Benedict XVI: Work is a Means and Path of Holiness

By Benedict XVI's address to Italian Artisans. Benedict XVI refers to the founder of Opus Dei as a "Saint of our times."

Dear friends, continue with tenacity and perseverance to preserve and put to good use the productive craft culture that can give life to important opportunities for balanced financial progress and encounters between men and peoples.

Furthermore, may you as Christians be committed to living and testifying to the "Gospel of work", in the awareness that the Lord calls all the baptized to holiness through their daily occupations.

Josemaría Escrivá, a Saint of our times, notes in this regard that since Christ who worked as a craftsman took it into his hands, "work has become for us a redeemed and redemptive reality. Not only is it the background of man's life, it is a means and path of holiness. It is something to be sanctified and something which sanctifies" (Christ Is Passing By, Homily, n. 47).

Benedict XVI on Opus Dei

By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, October 6, 2002. An article by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, published on the occasion of the canonization of Josemaría Escrivá. This is one of the best and most concise explanations of Opus Dei.

I have always been struck by the interpretation which Josemaría Escrivá gave of the name Opus Dei—an interpretation which we could call biographical and which allows us to understand the founder in his spiritual dimension. Escrivá knew that he should found something, but he was always aware that whatever it was was not his work, that he had not invented anything, that the Lord had simply made use of him. Thus it was not his work, but Opus Dei [Latin for "work of God"]. He was only an instrument with which God had acted.

While I was pondering this fact, there came to mind the words of the Lord reported in the Gospel of John (5:17): “My Father is always working.” These are words spoken by Jesus in the course of a discussion with some religious specialists who did not want to recognize that God could act even on the Sabbath. This is a debate that is still going on, in a certain way, among people and even Christians of our own time. Some people think that after creation God “retired” and no longer has any interest in our everyday affairs. According to this manner of thinking, God could no longer enter into the fabric of our daily life. But the words of Jesus affirm the opposite. A man open to the presence of God discovers that God is always working and still works today: We should, then, let him enter and let him work. And so things are born which open to the future and renew mankind.

All this helps us to understand why Josemaría Escrivá did not consider himself “founder” of anything, but only a person who wants to fulfill the will of God, to second his action, the work, precisely, of God. In this sense, the theocentrism of Escrivá, in accordance with the words of Jesus, means this confidence in the fact that God has not retired from the world, that God is working now and we ought only to put ourselves at his disposal, to be ready, capable of reacting to his calling. This, for me, is a message of greatest importance. It is a message which leads to overcoming what could be considered the great temptation of our times: the pretense, that is, that after the "big bang" God retired from history. God’s action did not “stop” at the moment of the "big bang", but continues throughout time in the world of nature and the world of man.

The founder of Opus Dei said: I am not the one who invented anything; there is Another who acts, and I am only ready to serve as an instrument. So the name, and all the reality which we call Opus Dei, is deeply bound up with the interior life of the founder. He, while remaining very discreet on this point, makes us understand that he was in permanent dialogue, in real contact, with Him who created us and works through us and with us. The Book of Exodus (33:11) says of Moses that God spoke with him “face to face, as a friend speaks with a friend.” I think that, even if the veil of discretion hides many details from us, still from some small references we can very well apply to Josemaría Escrivá this “speaking as a friend speaks with a friend,” which opens the doors of the world so that God can become present, to work and transform everything.

In this light one can understand even better what holiness means, as well as the universal calling to holiness. Knowing a little about the history of saints, and understanding that in the causes of canonization there is inquiry into “heroic” virtue, we almost inevitably have a mistaken concept of holiness: “It is not for me,” we are led to think, “because I do not feel capable of attaining heroic virtue. It is too high a goal.” Holiness then becomes a thing reserved for some “greats” whose images we see on the altars, and who are completely different from us ordinary sinners. But this is a mistaken notion of holiness, a wrong perception which has been corrected—and this seems to me the central point—precisely by Josemaría Escrivá.

Heroic virtue does not mean that the saint performs a type of “gymnastics” of holiness, something that normal people do not dare to do. It means rather that in the life of a person God’s presence is revealed—something man could not do by himself and through himself. Perhaps in the final analysis we are rather dealing with a question of terminology, because the adjective “heroic” has been badly interpreted. Heroic virtue properly speaking does not mean that one has done great things by oneself, but rather that in one’s life there appear realities which the person has not done himself, because he has been transparent and ready for the work of God. Or, in other words, to be a saint is nothing other than to speak with God as a friend speaks with a friend. This is holiness.

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. And if, then, Josemaría Escrivá speaks of the calling of all to be saints, I think that he is actually referring to this personal experience of his of not having done incredible things by himself, but of having let God work. And thus was born a renewal, a force for good in the world, even if all the weaknesses of mankind will remain ever present. Truly we are all capable, we are all called to open ourselves up to this friendship with God, to not leave the hands of God, to not neglect to turn and return to the Lord, speaking with him as if speaking with a friend, knowing well that the Lord really is a true friend of everyone, including those who cannot do great things by themselves.

From all this I have better understood the inner character of Opus Dei, this surprising union of absolute fidelity to the Church’s great tradition, to its faith, and unconditional openness to all the challenges of this world, whether in the academic world, in the field of work, or in matters of the economy, etc. The person who is bound to God, who has this uninterrupted conversation, can dare to respond to these challenges, and no longer has fear. For the person who stands in God’s hands always falls into God’s hands. And so fear vanishes, and in its place is born the courage to respond to today’s world.

Christian-bashing: the last acceptable bigotry

By Charles Moore in The Telegraph-Journal. Charles W. Moore is a Nova Scotia based freelance writer and editor whose column appears weekly at the Telegraph-Journal.

Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe's attack on a Quebec Conservative candidate over her membership in the Catholic prelature Opus Dei, and lack of any consequential significant expression of media censure or popular outrage, further underscores that Christian-bashing is the one remaining socially-acceptable form of discrimination and intolerance in Canada.

While it's unremarkable that Mr. Duceppe, a former communist and still thoroughgoing left-winger, despises traditionalist Christianity, that his criticism of Nicole Charbonneau Barron, Conservative candidate in the Montreal-area riding of St. Bruno-St. Hubert, for her Opus Dei affiliation received only cursory and passing mention from the commentariat speaks volumes about popular acceptance of anti-Christian bigotry in our increasingly secular humanist culture.

Opus Dei, you see, adheres faithfully to official Catholic doctrine condemning abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage, unlike some (more socially acceptable) "cafeteria Catholics" who imagine they can legitimately pick and choose among which Church doctrines and moral teachings they will affirm or oppose. The mission statement of the organization, founded in 1928 by Spanish priest Josemaria Escriva who was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002, is "to spread the message that work and the circumstances of everyday life are occasions for growing closer to God, for serving others, and for improving society."

