Jesus 42, Devil 0.
Opus Dei were great lovers and supporters of General Franco, am I not right? Their influence in the Church has undermined such magnificent centres of Catholic learning as the Gregorian University, Rome. Their disproportionate flourishing is a direct result of the Vatican's suppression of open discussion and democratic participation. Once again the Vatican finds itself in bed with fascism, as if it has learned nothing from its many previous misadventures along those lines.
Joe, calumny and slander are very grave sins.
Father O'Leary:
Could you justify your charge of being in bed with fascism? This is a very specific philosophical/political ideology. Do you merely mean to take a swipe at the Church which refuses to become democratic, or is there some justification for your charge. Aside from Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, is there actual evidence of the evils of the Opus Dei? I take you to be an intelligent man -- since after all you had to have sufficient education to be ordained a priest. Throwing around label merely for the purpose of venting is unhelpful to the very discussion you claim so much to desire. Since I take your claim seriously, please present evidence.
Now, on to the other half of your comment. The Church isn't a democracy, and isn't supposed to be. It is, after all, founded by Christ, Who is Truth. We know that God can not deceive, and that He has given us, in the Church He founded all the necessary means to our salvation. Truth, as His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI said before his elevation, isn't determined by majority vote.
Joe,
Unfortunately for your theory there were a number of Opus Dei members who were harassed by Franco because of their opposition to his regime. Also, last I checked, the Roman Catholic Church was not a democracy.
I think you would agree that some things are not open to discussion, for example, the existence of God, the divinity of Christ, the roundness of the earth. So the "suppression of open discussion" is a red herring, since I assume that even you would agree that "open discussion" has to stop somewhere - what's the point of endless open discussion if it never comes to any conclusions? It's just a matter of where it should stop.
All I know first-hand is that in a diocese where I used to live, if you knew that a Priest was with Opus Dei, you could be sure he was faithful to the teaching office of the Church.
The church is not a democracy, and as a result has often played footsie with antidemocratic forces. The first fully favorable Vatican reference to democracy dates from 1943 I believe.
By the way, a good analogy to the Catholic relation to democracy would be the Soto Zen relation to democracy. Having a highly hierarchical and non-democratic organization, Soto Zen served as a model for Japanese fascism and many Zen masters played footsie with the fascists. Of course both Zen and Catholicism would claim that their religious efficacity depends on being non-democratic. But when one looks at the other Christian churches that are as democratic as possible in their organization they do not seem to be doing so badly.
Joe,
It isn't a matter of who's doing well or doing badly, but a matter of what Christ desires for his Church. If he wants more democracy, I'm all for it; if not, not. As I said, last I checked, I still don't have a vote for pope or my local bishop, and I'm not sure how it would "help" that much, frankly. Ditto for doctrinal and moral beliefs.
I'm also not quite sure which churches you mean which have adopted democratic principles that are not doing so badly. I take it you don't meant the mainline Protestant denominations in the U.S. which have been losing members for decades now? Sorry for the denseness on my part - I have a distinct feeling that though we're both Catholics (presumably), we're coming from very different directions here and our assumptions and beliefs about the Church have very little in common so that half the time I have no idea what on earth you're talking about.)
I've enjoyed reading all of your posts because I recognize you all have much sharper minds than mine. I'm just a housewife and mother who takes in some work from home... but, here's my contribution:
As far back as I can remember, and I'm told by my grandparents their grandparents said this to their children: "This household is not a democracy." I remember particularly hating that statement by my father when I wanted to go to places like the mall or parties that no amount of discussion or argument on my part was going to make those places safer in the mind of my father. Most important to my father was protecting my innocence, even against my own eager nature to "learn" more. He knew in time I would learn all these things I so wanted to know, but he didn't want me learning about them without rooting me in something, or learning via blunt force mental trauma. I couldn't see his side many times because I was blinded by what I wanted. To my as I matured and listened more, I realized he actually wanted a lot more for me than some particular fad I was going through.
And that's how I see my Fathers and Doctors of the Church. I know that sound simple and stupid to a lot of people, but it orders my life and I believe in it.
"But when one looks at the other Christian churches that are as democratic as possible in their organization they do not seem to be doing so badly."
