the Church as "a very vital sign" and claimed they point to the same creative Spirit that once brought to life the Christian spiritual and cultural renewals of previous centuries. The cardinal mentioned in particular Opus Dei, the Neo-Catechumenal Way, and Communion and Liberation.

Call to purification

But the cardinal did not fail to point out that the modern relationship between secularism and Christianity serves a needed purpose for the purification and maturation of Christianity: "Christianity also needs the critical voice of secular Europe, asking hard questions, sometimes nasty questions, questions we should not try to escape or avoid.

"It does Christianity good to listen to the questions of secular society and be challenged to answer them. It wakes the Christians up and challenges them. It questions Christianity's credibility. And Christianity needs to be questioned.

"It is good for us to be held accountable."

He explained that the critical questioning of the secular world presses Christianity to become what it is called to be, and helps to purify what is incoherent between its words and deeds. "And why?" he asked. "Because deep down, the secular West longs for an authentic Christianity, and hopes for a Christianity that is credible through its life."

Cardinal Schönborn ended the evening with a call to faith. "Christian freedom has an inexhaustible source. 'Remember, I am with you until the end of time.' This saying of Jesus Christ is Christianity's most powerful resource!" he exclaimed. "This alone explains the inexhaustible power of regeneration in Christianity, which again and again experiences its resurrection, in the power of the One who rose again."

Showing the real story in Africa

2010-03-24T04:36:00.000-07:00

By Rome Reports

Africa continues to be an unknown territory for many. Not only for those who visit it’s deep jungles or it’s deserts. Even those who read the headlines daily don’t get the full grasp of the reality on the continent.

Harambee, an NGO, says the media rarely tells the full story on Africa. In an effort to change that, it’s established the 'Communicating Africa' award, which offers professional audiovisual journalists a challenge.

Rosalinda Corbi
International Coordinator of Harambee Africa International Onlus
“It’s about recognizing Africa through a news report. The award has two categories, one for western journalists an another for African journalists. Each one can tell their own story about Africa according to their point of view.”

It’s an award for journalists to shed some light on the rich untold stories about the history of this continent. It’s not about giving a naive or simplistic view of Africa, but instead an effort to show that even in a place ravaged by war and hunger there is also hope and there’s the earnest work of many organizations.

That’s why the prize is just the tip of the iceberg and Harambee wants to gradually change the bias about the continent with as great expectations as its people.

This NGO came to be out of donations that were collected for the canonization in 2002 of Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei. Since then Harambee has been dedicated to African development.

So far it’s financed more than one and half million euros 28 projects in 14 African countries. One way of providing a small contribution for development of the continent, is by focusing on the education of children.

Giovanni Mottini
President of Harambee Africa International Onlus
“We’re convinced that education is a priority to Africa because in about 10 or 15 years today’s kids will the future of these countries. Among them will be those who will be responsible for making the tough decision in these countries. That’s why education is our priority.”

Harambee means, “all together” in Swahili and it illustrates exactly what Africa needs and the nature of this organization. All together, for a continent that has so much to show the world.

If man is not reconciled with God, he is also in conflict with creation, with himself

2010-03-24T02:12:00.000-07:00

Q: In some of his conferences he has spoken of the "rediscovery" of the sacrament of reconciliation. To what degree do you regard this need as important?

Cardinal Herranz: To the degree that this sacrament is, as the arteries are for blood in the body, the privileged channel for the life of grace in the soul, the "stopping" or abandonment of the sacrament of penance or reconciliation would produce a heart attack or necrosis in the spiritual fabric of the person, and also of whole Christian communities, because the sense of sin, the need for forgiveness and the enjoyment of peace and joy of the reconciled soul would be gradually lost.

In fact in the address I just referred to, Benedict XVI addressed this profoundly human need: "If man is not reconciled with God, he is also in conflict with creation. He is not reconciled with himself, he would like to be something other than what he is and consequently he is not reconciled with his neighbor either. Part of reconciliation is also the ability to acknowledge guilt and to ask forgiveness from God and from others. Lastly, part of the process of reconciliation is also the readiness to do penance, the willingness to suffer deeply for one's sin and to allow oneself to be transformed."

And the Pope added: "Today, in this world of ours, we need to rediscover the sacrament of penance and reconciliation. The fact that it has largely disappeared from the daily life and habits of Christians is a symptom of a loss of truthfulness with regard both to ourselves and to God; a loss that endangers our humanity and diminishes our capacity for peace.."

In many cases -- as John Paul II reminded in his Motu proprio "The Mercy of God" -- it suffices for the priest to be available at all times and also in an ample schedule known in the parish and other places of public worship, so that little by little many more Christians will again receive this sacrament in a personal way. As is logical, we must also pray and do everything possible so that abuses in collective absolutions, wherever they happen, will disappear, which do grave damage and do not give true peace and joy to consciences. When sacramental confession is practiced frequently, there begins to be spiritual direction, greater desires for holiness, more peace in families and justice in society, more priestly vocations.

It is well known that I owe very much to St. Josemaría Escriva. He was a great apostle of sacramental confession, which he presented in his European and American catecheses as the sacrament of joy." He said for example in Chile, with the direct and familiar style that characterized him: "Confess, confess, confess! Christ has lavished mercy on creatures. Things don't go well, because we don't go to him, to cleanse us, to purify us, to inflame us. [...] The Lord is waiting for many to have a good bath in the sacrament of penance! And he has a great banquet prepared for them, that of a wedding, of the Eucharist; the ring of engagement and fidelity, and of friendship for ever. Go to confession! You, daughters and sons, bring souls to confession. Don't make my coming to Chile futile!"

Roots of accusations of secrecy against Opus Dei

2010-03-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia on Opus Dei

According to several journalists who have worked independently on Opus Dei, such as John Allen, Jr., Vittorio Messori, Patrice de Plunkett, Maggy Whitehouse, Noam Friedlander many of the criticisms against Opus Dei are myths and unproven tales.

Allen, Messori, and Plunkett say that most of these myths were created by its opponents, with Allen adding that he perceives that Opus Dei members generally practice what they preach.

Allen, Messori, and Plunkett also state that accusations that Opus Dei is secretive are unfounded. These accusations stem from a clerical paradigm which expects Opus Dei members to behave as monks and clerics, people who are traditionally known and externally identifiable as seekers of holiness.

In contrast, these journalists continue, Opus Dei's lay members, like any normal Catholic professional, are ultimately responsible for their personal actions, and do not externally represent the organization which provides them religious education.

Writer and broadcast analyst John L. Allen, Jr. states that Opus Dei provides abundant information about itself.

These journalists have stated that the historic roots of criticisms against Opus Dei can be found in influential clerical circles.

Why are Opus Dei centres not signposted?

2010-03-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

Question and answer at Opus Dei today

Leo:

I have a friend who goes to an Opus Dei centre and when I went to it, I noticed that there was no sign outside indicating that it was Opus Dei. Why is that? I mean if you want people to know you're there.. wouldn't it make sense to show that "Here!.. this is an Opus Dei centre"! Thanks.

leo

Pam:

Hi Leo,

I always think about a center as a family home. Wouldn't you be surprised if while you go by the street you see a sign in front of each house saying "Mary Smith's home" or "John Black's house"? I think the same about an Opus Dei center. The numeraries (celibate members) live there and the "center" is actually a home so it would be a little weird to have a sign outside... I'm sure you realized that when you accompanied your friend, you realized it wasn't a "club" or "college" with classrooms but a family home with living rooms, right? On the other hand, I believe each diocese has the address and names of the Opus Dei members working in their diocese so there is in fact no secrecy.

I hope I answered your question. I do not live in a center, I'm a married woman, but I feel at home everytime I go to a center. Opus Dei is like a family within the big family of the Church and its Founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá, wanted the centers to be like family homes...

All the best,

Pam

Leo:

OK.. thanks Pam. But I don't think Opus Dei is like a family.. I mean it's an established organisation in the church, right... so, like any other organisation - they have their places ear-marked on the map so people can go to them. I mean.. Opus Dei centres are also places where people receive standard information from the organisation like talks and stuff.

Pam:

Hi again!

I was glad to see you came back to read the answer ;O)

Yes, you're right in saying Opus Dei is an institution, among the many that exist within the Catholic Church. But you don't receive "standard information", actually the idea is to give you formation, doctrine, that help you know your faith better, to help you know Christ better.

I will encourage you to keep going to the center with your friend. That's the best way you can get to know more about Opus Dei itself. Please keep writing if you have more question, we're glad to help!

All the best,

Pam

Leo:

Ok, thanks Pam. I kind of understand it now. I guess it's just the whole secrecy thing people keep harpping on about it and the signposting is one of those things that they like to use to "prove" their point: "you see there!.. they don't even show where they give their talks!"... but I understand it pretty much if they are a family and they live in a home.. I wouldn't like my home to have neon lights either!

Roque:

I'm glad Leo asked that question about signposting Opus Dei Centers as Opus Dei Centers. Pam's answer may make sense if a person knows Opus Dei very intimately. Though in some part of the world the mailboxes carry the name of the Family who lives in that house.

Most Centers used by Opus Dei members that have a public status like the Center where I reside in Iloilo City, Philippines, have a sign that names the Center. The Center in Iloilo is called Tuburan Study Center and it has a sign visible next to the entrance. But the sign does not say that it is an Opus Dei Center. But if you read the brochures for public distribution about the activities in this Center the phrase: "The spiritual direction of Tuburan Study Center is entrusted to Opus Dei, a Personal Prelature of the Catholic Church." appears in the brochure. No secrets here at all.

The reason why we do not sign-post the Center as an Opus Dei Center is because most centers are not owned by Opus Dei. It's that simple. The Centers themselves, the physical structures, are not owned by Opus Dei itself. They are usually owned by a local Foundation whose trustees may or may not be members of Opus Dei. For example the Tuburan Study Center where I live is owned by the Daguaio Foundation, not by Opus Dei.

I've been in Opus Dei for 40 years now more or less and I never heard if it was explicitly forbidden to sign-post a center as an Opus Dei Center as if we were trying to hide something. Who knows perhaps someday it would be done. Perhaps never. It really is no big deal. But I do understand Leo's concern.

Somehow, by word of mouth people get to know that a particular Center is run by Opus Dei. And people who want to know about Opus Dei can write the official web site and get info as to where they could go for activities organized by Opus Dei. They will be given the contact numbers or addresses of the Center closest to where they live.

Hope my comments help clarify Leo's question.

Catholic Opus Dei-inspired MBA is number one in Economist Global Rankings

2010-03-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

By Egbert F “Burt” Bhatty in Washington Hotwire. Burt has worked 30 years as an analyst at the American Embassy, New Delhi, and at British Dunlop and American Chase Manhattan multinationals.

Opus Dei.

Isn’t that the powerful, evil, Catholic group in The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown in 2003?

No. Opus Dei is nothing like this bizarre creation of Dan Brown’s overwrought imagination.

In reality, Opus Dei, which is Latin for “Work of God”, runs educational institutions and agricultural training centers. In more than 90 countries across 4 continents.

One such educational Institution is IESE.

The initials IESE stands for “Instituto de Estudios Superiores de la Empresa” in Spanish.

In English, IESE translates as “Institute of Higher Business Studies”, or “International Graduate School of Management”.

And, The Economist ranks the IESE Business School’s MBA the # 1 in the world in 2009. A rank it, also, attained in 2005 and 2006.

The ability of the IESE MBA program to progress careers, open new opportunities, develop personal and work-related skills, were factors that The Economist considered in its rankings.

But, IESE students get more than just these secular capabilities.

Being students in a Catholic-driven Institution they get the whole Catholic shebang.

But, lightly.

Ever so lightly.

They assimilate the fundamental Catholic belief that each one of us, in our own way, is called to holiness.

That the very quotidian of our lives is the way to Goodness and Godliness.

Or, as Opus Dei founder, St Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, put it — “There is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.”

Discovering the Divine is what IESE’s MBA students are taught to do.

But, where is the Divine to be found?

In Man. In men.

Which is why IESE states that its mission is to teach students “to serve society…..”

Quite unlike American Business Schools which teach students to screw people if necessary to guarantee profits.

Opus Dei: A Call to Holiness for Everyone

2010-03-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

By Derrick Flannigan, of Washington, Missouri, who teaches music and theology. 8 March 2010

During this Lenten season, we are inclined to look at our lives and ask how we can better serve Our Lord and others by means of daily sacrifice. For some this may mean giving up chocolate or deciding to pray the Holy Rosary each day. But how are we to approach the spiritual life after these forty days in the desert? Are we to simply go back to our old habits?

These questions have lead me to the writings and work St. Josemaria Escriva, the "founder" of Opus Dei. Although this organization has been criticized in recent years, Opus Dei has helped members both in and outside of the Catholic Church to experience a life of virtue while living in society. Escriva is known for admitting that he did not begin Opus Dei ("work of God") saying, "I did not invent anything; another is acting and I am merely ready to serve [God] as an instrument". The essence of Opus Dei is to assist people in experiencing God in their work, study, family life and ecclesial worship.

After first encountering Opus Dei, I thought it was most likely started after the Second Vatican Council. However, Opus Dei was started in 1928 and actually was under scrutiny by many in the Church. Today Opus Dei is a personal prelature of the Church and has study centers throughout the world. By helping the faith to live lives of holiness, Opus Dei is ultimately fulfilling what the Council called all to: become holy...become saints! Anyone who has read Lumen Gentium knows that the Church calls all to holiness, not just priests and religious. And this is exactly what Escriva saw the need for when he "began" the Work!