Opus Dei's first Canadian member was Jacques Bonneville of Montreal who established the group's work there in Canada in 1957 at the invitation of Cardinal Paul-Emile Léger. There are now an estimated 600 Opus Dei members in this country (some 87,000 worldwide), mostly married men and women, as well as approximately 1,600 co-operators who pray for the group's work and help with apostolic initiatives, including programs for young people, professionals, and families such as seminars for high school students, parenting courses, summer camps, and student residences at several universities intended to provide an environment for Christian formation and help participants become "sowers of peace and joy." There are now 16 Opus Dei centres in five Canadian cities: Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver.

Opus Dei was viciously slandered in Dan Brown's amateurishly-written but wildly popular pulp-fiction fantasy novel The Da Vinci Code and the 2006 Tom Hanks film derived from it, in which the organization is caricatured as a sinister, murderous cult, a stereotype Mr. Duceppe presumably sought to channel with his assault on Ms. Barron's religious beliefs.

While he didn't call for Ms. Barron to resign as a parliamentary candidate, Duceppe was clearly fear-mongering in attempting to portray her as a member of a "secret society" with an agenda to impose "fundamentalist" Christian views on Parliament. That's pretty much lib-left boilerplate referencing any devout Christian participating in public life, but what especially rankles is that had Mr. Duceppe delivered a similar critique of the religious beliefs of, say, a Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Sikh candidate, the political correctness brigades would have been over him like flies on a garbage truck, condemning him as an in tolerant racist. However, attack serious Christianity and the silence is deafening.

The double-standard is infuriating. It's become abundantly clear that at least among media chatterati, devout Christians are about as welcome in electoral politics as fire ants at a picnic, the message being that Christian social conservatives should be disqualified from holding political power and influence because in the estimation of lib-left self-appointed elites they are moral interventionists promoting hidden agendas - ideologically out of sync with a society allegedly comprised mainly of social liberals. The further implication is that religious people who actually take seriously and try to practice the principles, standards, and doctrines of their faith must be relegated to second-class citizenship. A topical example is the bleating from stage left over U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's evangelical/pentecostal faith affiliation.

To draw a clearer bead on just how offensive this trope is, try inserting the words "Jew" or "Jewish" in place of "Christian" or "social conservative," or "religious right" in news reports and commentaries expressing shock and alarm that "fundamentalist" Christians are actually participating in the political process.

Sounds ugly, doesn't it? So why do secular humanists think it's perfectly OK to say such things about Christians seeking office? It's nothing less than selective, left-wing, secularist bigotry.

A struggle within our reach

By a priest of Midwestern United States in his blog, Clerical Reform.

I received a question about the quote from St. Josemaria appearing in the blog header: "A priest should be exclusively a man of God. He should reject any desire to shine in areas where other Christians do not need him."

St. Josemaria is quite a lightning rod. He is loved and revered as well as hated and reviled. It is in not enough to say, "So was our Lord." His model of priestly service is amazing on its own terms. He was sinful man, a broken man, a man whose sins were borne on the Holy Cross. Yet, he is also a saint. This ought to give us great comfort. This is not to say that we ought to embrace sin. It is rather to say that there is no place for discouragement. Yes, we shall sin. Yes, we have sinned. Yes, our sins make us foolish. However, they are not stronger than Jesus Christ. If we submit to Him and not to the sin, sanctity may be in our reach as well. Here's a quote that I think sums up St. Josemaria and his view on this:

"The Church, the souls, of all continents, of all times present and to come, expect a lot from you... But you should have it very firmly fixed in your head and in your heart that you will be fruitless if you are not a saint or, let me put it better, if you don’t struggle to be a saint." (From The Forge, 873)

Our job as priests is not perfection; it is the struggle for perfection. The struggle is within our reach.

My experience of Opus Dei

By David in Methodist Preacher. David is a preacher in the Birmingham West and Oldbury Circuit of the Methodist Church (UK).

The long planned resignation of Transport Minister Ruth Kelly has once again seen her alleged membership of the Roman Catholic group Opus Dei bought into the spotlight.

I must admit when Ruth was first appointed a Minister I felt uncomfortable with the implication in some quarters that her strong Catholic faith ruled her out from political office in a Labour government.

Now I'm no expert on the Catholic side of things but I'm aware that Opus Dei has always had something of a reputation and few years ago I was surprised to find myself providing a short training session for them.

A small part of my professional life is providing public speaking and media training. It isn't my main business but it brings in a few days work here and there, always useful.

One day I got a phone call and was asked if I could provide an afternoon's public speaking session to a woman's church group conference. I gather they had been let down and needed someone at short notice. By one of those astonishingly strange coincidences I had an appointment in the same city that morning.

Perhaps I should have asked a few more questions but was delighted that a church organisation was prepared to use my skills and halved my fee. On reflection the lady who telephoned me was a little vague.

Eventually I arrived just after lunch at a massive house in a suburb of Glasgow. My immediate impression was that there was a lovely atmosphere about the place and I felt welcomed.

What interested me about the thirty or forty people at the conference is that they genuinely spanned all age groups. I think of the words "woman's church group" and my Methodist mind defaults to a gathering of women in their late fifties and beyond. There were women in their 50s and 60s but there was also a strong representation of women in their late 20s and 30s. They seemed really nice, kind people.

Anyway I did my presentation, took a few questions, and joined them for afternoon tea. It was only when I was handed my fee that the organiser explained that this was an Opus Dei conference and offered me some literature about the controversial founder of the group Josemaria Escriva recently canonised by John Paul II.

I must admit I was a bit taken aback but certainly didn't feel I was meeting a group who were in any way sinister or fanatic. I haven't been asked to do anymore work for them but I now question the knee-jerk reaction of many who immediately denounce Opus Dei. I can understand how it provides the same sort of support that Bible study and house groups provide in a Methodist context. I feel sad that Ruth Kelly's alleged links have been used against her.

By David, a Methodist preacher in UK.

Opus Dei: No albino killers

By Michael Coren in the National Post. Coren is a respected Canadian columnist, author, public speaker, radio host and television talk show host.

We face an election conducted through the prism of sensationalist fiction or, to put it another way, the dictatorship of the novel. In this case a bad novel. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code has largely been forgotten but its grotesque caricature of Catholic organization Opus Dei has left a cloud of absurd misunderstanding around this group, whose main crime appears to be orthodoxy. For Dan Brown, Opus Dei, Latin for the work of God, signified crazed albino assassins running around France, secret plots, dark intrigue and self-flagellation. In fact, it’s more charity missions in slums, schools, religious retreats for busy people and work for the poor.

But Dan Brown is evidently big in Quebec and, much to the chagrin of the Bloc, so might be the Conservatives. Accordingly, Gilles Duceppe announced that the Tory candidate in Saint-Hubert-Saint-Bruno, Nicole Charbonneau Barron, was an Opus Dei member. Then Raymond Gravel, a Catholic priest and outgoing Bloc MP, opined that, “Social conservatives such as members of Opus Dei may be running for office in order to change policies concerning abortion and same-sex marriage.”