Other than the fact that their organisation is contrary to the constitution that Jesus established in His Church, and that they hold and teach heresy, no, they're not doing so badly. 
My pastor, who couldn't be described as conservative by any intelligent yardstick observed that we don't celebrate the feast of Christ the President. Kingship has particular connotations. In this context, he observed that Elvis Presley is not called the President of Rock and Roll. One might sensibly add that John Wayne was never called Senator. He was (for our international readers) called Duke.
I've been hearing all my life that the Protestant Churches are dying out. Oddly enough, in my own country, Ireland, they have been growing dramatically in recent years and people are now talking about the Catholic Church dying out there. Pride goeth before a fall.
No one today, not even Cardinal Ratzinger in Dominus Iesus, describes Protestants as heretics. To do so it so sin against ecumenism and against the charity and respect we owe our sister churches (to use the language of Paul VI).
Here is a letter from Escriva to Franco, 1958. http://www.odan.org/
escriva_to_f...a_to_franco.htm
http://www.joyofsects.com/
news_l...ews_local.shtml
Fox is over the top, and incorrect to say that B16 is the first grand inquisitor to be pope -- Paul IV and Pius V followed the same trajectory.
Some thought-provoking warnings about fascism here: http://www.mond.at/opus.dei/
opus...dei.uo.faq.html
http://www.rickross.com/referenc...pus/
opus44.html
On Escriva's alleged holocaust revisionism, it would not surprise me at all. I once heard a high Vatican official speak in exactly the same way to a group of theology professors in the Philippines.
Need it be pointed out that the question of fascism is a very actual one, and that the US stands in grave danger of succumbing to the fascist virus already rife in its body politic? Vide: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/3...herbert.html?
hp
"No one today, not even Cardinal Ratzinger in Dominus Iesus, describes Protestants as heretics."
You need to get out more. There are tons of folks who describe Protestants as heretics. As a former Protestant and a former heretic, I can assure you that Protestants meet the definition of the word "heretic."
"To do so it so sin against ecumenism and against the charity and respect we owe our sister churches (to use the language of Paul VI)."
I don't mind committing "sin" against ecumenism when ecumenism means not facing the reality of things. I believe John Paul II distinguished between true and false ecumenism.
Also, Protestant denominations and sects are more properly termed "ecclesial communities," not "sister churches." They have lost apostolic succession and therefore lack a valid Eucharist (except in those comparatively rare circumstances where renegade priests and bishops become Protestant ministers), and so are not churches in the proper sense of the word church. It is the Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern churches who are our sister churches.
As for Protestant denominations and sects dying out, many of them are. In fact, most Protestant sects are little more than a single congregation that exists for not much longer than the lifetime of its minister. The mainline denominations, of course, have been in pretty bad shape for quite some time, bleeding members to evangelical sects and to secularism. But that doesn't mean the Catholic Church is immune, especially when her clergy and laity are unfaithful -- for it is also infidelity, not just pride, that goeth before a fall. Indeed, pride is a form of infidelity.
Contempt of Court, like Sins against Ecumenism can sometimes be a virtue. I once attended an ecumenical conference at which the Lutheran representative explained very patiently that he and his accepted the Apostolic succession, but wanted to mean something different than the Church of Rome. Father O'Leary, why don't we agree to meet at a pub in Boston, MA and both order Barbeque. We'll order the same thing, but one of us will be mightily surprised.
As to the fact that the Protestant ecclesial communities are dying: even a corpse can be made to move by applying enough electricity to it.
Fr. O'Leary, I am in complete agreement with your sentiment, expressed more clearly elsewhere but implied here, that the greatest threat to the general populace today, and to Catholics in particular, is ignorance. And the impressiveness of your confidence that you are the one best positioned to enlighten your "fascist" Opus Dei brethren and their fellow "reactionaries" ... is surpassed only by the commonplaceness of such confidence among mainstream liberals, and, in particular, liberal Catholics. I suppose it never occurs to you that the shoe could be on the other foot and the most benightedly parochial and ignorant body in the U.S. could be the readership of the NY Times and NCR--those parish newsletters of affluent and self-congratulatory liberal enlightement?