Escriva challenges everyday Christians to live a life of heroic virtue. This type of virtue is one in which we strive to encounter Christ in our daily lives and are faithful to Him. Many of us won't be great saints in the Church, but we're all called to holiness, to live our faith the best we can and see Christ in others! I love the description that our current Pope Benedict XVI gave when commenting on Opus Dei: "Heroic virtue does not mean that the saint works out a 'gymnastics' of holiness that ordinary people could not tackle. It means, instead, that God's presence is revealed in the life of a person; it is revealed when the person could do nothing by himself or for himself" (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 9 Oct 2002: L'Osservatore Romano, page 3)

It's clear that we cannot do anything good without God. It's also clear that we have been called by God! Because of this call we can be sure that Our Lord will give us the gifts necessary to do His will and truly live a life of holiness. The primary gifts of Our Lord are the Sacraments, the means of grace for mankind! How often do we fail to remember that Our Lord gives of Himself freely in these seven gifts. We must strive to use such gifts for the good of our souls and those around us! Our Lord is waiting for us to respond...He wants to do so much good by means of us...let us go to Him!

And so, after prayer and reflection, I hope to pursue a vocation with Opus Dei, striving to learn from St. Josemaria Escriva practical ways to serve Our Lord and encounter Him as a theology teacher, son, brother, uncle, boyfriend, colleague and friend. Please pray for me as I begin this journey, which will begin this evening with my first session of spiritual direction with a priest of Opus Dei and an "Evening of Recollection" with other men of Opus Dei! Thank you for your prayers and for responding to God's call to holiness!

A crusading editor who stood up to the fascists

2010-03-10T19:42:00.000-08:00

By WILLIAM WEST in The Age

THE death of Antonio Fontan, named by the International Press Institute as one of the "heroes of press freedom", ends a critical chapter in the battle for freedom of the press around the world.

Fontan, editor-in-chief of Spain's Madrid daily newspaper from 1967 until 1972 when it was forced to close by the Franco government, refused to back down when the fascist regime repeatedly tried to silence the newspaper.

During that period, Fontan continued to publish pro-democracy material and to criticise the government.

As a result he was prosecuted 19 times and fined 10 times for a range of articles, including those championing civil liberties and defending democratic principles.

The paper had to cope with large losses when it was shut down for four months in 1968. Eventually the Franco government threatened to take steps to close the publication permanently unless Fontan was replaced by a journalist close to the governing Falange party.

....

Fontan's stand was vindicated when democracy was restored in 1975 and Spain's Supreme Court overturned the order forcing Madrid's closure, forcing the state to pay damages.

In the democratic elections that followed, Fontan ran for the Senate as a member of the Union de Centro Democratico coalition party, became the first Senate president of Spain's democracy and helped to draft Spain's 1978 constitution which legislated freedom of information and expression. Fontan then served as a government minister for three years.

In addition to his roles in the media and government, Fontan played an important role in training young journalists.

He established the country's first university school of journalism at the University of Navarra, a university under the guidance of Opus Dei, of which Fontan was a member.

His role in opposing the Franco government, which numbered members of Opus Dei, was seen in Spain as a confirmation of the political freedom of Opus Dei members.

To read the full article, please see The Age.

Alternative Feminism

2010-02-23T04:12:00.000-08:00

By Anne Marie Walker in Times

St Valentine's Day is an important day for most people but this year it is especially important. Why? Is it going to be particularly chocolate-filled? Will there be a mountain of roses? No. It will be the 80th anniversary of the start of the women's section in Opus Dei and as a woman in Opus Dei that's really important to me.

Opus Dei began life on 2 October 1928 when a young Fr Josemaría Escriva caught the tiniest glimpse of God's plan for him within the Catholic Church. At that time, he believed that it would only be for men. However, two years later, while celebrating Mass on 14 February 1930, he realised that women were very much part of Opus Dei.

Sixty-two years later, in January 1992, I joined those women of Opus Dei. At the time I was an undergraduate studying English and Publishing from a Marxist and Feminist perspective. Feminism, as far as I could make out, was defined as women imitating men in the worst possible ways. Needless to say I was not impressed so I was fascinated to discover the Catholic Church's teaching on an alternative Feminism.

St. Josemaria: The saint is not the person who never falls

2010-02-15T17:47:00.000-08:00

By St. Josemaria in Friends of God

The saint is not the person who never falls, but rather the one who never fails to get up again, humbly and with a holy stubbornness.

If the book of Proverbs says that the just man falls seven times a day, who are we poor creatures, you and I, to be surprised or discouraged by our own weaknesses and falls!

We will be able to keep going ahead, if only we seek our fortitude in him who says: 'Come to me all you who labour and are burdened and I will give you rest.' Thank you, Lord, quia tu es, Deus, fortitudo mea, because you, and you alone, my God, have always been my strength, my refuge and my support.

If you really want to make progress in the interior life, be humble. Turn constantly and confidently to the help of Our Lord and of his Blessed Mother, who is your Mother too.

No matter how much the still open wound of your latest fall may hurt, embrace the cross once more and, calmly, without getting upset, say: 'With your help, Lord, I'll fight so as not to be held back. I'll respond faithfully to your invitations. I won't be afraid of steep climbs, nor of the apparent monotony of my daily work, nor of the thistles and loose stones on the way. I know that I am aided by your mercy and that, at the end of the road, I will find eternal happiness, full of joy and love for ever and ever.'

At the heart is woman

2010-02-12T04:10:00.000-08:00

By Mercedes B. Suleik in Business World

Next Sunday, February 14, of course is hearts and flowers and sugary greeting cards day once again. This year, though, a number of other celebrations coincide with this holiday -- one of which is, for the Chinese, and others who like to join in, the start of the new year of the Tiger with its prognostications for what the golden tiger will bring to business, what good luck and progress may be expected as the year rolls on.

Two other events being celebrated on February 14 are not so well known but are significant for Opus Dei: the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Women’s Branch, and the founding of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross in 1943.

This article is not intended to describe Opus Dei (which I do not consider myself capable of). What I wish to take note of is the founding of the Women’s Branch of Opus Dei on Feb. 14, 1930 (I shall not discuss the other anniversary) -- a date which was long before the term "women’s liberation" (first used in the US in 1964) was invented. Originally, as I know it, the founder of Opus Dei, Josemaria Escriva, had envisioned the Work as a movement for men in the secular world, and how they could respond to the call for holiness in their spheres of work. In 1930, however, he received the inspiration that the universality of Opus Dei must be reflected not only by embracing people in every sort of profession, but also by including women in its apostolic work, albeit done separately, in recognition of their different pastoral needs.

Next month, March, has for some time been declared Women’s Month. I shall jump the gun ahead of others who would be writing about topics related to women, and feminism as it is foisted upon women these days, and write about what being a woman means to me, and relatedly, how womanhood is uplifted by the words of St. Josemaria and the late beloved Pope John Paul II.

What I found interesting is the way woman is understood by both of them, and how they say that woman is not a "lesser man" as feminists imply when they want to imitate men and "fulfill" themselves only if they become "copies" of the other sex, or as they prefer to say, gender. I found this quote in an article: "Feminists have charged that Judaism and Christianity are sexist religions with a male God and traditions of male leadership that legitimate the superiority of men in family and society." I guess this is the whole object of "sexism" which some say should be abolished, thereby allowing women to be "themselves."

Let me share what I agree is the role of woman. It is "defined by two factors: her identity and her self determination. A woman, just like a man, has to be able to choose her own future, to pursue her own life project. To do this she must have the same opportunities as a man. And she will do this by reason of her own identity, being who she is without falling into the temptation of mimicry, without imitating the customs and manners of men, thinking that in this way she will find herself." (Patricia Mayorga, in El Mercurio, Santiago, 1996)

In a sense, Josemaria Escriva’s ideas arrived many decades ahead of time. It was this foresight that enabled Centers of Opus Dei directed by women to be opened, because at the time hardly anyone believed that a woman could survive independently, without the help of a male partner, at least in what referred to the economic sphere and authority. It was foresight to encourage them from the beginning to develop activities with a wide range of apostolic activities in all fields and professions. He said to them, "You have all the conditions to be independent: in your own sphere of influence, since I have always been of the opinion that you should be autonomous, in your economic and corporate activities." Surely, these were revolutionary ideas, at that time, and even today.

Beloved Holy Father John Paul II also defended the rights of woman, praised their unique quality as helper and partner of man, and not as one inferior to him. He preached a new feminism that redefines the vocation and mission of woman, calling it the "genius of woman." He shows that she is gifted with a special sense for the concrete person, that she looks at persons with her heart, seeing persons independently of political or ideological systems. Sadly, our world today is so dominated by hedonism and a consumeristic culture that it is in danger of being depersonalized. The Holy Father felt that it needs the "genius of woman" to save and protect it from this threat.

So much rhetoric has been poured on the concern for "freeing" women from the so-called male-dominated socio-political and socio-cultural shackles, when, in fact, what is needed is to harness this "feminine genius" in all sectors of society -- whether they are running schools, active in businesses, working in the fields, working as politicians, journalists and artists, or working exclusively in work at the home. At the heart of progress in the community, society, and the nation, it has to be recognized that women play a key role -- as themselves, and not as poor imitations of the male.

The anniversary of the founding of the Women’s Center 80 years ago is a telling reminder that the Church has always considered woman as an equal of man. Each woman, in her own sphere of life, if she is faithful to her divine and human vocation, can achieve the fullness of her feminine personality, and indeed, "hold up half the sky" as an old saying goes.

Flower nursery run mostly by mentally handicapped

2010-01-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

From the Opus Dei website

"La Veguilla" is an extensive greenhouse in Madrid that employs 150 people, most of whom are mentally handicapped. Many consider this nursery one of the best in Spain.

Each year "Fleuroselect," International Organization for the Ornamental Plants Industry, awards its gold medals to the varieties of flowers considered most original for their color or some other botanical trait. The most recent ceremony took place in Madrid, hosted by José Alberto Torres. For a quarter of a century now he has overseen the La Veguilla special employment center.

Addressing people coming from all over the world, José Alberto explained the work carried out by the 150 employees, most of whom are mentally handicapped. The flower nursery he runs is considered the best in Madrid and one of the best in Spain. "Tomorrow," he says, "you can visit the premises at La Veguilla and those at Aranjuez. And as happens with most people, you might be tempted to attribute any problems you see to the mentally deficient people who work there. That would be a mistake. If you notice any deficiencies, it’s because their supervisors haven’t managed to teach these handicapped people as well as they should have. Or," he adds jokingly, "because they didn’t realize they should cover up the problems before you arrived!" His audience greets his words with warm applause.

Five million flowers a year

Like any other business, La Veguilla has its problems from time to time. But what draws visitors’ attention is the orderly and extensive greenhouse that produces over five million flower plants each year, and that since 2005 has extended its activities to another large site in Aranjuez, also in Madrid, which employs another 150 people.

While showing the visitors long lines of black plastic containers with petunias, geraniums, begonias, azaleas, daisies, and another thirty or so varieties in various stages of development, José Alberto gives some instructions to the employees he comes across, asks them about a personal problem they are dealing with or simply makes a joking remark. And he pauses, with a healthy pride, to point out in the greenhouse laboratory the experimental plants they are using to research brighter colors, blue and white fringes, and bigger petals. "It’s not really that difficult," he says. "Humidity, heat, an added hormone, and in two weeks these will be ready."

Demanding Work

José Alberto deliberately avoids using euphemisms such as "occupational therapy," and at times disagrees with the excessive government welfare payments these handicapped people receive. Although tranquilizing people’s "social conscience," in the end this welfare often only serves to marginalize the handicapped from the rest of society, trying to ensure that they don’t cause any problems. "Their occupation in some cases is reduced to just that: a therapy, a simple instrument to alleviate the burden of an illness. Here they work with all the consequences work brings with it: schedules, fatigue and a fully-earned wage."

The result is pride in their work and satisfied faces when they see trucks coming on a daily basis to take away the results of their labor. "If not for us," one of the employees told José Alberto, "Madrid wouldn’t have any gardens."

The real "fertilizer" in these nurseries is the sanctifying value of all this noble human work and its great dignity, something José Alberto learned in Opus Dei. "I set myself the goal that these people, whom God also calls to holiness, would discover in their tasks a way to find God and to serve other people."

Before his arrival, La Veguilla already existed as a school for the mentally handicapped, but it lacked a clear sense of direction. After working for the ministry of education and in a private high school, José Alberto says, "I decided to put all my efforts into this project."

At first came some failed attempts to produce furniture and ceramics. He also had to overcome some misunderstandings on the part of parents and employees. One person even told him: "You’re trying to get people to work who don’t have to bother about working!" With his practical and down-to-earth character, José Alberto likes to say: "here we don’t want charity but quality."

Normality with all the employees

A sense of meaning in life is given to people who because of their personal situation are an easy prey to a paralyzing compassion or abuse and neglect. "If they start to attribute their failure to their own deficiency, they will never cease being a failure and will always want to be helped," says José Alberto. Their lives can become so passive that they end up "vegetating" like these plants here, he says. Some of them arrive at La Veguilla so battered by what they have seen and experienced that they don’t believe in anything. "But after living alongside others with the same deficiencies for some time, learning how to work and to smile, they begin to believe in what they themselves achieve with their own hands."