Earth to dotty separatist: It’s not Opus Dei but the Roman Catholic Church that teaches that life begins at conception and that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. You might know that if you weren’t suspended from almost all priestly duties. Indeed it is entirely likely that in a less liberal place than Quebec in the 1980s, this former prostitute who worked in Montreal’s gay leather bars would never have been ordained in the first place.

The more important point is that this is a game of gutter politics being played by frightened politicians. Opus Dei is entirely faithful to Catholic teaching, so if anyone objects to its people standing for office they should really say what they mean — that genuine Catholics are not welcome. That, however, might be too much even for the most ardent followers of the new religion of state secularism.

Opus Dei was founded by Spanish priest Josemaria Escriva in 1928, as a largely lay organization of Roman Catholics with the purpose of sanctifying ordinary work. The holy is within everyday people doing everyday things, wrote the founder, but they need guidance. It is now an international group with houses and followers throughout the world. It has more than 80,000 members, 1,800 of them priests. In Canada there are around 500 members, but the number of followers is dozens of times larger. It is also a Personal Prelature of the Pope, which means it has clout.

Opus Dei is traditional: the sacraments, the Rosary, the adoration of the Virgin Mary and the saints, strict moral discipline. It’s what would have been considered average Catholicism just a few years ago, before “Catholics” such as Duceppe and Gravel came to prominence. It is growing particularly fast in Toronto, with a high school and a male and a female hall of residence catering to university students. Actual membership is not easy and most of its adherents simply go along for evenings of “recollection.” Others, however, commit themselves to celibacy and devote a certain part of their income to Opus Dei.

There have been rumours of extreme right-wing sympathies but this is largely nonsense. Because of the Spanish history of the organization, it is strong in Latin America and, of course, in Spain itself. Some members have supported juntas in Latin America, but they have also faced deportation, torture and murder because of their support for social justice. Opus Dei obviously stands for Church authority and hierarchy and so has sometimes been in conflict with the Liberation Theology of certain Marxist Latin American priests. But then so did Pope John Paul the Great and now Pope Benedict, men who have shown quite extraordinary sympathy toward the victims of fascism and offered contrition for any Church failings in this regard.

No albino killers, no former sex-trade workers and not even any leaders of the Bloc Québécois. Which rather disqualifies Opus Dei from what many see as the Canadian body politic -- one which is clad in fetish leather. It’s not the work of God that’s odd, but political liars who start false fires.

Michael Coren is an author and broadcaster.

Opus Dei welcomes left-wingers, too

Written by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register, Friday, 12 September 2008. Michael Swan is Associate Editor of The Catholic Register. He is an award-winning writer and photographer and holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University.

It probably comes as no surprise to many Catholics that Nicole Charbonneau Barron, is running in the Montreal riding of St. Bruno-St. Hubert for the Conservatives. Charbonneau Barron is a member of Opus Dei, and the personnel prelature to the pope is generally associated with conservative, right wing politics.

Members of Opus Dei were highly placed in the governments of Generalissimo Franco in Spain and Alberto Fujimori in Peru. Opus Dei members were influential in the senior civil service when the generals were running Brazil and Argentina.

But Isabelle Saint-Maurice who runs the Opus Dei information office in Montreal protests that there's nothing right wing about the Catholic movement, whose sole aim is to help people live their faith in their daily lives. Even in Franco's Spain there were Opus Dei members who had to go into exile because of their opposition to Franco and who returned to Spain after the Generalissimo's death to found a centre-left coalition which included ex-communists, she said.

The most prominent, active left-wing politician who is a supernumary of Opus Dei is Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Transport in Gordon Brown's Labour government in England.

Jesus Estanislao was secretary of economic planning in the government of Corazon Aquino which overthrew the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

Italian politician Paola Binetti is a numerary member of Opus Dei and was elected to the Italian senate in 2006 as a member of La Margherita (The Daisy) – a coalition which includes ex-Communists, Greens, Socialists and Christian Democrats.

Of course the list of Opus Dei politicians includes far more senior members of right wing governments and dictatorships than social democrats. But Saint-Maurice claims the only influence Opus Dei has on their members politics is to help them integrate the social teaching of the church and the values of the Gospel. Opus Dei wouldn't tell its politician members how to practice politics any more than they would tell its doctor members how to practice medicine.

"Politics is a practical way of bringing solutions to people," she observed.

Written by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register, Friday, 12 September 2008

God and Me and the Drunken Homosexual

By Austin Ruse at the Catholic Thing. Austin Ruse is president of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a New York and Washington DC-based research institute that focuses on international social policy.

When I was younger and single and living in New York I used to spend a good part of my time in the evening drinking big fat scotches, smoking cigarettes, and reading books at various saloons on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

I did not go to bars to make friends or to talk to strangers. I was the reader. The other regulars knew that and respected it. Sometimes strangers would try to engage me in conversation. They always wanted to know what I was reading. Biographies and Catholicism mostly. And they wanted to know why I was reading in a bar. Because I like to. I was the master of the mini-syllabic brush-off.

My spiritual director at that time was an Opus Dei priest named Father Bob Connor. In Direction, we discussed my evenings out and Father Bob told me that God speaks to you in the people He puts right in front of you. He said the bar situation was an ideal one for the apostolate, bringing others closer to God. He said I had to talk to the strangers. In fact he said, "The next person who speaks to you, you have to engage."

Shortly thereafter I was in Washington D.C., sitting at the bar of a place called Daily Grill, tucking into a nice tasty scotch, and reading a book about Church history or some such Catholic thing.

I heard him before I saw him. Homer Simpson said, "I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming." Let's just say the guy lurching loudly and drunkenly into view was a Homer-sexual, and he was coming my way. My blood ran cold. Could this be the person that God Himself is putting right in front of me? Surely not. There are open seats other than the one right next to me. Surely, he won't take that one. Surely he won't.

"What are you reading?" he practically screamed. I closed my book and turned to face him. "It’s a book about Catholicism," I said quietly, and off we went.

I guess I was emboldened by the Holy Spirit because I went almost immediately to the heart of the matter. When he told me he was Catholic I asked him when was the last time he had been to confession and Mass. He said it had been years. I asked if it was because of his homosexuality, something that had not really been established in our conversation. He said, yes but that he and his "lover" had not had sex in years. He said that was the way in homosexual relationships. Really emboldened by the Holy Spirit I said, "I bet you masturbate a lot, though" and he said "yes."

Maybe the guy would have talked about my book. Maybe he would have wanted to argue about Catholicism. But there was something inside him right then. It was part Confession but also a yearning to hear. Like most homosexuals, he lives in this world that constantly affirms him in his homosexuality and tells him how brave it is. Maybe he welcomed someone who would not affirm him, but rather affirm that other thing, the gnawing guilt that is always with him.

