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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Cafeteria Catholicism By Antonio C. Abaya Written April 11, 2006 For the Standard Today, April 13 issue If memory serves, the phrase �Cafeteria Catholicism� first became fashionable more than 20 years ago, when it was becoming obvious that tens of millions of otherwise conscientious Roman Catholic couples in North America, Europe and Australia-New Zealand were routinely disregarding admonitions from the Vatican against the use of artificial methods of birth control. They were consequently accused of practicing Cafeteria Catholicism, meaning, they were choosing only those elements of Roman Catholic doctrines and practices that were personally acceptable or convenient to them, and disregarding in good conscience those that were not. By 2006, those tens of millions may have become hundreds of millions and now include Roman Catholic couples in Latin America and the Philippines, especially among the upper and middle strata of society. Among Protestants, of course, that phenomenon has been around for centuries as the Protestant Revolt, started by Martin Luther in the 16th century, splintered into literally hundreds, even thousands, of competing sects and denominations. Among Roman Catholics, it is no longer on the matter of artificial methods of birth control alone that the Vatican has effectively lost control over vast segments of the faithful. There are also the issues of pre-marital sex, divorce, abortion, women priests, homosexuality, Church support for tyrants (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco etc) the dysfunctional behavior of some priests and bishops and, I suspect, even such basic doctrinal issues as the divinity of Jesus, the infallibility of the Pope, and the relevance of such �mysteries� as the Holy Trinity and Transubstantiation. The empty Roman Catholic (as well as Protestant) churches in Europe, except for gawking tourists, the dwindling number of young men studying for the priesthood, and the phenomenal increase in membership in Born-Again sects, especially in traditionally Roman Catholic Latin America�.all point to a Crisis of Faith that the institutional Church is facing. The ultra-conservative, back-to-fundamentals backlash represented by the Opus Dei does not appeal to the vast majority in the Roman Catholic middle class, especially since the Opus Dei principally addresses the very wealthy, and additionally has a distinct anti-feminine bias not unlike that of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Shia theocracy in Iran and the Wahhabist misogynism in Saudi Arabia. For the vast majority of the Roman Catholic middle class, the unauthorized Cafeteria is not only open, it carries a much wider menu than ever before. The phenomenal success of Dan Brown�s novel The Da Vinci Code, even among Roman Catholics, and the wide publicity enjoyed by the current Gospel of Judas and the 1982 non-fiction opus Holy Blood, Holy Grail (on which The Da Vinci Code is based) attest to this wider menu available in the Cafeteria, which many of the faithful are now, in good faith, spiritually partaking in. This has all to do with access to information, as I explained when film critic Lito Zulueta and I were interviewed by Ricky Carandang and Pia Hontiveros on ANC. (The interview will be telecast on April 13 and 14). In the first 1,000 years of Christianity, virtually only monks and priests knew how to read and write. Most everyone else was illiterate and ignorant and was totally dependent on the monks and priests for information on and explanation of the world around them. The opening of universities in Europe starting in the 12th century, the invention of movable-type printing in Germany in the 15th, the spread of universal education starting in the 19th �.progressively democratized to some extent the portals of knowledge. But it was not until the invention of the computer in the 20th and the explosive growth of the Internet in the 21st that access to information has become truly universal and affordable to almost everyone. One can tap any subject matter into the search engines of Yahoo or Google and be deluged with access to literally thousands of articles on that subject. It is no longer necessary to buy and own hundreds of books, or to consult voluminous encyclopedias in often inaccessible or incomplete public libraries, to have access to information. All one needs is a computer wired to the Internet. One does not even have to own a computer. For as little as P100, one can buy a computer card and enjoy 20 hours of access to the Net in an internet caf� or at a friend�s computer. In the face of such an avalanche of information, the idea of a One True Faith, once propagated and defended by the handful of literate members in the medieval fiefdom, is becoming tenuous, to say the least. Hundreds of millions in the Christian world own, or have access to, computers, giving many of them the means to access selectively those �articles of faith� that they