For José Alberto, one of the most gratifying moments of the day comes at the end of the evening meal in the residence close by the nursery where those whose homes are far away live during the work-week. "To alleviate my aches and pains they normally bring me an orange juice drink and there is always some left over. Then the youngsters gather around me and raffle time arrives. Let’s see who says the magic words! ‘Hay Torres’ [José Alberto’s last name] says someone, and he gets the drink. However, quite often it happens that, if for some time now a particular individual has not ‘carried off’ the orange drink, the others stay quiet and encourage him to say the magic words. Even though some of them might seem rough on the outside, they have a heart of gold."

Dealing with them in a normal way makes them feel the same as other people and helps them to forget about their deficiencies, at least for a while. "As soon as you aren’t honest with them or try to deceive them you’re lost," José Alberto remarks.

Fortunately things have improved a lot in this respect in recent years. People now realize that handicapped persons are capable of living a normal working life, in spite of their lacks or limitations. These days, doctors, neurologists and pediatricians pool their knowledge to help them. "It’s unbelievable," the father of one young boy told me, "to think that my son could be capable of supporting himself on his own… Whenever I needed to send one of my children on an errand, I always sent his younger brother because I was afraid something might happen to this one!" Today his handicapped son not only supports himself with his own work, but also has the benefit of a fixed work contract.

Support from professionals

Biology PhD, Marisé Borja combines her teaching at the university with the biotechnology laboratory at La Veguilla. There she carries out studies on plant viruses, on parasites and toxins, and on botanical engineering which are published in international journals. Most of the fieldwork is done by the mentally handicapped workers. "They can do almost everything: transferring the plant samples from one cultivation medium to another in the air flow chamber, moving the receptacles to the cultivation chambers, filling or emptying jars, sterilizing them, disinfecting walls or floors in order to achieve the necessary antiseptic standards," Dr Borja says.

A special education school under the patronage of Our Lady of Lourdes run by Promiva Foundation works in tandem with La Veguilla. This school has many years of experience educating the mentally handicapped. Around fifty personnel, teachers, psychiatrists, psychologists, physiotherapists, speech therapists and doctors work together.

Jorge Muňoz, who heads up the Mental Deficiency Diagnostic Services section of the Foundation, researches among other things a technique for ascertaining which parts of the brain coordinate sense and intellectual activities. Jorge carried out his studies at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in Philadelphia. Here he can apply it to the mentally handicapped in part thanks to the cooperative work environment he finds. "A dry detached analysis of exclusively psychiatric data is not the same as considering the same data in conjunction with specialists in psychology, speech therapy and work activity."

The collaboration between the school, which 200 students between the ages of 6 and 20 attend, and La Veguilla is also seen in the help received from the teaching personnel, especially through courses in social skills such as conversational capacities, character formation, etc., which have great importance in the social integration of the mentally deficient.

"Our specific task," says Encarnación Celada, a teacher with over 25 years of experience in the school, "is to provide individual treatment through tutoring. This is because there are different types of mental deficiency: people with serious brain damage and those who because of family pressures or faulty social adaptation have ended up with severe damage to their personality. It’s a question of trying to reduce their insecurities, their fears of failure, and to give them with all the affection we can."

Gonzalo, the richest fruit

Julian Ruiz, the head of the school, says that it is important to confront problems as soon as possible. "Some parents think it’s best to cover up the problems their children are having. This as is a mistake they end up paying dearly for. There are others who refuse any type of cooperation since they think it serves no purpose. Recently a mother remarked to the school psychiatrist that she didn’t think her son was able to understand the meaning of his first communion. He told her: ‘I don’t know if your son will understand who God is, but I know that God understands your son.’ Many parents have returned to the faith because of their children’s struggles and efforts: ‘Having a child like this is what has given a meaning to our lives,’ some of them confess."

José Alberto has a special place in his heart for Gonzalo, one of the first employees at La Veguilla, who a number of years ago married a girl working at the center. Still moved by the memory, he recalls their wedding ceremony, where he acted as a witness and which seemed crazy to many. A few days afterwards Gonzalo and his wife came to speak with him to ask him a question. They wanted to have a child, they said: "But will he be like us?" José Alberto, with his characteristic realism, told them probably not, since their condition was not congenital. Their son is now twelve and is their great pride and joy, along with their satisfaction at seeing each day the flowers at La Veguilla growing and embellishing the gardens in Madrid.

Opus Dei is integral and absolutely faithful to the Catholic Church

2010-01-05T18:11:00.000-08:00

Taken from Talk page of Wikipedia. By Walter Ching.

Opus Dei is the direct opposite of the definition of sect.

It has not broken off, because it is a prelature, ie. headed by a Catholic bishop and prelate appointed by the Pope and the Congregation of Bishops. As a prelature it is like a diocese, like the diocese of Chicago which it is totally part of the Church. It is much more integral to the Catholic Church than an association like the Knights of Columbus.

It has never protested against the parent religion. In fact, Benedict XVI calls it "absolutely faithful to the Catholic Church tradition and faith". Opus Dei has no other doctrine outside of the Catholic faith. The only thing it teaches is the Catholic faith.

Its opponents were the ones who invented the myths about Opus Dei. And according to expert sociologist Massimo Introvigne, its opponents call it names and stigmatize Opus Dei because "they cannnot tolerate the return to religion of the secularized society."

Prelate of Opus Dei invites us to greater love

2010-01-02T00:18:00.000-08:00

By H2O news

Christmas is a great opportunity for all families to imitate the Holy Family, and so proposes the Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Javier Echevarria Rodriguez to H2onews:

"The Christmas season is already an invitation to sanctify ourselves in family life and I would suggest putting the nativity in your home so as to look to Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Jesus is perfect Love who became man to bring love from heaven to earth; He is concerned for all mankind and can teach us to love God and love all creatures, and so we cannot forget that both Mary and Joseph showed Jesus to the shepherds, to kings and to all people without distinction of any kind. They became instruments because of their docility and love of God, and for their joy that the Trinity would use them to allow the people of this world to know the Incarnate God."

Monsignor Echevarria Rodriguez adds that one way to live closer to Jesus' birth this Christmas is to love all, and quotes the founder of Opus Dei, St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer.

"I think that an effort we have to make is to love one's own family, to love our friends. To love all friends as Christ would want is one of the things that St. Josemaría often said: "I want to love people and to treat them as I would Christ."

A cute Christmas Miracle

2009-12-31T23:32:00.000-08:00

By Teresa, a policy researcher, in Sharing the Moment.

Last Christmas Eve, hubby and I lost our 18-year-old dog, Dijon. She's mostly blind and deaf from old age. We let her out the townhouse to pee, then we got distracted with dinner and presents. One hour later, we realized --with horror-- that Dijon was still outside.

She was nowhere to be found. We knocked on doors of 10 or so neighbors who were all getting ready for Christmas dinner. No one has seen a small white dog wandering about. At this point, 2 neighbors volunteered to drive around the neighborhood to try to find Dijon. Nothing turned up. I had to miss my Christmas Eve Mass since I clearly can not leave my distraught hubby to look for Dijon on his own -- he was walking around the neighborhood in a t-shirt in 40-degree LA winter weather. I was making novenas to St. Josemaria Escriva under my breath. I was so distracted it was difficult to finish my Our Fathers.

After posting about 30 flyers with Dijon's picture around the neighborhood, we decided to call it a night. It was 1:00am, Christmas Day.

We woke up very sad and blue on Christmas morning :( Especially hubby who felt he let Dijon down. We were not in the mood to open gifts. I went to Christmas Mass--which was wonderful. Then hubby's sister called to suggest we try searching online. Great idea -- we decided to post a "Lost Dog" ad with pics asap, on Craigslist.

At this point, hubby -- who is Jewish -- suggested I make another novena to St. Josemaria Escriva (hubby knows I have a devotion to him). A few minutes after that conversation, we got an email response to our ad, pointing us to a "Found Dog" ad that may or may not be Dijon. We opened the Found Dog ad -- and it's Dijon!

We frantically emailed the person who posted the Found Dog ad. An hour passed. Nothing. Hubby was worried. Another hour passed... Half-way through my novena, the door bell rang -- and hubby was greeted by a nice gentleman, Dijon tucked under his arm. We were overjoyed! We introduced ourselves and it turns out Dijon's rescuer is named Nick -- Dijon apparently crossed a main thoroughfare and went inside Walgreens. The Walgreens people kept putting her outside, and she kept coming back in. Nick took her home, gave her a bath and tried to console her. He also posted the Craigslist ad. We offered a reward but Nick flatly refused it. So we donated the reward under his name to his favorite charity.

We consider it a miracle that Dijon survived crossing a big street despite being blind and deaf, and being found and safely returned by someone named after St. Nick, as in Santa Claus, on Christmas Day.

Now Dijon can pretty much have accidents around the house (because of her age) and we no longer complain :)

"Ordinary gals"

2009-12-28T21:20:00.000-08:00

By Sheila Liaugmina in Inforum Blog

If only their spirit of love and service and sacrifice were ordinary.

The trumped up ’secret society’ myths of Opus Dei (read any Dan Brown over the past few years?) are farthest from the truth. But the truth is hard to get at when the laymen and women who make up the personal prelature are known for not talking the talk, but walking the walk.

The Women of Opus Dei tell(s) the story. It’s more extraordinary than they admit.

As part of the Catholic Church, Opus Dei exists to help lay men and women find and love God through their work — whatever that may be — and the everyday events that fill a normal life. But having a vocation to Opus Dei does not change the fact that members are still simply lay faithful, the same as other lay faithful in the Catholic Church.

People in Opus Dei do not wear their vocation to Opus Dei on their sleeves. In general, they try to focus on being an “ordinary guy or gal” with their colleagues, family and friends, all the while trying to be more like Christ in their work and with everyone with whom they come in contact. In this way, each one strives to personally give glory to God and to give Christian witness through the way they do their work and through their personal relationships.

Interviewer Miriam Diez asks….is there a prototype of a woman of Opus Dei?

No. As readers will see, the women featured in “Women of Opus Dei: In Their Own Words” are all unique.

The women in the book, just like all the women — and men — in Opus Dei, come from all walks of life. Four of the 15 women featured in the book are converts to Catholicism. Three of the women featured are of African American heritage; several come from Asian and Hispanic backgrounds. Several are stay-at-home mothers — an important professional work esteemed as such by St. Josemaría Escrivá. Several are mothers who raise their families and have other professions they carry out.

There’s a scientist, a couple of medical doctors — including one of the founders of the Hospice Movement in the United States, hospitality services professionals, a childcare professional, several educators, the president of a women’s college, the executive director of a non-profit organization, etc.

The majority of the women are married, some are single. What they share in common is their vocation — which is the same calling regardless of their different circumstances.

Do they tend toward a particular political affiliation?

Members of Opus Dei, as free human beings, are encouraged to be responsible citizens, to vote, to take an interest in the public policies that affect them and others within their various countries and communities.

That said, members of Opus Dei are completely free in the realm of voting, public policies, political party affiliation, etc. Opus Dei is totally non-political. Its ends are completely spiritual. People in Opus Dei tend to be all over the map in their politics — some are liberal, some are conservative, some are moderate, etc. As devout Catholics, they often share similar points of view on moral “hot button” issues like abortion, euthanasia, sexual ethics, social justice, bioethics, etc. — all of which have political repercussions.

Still, they are encouraged to approach and decide on those and other issues of public policy in accord with their conscience. There’s no one approach that people in Opus Dei adopt when considering those and other public policy matters. As Christians, they pray about and ponder the matters, and then come up with their own political decisions based on the options available to them.

Do these women represent what the founder of Opus Dei intended?

Probably, if he had them in a room all together, he would not congratulate them for being in Opus Dei, rather he would challenge them to be more valiant women. He would encourage them to try to be more generous in their love of God and spirit of service. He would urge them to dream apostolically with a world vision, to continue struggling to be better, to convert daily.

That’s a far more gripping mission than any melodrama concocted in neo-Gnostic fiction.

St. Josemaria: Pray so priests may love and make themselves be loved

2009-12-28T18:26:00.000-08:00

By St. Josemaria in the Forge (quoted in Eucharistic Adoration for Priests)

910 The Church needs priests, and always will. Ask the Blessed Trinity for them each day, through Holy Mary.

—And pray that they may be cheerful, hard—working, effective; that they may be well trained: and that they may sacrifice themselves joyfully for their brothers, without feeling that they are victims.

646 Since you call yourself a Christian, you have to live the Sacred Liturgy of the Church, putting genuine care into your prayer and mortification for priests — especially for new priests — on the days marked out for this intention, and when you know that they are to receive the Sacrament of Order.

964 Pray for the priests of today, and for those who are to come, that they may really love their fellow men, every day more and without distinction, and that they may know also how to make themselves loved by them.

Jingle Bell, All the Way

2009-12-28T03:17:00.000-08:00

By Sonnie Ekwowusi in AllAfrica.com
22 December 2009

It's another Christmas (or Christ's Mass) ! You can hear the angels, the Magi, the Shepherds, men and women of our time inhabiting the four corners of the earth singing: "jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle all the way " in celebration of Christmas. From Washington D.C, London , Paris, Montreal , Madrid , Rome down to Fashola's Lagos houses, streets, offices and shops are decorated with special festoons and rosettes at the dawn of Christmas. Christmas, unarguably, is the most celebrated Feast in Christendom.

Christmas is simply the dies natalis, the birth day of Jesus Christ, the redeemer and Saviour of the world. Before the first Christmas, the hope was widespread in Jewish times that a Messiah King would come. Kings after kings, prophets after prophets, rulers after rulers later came, wielded power and authority.