"You know, that’s a sin, too."

"I know."

"Well you'll have to cut that out; go to Confession and go to Mass."

"But the priest would laugh at me if I went to Confession."

Imagine that. He did not resist the suggestion. He didn’t deny Confession at all. Not even a little bit. He wanted to go but he thought the priest would laugh at him, that maybe he couldn’t be forgiven.

"I promise you here and now that the priest will not laugh at you." How can you convince someone of this? By force of sincerity, I think. I practically begged the guy to believe me. "The priest will rejoice."

What I remember most of that evening now many years ago was a little mantra I kept reciting to him: "Go to Confession. Go to Mass. Go to Confession. Go to Mass." I still believe in the power of those two sentences to burrow down into his psyche and lie there dormant until in a dark moment they fight their way to his consciousness and maybe make all the difference.

This went on for a long while and it was time to go. As I got up to leave, I dug into my pocket and handed him my rosary which he took with emotional gratitude. I don’t know what happened to the guy. I never saw him again.

One day I'll know, at the General Judgment. At that glorious moment, we will learn everything. We will learn the terrible ramifications of our sinning; how our sins reverberated out and harmed others, who and how much and how our sins harmed the Body of Christ. We will also learn the reach of our acts of kindness and charity. We will also learn about our omissions, about all those people the Holy Spirit presented to us and what happened to them because we resisted. For me there will be plenty of those. But I will also learn what happened to that guy whom a good spiritual director emboldened me to engage.

Austin Ruse is president of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a New York and Washington DC-based research institute that focuses on international social policy. He welcomes comments at austinruse@c-fam.org

Summer camp weaves ‘the fun and holy together’

By Neil W. McCabe in The Pilot, America's Oldest Catholic Newspaper (established in 1829)

HEBRON, N.H. -- From Aug. 20-24th, more than 200 girls, ages 9 to 13, are populating the Opus Dei-guided Camp Mattakeesett in Hebron, N.H., a one-week annual summer camp in its 17th year.

The camp began in 1992, when a group of women associated with Arnold Hall, the Opus Dei retreat and conference center in Pembroke, decided that it would be nice to have a positive place for girls to go to during the summer, said Rosemary Cook, a mother of nine and grandmother of 44, who has led the camp since its inception.

The campers combine regular summer camp activities with adoration of the Eucharist, daily Mass and the sacrament of reconciliation, she said. “We have swimming, boating and arts and crafts, but we try to weave the fun and the holy together.”

Other activities include a Camp Olympics competition, a find-the-counselor scavenger hunt and a dance party, she said. At noon the campers recite the Angelus.

Each cabin of 10 to 12 girls, plus a counselor with a counselor-in-training, will pray the rosary together daily, she said. “When they say the rosary, they usually will go outside or down by the water.”

This year’s location on Newfound Lake is one of many different places the camp has called home, Cook said. For one week every year, Camp Mattakeesett rents the grounds from another camp after it closes for the season.

“There is another Opus Dei camp for boys in Pennsylvania that has to do the same thing, but they have a lot of kids from the Boston-area. I always thought there would be a way to buy a camp, so we and others could use [it]. But, since I only have $3.50 to my name, I have to hope some rich person looking for something to do with their money will help us.”

A similar camp for girls is run in Maryland by her daughter Jennifer Kilmer, who has 10 children of her own. “She was a counselor with us in the beginning, but she has been doing her own camp for eight years,” said Cook.

Although Cook grew up on the same road as Arnold Hall, it took her a while to warm up to her neighbors.

“My father had warned me about them because he said they were a splinter group,” she said. But, during a very bad snowstorm in the late 1960s, as her family was stuck without heat or electricity, members of Opus Dei came by. “They came up in a sleigh and brought us hot cocoa, and I thought, well, maybe my father was wrong about them.”

During the week of camp, Cook said she would like to be out on a kayak or joining the activities, but most of her time is spent with four or five homesick girls.

“We almost never have anyone go home, maybe once every few years. But, there are some who have trouble being away from home,” she said. “The best part is when they get over it, and then when they are leaving they tell you: ‘I’m coming back next year!’ Wow, that is victory.”

Friendly and family air

By Anne Soriano in Home Matters

Bishop Javier Echevarria or "the Father" as we fondly call him finally came to Manila on July 27 and left on Aug 1. Once again we saw and felt the family atmosphere of Opus Dei with the get-togethers that we had with the Father. In the general get-together that we had at SMX convention center, many people from all walks of life, members and non-members came to hear him.

With 9,000 people that gathered they said that they felt very much the friendly and family air we breathe in the Work. They also saw some other familiar faces they were not expecting to be there. Indeed, it is a small world, and many have heard or followed the Work in one way or the other.

What was the message of the Father to his Filipina daughters and sons? In summary, they are following:

1) to be joyful and optimistic in Christianizing the world; to deal with young people, since they are the future of the world; to have a lot of hope in getting many people involved in our projects (social or otherwise), and even asking for financial help
2) to take care of the family; for husbands and wives to love each other, and to take care of the children; love should prevail in the families; to take care of the material and spiritual care in the homes
3) to avoid grudges and resentments (which many Filipinos are prone to); this goes against Christian charity; to forgive and forget.

Not easy but very rewarding

By WH1988 at Catholic Answers Forum. WH1988 is a student of Economics from Portugal

Hello. I attend activities and have spiritual direction on Opus Dei. They are the most loyal people to the Church Magisterium and Tradition that I ever seen in Portugal. Their priests have a wonderful formation and are very orthodox.

The plan of life is not easy to follow (if it was easy, you would not grow in faith), but it's very rewarding. I started by praying the rosary daily. Later I added 2 weekdays masses and daily meditation.

Now, all my days include Mass, Rosary, Meditation (15m), Angelus, Exam before going to bed, spiritual reading, reading of the Cathecism, Gospel and, because we are on a Pauline year, reading of St. Paul's letters.

I strongly recommend Opus Dei to anyone!

By WH1988 at Catholic Answers Forum

On Clericalism

By Russel Shaw in InsideCatholic.com

Imagine a man who wakes up in the morning with a headache, fever, and chills. The symptoms persist and are there when he goes to bed that night. Next day, it's the same thing again -- headache, fever, chills. This continues day after day, week after week, over and over. Finally the poor man starts to think: "I guess this is how people always feel. I just have to live with it."

The Catholic Church is something like that man. In the Church, the illness is called clericalism. We Catholics have suffered from it so long that most of us take it for granted. In fact, we're clericalists ourselves. "That's how it is," we say. And our symptoms persist.