are comfortable with, intellectually, emotionally and psychologically. As I said during that interview, if one were to survey a thousand members of the faithful and ask them which of, say, ten �articles of faith� or teachings of the Church they still accept or believe in, chances are that one would get different percentages for each of the ten. This is the selection process going on in the Cafeteria, and it cannot be stopped short of burning all computers, together with their owners. So instead of One True Faith, what we are in fact experiencing are tens of millions of True Personal Faiths, each one somewhat different from, yet just as valid as, every other. This is the ancient heresy of Indifferentism. But who is going to say that this is not an enrichment of people�s spiritual lives? ***** NEW ARTICLES in www.tapatt.org. The following articles were emailed to us and are archived in the Reference Material section of the website. The notations in parentheses indicate the sub-section in which each article can be located. All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Philippine Politics, by Anonymous. A take-off on the bestseller by Robert Fulghum. (On Filipinos and the Philippines). Australia Gets into the Map, by Anonymous, from www.SatireWire.com. How a continent down under got drunk one evening and woke up in the North Atlantic. (On Australia and the Australians). . Dissecting �The Da Vinci Code� an interview dated Feb. 23, 2006 (www.zenit.org ) with Mark Shea, co-author of �The Da Vinci Deception,� who believes that the novel �was written with the express intention of destroying faith in Jesus Christ and replacing it with neo-pagan goddess worship.� (On The Da Vinci Code). Not a Clash of Civilizations, by Arab-American Psychologist Wafa Sultan, interviewed on Al Jazeera TV on Feb. 21, 2006. �The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations�.It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality.� (On Muslims and Islam). The Philippines: exhausted by coups and protest, by Sam Knight, in London Times Online, Feb. 24, 2006, who describes the Philippines as a country confused and exhausted by drama. �The truth is that there is no obvious alternative to Arroyo, there isn�t anything coming round the bend. So a lot of people are just staying at home today, turning off their televisions.� (On EDSA People Power). Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles in www.tapatt.org OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Cafeteria Catholicism� On your article on Cafeteria Catholicism: Christ summarized his teachings: Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Christianity is a religion of love. Preached by an itinerant preacher-carpenter in a remote part of the Roman empire, this new religion somehow took hold, and in three hundred years, supplanted the established pagan religion of the empire. It developed its own imperial rules, aping the imperial edicts. The essential message of love somehow got buried under all the rules and rubrics. Luther and Protestantism tried to get out of this heavy burden of rules and emphasized the core message of love and salvation. So when you talk about Cafeteria Catholicism, you are talking about all these rules. Which rules are being followed and which are not. However, there is always a continuum of conformity to the rules of any organization, be it the family, the community, a political party, a civic group. Some follow the rules more than others. Some children obey their parents more than others. Some Catholics believe more than others. So Cafeteria Catholicism, though coined just recently, has always been around. Conformity is always a continuum, from the most conforming to the least conforming. Fred Montenegro, [email protected] April 14, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww In the fifties, we also had a phrase..."Catholic but..." which I heard being said by Jesuits priests whenever our religion comes up for discussion. Tocayo Tony Joaquin, [email protected] Daly City, California, April 14, 2006 *How about having a blogsite about or concerning your column? Just an idea. Did you visit mine (please see below) http://myjoaquinfamily.blogspot.com/ wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww The only excellent news we hear these days. Starbucks Catholicism. Mormons will start drinking coffee when they own Starbucks. Bitnews (but not so new): Spain has 16% atheists vs. only 8% for the great US of A. Maybe we should look at our former mother country, once removed, more often. Ross Tipon, [email protected] Baguio City, April 15, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Friend, As a great admirer of Tony Abaya, I felt disappointed about the way you describe Opus Dei in this article. I would have expected more than the two often used street description of the Work. In other words a bit more research rather than the tired description, Time and others often use. Needless to say, this cannot be discussed via e:mail, perhaps one of these days we ail have time