Some even conquered and acted like messiahs. But none could satisfy that deep human longing for true liberation and redemption. But when the appointed time came what poet William Butler Yeats dubbed the "uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor" took place at a relatively obscure town of Bethlehem in contrast to human wisdom and human expectation: Jesus Christ took flesh in the womb of Virgin Mary and came to be born among us.

This is the mystery we shall be celebrating on Friday: God condescending Himself to become man and to live among us. As St. Josemaria Escriva aptly puts it: "when the fullness of time came, no philosophical genius, no Plato or Socrates appears to fulfill the mission of redemption. Nor does a powerful conqueror, another Alexander, take over the earth. Instead a child is born in Bethlehem ".

This Christmas, I guess, is a special Christmas. It is the last Christmas of the decade. More importantly it is the Christmas in the year of the world financial crisis. Confronted with the so many financial scandals and unethical practices in business, many in the world today are still looking for a perfect bail out.

And I think this Christmas offers a good opportunity to reflect deeply on this. What is the way out? The London Economist, Wall Street and world financial experts keep harping on the economic theories capable of producing the miracle. President Obama is ever on his feet proffering solutions and solutions. If you listen to the BBC, CNN or the big world analysts, it is big talks all revolving around mechanistic and technological development.

The average European may not worry about the breakdown of traditional families and high rate of divorce and juvenile suicide tearing Europe apart, but he is worried about the climatic change. Pick up the bestsellers and all what you will be reading is the same anthropological and mechanistic reductionism. But in his latest Encyclical Letter: Charity in Truth, Pope Benedict XVI calls for a deeper reflection on the true meaning of human development.

Integral human development, according to the Pope, must "include not just material growth, but spiritual growth as well, since the human person is a unity of body and soul the human being develops when he grows in the spirit, when his soul comes to know itself and the truths that God has implanted deep within ". In other words, the Pope is simply saying that a mechanistic and materialistic solution alone cannot be the true solution. If, for example, the world bankers persevere in the unethical practice of "making up the books" just to make them look good from the outside, no level of banking reforms will bring about the much-vaunted sanitization of the banking industry.

Therefore this Christmas calls for a re-think. Whether we like it or not we need world political and world financial systems that allow moral restraints to emerge and to be observed. This is because our future depends not merely on finding technical solutions to the problems we face, but in having politicians and financiers whose moral authority is brought to bear in the organization of political and financial systems.

We need politicians whose upright lives will help in shaping the political society. We need financiers too who are convinced that over-maximization of profit should not be the motive for going into business. In general, we must learn to see our neigbours as human beings not just mere instruments that pave the way for our materials comfort and enrichment. The self-sacrificing service of Jesus, Mary and Joseph at first Christmas is a spur to mankind to be less self-centered and attend to the needs of their fellow men and women. Our political leaders, in particular, should learn from Christmas a lesson of altruistic dedicated service to the people. Nigerians are suffering today because our leaders hardly care a hoot about the plight of the people.

Our representatives in government hardly pay a visit to their respective constituencies to really appreciate the plight of the people they are supposed to be representing. ...Others will be celebrating the Christmas in darkness owing to power failure. Security of lives and property is not even guaranteed...

Therefore as we celebrate Christmas, we need a new humanism. Following the selfless life of Jesus, our leaders should bring light to the dark land; hope to the hopeless; justice to the oppressed and integrity to the wasteland. The people, on the other hand, should eschew vices of greed, avarice, laziness and corruption. It is no use blaming the leaders for being corrupt when the people are also guilty of the same thing.

Christmas underlines the importance of the family. Jesus was born into a family of Joseph and Mary. If you take a glance again at the Christmas Crib, you will see the family atmosphere that was the hallmark of the first Christmas in Bethlehem more than two thousand years ago. Everything in the Holy family of Jesus, Joseph and Mary bespeaks the family values of concern service, dedication and altruism. The family is the nucleus of the society.

The family plays a vital role in the upbringing of a person. All the things that shape the life of an adult are what he learned from his family or from his parents in childhood. Any wonder the family has been dubbed as "the shaper of values". The values, which the family institution imparts into the child eventually forms the superstructure around which the child's future behaviour will revolve. And for us in Africa and Nigeria, the family viewed from historical and cultural context, essentially doubles as the provider of those "social safety-nets" which a person needs to grow up to become responsible member of the society. Therefore the government should protect the traditional African family from being destroyed or deconstructed.

Lest we forget, we live in a sad world. Today laughter has evaporated from the faces of many. But Christmastime should be time to regain our laughter and sense of humour. Everything may collapse; politics may be become synonymous with hypocrisy; life itself may be very tough, but our optimism must be very high. With our laughter we can challenge the sad world to look at us and be hopeful Signing off

This column signs off today for the Christmas vacation, to resume, God willing, in the next decade, precisely in January 2010. Thanks for being a good companion in the journey of the last one year. Imagine a painstaking journey in the narrow jungle of the hungry lions without you. See you next year. Though human frailty may threaten to scuttle our deep resolve to reach the glorious end, our final destination, we will never throw in the towel. Look, those who flee the battle line are mere cowards. But we are not cowards.

As the decade bug, decade madness, the fear, the joy, or the ecstasy of entering 2010 gets better hold of you in the next 8 days, permit me to invite Susie Cooper to tell you something that you may find reassuring: "The space you leave behind is as important as the space you fill". So let us continue filling up our little spaces in the family life, at work, in the streets, in beer parlours, in stadia and at all corners of the public square where the public is waiting for you to form their consciences. And if you continue like this you will see how gradually over the years you will be a beacon of light for many despite the heavy burden on your shoulders.

Wishing you and all members of your family a peaceful Christmas and fruitful 2010. My warmest embrace!

John Paul II "would whip himself before he ordained priests"

2009-11-26T00:22:00.000-08:00

From Daily Mail

Pope John Paul II regularly whipped himself in a sign of 'remorse for his sins,' a nun has sensationally revealed.

Pope John Paul, who died in 2005, is being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church - the ultimate accolade and a tribute to his holiness.

As part of the Vatican's investigation thousands of documents have been collected and examined by officials from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Among them is the testimony of Polish nun Tobiana Sobodka, of the Sacred Heart of Jesus order, who worked for Pope John Paul in his private Vatican apartments and at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo near Rome.

Sister Sobodka said: 'Several times he (Pope John Paul) would put himself through bodily penance.

'We would hear it - we were in the next room at Castel Gandolfo. You could hear the sound of the blows when he flagellated himself. He did it when he was still capable of moving on his own.'

The flagellation is also confirmed by another bishop who has given testimony Emery Kabongo, who for several years was a secretary for Pope John Paul.

He said: 'He would punish himself and in particular just before he ordained bishops and priests. Before passing on the sacraments he wanted to prepare himself.

'I never actually saw it myself but several people told me about it.'

Sister Sobodka's leaked statements were published in Italian newspaper La Stampa and are part of new book on Pope John Paul II by it's Vatican correspondent.

Self flagellation is sometimes used by devoted Catholics as it reminds them of the whipping endured by Christ at the hands of the Romans before he was crucified.

It is still common in the Philippines and Latin America, some members of strict monastic orders and some members of the lay organization Opus Dei - who feature in the Dan Brown blockbuster The Da Vinci Code.

In the film - which was condemned by the Vatican - murderous Albino monk Silas, who is a member of Opus Dei is seen in a brutal scene whipping his back and drawing blood as he prays on his knees.

Today a Vatican spokesman said: 'The investigation and documentation is still secret and as such we can make no comment on it until the final report is published.

'I know that the nun in question has returned to Poland and she would have spoken with the Congregation as she was with an order that worked in the apartments of Pope John Paul.'

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints has been investigating the case for Pope John Paul since he died and has approved the late pope's 'heroic virtues' and the paperwork has been sent to his German successor.

The late Polish pope's beatification is expected to take place sometime next year, perhaps in April, to coincide with the fifth anniversary of his death or in October to coincide with his election in 1978.

Beatification is the first step in becoming a saint and in order to be granted evidence of a miracle performed by praying to the candidate in question has to be proved and verified by the Vatican.

In the case of Popes the procedure is usually much longer because the Vatican must examine much more material given the mass of responsibility and decisions taken by them as leaders of the Catholic Church.

However, Pope Benedict XVI has put John Paul II's beatification cause on a fast track, waiving a rule requiring a five-year wait before the start of the process.

Following his death in 2005 the vast crowd that gathered in St Peter's Square carried banners bearing the slogan 'Santo Subito' (Saint Immediately).

New reports of miracles attributed to John Paul II's heavenly intervention are said to arrive in Rome every week.

The key one being examined at the moment is the case of French nun Sister Marie-Simon Pierre, 47, said to have been cured from Parkinson's Disease - the same illness suffered by Pope John Paul II - after praying to him.

New light in Boston on Opus Dei's mission

2009-11-22T18:06:00.000-08:00

By Erica Noonan at Boston Globe

At the Montrose School in Medfield, it means educating girls to be leaders with “faith, character, and vision,’’ said the independent Catholic institution’s head, Karen E. Bohlin.

For Mary Brennan, a Franklin mother of six, it is a search for divinity in everyday life as she cares for her children and works part time. “It’s faith in practice,’’ said Brennan, who prays several times a day, using a rosary, Latin readings, and the New Testament. “As Catholics, it’s making a connection between work and faith.’’

Eighty years after being founded in Spain by St. Josemaria Escriva, Opus Dei remains an under-the-radar extension of Catholicism that is often misunderstood, adherents say. Yet it maintains a thriving presence in Greater Boston, with about 300 members, centers in Chestnut Hill, Boston’s Back Bay, Cambridge, and Pembroke, and the affiliated school in Medfield for girls in grades 6 through 12.

It took an image crisis - spurred by a 2003 novel by Dan Brown, “The Da Vinci Code,’’ featuring a monk-assassin with ties to Opus Dei - to put the prelature front and center in popular culture, and not in a positive light.

Finding many misrepresentations in Brown’s book, particularly about how Opus Dei treats women, who make up more than half of its membership, Boston College graduate Marie Oates started work on her own book, a pioneering collection of essays by two dozen women proclaiming the group’s egalitarian nature.

"We realized we had to tell the world about ourselves,’’ said Oates, who co-edited “Women of Opus Dei’’ with Dr. Jenny Driver, a physician at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. “Saint Josemaria loved women, and had great respect for them and everything they do in the world.’’About 20 percent of the organization’s 87,000 members worldwide are “numeraries,’’ who live celibate lives, primarily work in service to the church, and live in Opus Dei residences.

Roughly 2 percent of its members are priests, according to Opus Dei, and the remainder are regular churchgoers with secular jobs and families, like Brennan, who attends Mass daily when possible. But her deepest relationship with God, Brennan says, is outside the sanctuary while doing her everyday work “with great love’’ - raising children, doing freelance design at night, and in her part-time job in the cafe at Dean College in Franklin.

Opus Dei’s mission was also the inspiration behind the three-decade-old Montrose School, though today 25 percent of the girls and faculty are not practicing Catholics; several are Muslim, Greek Orthodox, or unaffiliated. The school is financially independent from Opus Dei and the Archdiocese of Boston, though it maintains a warm institutional relationship with both.

“I guess you could say our secret weapon is prayer,’’ said Bohlin, a scholar at Boston University’s Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character and an Opus Dei member. “We don’t have a corner on that market, but we do integrate it into all we do. And because we respect every person as a child of God, it’s easier to appreciate people, gain perspective under pressure, and laugh at ourselves.’’

To read the full article, please see Boston Globe.

Some facts about Opus Dei
Latin for “work of God’’
Established in 1928 by St. Josemaria Escrivia in Madrid
87,000 members worldwide; 3,000 in the United States
20 percent of members are numeraries, living celibate lives in service to God; 2 percent are priests, and the rest are supernumeraries, with secular jobs and families.
Joining is a civil arrangement. Members renew their commitment to do “the work of God’’ on an annual basis.

SOURCE: Opus Dei

The Seventeen Evidences of a Lack of Humility

2009-11-19T00:26:00.000-08:00

by The Cukierski Family Apostolate

[Saint] Josemaria Escriva once compiled an inventory of pride so exhaustive that it is like something written on the shield of a soldier who has learned it all in true combat.

The seventeen evidences of a lack of humility are:

1. To think that what one says or does is better than what others say or do

2. To always want to get your own way

3. To argue with stubbornness and bad manners whether you are right or wrong

4. To give your opinion when it has not been requested or when charity does not demand it

5. To look down on another's point of view

6. Not to look on your gifts and abilities as lent

7. Not to recognize that you are unworthy of all honors and esteem, not even of the earth you walk on and things you possess

8. To use yourself as an example in conversations

9. To speak badly of yourself so that others will think well of you or contradict you

10. To excuse yourself when you are corrected

11. To hide humiliating faults from your spiritual director, so that he will not change the impression he has of you

12. To take pleasure in praise and compliments

13. To be saddened because others are held in higher esteem

14. To refuse to perform inferior tasks

15. To seek to stand out

16. To refer in conversation to your honesty, genius, dexterity, or professional prestige

17. To be ashamed because you lack certain goods

How the personal ordinariate for Anglicans is different from personal prelatures

2009-11-19T00:08:00.000-08:00

By Rev. Dwight Longenecker in Inside the Vatican and also in Pope Benedict XVI blog

Msgr. William Stetson is the secretary of the pastoral provision, the structure provided by Pope John Paul II in 1980 to enable married former Episcopal priests to be ordained as Catholic priests. The pastoral provision also empowers the establishment of "personal parishes" -- groups to which the Church grants special pastoral care (in this case, non-Catholic Christians from the Episcopal Church) -- that follow the Anglican Use liturgy.