They look like this:

* A pastor lords it over his people, consulting no one and habitually making unilateral decisions. His people are a passive, dispirited lot, quick to complain and slow to cooperate.
* A bishop routinely goes far beyond fundamental moral principles in talking about political issues. He advocates highly specific solutions to problems that admit of more than one legitimate view and makes no secret of his political partisanship.
* A carefully planned, highly touted diocesan vocations recruitment program aimed at attracting men to the priesthood turns out a flop. Its planners scratch their heads and wonder what went wrong.

Clericalism is operative in all these cases and many others. After all this time, you'd think people would have caught on and taken remedial steps. But even now, many haven't. "That's how it is," they say. And the symptoms persist.

But a cautionary note is in order upfront: There are real risks involved in criticizing clericalism.

One is the danger of giving aid and comfort to dissenters who want a revolution in the Church that will allow them to choose their own bishops and pastors and make other important decisions, up to and including decisions about doctrine. (If a teaching isn't "received," it's said -- that is, if people reject the teaching because it hampers their lifestyle or requires some sacrifice on their part -- then the teaching must be wrong.)

The American theologian Paul Lakeland contends that the "existential predicament" of the laity in today's Church is that "they are in chains." Lakeland writes in the framework of liberation theology, and what he says about the laity is an exercise in appallingly bad taste inasmuch as it likens the irritation of middle-class American Catholics to the plight of some of the poorest and most oppressed people on earth.

There's also a danger of devaluing priesthood and priests just when a clergy shortage leads some to look to supposed alternatives. A few months ago, the tiny Dutch province of the Dominicans issued a paper suggesting that in cases of need, a congregation could designate one of its lay members, man or woman as the case might be, to preside at the Eucharist.

The Dominican leadership in Rome moved to reprimand the Dutch. But this neo-congregationalism, which goes back to Rev. Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., and before him to the Protestant Reformation, could attract followers. Not only does it supply an answer, albeit an illusory one, to the priest shortage, it also opens the door to women priests -- or, more accurately, to women who want to act as if they were priests.

Against this background, those of us who speak of the evils of clericalism need to be careful not to undermine the dignity and sanctity of the ordained priesthood and obscure its radical, ontological difference from the baptismal priesthood of the faithful.

Clericalism, however, is not an affirmation of these sacred realities but a caricature. It fosters an ecclesiastical caste system in which clerics comprise the dominant elite, with lay people serving as a passive, inert mass of spear-carriers tasked with receiving clerical tutelage and doing what they're told. This upstairs-downstairs way of understanding relationships and roles in the Church extends even to the spiritual life: priests are called to be saints, lay people are called to satisfy the legalistic minimum of Christian life and scrape by into purgatory.

Even while absorbing these clericalist views, of course, the laity traditionally have entertained certain contrary perspectives. Think of the robust anticlericalism of Chaucer. Or consider a line in Edwin O'Connor's splendid pre-Vatican II novel The Edge of Sadness. "Probably in no other walk of life [besides the priesthood]," the priest-narrator remarks, "is a young man so often and so humbly approached by his elders and asked for his advice. Which, by the way, is almost always received gratefully and forgotten promptly."

So, where does Catholic clericalism come from?

At bottom, it comes from erroneous thinking about vocation. The fundamental, and profoundly mistaken, idea behind it does much to explain the apparent shortage of new vocations to the priesthood and religious life and the persistent failure of carefully planned programs to recruit them. (As I've remarked elsewhere, there's no shortage of vocations in the Catholic Church. What we have today is a shortage of vocational discernment, with accompanying disastrous results. But that's another story.)

The bad idea at the heart of clericalism equates "vocation" with "state in life." A state in life is a large, overall framework of commitment within which different people choose to live their Christians lives. State in life is one meaning of "vocation," but not the only one.

Starting from that mistake, bad thinking about vocation then makes the great leap of supposing that the only real vocation worthy of that name is the clerical state in life. Those whom God doesn't call to be priests (or, by extension, religious) -- the laity, that is -- may have a vocation in some weak, analogical sense, but they don't have the vocation that's the gold standard for everything else -- the vocation to be a priest. All other callings are evaluated by how well or poorly they approximate the clerical norm.

Many things could be said about this. The most important thing to say here is that this clericalist way of thinking overlooks the reality and relevance of unique personal vocation -- the particular, essentially unrepeatable role in the carrying-out of his redemptive plan to which God calls each baptized person.

Like others before him (St. Francis de Sales and John Henry Newman, for instance), Pope John Paul II gave a compelling account of personal vocation. In fact, it was one of his central themes. "God calls . . . each one individually by name," he wrote. "In this sense the Lord's words, 'You go into my vineyard too,' directed to the Church as a whole, are specially addressed to each member individually" (Christifideles Laici, 28).

From the historian's and sociologist's perspectives, the origins of clericalism go back many centuries. It's a fascinating story, but too long to retell here. For the moment it's enough to say that during the last two centuries the realization grew among Catholic leaders that the Church was facing an unprecedented challenge in the post-revolutionary, anti-clerical secular democracies of Europe and the Americas. To cope with the problems arising from the sharply reduced access of clerics to cultural and political influence, the Church had to turn to the laity if it was to have any hope of playing a significant role beyond the sanctuary.

One product of this growing awareness -- and an extremely important one -- was Catholic Action. The movement emerged as a major force in world of Catholicism in the 1920s and 1930s. Pope Pius XI's strong encouragement of it even earned him the title "Pope of Catholic Action." Especially in parts of Western Europe and Latin America, Catholic Action did crucial work representing the views and interests of the Church in secular society.

Catholic Action as such was never a political factor in the United States, where the Church instead exercised political influence through its working alliance with the Democratic Party. Over time, nevertheless, an extensive network of church-related groups organized on the Catholic Action model arose. They flourished until well into the middle years of the 20th century, when the confusion of the postconciliar era and the hostility of liberal Catholic intellectuals to what they liked to call "ghetto Catholicism" proved its undoing.

But Catholic Action was truly a great thing in its day. Here was recognition by the leaders of the Church that the laity had a critically important work to do in what was universally called "the apostolate" -- the Church's mission of making Christ present and active in the world. Still, there was a catch. Catholic Action was officially defined as the participation of the laity in the apostolate of the clerical hierarchy. There may have been exceptions here and there, but groups operating on the Catholic Action model were ultimately under clerical, hierarchical direction and control.

Here and there, farsighted individuals objected that this version of the laity's place in the apostolate was too limited. In 1932, Msgr. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, wrote:

We must reject the prejudice that ordinary faithful must limit themselves to helping the clergy in ecclesiastical apostolates. There is no reason why the apostolate of lay people should always be a simple participation in the hierarchical apostolate. They have a duty of doing apostolate, not because they receive a canonical mission, but because they are part of the Church. They carry out this mission through their professions or jobs, with their families, their colleagues, and their friends (quoted in John F. Coverdale's Uncommon Faith, Scepter 2002).

Talk like that was radical at the time. Then the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) adopted it as its own.