Like your remarks on the crusades and spanish inquisition in another context, your efforts here to provoke gasps of horror at the canonized SAINT (!) Josemaria Escriva by citing his letter to Franco (Woo-woo!) betray seemingly surpassing ignorance of the history of the Spanish Civil War and the fate of the Church in it. You do know, I hope, that more than 6000 bishops, priests, and religious were summarily slaughtered during the ascendancy of the communist and anarchist revolutionaries in that civil war, with the ebullient support of Western liberals, popularized by the likes of Hemingway. You make little effort to distinguish-- for someone who values nuance as much as you do-- the difference between (1) Nazi & Italian facism and (2) the thing called "fascism" that emerged in the context of the Spanish Civil War. Your links to the notoriously disinformational "Opus Dei Awareness Network," your appeal to the apostate Matthew Fox--whose "creation spirituality" exhibits no more than a superficial linguistic affinity to Christianity, your scare-mongering links to "Opus Dei=fascist" websites, etc., would have seemed--to me--to be beneath your dignity and self-respect, not to mention your sense of intellectual integrity. I am saddened every time I am reminded of the existence of such opinions as these, because it tells me how widespread and commonplace such ignorance is.
It's easy to light fires (rumors, misinformation). It's much harder to extinguish them (refuting, rebutting, uprooting false assumptions), especially where they have grown nearly out-of-control. For those who love truth and are willing to spend time digging to find it, however, I have never found the Catholic Faith to disappoint.
Opus Dei floruit in societate Hispaniae sub Franco et mentalitas ultraconservativae egregii inceptoris huius societatis bene convenit cum cultura fascista. Peccata Republicanorum in bello civili non sunt ad propositum. Visio conservativa est comprehensibilis, sed restat ut promotio questae visionis exponit ecclesiam ad infectionem ideologiarum regressivarum et diminuit vigorem ecclesiam in opponendo inimicos humanae libertatis.
Fascinatio per sectas ultraconservativas diminuit vigorem ecclesiam contra fascismus in hodierna America et vigilantiam ecclesiae in promovendo et protegendo sacrum donum dei quod est libertas.
Let see, St. Josemaria Escriva is a saint. Check. Now, St. Joe O'Leary of Ireland. Who!? oh that guy, the patron of rumors and bad novels.
Quod eminens Escriva sanctus vocatur non est ad propositum in contextu argumenti de infausta influentia politica et ideologica hominis. Multi sancti malam influentiam habuerunt. Anti-semitismus promotus est a Sancto Johanne Chrystomo et aliis; militia barbara exhortata est a Sancto Bernhardo Clarae Vallensis; sanguinolentem institutionam "Sanctae" Inquisitionis promulgaverunt et defenderunt plus quam 50 Papae; nonnulli sancti in opere inquisitionis participati sunt -- e.g. Sanctus Franciscus Xavier, Sanctus Robertus Bellarminus. Animadversiones ad hominem -- argumenta ex sanctitate, quae implicant iudicium quae est solum Dei -- indicant pigritiam spiritus et indolem animi quae "misologia" ab antiquis vocatur.
Fascismus non est entitas mysteriosa. Gubernatio Hispaniae sub Franco et Chile sub Pinochet fascistica erat. Opus Dei maximam influentiam habuit in illis regiminibus. Si vis defendere Sanctum Josephum Mariam Escriva ab imputatione sympathiae cum fascismo, monstra mihi verbos illius contra abusos illorum regiminum fascisticum. Forse non concedis quod Franco et Pinochet fascisti erant. In tali casu argumentum removetur ad novum planum.
correctio -- contra abusus.
Humana aequalitas est principium fundamentale nostrae societatis. Mentalitas hierarchica Sancti Escriva permisit discipulis eius partecipare in sinistris operationibus regiminum fascisticorum in Chile et in Hispania. Si non est verum, faciliter posses monstrare ubi et quando St. Escriva activitates fascistorum denunciavit.