The pastoral provision is overseen by an ecclesiastical delegate -- at the time of its institution, then-Bishop Bernard Law. Since 1996, the ecclesiastical delegate has been Archbishop John Myers of Newark. Monsignor Stetson works for the archbishop -- meeting candidates, managing the examination process, and guiding the application for dispensations to Rome.

I interviewed Monsignor Stetson during a retreat for priests of the pastoral provision in Tampa, Florida, this week.

♦ ♦ ♦

Father Longenecker: You've been working in this area for more than ten years, and you belong to the Opus Dei prelature. How is the new personal ordinariate different from a personal prelature?

Monsignor Stetson: In the new ordinariate, the faithful will receive all their pastoral care from priests in the ordinariate. In a personal prelature, the faithful normally receive their sacraments and pastoral care from the clergy of their diocesan parishes.

FL: The Anglican personal ordinariate -- who's in? Who can belong?

MS: Former members of the Episcopal/Anglican Church who, at the time of coming into full communion, request in writing to be members of the ordinariate. Also, priests -- married or single -- may request to be part of the ordinariate, and then they may move forward through the selection and discernment process to be ordained as Catholic priests. It is also possible for the faithful who are presently Catholic, but who converted from Anglicanism, to belong to the ordinariate.

FL: What about cradle Catholics who have converted to Anglicanism? Can they belong to the ordinariate?

MS: This touches the question not only of those individuals but also Latin Catholics who wish to belong to the ordinariate for whatever reason. The Apostolic Constitution says that those who were baptized as Catholics outside the ordinariate will not normally belong to the ordinariate, unless they belong to a family that is part of the ordinariate.

Heaven is the goal: "Keep on lifting your eyes up to heaven as you go about your work"

2009-11-16T20:08:00.000-08:00

"Grace in the spirituality of St. Josemaria Escriva," by Cardinal Leo Scheffczyk

To know where one is traveling one needs to know what the goal is. The path of grace would be a path without meaning if faith and hope in reaching heaven were lacking.

That many Christians view the life of grace as lacking in savor and dynamism stems, in part, from not seeing heaven as a real goal. Therefore Escrivá encourages his hearers in a homily: “let us...go right to the core, to what is really important. Look: what we have to try to do is to get to heaven. If we don’t, nothing is worthwhile.”

And he advised “keep on lifting your eyes up to heaven as you go about your work, because hope encourages us to grasp hold of the strong hand which God never ceases to reach out to us.”

Here he is alluding not simply to a longing glance but to a determined effort to reach the goal, compatible with the reality of the trials and apostolic hardships from which it blossoms. For those who are following the path of salvation “at the end of the road a garden of paradise awaits them, eternal happiness, heaven.”

This realism in regard to salvation is firmly grounded in the Gospels, including the very human concern for the reward. Seeing life as a struggle entails the thought of the prize of victory:

“It’s hard! Yes, I know. But, forward! No one will be rewarded—and what a reward!—except those who fight bravely.” Escrivá recalls St. Paul’s promise that “each will duly be paid according to his share in the work?” What one reaps will be a function of what one sows.

Escrivá, in giving us his fullest view of heaven, asks: “what will it be like when all the infinite beauty and greatness, and happiness and Love of God will be poured into the poor clay vessel that the human being is, to satisfy it eternally with the freshness of an ever-new joy?” Heaven is the definitive fullness of grace, union with the divine Persons in love, joy, holiness and glory.

Here we see the dynamic and personal character of Escrivá’s thought, which permits one to grasp the heights and depths of the Catholic faith.

One of the most modern parts of the Catholic church

2009-11-04T17:21:00.000-08:00

By Mike Collet-White (Reuters) in Washington Post

If Opus Dei had a rough ride in the blockbuster movie based on Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," it looks set for an altogether more sympathetic portrayal in another film that deals with the Catholic organization.

British director Roland Joffe, renowned for Oscar-nominated "The Killing Fields" and "The Mission," is making "There Be Dragons," a film set during the Spanish Civil War that focuses in part on the life of Opus Dei founder Jose Maria Escriva.

Principal photography is complete, and Joffe is now in the editing room aiming to have the movie, which stars Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, ready for theatres by autumn next year.

Joffe originally intended to turn down a project which, owing to its religious theme and Opus Dei's controversial profile, promises to draw closer scrutiny than the average film.

In The Da Vinci Code, Opus Dei was cast as a secretive cult that resorted to murder to defend a fictional, 2,000-year-old Catholic cover-up. It has also been criticized by church liberals suspicious of its power and reach and by estranged members telling of coercion and corporal mortification.

But when he saw a video of Escriva addressing a large crowd, Joffe changed his mind.

The priest, who was made a saint in 2002, was asked by a Jewish girl if she should convert to Catholicism. Knowing it would upset her parents, Escriva told her that she should not.

"One of the things that impressed me a lot about Jose Maria was the fact that he saw that saintliness didn't require that you withdraw into a religious order, it didn't require that you become a priest," Joffe said on a recent conference call.

"But actually saintliness, saintly acts, could be performed by perfectly ordinary people in their everyday lives, which at the time was a very radical idea."

PROPAGANDA FOR CULT?

Opus Dei ("God's work") teaches Catholics to strive for holiness through their work. The far-flung, conservative Catholic organization was founded in 1928 and has around 85,000 members, some 2,000 of them priests.

Rather than making a biopic of Escriva, Joffe wrote a script that surrounded the priest with fictional characters and dealt with universal themes of love, betrayal and redemption.

The film's $30 million budget came from a mixture of a media company and some 100 investors led by producer Ignacio Sancha, a Spanish financier and Opus Dei member. Sancha also provided Joffe with a leading Opus Dei member to advise him on set.

But despite his clear sympathies with Escriva's teachings, and the financial and logistical backing by members of the organization, Joffe rejected concerns that There Be Dragons will become a propaganda piece for Opus Dei.

"When I wrote it (letter of acceptance) I said to the producers, one of whom is an Opus Dei member, 'Will I be free to write what I want?' He said the only reason we're coming to you is so that you're free to write what you want."

Sancha agreed. "Roland would never get involved in propaganda, left wing or right wing," he told Reuters.

Propaganda or not, There Be Dragons will be welcome by Opus Dei members who feel their organization has been wrongly maligned because of misrepresentations in popular culture.

"I used to think that Opus Dei was a cult," said Sancha, adding that he joined the group around 20 years ago.

"I was a bit tired of hearing on one hand it was a cult and on the other it was fantastic. I went to them and they gave me access to everything and I came to the conclusion that it is not a cult but one of the most modern parts of the Catholic church."

Joffe said Opus Dei's influence had been exaggerated.

"How could it be influential?" he said. "It could have influence, I suppose, in the church. I checked up to find out how many cardinals were Opus Dei and I think there may be one."

St. Josemaria Escriva is one of my son’s patron saints

2009-11-03T00:24:00.000-08:00

By Jennifer Gregory Miller in Family in Feria and Feast

St. Josemaria Escriva is one of my son’s patron saints. We named him after this saint in thanksgiving to St. Josemaria. In 2002 we made a pilgrimage to Rome for the canonization of Josemaria with the intention of having a child, as we were having difficulties getting pregnant. The next year our son was born, so in thanksgiving his middle name is a form of Josemaria.

Dh and I have told him this story over and over again, and include our “St. Josemaria, pray for us!” every evening in our night prayer. Now at the ripe old age of 4 1/2 our son has totally embraced this saint. And although it’s been really busy this month with many a feast passing by with just a few words and prayers, we are definitely celebrating this nameday.

This site on St. Josemaria has a section for young readers (see sidebar), with this link going a nice short biography. There are also recommendations for reading.

Through the Mountains is the first book we read together. It’s in comic book format, but a very detailed presentation of St. Josemaria’s life. We all learned so much about him reading this every night to our son. Some of the materials was over his head, but he wanted to read it all, so we read it in small chunks every night. We had many discussions stemming from the book.

Our current read-aloud is Yes! The Life of Josemaria Escriva for Young Readers. This is better for younger readers (or listeners). I believe this is a translation into English from another language, as there are some awkward phrasing and several typos. But my son really, really loves it, because it really is detailed on his early years in his family life and has lovely illustrations.

I didn’t realize how much this book was making an impression on him until the last two nights. As I was reading one of the chapters, my son starting talking out loud. I paused and asked if he wanted to continue, and he replied, “Yes, I was just praying.”

I didn’t think much about that until tonight when we said our night prayers together as a family. Our usual prayers are Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Angel of God and invocations to saints, and then spontaneous prayer which include prayer requests and going over the day. When we got to the Hail Mary, ds said we need to say 3 Hail Marys and then led them.

I was puzzled as to where he got this idea of adding the two extra Hail Marys, so after prayers I asked him. He said “We’re praying three Hail Marys to the Virgin Mary, like St. Josemaria’s family did!” And then I remembered that we read that chapter of Josemaria’s family prayer the night before.

It impresses me how absorbent a child is. I have never said explicitly that we read about saints to imitate them. And yet, how easily my son was inspired and made his own decision to imitate his patron saint.

We will be attending a special Mass in honor of St. Josemaria Thursday evening. I know it will be a little difficult due to usual bedtime routine, so I pray St. Josemaria will help the boys (and Mommy!)

And although the suggested feast day food is crespillos (see bottom of page), the recipe doesn’t fit our food allergy needs (nor, I admit, our tastebuds. Fried sweetened spinach?). So I am making allergy safe brownies for dessert, and we have a special favorite cereal for breakfast.

St. Josemaria’s teachings are simple and straightforward, but so helpful for me. Everyone is called to be a saint, echoing Vatican II’s “Universal Call to Holiness” — even lay people are called to be holy and become saints. And in our ordinary daily lives we must have a sanctification of our work.

“Since 1928 I have understood clearly that God wants our Lord’s whole life to be an example for Christians. I saw this with special reference to his hidden life, the years he spent working side by side with ordinary men. Our Lord wants many people to ratify their vocation during years of quiet, unspectacular living.”

The ordinary Christian can seek holiness in and through the ordinary circumstances of life. “Ordinary life can be holy and full of God.” And in everyday life, the Christian practices all these virtues: faith, hope and charity, and the human virtues – generosity, industriousness, justice, loyalty, cheerfulness, sincerity, and so on. In practising these virtues, a Christian imitates Jesus Christ. “The Supernatural value of our life does not depend on accomplishing great undertakings suggested to us by our overactive imagination. Rather it is to be found in the faithful acceptance of God’s will, in welcoming generously the opportunities for small, daily sacrifice.”

For the majority of Christians, marriage and the family are among the things upon which sanctity should be built, and should thus be given a Christian dimension. “For a Christian, marriage is not just a social institution, much less a mere remedy for human weakness. It is a supernatural calling.”

I forgot I had written these posts.

And I’ll close with my favorite prayer to the Holy Spirit written by St. Josemaria:

Come, O Holy Spirit:
enlighten my understanding
to know your commands;
strengthen my heart
against the wiles of the enemy;
inflame my will…
I have heard your voice,
and I don’t want to harden
my heart by resisting,
by saying ‘later…tomorrow.”
Nunc coepi! Now!
Lest there be no tomorrow for me!
O, Spirit of truth and wisdom,
Spirit of understanding and counsel,
Spirit of joy and peace!
I want what you want,
I want it because you want it,
I want it as you want it,
I want it when you want it.

After death you will be welcomed by Love itself

2009-10-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

Do not ever forget that after death you will be welcomed by Love itself.

And in the love of God you will find as well all the noble loves which you had on earth.

Our Lord has arranged for us to spend this brief day of our earthly existence working and, like his only-begotten Son, ‘doing good’.

--St. Josemaria, Friends of God, Christian Hope 221

Five things you don’t know about top MBA programs

2009-10-28T00:30:00.000-07:00

By David Grant in the Christian Science Monitor

The Economist recently released its annual rankings (subscription required) for the world’s top MBA programs. While weighing the relative merits of titans like the Sloan School at MIT and the Haas School at the University of California-Berkeley is tough enough, adding international programs from Spain to Singapore muddies the waters that much more. By combing through the numbers, though, several interesting facts come to light.

1. You’ve never heard of the most competitive MBA program:

What? Everybody knows it’s Harvard/MIT/Chicago/Wharton. Good guesses. All wrong. With 680 applicants for every one of its 297 spots, the International Institute of Management in Ahemdabad, India is the world’s most competitive MBA program and 99th best worldwide. While most of its graduates go on to careers in India, its career services placed 8th of all MBA programs and boasts McKinsey Co. and Monitor Group (alongside now defunct Lehman Brothers) as its principal recruiters. With a price tag of just over $20,000 per year (versus over $50,000 at Stanford), maybe even some American MBA students will be looking to a new eastern locale for their graduate education.

2. The best program is … affiliated with Opus Dei?

The IESE Business School at the University of Navarra in Barcelona took home the Economist’s top spot. The Opus Dei connection has more to do with business ethics than Dan Brown-esque intrigue, though. While European business students tend to have twice as much work experience as American students, according to the report, IESE came in second on immediately boosting students’ incomes from their pre-MBA level. (The Joseph M. Katz school at the University of Pittsburgh was first.) The cost? Writing seven admissions essays and plunking down a cool $99,813 for the 19-month program.