In documents like the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, and the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem, the council taught that the call to lay people to participate in the mission of the Church does not come to them from bishops and priests; it comes directly from Christ, by reason of baptism and confirmation.

"The apostolate of the laity is a sharing in the salvific mission of the Church. Through Baptism and Confirmation all are appointed to this apostolate by the Lord himself" (Lumen Gentium, 33). And because lay people live and work in the world, their apostolate is naturally directed to, and carried on within, the structures and settings of the secular order -- at work and school, in the neighborhood and at home, in all those places that the clergy can't directly reach.

Now lay apostolate was seen to be something belonging to the laity as a matter of intrinsic right and duty as baptized members of the Church. And not only that -- God's call to sanctity was understood as being directed to all, lay women and men just as much as bishops, priests, and religious: "All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love," the council declared (Lumen Gentium, 40).

In the context of American Catholicism today, it's a bit of a shock to realize that Vatican II, while strongly encouraging lay apostolate, had next to nothing to say about "lay ministries." The big push for lay ministry only began after 1972, following the publication of Pope Paul VI's Ministeria Quaedam. That document abolished the old "minor orders" and subdiaconate and assigned the functions of subdeacons to the new lay ministries of lector and acolyte; it also invited other forms of lay ministry.

Since then, the lay ministry boom has been propelled by theologians and lay bureaucrats in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and diocesan chancery offices. It has the support of well-meaning bishops and pastors who apparently believe that letting lay people do some things that only clerics previously could do advances the cause of the laity in the Church.

For the most part, lay ministers of both kinds are generous people serving the Church well. All the same, John Paul II, in his landmark 1989 document Christifideles Laici, found cause for concern in this development. One problem, he said, was "a too-indiscriminate use of the word 'ministry'" -- a common foible today, when just about every function and job in a typical parish gets called a ministry. Another was "a 'clericalization' of the lay faithful and the risk of creating . . . an ecclesial structure of parallel service to that founded on the Sacrament of Orders" (Christifideles Laici, 51).

Good grief -- what's "an ecclesial structure of parallel service to that founded on the Sacrament of Orders"? The outlines of such a creature are clearly visible in the Dutch Dominicans' proposal, noted above, to have congregations designate lay people as presiders at Mass in a pinch. Does that sound far out? The fact that no one in your parish is pushing that particular idea right now doesn't mean no one ever will. Just give it time.

As for John Paul II's "'clericalization' of the lay faithful," that problem is summed up in something a lay woman wrote describing her experience speaking to an audience of Catholic women like herself. She was trying to explain the Schoenstatt movement, a lay apostolic group emphasizing holiness in everyday life. Here's how it went.

As an opening exercise I asked the women to write on one side of the paper basically all the things they do in the course of a day or two. Then I asked them to write on the other side all the things they do in the same time frame which they considered holy. Without exception, two types of lists were composed: the one with all those mundane daily chores and the other with lots of things all associated with "ministry" activities . . . . No one in the group simply put an arrow pointing to the daily activities . . . .

If nothing else, I wanted the women to take away from the lecture a sense of the dignity and mission we know is ours: the realization that the daily list of their activities is all holy when done as faithful Christians; that not just receiving the sacraments but to be a sacrament is our call and opportunity.

That's a beautiful idea. But clericalist conditioning makes it a hard sell to get lay Catholics to link up everyday things with the holy. Instead clericalism widens the gap between faith and life that Vatican II deplored.

Not only that, one-dimensional emphasis in official Church circles on "lay ministry" is at the expense of time and energy that might better have been spent forming people for lay apostolate. Lately, the U.S. bishops' conference has concentrated on setting norms for training people preparing to work for the Church as lay ecclesial ministers. Considering the important role these people often have in liturgy, catechesis, and other areas of Church life, their training certainly merits attention. But not at the cost of ignoring the formation of lay people for apostolate in the world. Yet that's exactly what happens -- and has been happening for a long time.


Finally, unpleasant though it is, it's necessary to face up to the link between clericalism and the scandal of clergy sex abuse. Clericalism plainly doesn't cause sex abuse, any more than sex abuse causes clericalism. But the two things fit together hand in glove. Secrecy explains why.

Speaking of the us-and-them mentality to which institutional secrecy gives rise, ethicist Sissela Bok writes:

Long-term group practices of secrecy . . . are especially likely to breed corruption.

Every aspect of the shared predicament influences the secret practice over time: in particular the impediments to reasoning and to choice, and the limitations on sympathy and on regard for human beings. The tendency to view the world in terms of insiders and outsiders can then build up a momentum that it would lack if it were short-lived and immediately accountable (Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, Random House Vintage Books, 1999).

Disregard for the welfare of outsiders and excessive concern for insiders go far to explain the cover-up of clergy sex abuse by Church authorities. The National Review Board established to monitor the bishops' implementation of their sex abuse policy makes that point.

Clerical culture and a misplaced sense of loyalty made some priests look the other way . . . . Clericalism also contributed to a culture of secrecy. In many instances, Church leaders valued confidentiality and a priest's right to privacy above the prevention of further harm to victims . . . . [C]hurch leaders kept information from parishioners and other dioceses that should have been provided to them. Some also pressured victims not to inform the authorities or the public of abuse (Causes and Context of the Sexual Abuse Crisis, 2004).

Clericalism harms the Church in many ways, both large and small. The elimination of clericalist habits of thinking and acting from Catholic life is long overdue. In very many places, though, it has yet to begin. Remember that sick man I mentioned earlier: It's high time he recognized that he's sick and did something constructive about it.

By Russel Shaw in InsideCatholic.com

May the children drink the faith of your life

In "Ah Boo Chuck!": Tales of a mum and her two kids, Alison, and Angeline.



Last Saturday, I had the great pleasure of listening to a talk given by the Prelate of Opus Dei- His Excellency Bishop Javier Echevarria. It was a very enlightening and inspiring talk - given straight from the heart, with the wisdom that can only be attained through a strong faith and deep relationship with God.

I thought I'd take the time to pen down what he said about children and family. This was in response to a question raised by Marjorie, who is the coordinator for the Family Enrichment Program that I am attending with Mark. She and her husband, Cyprian currently have 6 children (her youngest is 1.5) and they are expecting their seventh child. If you knew them, you would be in awe at how they manage their lives and respect them for it. She said they struggled with the decision of whether or not to have a seventh, often feeling that they have not enough time with the children (both of them work) and asked for some words of advice.

His answer
1) See the children coming to your home as a sign of God giving his love to you. Tell the Lord to protect your children and pray for all the other children of the world. Love God through your children.

2)Teach the older children to take responsibility, to take care of their siblings.

3) Always have a big smile on your face when you come back home from work. Even if you have been away, your smile and love will make your children look forward to you.

4) Don't seek comfort for its own sake. Don't use that as an excuse not to have more children.

5) Be good friends of your children so that they learn the right things, from you. Set good examples for your children. May the children drink the faith of your life.

