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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Aug 29, 2008 16:25:23 GMT
This is an interesting development www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0829/1219875241921.html?via=mr. The parishioners and others using the Church can be assured of a correct Liturgy and orthodox preaching. (I'm not of course suggegsting that they didn't get the same from the retiring PP and his colleagues, of whom I know nothing; rather that it's not something one can be sure of getting in most parishes these days.)
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Post by Noelfitz on Aug 29, 2008 16:51:19 GMT
Great to hear this news.
I think this will be a great boost to Catholics in this diocese.
I am please that OD are running parishes and participating in the life of all the faithful.
All Catholics win in this case.
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Post by monkeyman on Sept 8, 2008 1:36:12 GMT
Opus Dei qui tolis pecunia mundi, dona nobis partem ;D
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Sept 8, 2008 18:18:23 GMT
They will at least celebrate the Ordinary Form in complete accordance with the rubrics, but it will be interesting to see whether they provide a Mass in the Extraordinary Form. Opus Dei are noted above all else for total allegiance to the Pope. Since Pope Benedict has indicated his wish for the EF to be available in every parish, it will be interesting to observe what happens. Have we any members or readers in the Merrion Road parish who might make the appropriate request?
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 4, 2009 16:20:26 GMT
It might be a good idea to revive this thread as a venue for discussing Opus Dei more generally.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 29, 2009 17:28:26 GMT
Here we see an example of the impact of THE DA VINCI CODE on perceptions of Opus Dei; people protesting at a proposed Opus Dei centre (admittedly on town planning grounds) have been giving out copies of THE DA VINCI CODE as informative material about OD, although the novel is notoriously inaccurate and its central plot is based on a hoax concocted by a French neo-fascist. Will their next trick be to protest about a marine research centre by giving out copies of HP Lovecraft's THE INNSMOUTH HORROR, or against a dogs' home with Stephen King's CUJO? insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/09/another-entrycanadianfrom-the-its-just-a-novel-files.html
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 18, 2010 14:01:23 GMT
Someone on th traditionalist blog RORATE CAELI is griping at Opus Dei. Here are the commentaries, with a range of responses (note the whackjob who is blaming OD for the demise of Francoist Spain). Several very able defences of OD's "reform of the reform" approach. Alan Robinson has a fairly innocuous post - says he was in OD for 10 years. www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=19978542&postID=1425168277322203119&pli=1
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 9, 2010 11:49:39 GMT
Dawn eden has some interesting comments on the Legionaries of Christ. This contrast between her impressions (as a complete outsider and before the final discrediting of "Nuestro Padre") of the writings of St. Josemaria Escriva and Fr. Maciel is very striking EXTRACT Although I remain to this day a “mere Catholic,” I was curious enough about Opus Dei and the Legion’s lay movement, Regnum Christi, to read some of their literature. The difference between the literary styles of Opus Dei founder St. Josemaria Escriva and now-notorious Legion founder Father Marcial Maciel proved striking and a tad disconcerting. Escriva’s cerebral prose could be obtuse and somewhat cold at times, but his spirituality was profound, offering new layers of depth with repeated readings. His words read like those of a saint: “The world admires only spectacular sacrifice, because it does not realize the value of sacrifice that is hidden and silent” (The Way). The works of Maciel, by contrast, read like Hallmark greeting cards, or those Our Daily Bread pamphlets that Evangelicals leave behind on city buses: “God’s love ... has given you an easy and fast road to holiness” (Envoy II). Perusing his platitudes – some of which have proven to be plagiarized – I marveled that they could provide enough spiritual fuel to power an international movement of priests and laity. It seemed to me even then, before I knew much about the accusations against its founder, that the Legion was running on fumes. END OF EXTRACT headlinebistro.com/hb/en/columnists/eden/062810.html
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 29, 2012 18:45:20 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 24, 2012 19:20:57 GMT