for a deeper discussion on the subject! Happy Easter! JayJay Calero, [email protected] April 15, 2006 P.S. I feel that something indeed happen and not so "Funny on your way to Communism"! Looking forward to discussing this. Warmest Regards Jay wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Mr. Abaya: Many if not most of the propositions, doctrines and received beliefs of the One True Faith must yield inevitably to rationality in this our century, the Age of Enlightenment. This Age of Enlightenment is proving to be barren ground for the One True Faith, which for two thousand years has thrived on ignorance, obscurantism and unquestioning obedience. Mariano Patalinjug, [email protected] Yonkers, New York, April 15, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Tony A , I am enjoying - learning a lot from the articles you write. The more reason, I hope to meet and know you. Perhaps, even hopefully, get some perfusion from your knowledge-intellect-------------.I do not really know you at all. I wonder, I think you must have a C.V. or a biosketch. Happy Easter to you and yours. Tony Oposa, [email protected] April 14, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww As a happily self confessed Cafeteria Catholic myself, I do not find the term derogatory. It implies choice, nourishment, modernity... Great article. Carlos Celdran, [email protected] April 16, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww I hope you are okay, Mr. Abaya Well, you are probably resting. It is holy week there, after all. I was watching TV last night. I think we have become a Catholic society of unthinking fanatics. I don't think the Catholics in Rome and in Latin America are doing what the ignorant Catholics are doing there. Cesar Torres, [email protected] April 13, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Lovely article, so well put, Tony! You send a "Examine what you Believe" call, that so many find it easier to ignore. Jack Sherman, [email protected] April 15, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Thank you for a very interesting article on Cafeteria Catholicism. We have a counterpart here in Colorado whom our parish priest refers to as PACE Catholics, who only go to church on four special days: Passion (Sunday) Ash (Wednesday) Christmas Easter Might I add that PACE Catholicism is extremely rampant all over the 50 states, sadly enough! But the good result is that the church collections sometimes triple on the P, C, and E days. There's no tithing on Ash Wednesday, so the "faithful" get a freebie. Rome Farol, [email protected] Highlands Ranch, Colorado, April 18, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Thanks Mr. Abaya for your challenging article on Cafeteria Catholicism. Challenging because it makes us Catholics be more rational and serious in what we believe in and not merely to say "amen" to everything our leaders tell us. There's basically no conflict between reason and faith, although faith is our ultimate norm for human reasoning is only a tiny reflection of the Truth of the Mystery we hold onto. On the other hand, human rationality, especially when it is held accountable to no authority but to itself in the modernist sense, can be faulty and becloud the Truth. I agree with the Jesuit priest (of the second batch of discussants in the ANC) that just as there is democratization of knowledge in the internet there can also be democratization of garbage. By the way, you and I know that Cafeteria Catholicism started and thrives in the modernist West with its dominant concept of individual autonomy. In its cultural context I think what the institution should do is to listen to and re-root the Christian message in this context without compromising its foundational elements. Lastly I do not think there is crisis of faith in the institution; crisis of a particular tradition in the church perhaps would be a more accurate depiction. Levy Lenaria, [email protected] April 18, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww The following article was emailed to us by Millet S. Castro, [email protected]. Jesus' Passion Is Being Manipulated By the Zenit News Service April 14, 2006 VATICAN CITY, APRIL 14, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The Pontifical Household preacher warns that truth of Christ's passion and death is being subjected to media manipulation. In the presence of Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Basilica, the preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in his Good Friday homily, quoted St. Paul. "The time is sure to come," the Capuchin said, "when people will not accept sound teaching, but their ears will be itching for anything new and they will collect themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes; and then they will shut their ears to the truth and will turn to myths." "This word of Scripture -- and in a special way the reference to the itching for anything new -- is being realized in a new and impressive way in our days," lamented the pontifical preacher. "While