Nice simple words of advice. I find it helps us see the bigger picture. Often, we can be caught up in our own self centered pursuits. Often, we don't even see them as self centered pursuits but necessary to our well being. Sometimes, we just need to stop and think, and consider the bigger and more important picture. I found his words inspiring.

Found in "Ah Boo Chuck!": Tales of a mum and her two kids, Alison, and Angeline.

You, basketball player, join us!

By Chris Tiu in Chris' Blog. Chris Tiu is a famous college basketball player in the Philippines.

Tuesday, a day to be remembered throughout my life. I was not only able to meet the Prelate of Opus Dei, Don Javier (who happens to be in the country for a couple of days) but i was able to kiss his ring not once, not twice, but three times!

Opus Dei is a Catholic group founded by St. Josemaria Escriva that has thousands of followers all over the world. My mom is a supernumerary, and with her connections, she was able to come up with a special arrangement for me to meet the Father at the Maynilad men's center. I was also able to join a special "get together session" of about 20 people in that same center (normally there would be hundreds and thousands of people in attendance in the sessions in SMX). My mom was not even able to personally meet the Father this time around. He is probably in his late 70s but still has a very sharp memory. Despite being the highest in the organizational hierarchy of Opus Dei, he is very down-to-earth. At the same time, he is treated with utmost reverence and respect. I was in awe, he was like a living symbol of all the virtues we needed to possess in life.

In the small get-together session, he spoke in Spanish while the Vicar (Father Duran) translated it to English for us. He told us that the closer we are to God, the happier we will be in life! We can achieve this through deep constant prayer with our Father in the Blessed Sacrament as well as by receiving the different Sacraments. I totally agree with him. He also shared a story about Pope John Paul II who spent most of his time in the Blessed Sacrament talking to God as his source of rest and refuge.

After the short get-together, there was a simple photo-session but i just stood and watched at the back of the room. He personally called me "You, basketball player, join us!" I was very touched! He even remembered me from the time we were introduced a couple of hours earlier. His words and stories got me thinking about my own life. I was truly moved. I want Christ to be the center of my life as well. We are all instruments of the Father and it is our mission / apostolate to bring Christ to others. Amen.

By Chris Tiu in Chris' Blog

Why has Dan Brown chosen a lay Catholic organization to slander?

By Mike Humphrey in AskACatholic.com

What is Opus Dei?

The goal of this lay Catholic organization is to encourage the ordinary parishioner / the lay Catholic to grow in holiness in the world for Our Lord Jesus. The Church has given official approval to the existence of Opus Dei by erecting it as a personal prelature. {Personal prelatures are ecclesiastical jurisdictions provided for by the Second Vatican Council and the Code of Canon Law that are created to meet specific pastoral needs with greater flexibility. Opus Dei combines in a single worldwide institution priests and laity, women and men, sharing the same vocation of spreading the ideal of holiness in the world and the sanctification of work.}

A critique of Opus Dei, pro and con

In my area, I have friends and family members who have both very positive and very negative experiences with Opus Dei. Critics have charged it with controlling the lives of some of its members, and with manipulative recruiting practices. Here is just one example.

Some have experienced a cult-like environment where:

* rash judgments are made
* mind control is involved.
* people are pulled away from their families and
* people are used for their money.

They will refer to the Opus Dei Awareness Network for a list of similar experiences they have had as well as the book "Beyond the Threshold" by Maria Del Carmen Tapia, a former Opus Dei numerary.

On the other side I've had some friends that have nothing but admiration for the goals and way of life Opus Dei has to offer those who choose to get involved.

One of our colleagues, Terry, has stated:

I have nothing but admiration for Opus Dei (or more properly entitled the Holy Cross Prelature) However, their methods of living are too much for me to embrace in my life, but I admire those that do so.

When I reflect on the family and friends who have had bad experiences with those that have had a MUCH more positive experiences, the only difference I see is a greater commitment to practicing the faith by those with a positive experience.

No one, not even Opus Dei members, are denying that the organization, like any other lay or religious organization, has its set of problems. The Church has established statutes for the governance of Opus Dei, putting an end to the somewhat secretive treatment of its internal rules. The question is: Are they dealing with it. I believe they are.

One book recommended by the head of Opus Dei in America as well as a good friend of mine:

Opus Dei : An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church by John L. Allen.

No matter what the ups and downs of Opus Dei are, there's obviously something positive here that the Church wants to foster.

But where does someone who has had a bad experience with Opus Dei go to grow in holiness?

I would recommend one of two options:

* as a lay Catholic, live a sacramental life by striving to get to daily Mass and trying to say the rosary daily if possible
* if you feel that you are called to a vowed religious order, check out the various orders named after the Saints:

o Benedictine, (my favorite),
o Dominican,
o Jesuit,
o Franciscans, etc.

Some of these religious orders also have third orders for the lay Catholics like the Benedictines and Franciscans. This allows the lay Catholic to be associated with a Catholic religious order while still living in the world. It usually involves some minimum requirements like making a regular visit to the order, saying some prayers, etc,. The KEY: Make sure they are loyal to the Church's Magisterium, the official Teachings of the Church and the Holy Father. Many are but many ARE NOT.

While on the issue of people who have had a bad experience with Opus Dei, I'd like to express one major concern.

Throughout Church history there have been times where religious people in authority have scandalized the Faith by either their actions or inactions. The problems in Opus Dei, like any other religious organization are not anything new. There is a tendency though for people who have had a bad experience, with what is otherwise a virtuous organization, to have their experience re-affirmed in a movie like the Da Vinci Code.

If we make generalities on people or organizations based on bad experiences, we don't allow God to work in the hearts and minds for that change that is needed. We ultimately end up stereotyping an organization or person solely based on previous sins. I should know this because I've done that to certain frineds :)

My question is:

Why has Dan Brown chosen a lay Catholic organization to slander?

Why not the Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans or some other Catholic religious order? Surely "some" of them have their set of "problems and sins", which over time they are able to rectify.

I think part of the reason is because of the world-wide effect a compelling lay Catholic organization in the workplace dedicated to holiness and the Holy Father would have on the world if the goals of Opus Dei were to succeed. Just my opinion.

By Mike Humphrey in AskACatholic.com

It is about becoming a saint

By daughterofmary at the Catholic Answers Forum

"The Work" - Opus Dei - is about sanctification in daily life. It is about becoming a saint no matter if you are a priest, sister, nun, mother, wife, fireman, waitress, plumber, etc. Everyone is called to holiness and to respond to grace daily in just one's everyday life. [The writings of St. Josemaria Escriva] will help you to know more about the spirituality of Opus Dei.

I have a friend who is discerning becoming an Opus Dei priest. He is so inspiring and so devout. He is very involved with opus dei. I have only ever met good people that are very solid in their faith when it comes to Opus Dei. I have never encountered anything wrong with them.