A nice example of Opus Dei's mission to sanctify everyday life - apparently the founder and director of the highly-publicised El Sistema scheme of musical education in Venezuela (which trains poor children to become classical musicians) is an Opus Dei member: blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/jmacmillan/100066610/does-richard-holloway-and-other-leftist-class-warriors-realise-that-el-sistema-has-links-with-opus-dei/EXTRACT I was intrigued to follow the debate about El Sistema during the summer. The visit of Gusatavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in June provoked some fierce rows about music education and the place of the Sistema-like schemes in the UK. El Sistema was founded in 1975 by the inspirational pianist, economist and educator Jose Antonio Abreu. What is less known about this phenomenal man is that he has also had a career in politics. He served as a Deputy at the Chamber of Deputies in the Congress of Venezuela. He would return to politics briefly in 1983 to serve as Minister of Culture in the Right-of centre administration of Carlos Andres Perez. In a recent visit to the USA I heard some more interesting information about Abreu. Apparently he is a member of Opus Dei too. I am not surprised by this. I met him a few years ago and not only did he couch every point he made in theological terms, but there was something truly numinous and holy about him. People who know him describe him as a saint. One of the reasons El Sistema is such a success in Venezuela is that it has religious roots. Every attempt to mimic it in more secular societies has deliberately ignored this fundamental aspect of the scheme. Some say that it is difficult to transplant Abreu's idea successfully to other places... END OF EXTRACT en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Antonio_Abreu
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 20, 2013 19:49:14 GMT
A profile of Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, St Josemaria Escriva's assistant and successor, whose beatification has just been announced. Those of us who are not OD tend to see it in terms of St Josemaria, but with such movements the successor and assistant is often extremely important in consolidating it, especially in the period after the founder's death. www.ncregister.com/daily-news/remembering-don-alvaro/
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 26, 2014 20:43:59 GMT
A 1995 piece by Leon Podles offering some thoughts (generally favourable) on Opus Dei and why it attracts such bitter hostility in some quarters. Podles is known for no-holds-barred comment on clerical abuse, so he's not someone who goes along with an "official" line for its own sake. He is also someone who thinks there is a longstanding tendency for Latin Christianity to favour feminine styles of worship and discourage male worshippers, so his comments on OD as practising a form of everyday spirituality - which opposes a post-Tridentine tendency to assume serious believers should be priests or religious and hence to create a self-enclosed clerical culture - should be read in that light: www.podles.org/Opus-Dei.htmEXTRACT ... Opus Dei is both innovative and conservative. It encourages the traditional Catholic practices of Counter-Reformation piety: daily Mass, the Rosary, novenas, mental prayer, and spiritual direction. It appeals to all classes of society. Unlike most religious orders, it does not concentrate on institutions. It runs the University of Navarre in Spain, and a few schools and centers throughout the world. The innovation is that it seeks to counteract the feeling among Catholics that it is necessary to become a priest or religious in order to pursue holiness. This is a novelty in the Counter-Reformation Church which, in reaction to Protestantism, had stressed the importance of the priestly and religious vocations. However, it is not totally new in the context of Christian history. St. Paul stresses the importance of fulfilling their daily duties in marriage and work to the Christians of the new churches, who were tempted to neglect such duties in their enthusiasm for the charisms and their eager anticipation of the imminent end of the world. Later, when the ascetic movement, the forerunner of monastic and religious life, entered the Church, work was also sometimes neglected. Asceticism is not a Christian phenomenon, but a part of every religion. The desert fathers stressed that self-denial, such as fasting, should not interfere with the daily work of the monk. Benedictine monasticism tried to balance both demands of religious life in its motto ora et labora (prayer and work). However, by the late medieval ages Catholics had it firmly in their minds that a serious Christian should become a priest or religious. The Reformation reacted to this, and stressed the importance of family life and the fulfillment of one's duties as a way to please God. One of the Reformation's best contributions to lay life was the Anglican William Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728). Law said "all parts of our life are to be made holy and acceptable to God," and "this holiness of common life, this religious use of everything that we have, is a devotion that is the duty of all orders of Christian people." In the Catholic Church St. Francis de Sales' advice to the laity in The Introduction to the Devout Life took a similar line. In the 19th century Thérèse of Lisieux was given the Little Way, in which the performance of unspectacular duties and the acceptance of small mortifications was seen as a better way to please God than spectacular self-denial which contains dangers of self-dramatization and spiritual pride. Msgr. Escrivá is in this school of spirituality. Opus Dei operates as a network of spiritual direction which tries to help lay people living in families and working in secular occupations pursue sanctity. Fidelity