3. Have deep business experience? Go UK:

Ranked by post-MBA salary, five of the top 10 programs are in the United Kingdom. Like Ashridge, the top MBA for salary growth, many top European programs focused on executive MBA training grounds before expanding standard MBA education. Thus, their deep experience working with seasoned managers can take them the extra mile.

4. American business grads take care of their own:

Of the top 25 schools with top alumni effectiveness, 21 are American, led by the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, Stanford University, and the Mendoza College at Notre Dame. Founded in 1900, Tuck is the world’s oldest business school and has a honed curriculum that focuses on building students’ ability to work both within teams and intimately with faculty members. Those personal connections may be something what translates into alumni who will really go to bat for freshly-minted grads.

5. Head down under for a top student experience:

Monash University in Caulfield East, Australia, claimed the top ranking for personal development and educational experience. It’s superlative only in the quality of one’s eventual MBA colleagues (where it ranks 3rd). It isn’t barn-burning in any other category – 15th in faculty quality, 17th in diversity, and 25th in educational experience – but in aggregate these strong showings build a cohesive whole. The trade-off? Its post-MBA salaries lie in the bottom quarter of schools surveyed.

The Wives, Mothers and Daughters Who Live the Charism of Opus Dei

2009-10-26T23:08:00.000-07:00

By Miriam Díez i Bosch, in Zenit.org.

We tracked down Marie Oates in Opus Dei headquarters in New York. Her desire to show how women live the Opus Dei charism resulted in her book “Women of Opus Dei: In Their Own Words."

Coedited with Linda Ruf and Jenny Driver (Crossroad Publishing, 2009), the book's profiles range from a Harvard doctor, to stay-at-home moms, to an MIT graduate; it aims to introduce "the women in Catholicism's most intriguing organization."

ZENIT: Finally someone is talking about women in the Opus Dei. Women make up half -- some believe more than half -- of the total number of members of Opus Dei in the United States and worldwide, but most people do not know you. Why this lack of protagonism?

Oates: As part of the Catholic Church, Opus Dei exists to help lay men and women find and love God through their work -- whatever that may be -- and the everyday events that fill a normal life. But having a vocation to Opus Dei does not change the fact that members are still simply lay faithful, the same as other lay faithful in the Catholic Church.

People in Opus Dei do not wear their vocation to Opus Dei on their sleeves. In general, they try to focus on being an "ordinary guy or gal" with their colleagues, family and friends, all the while trying to be more like Christ in their work and with everyone with whom they come in contact. In this way, each one strives to personally give glory to God and to give Christian witness through the way they do their work and through their personal relationships.

Readers will find that there is plenty of "protagonism" -- as well as human imperfections and defects too -- among the women featured in the book.

Each one is the protagonist of her unique and personal effort to live out her calling to holiness as a lay person.

ZENIT: Is there a prototype of a woman of Opus Dei?

Oates: No. As readers will see, the women featured in "Women of Opus Dei: In Their Own Words" are all unique.

The women in the book, just like all the women -- and men -- in Opus Dei, come from all walks of life. Four of the 15 women featured in the book are converts to Catholicism. Three of the women featured are of African American heritage; several come from Asian and Hispanic backgrounds. Several are stay-at-home mothers -- an important professional work esteemed as such by St. Josemaría Escrivá. Several are mothers who raise their families and have other professions they carry out.

There’s a scientist, a couple of medical doctors -- including one of the founders of the Hospice Movement in the United States, hospitality services professionals, a childcare professional, several educators, the president of a women’s college, the executive director of a non-profit organization, etc.

The majority of the women are married, some are single. What they share in common is their vocation -- which is the same calling regardless of their different circumstances.

Though they each have their own personal shortcomings and struggles like everyone, they all love their Catholic faith deeply and find that their vocation to Opus Dei helps them cherish, live and pass on that faith more readily.

Women (and men) in Opus Dei are normal Catholics who want to respond daily to God’s deep love and goodness.

ZENIT: Is there anything distinctive Opus Dei offers to women in terms of formation, ways of behaving?

Oates: The formation offered by Opus Dei, a personal prelature of the Catholic Church, simply echoes the Christian formation recommended by the Church for all the faithful -- men and women. The Christian programs are the same for men and women -- though they are carried out independently of
each other.

The independence of the women’s formation programs from the men’s primarily was part of the foundational charism St. Josemaría received from God. It works effectively for Opus Dei’s formational activities, but it might not for other Catholic organizations.

I guess one of the distinctive features of the formation is that it is offered by lay people and priests. It strives to be practical and to help people live the Christian virtues in their place of work, in their normal daily activities.

ZENIT: In your book it is impossible to find the political affiliation of the women featured. Was that done on purpose or is it simply not an issue?

Oates: That was done on purpose because it is not an issue. Let me explain. Members of Opus Dei, as free human beings, are encouraged to be responsible citizens, to vote, to take an interest in the public policies that affect them and others within their various countries and communities.

That said, members of Opus Dei are completely free in the realm of voting, public policies, political party affiliation, etc. Opus Dei is totally non-political. Its ends are completely spiritual. People in Opus Dei tend to be all over the map in their politics -- some are liberal, some are conservative, some are moderate, etc. As devout Catholics, they often share similar points of view on moral “hot button” issues like abortion, euthanasia, sexual ethics, social justice, bioethics, etc. -- all of which have political repercussions.

Still, they are encouraged to approach and decide on those and other issues of public policy in accord with their conscience. There’s no one approach that people in Opus Dei adopt when considering those and other public policy matters. As Christians, they pray about and ponder the matters, and then come up with their own political decisions based on the options available to them.

ZENIT: Do you think the Opus Dei these women represent is the Opus Dei the founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá, envisaged?

Oates: I like to think so. These women are all normal -- they are not perfect, but they are committed to struggle each day to keep Jesus front and center in their lives. We are all “works in progress” until we die.

Our existence on earth is a pilgrimage as we walk in time toward our definitive destiny: eternal life with God. God gives us time here on earth to cultivate the talents we have been given and to make the best of them in his service and the service of souls around us.

I think St. Josemaría would be happy with the dedication, focus and diversity of these women -- and the thousands not included in this book.

Probably, if he had them in a room all together, he would not congratulate them for being in Opus Dei, rather he would challenge them to be more valiant women. He would encourage them to try to be more generous in their love of God and spirit of service. He would urge them to dream apostolically with a world vision, to continue struggling to be better, to convert daily.

He often said that about himself, i.e., that he personally played the role of the prodigal son each day in his own life, and that most of us need to have little and big conversions each day, turning back toward God.

Did Founder of Opus Dei Prophesy the Pope's Anglican Ordinariate?

2009-10-26T21:30:00.000-07:00

By Taylor Marshall in Canterbury Tales

Did the founder of Opus Dei prophesy the Pope's Anglican Ordinariate? In a way, yes.

According to Msgr. Bill Stetson, Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, visited England back in 1958. He frequented many Anglican Churches and was keen on rekindling fervor in England for the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

While visiting an Anglican Church, Saint Josemaria Escriva said in Spanish, "If we don't lend them a hand, the Christian Faith will die away in fifty years."

Well fifty years later (2008) the Anglican Communion became fractured through the ordination of active homosexuals and by the general erosion of Christian orthodoxy. Fifty-one years later (2009) the Holy Father "lends a hand" by establishing the Anglican personal ordinariate. Pretty amazing if you ask me. Saint Josemaria had it just about right.

Carnegie Council: Opus Dei by John Allen

2009-10-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

John Allen and Joanne Myers in Carnegie Council

Introduction

JOANNE MYERS: Good morning. I'm Joanne Myers, Director of Public Affairs Programs, and on behalf of the Carnegie Council I'd like to thank you all for joining us this morning as we welcome John Allen, our fifth speaker in our series on Religion and Politics. Today he will be discussing Opus Dei: The First Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church.

So just what is the truth about Opus Dei? Is it actually doing the quiet work of His Holiness, or is it a human instrument of power and control, out to effect a covert and hostile takeover of the Church?

Remarks

JOHN ALLEN: Thank you. Good morning. Let me just make a couple of observations on the basis of that very gracious introduction. First of all, you should know that there is actually a member of Opus Dei named Silas. However, unfortunately, he's a short black guy, as opposed to an albino monk roaming the earth in search of the enemies of the Church.

Secondly, it is of course true that I wrote a book called The Rise of Benedict XVI, and I was actually asked just before this talk if the Holy Father had had any reaction to the book. I can pass along to you the message that indeed he did.

You should know about this book that it was a sort of tripartite effort. The first was the last days of John Paul II. The second component was the story of the Conclave for the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope. The third was a kind of projection of where this pontificate is going to go.

Now, the Holy Father read the book over his summer vacation in Val d'Aosta in the north of Italy, and then sent back a message through his spokesperson, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, saying, "Would you please thank Herr Allen for having written this book, among other things, because he has discussed the future of my pontificate, saving me the trouble of thinking about it for myself." So whatever else you may think, at least the Holy Father has a sense of humor.

I'm delighted to be here with you this morning to talk about the subject of Opus Dei. What I would like to do first of all, is say just a couple of brief words about the perspective I bring to the subject; give you some essentials about Opus Dei, a sort of Opus Dei 101 if you like; talk about a couple of the most common controversies that have surrounded Opus Dei; and then perhaps, given the particular interest of this audience, say just a couple of words about the foreign policy, so to speak, that is the political concerns of the Holy See, and how groups such as Opus Dei might fit into that.

First, to begin, the perspective I bring. I am what the Italians call a Vaticanista, which means that it is my full-time professional work to follow the goings-on in this 108-acre island of ecclesiastical life in the heart of Rome that we call the Vatican.

Concretely, that means that when a visiting dignitary is in to see the Holy Father, often I go up to the papal apartment to cover the event. Most recently, I was there for the farewell visit of Prime Minister Kwasniewski from Poland just last Friday. It means I travel when the Pope travels, so I traveled to twenty-five countries with John Paul II, and on and on. Concretely, I think what that allows me to do is see some of the complexities of the Vatican and the Universal Church.

I'd like to tell you a very quick anecdote to drive that point home. You may know that when the Pope travels, he does so in a dual capacity. He is both, of course, a head of state—the Holy See is a sovereign entity in international law that exchanges ambassadors with 174 countries and international organizations. He is also, of course, the head of the Catholic Church. So when he arrives in a foreign country, he is welcomed twice: once in a very formal setting, usually by the president or prime minister of the host country; again, usually in a much less formal setting, on behalf of the local Church, often by the President of the Bishops Conference; by the Primate, if this country has a historical Primate; and in some cases, if it's a very small country, by the Papal Nuncio—that's the Pope's ambassador in that country.

This particular story is set on a trip to Eastern Europe, to a country that had a very, very small Catholic community. It's actually Azerbaijan, which has all of 114 Catholics. I ran the math, and it would have actually been four times less expensive to bring all of those Catholics to Rome than to bring the Holy Father to Azerbaijan. But in any event, obviously that wasn't the point.

The greeting for the Holy Father, the second greeting in this case, was delivered by the Pope's Nuncio, who is a very lovely Italian monsignor, a wonderful man, but has a reputation—and I have to tell you it's a well-deserved reputation— as a bit of a windbag; that is, he goes on and on, and often, the mystery is, without saying very much.

On this particular day, I actually clocked his greeting for the Holy Father at forty minutes. Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, this is a twenty-four-hour trip. We actually thought the Holy Father would be back in Rome before this guy was done welcoming him. I happened to be in the pool covering the welcome, so I was at the end of one row of seats. Immediately across the aisle was the seguito, the papal entourage, the cardinals and other Vatican officials who travel with the Pope. So I was more or less immediately next to a very senior Vatican cardinal—a man I know, I've interviewed him several times. I could tell as this oration was winding on that our cardinal friend was becoming increasingly frustrated. I mean you can tell these things. You don't have to be a genius. His breathing was becoming heavy, eyes were rolling in the back of his head, and veins were throbbing on his forehead, and so forth.

And so, at a certain stage, I felt I needed to give him an opportunity to vent. So I leaned into the cardinal and I said to him, "Cardinal, what do you think?" Well, there was this sort of nanosecond of hesitation, where you could tell he was calculating, "Should I say this; should I not say it?" ? but it was obvious he needed to get this off his chest. So, in sotto voce fashion, he leaned into me and, looking up at this monsignor going on and on and saying nothing, the cardinal whispered to me, "You realize that some Italian village is missing its idiot."

[Laughter.]

Now, in addition to being a once-in-a-career punch line, this anecdote makes a valuable point, which is that only seen from afar could the Vatican look like a "Stepford Wives" environment in which everyone looks alike and dresses alike and thinks alike and acts alike. The truth is it is much more polychrome than that. There are many different personalities, temperaments, styles, outlooks, visions, and so on. I hope what my experience enables me to do is to bring some of that complexity to bear.

I want to do that on the subject of Opus Dei as well, because I think Opus Dei is a topic that is so often dealt with through the prism of myth and sweeping overgeneralization. That is, I think the conversation about Opus Dei often generates far more heat than light.

I hope what we can do today, I hope what I was able to accomplish in the book, is bring a somewhat more complex, and I think nuanced, approach to the subject. In terms of the importance of this subject, let me just very quickly say that in addition to the vast public fascination with this organization, most prominently carried of course in The Da Vinci Code—and that would sort of be the journalistic motive for tackling this project —let me just say a brief word about my motivation as a Catholic for turning my attention to this subject.