Reputatio historica precedentis Papae non erit gloriosa. Lege sequentem articulum. http://www.rootsie.com/weblog/ar...es/
00001184.htm
Veritas supra sectam quae vocatur Opus Dei celatur sub profundo silentio. Vide sequentem articulum lingua castellana conscriptam: http://www.cadenaser.com/comunes...a/
quien_05.html
http://titusonenine.classicalang...ndex.php?
p=6275
http://www.mond.at/opus.dei/mccl.../
mccloskey.html
Mentalitas fascistica viget in Ecclesia actuali. Si vigilantia perpetua est pretium libertatis, ut dicitur, debet fidelis catholicus scrutare ascensionem ideologiae escrivanae in universitatibus et chancelariis catholicis. Silentium actuale circa iste magnum periculum lamentabile est. Mentalitas fascistica adoptata per Ecclesiam in Latina America expulsit magnum numerum fidelium in communitates Pentecostales. Populus Latinae Americae fetorem fascismi bene agnoscunt.
Opus Dei, in intentio fundatoris sui, in Hispania sub Franco, functionem olim habitam per Inquisitionem adquirere debuisset! http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cac...hl=ja&
start=120
My dear Father O'Leary:
It is your accusation that Saint Josemaria Escriva was a fascist sympathizer. It is therefore upon you that the burden of proof rests. Similarly, those who wish to argue in favor of the ordination of priests must demonstrate that it is a positive good and expressly permitted by the Church. This they can not do. We do not need to justify kneeling before Our Lord, or receiving Confession before Communion.
Why have you such an animus against the Popes. Sure there have been some good ones and some bad ones, but to paint more than 50 popes with the tar of modern political correctness instead of the bracing color of the Truth is to do them and yourself a dis-service. Why do you need to attack saints such as Francis Xavier, John Chrysostom and others -- who, after all are in Heaven -- when the dragon who sweeps away a third of the stars in the firmament is already active among us.
Fr. O'Leary,
Hitotsu: Gendai no shimpu-sama toshite, naze ippan no hito ga sappari shiranai Latin-go o kono-yo ni tsukau koto o shiritai desu.
Futatsu: Anata ga kaita koto ni tsuite, kotae o shitai desu:
"Opus Dei floruit in societate Hispaniae sub Franco et mentalitas ultraconservativae egregii inceptoris huius societatis bene convenit cum cultura fascista...."
Tsuzukete konna iken o warera ni tsutaeru to jibun ga kyokai no rekishi ni taishite amari yoku shiranai yo ni mirareru to omoimasu.
"Fascismus non est entitas mysteriosa...."
Ippan no hitobito no iken ni taishitae kore was shinjitsu kamo shira nai desu. Keredomo, komakai tokoro made kenkyu shitemitara, hitotsu no kuni no "fascism" was hoka no kuni no "faciscm" to tottemo chigau koto ga kantanni miraremasu. Aru "fascism" wa "Marxism" no yo ni, hito no jiuu o tsubusu yo na koto ni nariuasu. Spain no Republicanism no bawai, kyokai wa zenzen jiuu ga nai deshita. Franco no bawai, kyokai ga kanzen ni jiuu ga arimashita.
Kono riyuu de Escriva o "fascist" to yobu to wa mattaku bakarashii koto dewa nai desu ka. Yokamo, kare yori, Hans Kung toka Matthew Fox toka Call to Action no ho ga, zuuto jiuu o tsutaenai yo na fascism ni au desho.
Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever. -- Aristophanes (448-380 BC)
Joe,
It's hardly fair for you to link to exclusively anti-Opus Dei sites like ODAN, etc. and other critical reports. Is this your only source of information about Opus Dei? I think any outside observer would have to think that your selection of sources was a bit skewed, don't you think? Have you ever read anything that St. Josemaria has written? Not an accusation, just curious.
Legi librum quod vocatur El Camino et non approbavi tenebrosam atmospheram pietatis escrivanae.
50 Papae benedixerunt Inquisitionem -- multi adherentes Opus Dei in regiminibus Franco et Pinochet activae erunt -- illa facta non potens confutare, alias inutiles nugationses et distractiones discutere otiosum est. Ego, contemptor Americanae "pulp fiction", non teneo positiones "Dan Brown", quae positiones totaliter ignoro.
