Matthew Fox tries to "blast" Opus Dei in an article in Tikkun:
Matthew Fox discusses the infiltration of the Opus Dei in American society.
Ooh. "Infiltration". Let's use a good scary word just in time for Halloween. Or would that be "Samhain" to you, Matt?
The pet club of the late Pope John Paul II and the current Pope Benedict XVI, Opus Dei, has gone through a rough week. First the release of the film Da Vinci Code, which, granted, is fiction but which integrates some of the realities of Opus Dei including its penchant for housing strange characters and fostering body-beating ascetic spiritual techniques all in an effort to render fascism fashionable, and allow its members to circulate unencumbered in powerful places of European politics, economics and religion (to say nothing of American media and governmental hot spots).
Funny thing about that Da Vinci Code thing, isn't it? It bombed and gave Opus Dei the best publicity possible.
Opus Dei allows its lay members to "circulate unencumbered"? I should hope so. Members of the Work are part of the laity and have all the associated rights.
Opus Dei is the club, remember, that the current and past papacy has substituted for base communities and liberation theology in Latin American. The latter had as its motto, a "preferential option for the poor." Opus Dei might have as its motto, "a preferential option for the rich and powerful." Opus Dei is a club that has infiltrated the American CIA, FBI, Supreme Court, media and now the bishopry, where four dioceses in the United States (most recently that of Kansas City) are now headed by Opus Dei bishops just as numerous dioceses in Latin America are so "ed." (The greatest spy in American history, FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who got more American agents and double agents murdered than anyone is U.S. history, was a practicing Opus Dei member who hid for years in the FBI when it was headed by -- you guessed it! -- an Opus Dei chief.)
The Work replaced liberation theology? That's funny, I thought Opus Dei had been around since 1928 and liberation theology was circa 1955.
As for "preferential option for the rich" - hah! I'm a member of the Work and I'm just getting by by the skin of my teeth with six kids and three private school tuitions (No, none of the kids go to schools operated by the Work, though, that would be nice some day), a broken tv, a couch that just collapsed, an ice maker that just went on the fritz, and many other small inconveniences that just will have to wait due to lack of funds.
"Infiltrate". There's that word again.
There is no getting around the fact that Hanssen was a scum bag, but that was hardly caused by living the spirit of the Work -- exactly the opposite. Fox repeats the canard that Louis Freeh is a member of Opus Dei. This has been proved false in many places, the most recent being Freeh's own
memoirs.
A second embarrassment for Opus Dei this week was the following headline: "Italian Opus Dei Banker Savagely Murdered." Gianmario Roveraro, coming home from an Opus Dei meeting in Italy, was kidnapped, murdered and chopped into pieces about 30 km from Parma. Opus Dei's biggest concern is secrecy and this unfortunate happening, like the movie Da Vinci Code, has shed some unwanted light on the organization.
Turns out that seventy-year-old Roveraro has been implicated in Europe's largest corporate scandal regarding the collapse and fraudulent bankruptcy of the food and dairy conglomerate, Parmalat, which went out in 2003 with a debt of 23.6 billion dollars "the largest European corporate failure in history. Said one Italian news magazine, the case involved "rivers of money, opaque interests and shady figures." Smells like the Opus Dei I know.
I really do not know anything about Roveraro. I don't know whether he was a member of the Work or not -- most people who go to evenings of recollection are not members of the Work. I also do not know whether he was involved in anything shady or not. It doesn't really matter. Someone who does not live up to an ideal does nothing to diminish the greatest of the ideal. Anytime you see "Opus Dei member" in a news article try substituting "Catholic" as in "Catholics were part of Franco's government".
When I was in Frankfurt a few years ago I had tea downtown with a journalist. He said to me, "See all those new skyscrapers surrounding us here? They are all financial headquarters since the center of European banking is moving from Switzerland to Frankfurt because of the Euro. At the top of each of those skyscrapers is ... Opus Dei."
This is just bizarre. Matt: just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. What was in that tea anyway?
The third bit of bad news for poor old Opus Dei is the Mel Gibson "I am drunk ... with anti-Semitism" case. Here is a self-proclaimed theologian and poster boy for Opus Dei, having served up the sadistic, fascistic, bloody, gory, anti-Semitic pseudo-religious film The Passion of the Christ (see my review on my web page, www.matthewfox.org) that is a veritable parody of Jesus' teachings (Gibson's PR kit mailed to all Christian parishes in the country led with bold headlines: "Dying was Jesus' reason for Living"), and now informing all who would listen to his drunken tirade that "all wars are caused by the Jews."
Why are people so surprised at the ugly words that came out of the mouth of drunken Gibson? Given his fascist political leanings and his religious yearnings for a godly punitive Father, and his membership in Opus Dei, whose founder (rushed into canonization in record time by the last and present pope) actually praised Hitler, why were people so thoroughly shocked?
Matt, did you do your homework? It has been widely reported that Mel Gibson is
not a member of Opus Dei. Gibson is not even, technically, a Roman Catholic -- he is a schismatic. As for St Josemaria Escriva praising Hitler, this is simply scurrilous.
The trouble is, many investigating units in the media are themselves riddled with Opus Dei influence. Check out Chris Matthews' so-called ÂHardball program on CNN, which ran a cuddly one-hour show on a sweet Roman Catholic Opus Dei couple just a week after yielding to Opus Dei pressure to cancel a theologian who was promised thirty minutes of interview time on his program to provide an alternative view of Pope Ratzinger. Is it time that someone investigated Chris Matthews' love of right wing Catholicism? The least he can do is rename his program from "Hardball" to "No Balls."
And what about the Supreme Court judges who are Opus Dei? Is the number two? Or three? Or four? Won't someone please investigate? (Come to think of it, isn't that the job of our senators who are supposed to examine Supreme Court candidates?) And what about the senator from Kansas, Sam Brownback, the cheerleader for a theocratic America, who is an out-of-the-closet convert to Opus Dei Catholicism? He deserves some attention also.
Wrong again. Not a single member of the Supreme Court is a member of Opus Dei. As far as I know, no senators or members of congress are members of the Work -- maybe that is what's wrong with the Supreme Court, Senate and Congress? Matt, while you are investigating who is and who isn't a member of Opus Dei, why don't you find out who is Catholic -- or Jewish for that matter. Isn't religious freedom one of the building blocks of our country?
Yes, with Opus Dei bankers being murdered and chopped up; with Opus Dei Hollywood producers (I wonder who got the largess of Gibson's $600 million in profits from his pseudo-Christian film) drunk and spouting deeply held anti-Semitic epitaphs; with exposes on Opus Dei bishops like that of Kansas City (the first thing he did was to fire every church worker in the diocese's officeÂand then swear that his seminarians would all go to the right wing so-called Catholic Ave Maria college put up by right wing owner of Domino's pizza in a strange Florida town where everyone must be a right wing Catholic); with Opus Dei senators preaching a theocratic America; and with the film Da Vinci Code beginning to tell some of the secrets of this silly but dangerous and powerful club, this has not been a good season for Opus Dei. Its covers are being blown open. The secrets are seeping out.
But when you have the amount of money they have and the amount of "friends" in high, high places (like the Vatican and the Supreme Court and mainline media as starters), it's hard to count them out. Better to stay alert and ring bells of warning when you see them coming.
Yes, and let's all pray for Mel Gibson's conversion. Then maybe some of his $600 million ill gotten gains from sick religious filming will go to authentically spiritual causes ... one can hope, right?
All these lies, character assassination, unsupported claims, misinformation, and downright hatred from a
website that aims to "heal, love, and repair the world"?