I think the truth is that inside the Catholic Church we often have a problem with sustaining rational conversation across party lines. The Catholic Church is, I think, in too many ways today, a house divided against itself. My hunch about this subject was that if we can clear a space in which we can have a patient, rational, understanding conversation on this subject, then it could be a model for how we could do so on any number of other contentious topics. That said, let me give you a few basic points about Opus Dei that I think will help our understanding.

As was said in the introduction, Opus Dei was founded in Madrid, in Spain, in October 1928, on the Feast of the Guardian Angels, by a Spanish priest by the name of Josemaria Escrivá. I think it is important to contextualize what was going on in European Catholicism at that moment. In addition to the fact of the intra-Spanish context, that this was the run-up to the civil war, I think the broader context was there was great ferment in the Catholic Church in the early 20th century about what was seen as—and I think rightly so—a growing gap between the Church and secular modernity; in other words, this tendency to think of religion—"Catholicity," if you like—as a kind of private compartmentalized experience, that, whatever it might mean to the individual believer, had precious little relevance to the broader cultural context—the political debate, economic systems, and so on. There were a number of organizations in the Catholic Church, and creative thinkers in the Catholic Church, that were trying to imagine ways to breach that gap. I think that's the context in which the foundation on which Opus Dei needs to be located.

Escrivá's vision—which, of course, according to his testimony and the tradition of Opus Dei, was a vision revealed to him by God—was the creation of a core of Catholic laity who would be well formed in the spirituality and doctrine of the Catholic Church and then would take that formation and apply it to whatever path of life they happened to find themselves in. So you would have lay Catholic bankers and lay Catholic politicians and lay Catholic architects and teachers and bus drivers and bakers and so on, who would see the ordinary details of their daily work not merely as an opportunity for their own sanctification—that is, making themselves holy—but as an opportunity for transforming the world.

In other words, the idea was that if we want to change secular modernity, we cannot do it from the outside, with a clerical cast wagging its finger at lay people and exhorting them to do moral things; it had to be done from the inside-out, by people who were in and of the secular world, imagining a Christian vision of what secularity and secular modernity might look like and then bringing it about.

Now, as obvious as that may seem with the benefit of seventy years of experience, I think it's worth saying that this was a direct frontal challenge to much of Catholic spirituality and much of Catholic attitudes towards the secular world at the time. Let me make two points.

First, it was a challenge to the kind of clericalist ethos that was, I think, overwhelming, particularly in Spanish Catholicism at the time, in which the clergy were seen as the primary actors in the drama of redemption, and the role of laity was, in the classic formula, to pray, pay, and obey.

Escrivá turned that directly on its head. He said: "No. The clergy are a supporting cast, they are at best a support system, and the real work of redemption and transformation, sanctification, has to be done by laity who are fully immersed in the highways and byways of modern life and bringing a Christian spirit to it." In that sense, I think we can fairly say that Escrivá was in a way a prophet, a visionary, of the Second Vatican Council, which would of course arrive in Catholicism in the mid-1960s, which would herald in the era of the laity.

It has been fairly said that, whatever Opus Dei's profile today may be, however traditionalist or conservative one may see it as, at least in this sense there is no question that they were ahead of the curve in terms of announcing and embracing a much more active and dynamic vision of the lay role.

Secondly, the other sense in which Opus Dei, I think, in Escrivá's vision, was an inversion of what was traditional Catholic thinking is he insisted that the modern street or the boardroom or the assembly hall of a parliament is every bit as religious an environment as a church building. In other words, if you want to have a religious vocation, you do not have to retreat into a monastery; quite the contrary, you can be a seriously engaged, deeply committed, religious person and see in a sense the sacrifice of your work at a board table as every bit as important, as every bit as crucial, an act of sanctification, as the sacrifice that a priest performs on the altar when he consecrates the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. This, too, was very much a challenge to what was contemporary spiritual understanding inside the Catholic Church of his day.

I think it's important to make these points, because my observation is that in much public discussion about Opus Dei we concentrate—I think legitimately so—on matters that are in many ways peripheral to Opus Dei's core message —that is, debates over Opus Dei's money or power or the role of women or corporal mortification. Again, there is a perfectly legitimate conversation to be had about these topics, but the risk is that we miss what Opus Dei actually purports to be about.

The analogy that I came up with in the course of my research is that most writing and journalistic commentary on Opus Dei is similar to doing a book on General Motors without mentioning that they make cars. In other words, you're not quite getting to the core of what this organization is all about.

Now, having said all of that, let me then turn a couple of those controversies. Obviously, I can't pretend to be all-embracing—we could spend considerably more time than we have talking about all of the different question marks and myths and concerns about Opus Dei that have grown up over the years. What I want to do is pick up a couple that I think are representative, and then, obviously, I'm happy to respond to any questions you have.

In my experience, in looking at the most common public controversies surrounding Opus Dei, I think you can separate them into two categories. There are those concerns that dissolve upon contact—that is, once you take a hard look at them, they go away. Then, there are those that, even after you have made a sustained, deliberate effort to try to understand it from the inside-out, rational, well-meaning people without an axe to grind are going to draw very different conclusions.

I want to offer you an example of each. First, let's talk about Opus Dei's wealth. As you undoubtedly are aware, there is a public perception that Opus Dei is an enormously wealthy organization, sitting on secret bags of cash, and that over the years this has generated conspiracy theories, such as that Opus Dei bailed out the Vatican Bank in the late 1970s when it was, to put it euphemistically, "having difficulties"; and that Opus Dei funneled money to Solidarity in Poland, and in so doing essentially bought the allegiance of the future Pope, John Paul II.

It's easy enough to understand where perceptions like this come from. If you have ever been, for example, to the Opus Dei headquarters here in New York, at 34th and Lexington, that seventeen-story building jokingly known as "the tower or power," it is a fairly imposing edifice and it is fairly sumptuously appointed when you poke around inside. So you understand where the perceptions come from.

But what we did in this book, for the first time, is actually run the numbers. So let me tell you what the numbers are and then try to put them in some context for you.

The primary Opus Dei operations around the world are what are known inside Opus Dei as "corporate works," that is, activities for which Opus Dei guarantees the spiritual and doctrinal formation. This includes a series of universities, schools, hospitals, social service centers, and so on.

In the United States, if you add up the cash value of all of those Opus Dei operations— that is, the total assets of everything that is connected to Opus Dei in the country—you arrive at a figure of $344 million. If you do the same thing for the globe—that is, the cash value of all of Opus Dei's activities around the world—and here I have to say that while that $344 million is a hard number, because of the differences in accounting requirements in various parts of the world, the global number is a best guess. But I think we intentionally crafted this as the most liberal estimate possible—in other words, this is the most it could possibly be—the amount is $2.8 billion. That is, in essence, the value of what Opus Dei owns.

Now let's try to put that in some kind of context. The cash value of the assets of the Archdiocese of Chicago in the United States is $2.5 billion. In other words, Opus Dei worldwide owns roughly what the Archdiocese of Chicago by itself in the United States has.

To take another example, there is a lay Catholic organization in the United States called the Knights of Columbus that has an insurance program that by itself is capitalized at a value of more than $6 billion. In other words, the Knights of Columbus insurance program is two-and-a-half times wealthier than Opus Dei's total set of assets.

Now, I think it's important to say this because there are all kinds of impressions—I think terribly exaggerated impressions—about Opus Dei's wealth. For example, there was a book in the early 1990s that suggested that Opus Dei operated a financial empire that rivaled General Motors. Well, ladies and gentlemen, last year General Motors reported assets of $455 billion. By that standard, Opus Dei simply does not compete.

And if I were to run through for you other common perceptions of Opus Dei—such as its influence in secular politics, its influence inside the Catholic Church, its much-vaunted recruiting machinery—I think what we would find is a similar pattern, which is, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there's not much there there. In other words, to be honest, this is a group that has a much more modest sociological, political, and financial profile than overheated, feverish imaginations sometimes suggest.

Let's shift to category two; that is, questions about which at the end of the day there still remain legitimate debate, legitimate diversity of opinion. Any number of things we could talk about here.

But let me pick up what is usually the very first question I am asked, in the Anglo-Saxon world at least, by media, which is Opus Dei's practice of corporal mortification, or to put it in lay terms, self-inflicted pain. There are two forms of this corporal mortification practiced by Opus Dei members.

Now, I should say before I get into that that there are different kinds of Opus Dei members. They have 85,000 members worldwide. I suppose the basic difference is between numeraries, who are celibate Opus Dei members who live in Opus Dei centers; and supernumeraries, who are typically married, have families, have jobs in the outside world, and so on. The supernumeraries are about 70 percent of Opus Dei's total membership; the numeraries are 20 percent; then there are about 1,800 Opus Dei priests, which are about 10 percent of the total membership.

It is the celibate members of Opus Dei, meaning the numeraries and priests, who practice these forms of corporal mortification. In other words, it's a minority of Opus Dei's total membership that do these things.

As I say, there are two. One is something called the cilice, which is a sort of barbed chain that is tied around the upper thigh and is worn for two hours a day every day except Sunday. Then there is a discipline, which is a small cloth whip that is administered to the back once a week, usually while reciting a prayer, the "Our Father," or something like that.

Now, let me say, contrary to what you may have read in The Da Vinci Code, these things do not break the skin; they do not cause massive bleeding. They do not whip you into frenzies of spiritual exaltation. For this book I wore the cilice for my mandatory two hours, and I did try the discipline briefly. I can tell you, while they are uncomfortable, I didn't find them exceptionally painful. To be honest with you, when my wife will goad me into going to the gym to try and run a mile, I find that a lot more uncomfortable than either of these two things.

Having said that, let me try to explain how Opus Dei understands the spiritual logic. In other words, why do it? It is three-fold. The first is to remind one in a physical way of the consequences of sin. The second is to identify with the suffering in the world. The third is to identify oneself with the suffering of Christ on the cross.

It should be said about this that these are practices with a rich pedigree in Catholic spirituality. Great saints of the Church, past and present, have done these things, from Dominic and Francis in the 12th and 13th centuries to in the 20th century people such as Padre Pio, Pope Paul VI, Mother Teresa—all of them engaged in these practices. Prior to the Second Vatican Council, these were, I think, almost universally practiced inside Catholic seminaries and religious orders and so on.

Nevertheless, in the post-Vatican II period, they have been, I would say, largely abandoned in mainstream Catholic life. I suppose the primary reason has been concern about the potential for abuse. That is, I think it is somewhat seductive for an idealistic young person to believe that if a little bit of pain is good, then a lot of it must be great, and so there is this tendency to push towards excess.

Now, Opus Dei members will tell you—and I think they are telling the truth, in my experience—that they are very vigilant about that sort of thing, that they are very careful to insist that this must be done in moderation.

They also say that, frankly, these two practices are a very minor piece of the broader picture of mortification—that is, a kind of denial of self and sacrifice for others—as they understand it. I mean they will always say that going without a cup of coffee, or taking out the garbage when it is not your turn, is just as valid a form of mortification, and that, frankly, you could take away these two things, that is the cilice and the discipline, without changing very much about Opus Dei's spiritual understanding and spiritual practice.

Again, I will tell you that, having said all that, at the end of the day, there still are a lot of people—and again I say rational, well-meaning people, who have no fight to pick with Opus Dei—who will still find these practices hard to understand and hard to accept, either at an aesthetic level, since they will just find them kind of repugnant; or they will find them, frankly, self-destructive, and therefore just very difficult to get their minds around. I think in that sense—and there are any number of other examples—Opus Dei is, to some extent, a sign of contraction; that is, it is deliberately, self-consciously swimming against the tide of much contemporary Catholic opinion, to say nothing of the thought patterns and presumptions of the broader secular world.

To read the rest of the discussion, please see John Allen and Joanne Myers in Carnegie Council .

ABC News: Q & A on Opus Dei

2009-10-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

ABC News and Brian Finnerty, Opus Dei Spokesman

Q: Opus Dei's core message of lay spirituality has always been a component of the Christian faith, so what makes Opus Dei different?

Finnerty: "I think lay spirituality is something that has been in the church from the very beginning, but it's something which often has been forgotten. That focus on the universal call to holiness, and that idea that the activities of daily life, and especially work, can be a path to holiness, that idea is something which is particularly characteristic of Opus Dei. There's no other institution of the church which is really set up to spread that message."

Q: How does Opus Dei's message of lay spirituality actually impact what one does in the workplace?

Finnerty: "Recognizing that I'm going to work today not so that I can earn money, but because it's a way that I can serve God, in God's act of creation.

"Another aspect of it as well is simply trying to do the work well. Trying to do your best work that you possible can. And it means trying to be a good friend to the people around you …. Trying to live your various Christian virtues at work.

Another aspect as well is trying to do your work realizing you're in the presence of God. There are some concrete ways that you can do in order to help promote that. One thing that people are encouraged to do is start the day with a little prayer at their desk. It doesn't have to be anything flashy or anything like that, it can be like, 'Dear God, I offer up the work to you I'm going to do today.' Or it could be you have a little cross at your desk."

Q: Why do Opus Dei numeraries and associates commit to a life of celibacy?

Finnerty: They "live apostolic celibacy in order to be available to help carry out the apostles of Opus Dei …

"Because, if someone is an engineer or something like that, he can communicate what it's like to try to live the Christian faith in the middle of the world better perhaps, or in certain ways that a priest can't. It's useful to have lay people that are available to help set up activities in Kansas or Milwaukee or wherever. And that's something you can't ask a married person, who has sometimes a commitment to their natural family, in the same way …."