to daily prayer is stressed. Monthly meetings and annual workshops provide instruction in doctrine and advice on leading Christian lives. Self-denial and mortification are seen as most effective when they are done in the context of daily life: washing the dishes instead of leaving them in the sink overnight, keeping your desk clean, doing your work today instead of postponing it until tomorrow (a radical innovation in Hispanic cultures where man ana is the answer to most requests for action). .. Opus Dei seems to me to be a revival, a continuation, or perhaps a modernization of the great Catholic spirituality of the Baroque. The Baroque emphasized the goodness of creation and of creativity, and led to a magnificent efflorescence of Catholic culture and art. Similarly Opus Dei emphasizes the goodness of creation, of creative work, and of procreation. During a retreat an Opus Dei priest asked what would Jesus’s reaction be to the achievements of the modern world. The priest thought that Jesus would say they were basically very good, that there were problems that needed correction, but that man’s creativity had accomplished something good. Christians should not withdraw from this world, the priest continued, invoking a familiar theme of Msgr. Escrivá, but use their work to sanctify the world. The Pope, who is obviously sympathetic to Opus Dei, also emphasizes the goodness of creation and human work as sharing in God's creativity. Msgr. Escrivá’s first aphorism is: "Don't let your life be sterile." The only time I have ever heard (as opposed to having read) that contraception is sinful, and demands repentance, was in an Opus Dei talk. The Baroque, in stressing the goodness of creation, thereby tapped the erotic energy of the human personality in the service of Christianity. Bernini’s St. Theresa in Ecstasy is the best known product of this milieu; but the Baroque and Rococo churches of Germany are filled with cupids darting arrows of love at the hearts of man and God. I detect a similar note in the spirituality of Opus Dei. Msgr. EscrivÁ, as the many videos of him show, was an extremely warm and outgoing person, even for a Spaniard. He gave the embraza (the ceremonial hug and kisses on both cheeks) to all the men he met. But even when he was in his seventies, he explained that he did not give it to women. At most he would kiss the hand of an elderly woman to honor her motherhood. Nor was this play acting. When he was being hunted in Madrid during the Civil War, he was offered refuge in an apartment for a few weeks, a refuge that might have been necessary to save his life. When he asked who else would be there, and was informed only a housekeeper in her early twenties, he took the key and threw it down the sewer, saying never would he take the chance that he might compromise his priestly celibacy. He obviously knew temptation and the special urgency that passion seems to take under conditions of war and imminent death. In his aphorisms, there are remarks that may sound a little trite until they are placed in the proper context of eros in the service of God. He says that once someone asked him if he were in love, because there was a special sparkle in his eye. The Monsignor said that he was, but not in the way the person thought. In his public meetings, many of the questions from the floor dealt with affairs of the heart. He showed sympathy and delicacy in answering them, but could also be blunt. He knew from hearing confessions of the frequent adulteries that poison marriages, but he pointed out that women must share the blame. He told women that they succumbed to frumpiness, and ceased trying to be attractive to their husbands, whose eyes wandered elsewhere. Remarks like this breathe the wholesome, sweet eroticism of the Song of Songs. Msgr. Escrivá realized that human attractiveness is important to spreading Christianity. “Long faces, coarse manners, a ridiculous appearance, a repelling air. Is that how you incite others to follow Christ?” This is his version of the observation attributed to various saints of the Baroque: “You catch more files with honey than with vinegar.” All this placed within the tradition of asceticism and a realism about fallen nature. Opus Dei has always emphasized frequent confession and the ordinary means of penance. But the focus remains on the goodness of creation and ordinary life, not upon the heart-rending spectacle of human depravity, as it is in Lutheran and Calvinist traditions. Nor was tins a cheap optimism on Msgr. Escrivá's part. He lived through the Spanish Civil War, in which death by firing squad was one of the more merciful fates that priests suffered. All this is innocuous or even charming, but Msgr. Escrivá faced opposition from the start. What did Catholics find objectionable in his approach? While I was a student at Providence College, I received an unbiased view of the controversies of the Jesuits and Dominicans. De Auxiliis (the controversy on grace) was of course the high spot, but another area in which the two orders enjoyed a good fight was spirituality. The Jesuits opined that the laity were bound by the Ten Commandments, but not by the counsels, which were reserved for those in religion. The Dominicans argued that the call to evangelical perfection was addressed to all Christians, not just the religious. The Second