Non dixi quod Escriva fascista erat, sed quod discipulos eius in societate fascistica floruerunt et quod mentalitas eius habet aliquam affinitatem cum ideologia fascistica. Istam opinionem faciliter refellere posses, citando defensiones humanae et democraticae libertatis profertas ab Escrivo.
please Joe, we don't speak latin, but if you must don't mix it with english. 'mentalitas' ?? and please, stop quoting mainstream media and websites; we simply won't see them and that's because we've seen them! they're rubbish. proof it that you're not like them.
Mentalitas is a good Latin word, it seems to me. Let me recommend, rather than internet links, a very valuable book I am reading now: THE SAYINGS SOURCE Q AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS, ed. A Lindemann, Leuven University Press, 2001. Here is something that reactionaries are likely to dismiss as rubbish, saying with Luke T. Johnson that we have the "biblical Christ" and that to look for "the historical Jesus" is a waste of time. In reality the connection between the historical Jesus and our faith cannot be broken except under pain of falling into docetism.
Actually the distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith has the following present-day relevance: historians, constrained by the texts and contexts of the first century, which are ever more precisely and fully understood, can imagine in various ways what kind of person Jesus of Nazareth was like historically. Their results are likely to be in tension -- or indeed are in tension -- with the image of Christ that later piety creates -- including the images of Christ projected by the four Gospels (John in particular). The Jesus reconstructed by the historian (over a gap of two millennia) can be found edifying and thus be a Jesus for faith. The later images of Jesus may be found in large part unhistorical, but that does not take away from their profound value for faith. The images of Jesus that scholars construct within the perimeters of what strict historical veracity suggests and permits will never match the images projected in the four gospels in theological or even in imaginative power. Suppose, for example, that most or all the seven words of Jesus on the Cross are non-historical, they still remain sublime utterances bringing out the meaning of the death of Jesus. The doctrine of the Atonement is often attacked today, but it is attested in one of the oldest Christian texts, Galatians (little more than two decades after the death of Christ) begins a reference to Christ giving himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age (1.4) and Mark (c. 65 AD) has the statement about the Son of Man giving himself as a ransom for the many, which must reflect a quite early interpretation if not that of Jesus himself. The nub of the matter is that there is a gap of some sort between the pre-paschal Jesus and the figure of Jesus as he appears to the infant church in light of the resurrection. Reconstructing the Jesus of history by definition never takes us beyond the pre-paschal Jesus, whereas the whole New Testament bathes in the light of the resurrection/exaltation of Jesus.
One of my deep disappointments with Catholic biblical scholarship of the last 50 years is how deeply enamored it became of the whole secularized Liberal Protestant "historical-critical" tradition. Most Catholic Bible scholars since V-II have seen themselves as liberated from the "schackles" of a "rigid scholasticism" and have, for the past few decades been bending over backwards, as if making up for lost time, to ingratiate themselves with the tyrannical fashion poodles of the Mod-to-Post-Mod [all together now: "Let's Demythologize & Deconstruct!"] secular protestant Bible Game Show. The degree to which vestiges of a discredited and unsupportable logical-empiricist (positivist) epistemology continue to infect current scholarship can be seen in the continuing recrudescences of fact/value, history/faith dualizations such as appear even in Fr. O'Leary's well-schooled discourse. He refers, for example, to "what strict historical veracity suggests," in contrast to "images projected in the four gospels in theological or even in imaginative power." But who and his point-of-view-from-nowhere army is going to justify his presumption that he conclusively well positioned to tell us what "strict historical veracity suggests"?
Again, Fr. O'Leary says: "Reconstructing the Jesus of history by definition never takes us beyond the pre-paschal Jesus ...." Says who? Oh, I must have forgot: those tyrannical fashion poodles. But why should one buy what they're selling? What, beside a dogmatic adherence to a residual Humean skepticism about the possibility of anything supernatural occurring in history, should lead us to reject the historicity of the post-Paschal Christ of Faith? Nothing. The dichotomizing premises underlying such "scholarship" are supported by nothing but western bourgeois academic prejudice.
Try thinking outside the fashion poodle box. Try reading, for a change, something like C. Stephen Evans' The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith (Oxford U.P., 1996) ... unless that demolition of your history/faith dualizations would blow your circuits.
this is a test, anyone reply
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