The Church that grew out of crayons

2009-10-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

By Michael Coren in Catholic Herald.
16 October 2009

Michael Coren's heart sank when he first encountered Canadian Catholicism. But today he is proud of the country's vibrant Catholic life

It was 1986. The great brown crayon disaster of Holy Name church in Toronto, Canada's largest city. I'd been received into the Church two years earlier in London's sumptuous Spanish Place and convinced of the Catholic argument by Chesterton, Belloc, Knox and Newman.

It was because I was writing a biography of the former than I'd been invited to Canada to give a lecture at a G K Chesterton 50th anniversary conference (he died in 1936). I met a woman at the post-conference cocktail party who told me I "was amazing". Convinced this would never happen again, I would marry her the following year.

During the transatlantic courting visits I attended a large weekend Catholic gathering held by an influential and charismatic priest where we were lectured by a middle-aged woman psychiatrist with an eastern European accent straight out of central casting. She asked us to pick up a crayon from the middle of the room and colour in a picture. Bemused, almost incredulous, I grabbed the closet crayon and coloured away, assuming that my wife to be was somehow a follower of all this. She now, by the way, pretends not to have been present.

The lady professor from middle Europe looked through the 40 or 50 papers and then stopped at one in particular. I knew. Just knew.

"Who is Michael" - awful pronunciation - "Coren?" Seven years old again, I owned up.

"Agh", she said, all Freud and tweed, "so why did you only use the colour brown?"

"Because," I almost shouted, "it was the only bloody crayon left!"

Thus was my welcome to the Canadian Roman Catholic Church.

Canada is one of those geopolitical mysteries. Like Costa Rica's peacefulness or the beauty of Bruges. People just don't usually know. Thirty million people, incredibly wealthy, absurdly large, enormously successful, culturally and artistically fertile and often a predictor of what the United States will become 10 years later. But because it's a former British colony and on top of the world's only superpower it's often forgotten, ignored.

And it rather likes it that way.

Similarly with the Canadian Church. There are more than 13 million Catholics in Canada, 44 per cent of the population. There are eight million Protestants of various denominations, the largest claiming to be the United Church, at around half a million members. It's the most liberal of the churches and is haemorrhaging adherents. As are the Anglicans and the Presbyterians. Unlike the US, Evangelicals, at around 11 per cent, they are not a major force. Immigration has, of course, enormously increased the Hindu, Sikh and, in particular, Muslim communities.

There is an extensive, publicly funded Catholic education system in the country, a small Catholic television station and in the past two generations it's been unusual to have a prime minister who is not Catholic. Of a sort. Liberals Pierre Trudeau, Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien and John Turner and conservatives Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark were all nominal Catholics, with one or two of them claiming to attend Mass and perhaps even sometimes doing so. They also governed a country that is unique in the western world in having no abortion laws at all - publicly funded up to the ninth month and all sorts of laws to prevent protests outside abortion clinics. Canada was also the fourth country to introduce full same-sex marriage and had led the world in same-sex adoption and hate crime prosecutions of people who criticise the gay community just a little too much. Not that these issues are exclusively Catholic or the only issues facing the Church, but they are fairly reliable guide as to the social and political influence of Catholics within any state. Briefly, there are lots of people calling themselves Catholic in Canada, lots of people in Catholic churches in Sunday but still a crisis within Catholic Canada. Or at least there was.

At around the time when brown crayons were causing such a fuss, orthodox Catholics were considered eccentric and often regarded themselves, not altogether inaccurately, as victims. Perhaps the most influential Church newspaper was something called The Catholic New Times, referred to by those who knew it best as "Sandinista Update". The usual stuff - social justice, a preferential option for the poor, Liberation Theology and female ordination. The Church was wrong before Vatican II and John Paul didn't understand its true meaning. I demonstrate therefore I am, and a devotion to Marx rather than Mary. Or no, not Marx at all really. These were the middle class at play and prayer, frightened of leaving the Church and too timid to describe themselves as socialist. This may be Canada rather than the US but socialism is still considered extreme.

Vocations were rare, convents evaporated as feminist nuns positively dissuaded young women by example and even by argument from joining, and unions in Catholic schools made it virtually impossible for headmasters to ask potential teachers about their faith. It was a bleak time and many serious believers left for the Society of Pius X, Eastern Orthodoxy or evangelicalism. The best and the bravest stuck at it, argued that there had been worse in the past, that God would not abandon His Church.

Twenty years later it has not all been resolved but every change and reform is positive and every indication is that the worst has gone and that, while the detritus of what was still causes problems, it's going to be OK. Some of the reasons are obvious; most importantly, two popes who changed everything. While some of the Canadian bishops acted as if Rome did not exist, there was only so much denial that they could hide behind. They were also men of the Sixties and in their 60s and most of them have now retired. It must be deeply painful for them to watch as new bishops are appointed who are younger, often better educated and invariably far more conservative.

These new leaders were formed under John Paul and the Catholic counter-culture that developed during his reign, arguably more vehemently in North America than anywhere else. They were allowed to be thus formed because - important this - there was a revolution within Canadian seminary life. Two major causes. First, widespread immigration, in particular from China, Vietnam, Poland and the Philippines, sent waves of young men into seminaries who had often experienced Communism firsthand and were jubilantly orthodox. Very difficult for a bearded suburban liberal in sandals to tell a hardened young refugee from a Marxist paradise about injustice and why there "had to be a new paradigm shift and a new conversation of dialogue between the people of Jesus and the people of socialism".

Second, there was a great cleansing following the infamous abuse scandal. Canada was hit hard by this and the Canadian Church, as opposed to the media, knew exactly what was going on. The extensive and admirably balanced New York University study of the phenomenon concluded that more than 85 per cent of the victims were not so much little boys as young men who had reached puberty. Most of them were aged between 13 and 17. In fact, there were surprisingly few girls or very young boys. This did not suggest that homosexual men were more likely to be abusers, and no serious commentator made that conclusion, but it did suggest that most of the abuse from priests was of a homosexual nature rather than paedophiliac. Entire seminaries lost staff and students. It's no coincidence that in one of the largest, where there were alleged cases of bed-sharing and worse, a seminarian was required to obtain permission to initiate a group rosary. It is now compulsory.

The seminaries are not full but are growing steadily and the quality of the vocations is higher than ever.

In the greater Church two groups in particular engaged in a sort of stealth orthodoxy in those troubled years, Opus Dei and the Oratory. Opus Dei has always had its centre in Quebec, where, although overwhelmingly French and ostensibly Catholic, the Church is probably less popular than in any other Canadian province. The energy and passion of French-Canadians was injected into battles of over language and nationalism and the Church was seen as irrelevant and even an obstacle to change. Opus Dei developed in English Canada in the Seventies and established schools, organisations and a dormitory at the University of Toronto and chaplaincies elsewhere. It became the hub for serious Catholics, lay and religious, whether they were members or not. It gave support to those who felt isolated and marginalised in their parishes and kept a flame burning that had been as good as extinguished elsewhere.

The Oratory, led by a remarkable priest named Fr Jonathan Robinson, moved into a small, old church in the Toronto district of Parkdale, an area known for prostitution, drugs and being used by the authorities as a place to house the mentally ill. The Oratorians flourished in this glorious juxtaposition - intellectual, refined, committed followers of Newman and Neri living and working in some of the most difficult conditions the country faced. Masses for the masses. The church would eventually burn down and in its place the community raised enough money to build a new church that has a monastic, light-on-the-hill, reputation and presence. Yet while they were successful, the priests of the Oratory were obliged to keep a fairly low profile. There was resentment and opposition and little support from bishops and archbishops.

Fast forward to the present and Opus Dei is growing and part of the mainstream. The Oratory has two parishes, a seminary, young priests and probably the finest philosophy school in the country. The new Archbishop of Toronto, the most senior cleric in English Canada, is a visitor to the church and a genuine supporter of the work they do. He sends students to their schools. The appointment of Thomas Collins to the Toronto archbishopric is an inspired move. He a deeply pastoral man but also something of an intellectual, a fine preacher, media-savvy and with an utter commitment to his priests, his flock and to the historic Church.

This new sense of liberation has allowed the Sisters of Life, founded by the late Archbishop of New York John Cardinal O'Connor, to come to Canada for the first time and the Latin Mass in various forms is now celebrated in several parishes. It's not, though, and never should be about the Latin but about the reverence, and this is what is now most apparent in the Canadian Church. While there are still colossal problems within Catholic education in this country, and millions of Catholics who have no idea what they are supposed to believe, the dominant context has shifted and the sacraments, papal authority, the place of the Church in modern society and the importance of Catholic culture have become startlingly immediate.

I suppose they always were, but the perception is different now and the assumptions have been transformed. While orthodoxy varies from diocese to diocese, very few devout and serious Catholics now regard themselves as being alone and in the besieged minority.

As for The Catholic New Times, it folded because nobody was reading it. The poor old brown crayon? The rumour is it became a New Age devotee of internet paganism and left Canada long ago. It will not be missed.

Michael Coren is a television host and columnist in Canada. His website is www.michaelcoren.com

Cure for moral relativism? Be a saint

2009-10-15T01:15:00.000-07:00

By Peter Kreeft

What is the cause, and cure of moral relativism? The real source of moral relativism is not any argument at all, and therefore its cure is not any refutation of an argument. Neither philosophy nor science nor logic nor common sense nor experience have ever refuted traditional moral absolutism. It is not reason, but the abdication of reason that is the source of moral relativism. Relativism is not rational, it is rationalization. It is not the conclusion of a rational argument. It is the rationalization of a prior action. It is the repudiation of the principle that passions must be evaluated by reason and controlled by will. That is the virtue Plato and Aristotle called self-control. It is not just one of the cardinal virtues, but a necessary ingredient in every virtue. That classical assumption is almost the definition of civilization. But romanticists, existentialists, Freudians, and many others have convinced many people in our culture that it is oppressive and unhealthy and inauthentic. If we embrace the opposite principle, and let passion govern reason, rather than reason govern passion, there is little hope for morality or for civilization.

The cure requires more than an argument

Obviously, the strongest and most attractive of the passions is sexual passion. It is therefore also the most addictive and the most blinding. So, there could hardly be a more powerful undermining of our moral knowledge and our moral life than the sexual revolution. Already, the demand for sexual freedom has overridden one of nature's strongest instincts: motherhood. A million mothers a year in America alone pay hired killers, who are called healers or physicians, to kill their own unborn daughters and sons. How could this happen? Only because abortion is driven by sexual motives. For abortion is backup birth control, and birth control is the demand to have sex without having babies. If the stork brought babies, there'd be no Planned Parenthood.

Divorce is a second example of the power of the sexual revolution to undermine basic moral principles. Suppose there were some other practice, not connected with sex, which had these three documentable results. First, betraying the person you claim to love the most, the person you had pledged your life to, betraying your solemn promise to her or him. Second, thereby abusing the children you had procreated and promised to protect, scarring their souls more infinitely than anything else except direct violent physical abuse, and making it far more difficult for them ever to attain happy lives or marriages. And thirdly, thereby harming, undermining, and perhaps destroying your society's future. Would not such a practice be universally condemned? Yet, that is exactly what divorce is, and it is universally accepted. Betrayal is universally condemned unless it is sexual. Justice, honesty, not doing other harms—these moral principles are affirmed, unless they interfere with sex.

We are designed for joy

The rest of traditional morality is still very widely believed and taught, even in TV sitcoms, soap operas, and Hollywood movies. The driving force of moral relativism seems to be almost exclusively sexual. Why this should be, and what we should do about it, are two further questions that demand much more time and thought than we have available here and now. But if you want a very short guess at an answer to both, here is the best I can do. I think a secularist has only one substitute left for God, only one experience in a desacrilized world that still gives him something like the mystical, self-transcending thrill of ecstasy that God designed all souls to have forever, and to long for until they have it. Unless he is a surfer, that experience has to be sex. We're designed for more than happiness; we're designed for joy. Aquinas writes, with simple logic, "Man cannot live without joy. That is why one deprived of true spiritual joys must spill over to carnal pleasures."

Drugs and alcohol are attractive because they claim to feed the same need. The lack the ontological greatness of sex, but they provide the same semi-mystical thrill: the transcendence of reason and self-consciousness. I do not mean this merely as moral condemnation, but as psychological analysis. In fact, though they sound shocking, I think the addict is closer to the deepest truth than the mere moralist. He is looking for the very best thing in some of the very worst places. His demand for a state in which he transcends morality is very wrong, but it's also very right. For we are designed for something beyond morality, something in which morality will be transformed. Mystical union with God. Sex is a sign and appetizer of that. Moral absolutists must never forget that morality, though absolute, is not ultimate. It is not our Summum Bonum. Sinai is not the Promised Land; Jerusalem is. And in the New Jerusalem, what finally happens as the last chapter of human history is a wedding between the Lamb and His bride. Deprived of this Jerusalem, we must buy into Babylon. If we do not worship God, we will worship idols, for we are by nature worshippers.

Finally, what is the cure? It must be stronger medicine than philosophy, so I can give you only three words in answer to this last and most practical question of all. What we can do about it? What is the cure? These three words are totally unoriginal. They are not my philosophical argument, but God's biblical demands. Repent, fast, and pray. Confess, sacrifice, adore. I know of no other answer, and I can think of nothing else that can save this civilization except Saints.

Please be one.