Vatican Council settled the matter in favor of the Dominicans: all are called to holiness. But that was not the opinion in Spain in the 1920s. A priest who was trying to help laymen to live a life of holiness was seen as somehow subversive (probably a Freemason, the suspicious opponents snorted into their sherry), and provoked opposition. Originally Opus Dei was confined only to men. In all of Western Christianity religion is a feminine affair, and women are more active in church life than men. Msgr. Escrivá, however, realized that appealing to men through their work was a possible way of reaching them. That is, he could show them that their worldly work could be a way of pleasing God, and that piety would not convert them into sacristy hangers-on or sanctuary drones, but would help them to be responsible in their work. He stressed the divine filiation, the fact that grace truly converts us into sons of God. Nowadays, however, it is not reactionary prelates in Spain who dislike Opus Dei, but the trendy set. Something in Opus Dei provokes bitter hatred and wild accusations among liberals who ignore such truly right-wing movements as the Lefebvrites. Why does Opus Dei provoke them?... Opus Dei encourages the Rosary, novenas, and benediction—practices which were universal only a generation ago. If there is a lesson to be learned from Church history, it is perhaps that the traditional forms of religious life—the Jesuits, the Xaverians, the various foundations of sisters—are not adequate to deal with problems of the modern Church, and that some new form of life, perhaps Opus Dei, perhaps something else, is necessary to preserve the essence of Catholic life in a new organizational form. Walsh is correct in seeing that Opus Dei is trying to maintain some Christian customs that are being given up elsewhere in the Church. Opus Dei is trying to help its members lead a life of pre-Enlightenment, pre-Modernist spirituality while working in the world. This is very difficult. Not only are there the ordinary temptations of life, there is a constant danger of compartmentalizing life so that religion and ordinary life co-exist but do not mingle. Msgr. Escrivá was well aware of the dangers, and addressed them in his book of aphorisms, The Way. As a criticism of Opus Dei, Walsh's book cannot lay claim to an ounce of intellectual seriousness. He accuses Opus Dei of legalism, and then devotes over half the book to canon law minutiae that he admits even the Vatican rarely takes seriously. He repeats every rumor and whisper, and asserts the resulting farrago of misrepresentations and lies has historical value. Opus Dei grants vast freedom to its members, which causes it to attract eccentrics who sometimes go off the deep end and must be asked to leave. Walsh has sought out unstable ex-members who could list the strengths and weaknesses of Opus Dei. Even Walsh calls one of them "paranoid"; and when even they don't agree with his elaborate conspiracy theories, he dismisses them as naïve. Most troubling about Walsh's criticisms is what they reveal about that part of the Church that identifies itself with liberation theology, creation theology, and the like. When one does something fairly innocuous that arouses a violent reaction from those who disagree with him, it is usually a sign of bad conscience on the part of the objectors. One reason for the criticism is that liberals see Opus Dei as a sign that they have chosen the wrong path, that the way of true renewal lies in fidelity to prayer and to the Church, not in the pursuit of theological fads and leftist fantasies. Still, that hardly seems sufficient cause for hysteria. If Opus Dei is anachronistic, it will wither away. If it is but an eddy on the river of progress, it will disappear. Liberals could take the attitude of Gamaliel and say that if it is of God, it will flourish; if it is not, it will die out. There seems to be a tender spot on the liberal soul that the mere existence of Opus Dei has touched and galled. My wife suspects it is simply the emphasis on frequent confession—we sinners hate being reminded that we are sinners, even in a mild and gentle way. I think that is part of the reason for the dislike of Opus Dei, but I suspect the root reason for the animosity has a specific historical cause. More than anything else Opus Dei is a challenge to clericalism—the tendency to identify priests and religious with the church. Msgr. Escrivá had some harsh things to say about the "professional Catholics" of Franco's Spain, who found worldly advantage in the Catholic faith. [AND BY ALL ACCOUNTS THIS WAS A FAIRLY COMMON PHENOMENON IN PRE-HUMANAE VITAE IRELAND, TOO - HIB] But clericalism is endemic among those who regard themselves as progressives or liberals. A clericalist sees the life of the Church as centered on the sacristy and the chancery. The clerical life is one of exercising power over the benighted. The vocation of the post-Vatican II laity, in the updated clericalist mindset, is to participate in this way of life. Therefore a Catholic is most a Christian when he is engaged in a clerical or quasi-clerical activity. This is the point of conflict. Where a clericalist progressive wants the laity to participate as much as possible in clerical activities, and therefore wants the laity to take over the functions of the priest, Opus Dei sees