By daughterofmary at the Catholic Answers Forum

It turned out to be a great experience

By Richard Dujardin at Projo.com

Charles Kineke recalls the first time he went on a retreat with Opus Dei.

The Annapolis graduate and former F-14 fighter pilot had attended some evening meetings sponsored by the group -- whose name means "Work of God" -- when a friend asked him if he'd like to go on a four-day mostly "silent" retreat at Opus Dei's Arnold Hall in a Boston suburb.

It turned out to be a great experience, he says. People prayed and listened to a Catholic priest talk about how to practice virtue and bring one's faith into daily life. But after two days, the friend who invited Kineke on the retreat, told him, "I'm exhausted from all these prayers. Let's go out and get a beer."

So they did just that, as the retreat continued..

Not bad, not bad at all, thought Kineke, who had first learned about Opus Dei from a "friend of a friend" in his wife's home schooling network.

The retreat mirrored the meetings, known as "evenings of recollection," that he had attended over several months at St. Sebastian Church in Providence . There too, under the auspices of Opus Dei, men would come together to pray, meditate and listen to an Opus Dei priest or layman talk about an aspect of the faith before heading downtown to sing and drink beer at an Irish pub.

"I said to myself, 'this Opus Dei stuff is great. You pray some, you drink beer, sing songs and hang out with the guys. And my wife thinks it's good because I'm going out to pray, which is what she wants me to do. It doesn't get better than this.' "

Kineke acknowledges that his experience is quite different from the image of Opus Dei presented by critics whose accusations have been given new life these last few years by Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The novel, whose film version is set to open this Friday, portrays the group as a dark and sinister organization whose members flagellate themselves and will stop at nothing, not even murder, to carry out their agenda.

Most critics don't go that far, but some liberal Catholics argue that Opus Dei -- founded in 1928 by Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, a Spanish priest who was canonized four years ago by Pope John Paul II -- is an elitist organization that denigrates women. They suggest that the group's emphasis on achieving holiness through prayer and discipline could lead to religious extremism.

As with other Opus Dei members, Kineke thinks the charges about the group, which they refer to as "the Work" are off base.

'You hear stories about people being pressured to join the Work. When I tried to join, it was the direct opposite."

Kineke, a senior vice president at Citizens Bank, said he was so impressed with what he had seen on the retreat and days of recollection that he approached Robert Sylvain, who directs Opus Dei's Mathewson House on Providence's East Side, to say he wanted to join.

"He told me, not so fast, that I couldn't just join, because Opus Dei is a calling. I had to come in for a chat every week or so for four months before I was even invited. Even then, I had to go through a catechism of the faith and 18 months of (spiritual) formation. It was great for me because even though I was born and raised Catholic there was a lot of stuff I didn't know."

WITH 85,000 members worldwide, and about 3,000 in the United States, Opus Dei describes itself as an international lay Catholic group whose main focus is the sanctification of people's ordinary lives, including their work. Members say Father Escriva's great insight was that being a saint is not the province of a few, but the universal destiny of every Christian. The priest taught that holiness can be lived out in one's everyday life.

Toward that end, its members -- both married and unmarried -- commit themselves to a "plan of life," a daily regimen that includes a morning offering, a half hour of prayer, recitation of the Rosary, an examination of conscience and attendance at Mass, as well as frequent confession -- as a step toward holiness and bringing God into their homes and workplaces.

St. Josemaria on justice, poverty, and civic responsibility

Teachings of St. Josemaria on education and civic responsibility. Taken from St. Josemaria.info


“A man or a society that does not react to suffering and injustice and makes no effort to alleviate them is still distant from the love of Christ's heart.” (Christ is passing by, 167).

“That is what our entire life is, my daughters and sons —a service with exclusively spiritual aims, because Opus Dei is not, and will never be —nor could it be—a tool for temporal ends. But at the same time, it is also a service to mankind, because all you are doing is trying in an upright way to achieve Christian perfection, acting most freely and responsibly in all the areas of the civil life.” (Opus Dei in the Church, p. 107).

Opus Dei must be present “wherever there is poverty, wherever there is unemployment, wherever there is sadness, wherever there is pain, so that the pain is borne with cheerfulness, so that the poverty disappears, so that the unemployment is overcome.” (In A glance toward the future from the heart of of Vallecas, Madrid, 1998, p. 135. Words from October 1, 1967.)

“We try to bring about a world with less poverty, less ignorance, more justice. I will tell you that the first means is prayer, self-sacrifice, which you can do in your work, doing it well.” (In A glance toward the future from the heart of Vallecas, Madrid, 1998, p. 138. Words from October 1, 1967)

“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... 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.” (Christ is passing by, 111).

Saints in business suits, janitor uniforms, blue jeans, t-shirt and sneakers

By Margaret, who commented on Olivia Darby's article on Opus Dei

THANK YOU Olivia for such a great column.

I am a supernumerary on the other side of the Pond from you, and then across the country from there to California. :-) I think we're even more thinly spread here than you are in the UK.

And you are so right about the superwoman bit-- I have eight kids. Believe me, there have been many days when superpowers would have come in handy. (Bi-location, in particular, if you're listening, Lord!!!)

I honestly had to laugh out loud when I read the Da Vinci Code, because it was just so obvious that the author had never actually spent time around people in the Work. I like normal people. I have no interest in spending my free time hanging around with brainwashed zombies who alternately beat themselves senseless and kill people. :-) If the Work had been filled with anything other than normal, kind, funny people, I would have passed right along and never given it a second thought.

As it is, I view my vocation as how God intends me to be a saint, and hopefully my family and friends too. The statues in church can be a bit misleading, because those saints are nearly all in religious habits. I hope Opus Dei's contribution to society will be many, many saints in business suits, janitor uniforms, or in my case, blue jeans, t-shirt and sneakers.

I found great friendship

By mmr at the Catholic Answers Forum. She is a fitness instructor from Ireland

My experience of Opus Dei has been really good. But as somebody mentioned, it's a vocation, so God and no one else will tell you if it's for you.

I have found great friendship and support and advice amongst the people of Opus Dei, and most importantly, sound non-judgemental advice both spiritually and humanly.

But equally I have friends who have felt it too intense for them. I think it has a huge amount to do with your stage in life and your temperament. If you are feeling stressed, or have a tendency to be a perfectionist, or not speak up for yourself when you feel uncomfortable about something, then it's probably not a good mix. Opus Dei members are hugely apostolic, and I don't think they try and hide or apologize for it: it's why they exist.

I really don't get how they are constantly accused of being secretive. I have never met a more assertive bunch ( in a healthy way). So if you think you are being pressured you have to be clear and articulate about that and set boundaries. I push back all the time. But honestly I also get such a positive reaction when I do, I think its almost encouraged.

I think that Opus Dei is a great organization, trying to help people get closer to God and to be better people. It's just not for everyone.