the vocation of the lay Christian as primarily in the world. It appeals not only to domestics and farmers, but also to professional people, who have a sense that their secular work is important and want to make it pleasing to God. That is why Opus Dei has had surprising success among university types, such as Harvard medical and law graduates, and Berkeley and Wellesley graduates; and why it provokes the envious attacks of the clericalists, who are disappointed that the professional women that Opus Dei attracts—doctors and physicists—are not clamoring to be ordained priests and share in the exalted life of the clergy. Clericalism is a very serious deformation of Christianity. The person afflicted by it sees the clerical vocation not as one of service and sacrifice, but of power. I fear the problem is that clericalist liberals are scarcely Christian at all. Walsh finds it deeply shocking that Msgr. Escrivá wrote: "Wherever you see a poor, wooden Cross, alone, uncared-for, worthless . . . and without a Corpus, don't forget that that Cross is your Cross—the everyday hidden Cross, unattractive and unconsoling—the Cross that is waiting for the Corpus it lacks: and that Corpus must be you." Msgr. Escrivá is simply telling us to follow the call of Jesus: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Walsh thinks that there can be a Christianity without the cross. What Walsh inadvertently reveals is that what is troubling the Church is not dissent or even heresy, but nihilism. This is harsh, but liberals, having succumbed to various forms of soft nihilism, see the key to life as seizing and exercising power. [THIS IS SPOT ON IMHO - HIB] Feminist theology is endlessly preoccupied with power. Walsh, a librarian, looks through a keyhole into the Church and thinks he sees an orgy of power politics from which he is excluded. He can't imagine that Christians, even those who occupy positions of authority, do not lust after power, but seek only to obey God. The kenosis, the self-emptying of God in the Incarnation and Passion is incomprehensible to them. Therefore, any movement that stresses mortification and self-abnegation, showing that it is not confined to a few ascetics but should characterize every Christian's life, is a rebuke to the most critical decision that liberals have made: that is, to fill the void their infidelity has created by seeking and worshipping power. END
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 30, 2014 21:53:55 GMT
Have been reading THE MAN IN THE VILLA TEVERE, an account of St Josemaria's later years in Rome, written from the Opus Dei perspective. It is somewhat disconcerting that it is written as a collection of anecdotes rather than a consecutive narrative, so it's difficult to get a sense of development. It is also clear that some of it is written in response to accusations levelled at Mgr Escriva by former members of the Work who turned against it, but since this is never spelled out it's a bit unclear how this operates unless you are already familiar with the accusations. (One example, which seems convincing, is where the book explicitly mentions the claim that Escriva considered joining the Greek Orthodox Church after Vatican II and states that this derives from a misunderstanding - genuine or deliberate - of a suggestion that some Opus Dei priests might transfer from the Latin Rite to the Maronite Rite for the purpose of missionary work in the Middle East.) That said, it does give a sense of the sheer hard work and austerity that went into setting up the OD HQ in Rome over many years, and there is a real sense of St Josemaria as a father figure to his followers (he suggested that his tombstone should include the inscription GENUIT FILIOS ET FILIAS - He BEgat Sons and Daughters - though this was disregarded after his death). I particularly like the reminiscence by one member of how she woke up one morning with a pimple on her nose. Everyone else whom she met that morning told her "You have a pimple on your nose". Escriva said nothing but shortly afterwards sent her some ointment "for the pimple".
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 2, 2015 21:03:57 GMT
As St Josemaria Escriva is this month's saint I thought I'd bump up this thread as well - discussions of Escriva and Opus Dei can go here or on the SAINTS thread. A couple of ideas: (1) Opus Dei and Escriva are not responsible for every crank or influence-peddler who may be attracted to it. The Legion of Mary also has a fairly long record of attracting cranks and dubious people (some of Ireland's best-known Marxists learned organising through the Legion Handbook); that does not mean Frank Duff, or the Legion as such, is responsible for their antics (though a tendency to attract a particular sort of crank might suggest a weakness that needs to be addressed). (2) One impression I get is that Escriva and OD had an element of self-conscious manliness in their spirituality to offset some of the "feminine" traits of pre-Vatican II Catholic spirituality and this is part of the emphasis on divine fatherhood (though Escriva also had a strong Marian devotion). This would be one of the OD features which appealed to Leon Podles (see a few posts back).
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 14, 2016 20:41:03 GMT
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