we celebrate here the memory of the passion and death of the Savior, millions of people are seduced by the clever writing of ancient legends to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was never crucified," he noted. Father Cantalamessa mentioned a "best seller" today in the United States, "an edition of the 'Gospel of Thomas,'" presented as the gospel that "spares us the crucifixion, makes the resurrection unnecessary, and does not present us with a God named Jesus." "More profitable" "People who would never bother reading a responsible analysis of the traditions about how Jesus was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead are fascinated by the report of some 'new insight' to the effect he was not crucified or did not died, especially if the subsequent career involved running off with Mary Magdalene to India," alerted the Capuchin, quoting biblical scholar Raymond Brown. "These theories demonstrate that in relation to the passion of Jesus, despite the popular maxim, fiction is stranger than fact -- and often, intentionally or not, more profitable," continues the biblicist's quotation. "There is much talk about Judas' betrayal, without realizing that it is being repeated," said Father Cantalamessa. "Christ is being sold again, no longer to the leaders of the Sanhedrin for thirty denarii, but to editors and booksellers for billions of denarii." The Pope's preacher warned that this "speculative wave" is unbridled and, in fact, will grow "with the imminent release of a certain film." At the height of the commemoration of the Lord's Passion in the basilica, Father Cantalamessa said that such topics "would not merit being addressed in this place and on this day, but we cannot allow the silence of believers to be mistaken for embarrassment and that the good faith -- or foolishness? -- of millions of people be crassly manipulated by the media, without raising a cry of protest, not only in the name of faith, but also of common sense and healthy reason." The "fantasies" mentioned have an explanation, concluded the Pontifical Household preacher: "We are in the age of the media and the media are more interested in novelty than in truth." ZE06041401 =================================================== ZENIT is an International News Agency. To receive ZENIT News Services by e-mail, FREE Subscription at: http://www.zenit.org/english/subscribe.html wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww The following article was emailed to us by Mariano Patalinjug, [email protected]. The Gospel of Judas By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor April 14, 2006 When the Rev. John Buehrens gives his Easter sermon this Sunday, he'll borrow a page from an unlikely source: the Gospel of Judas. The gnostic text, unveiled by scholars with fanfare last week, portrays Jesus Christ as an enigmatic guru who venerates Judas, teaching him secret accounts of creation and approving his imminent betrayal. Many Christians might find that offensive, or, like Mr. Buehrens of Unitarian First Parish in Needham, Mass., silly. But as an emblem of Christianity's long tradition of dissenting voices, the text is for him an inspiration nonetheless. "An awful lot of what passes for orthodoxy today is something Jesus would have despised," Buehrens says, noting Christian support for "imperialism and militarism." As a challenge to orthodoxy in its time, he says, the Judas story is "a reminder that no single interpretation of the Christ event can exhaust the spiritual implications." Across the country, observers say, the Gospel of Judas is striking a chord with progressive Christians. Not so much for its heretical theology, but as an ancient symbol of their modern mission to update what defines faithfulness. It's an approach that's winning approval from scholars, who say Christianity has always attracted diverse beliefs. But others worry that this revisionism misrepresents time-tested truths. Modern theologians attracted to the Judas gospel are reminding today's dissenters that they follow a long, legitimate tradition. At last week's press conference, four academics used either "diverse" or "diversity" to describe what the text reveals about the beliefs and attitudes of the early church. If the church was so varied in its early days, they suggest, then contemporary Christians can perhaps accept the growing diversity of beliefs and lifestyles in their religious communities as well. "The Christianity of the ancient world was even more diverse than it is today," says Bart Ehrman, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a former fundamentalist Christian turned self-described "happy agnostic" - someone who claims it cannot be known if God exists. "My hope is that when people see how diverse Christianity was in its origins, [they] will be a little bit more tolerant of diversity in Christianity today." That may be easier said than done. One reason: many of early Christianity's most steadfast figures rejected gnostic teachings as heresy - that is, false representations of Jesus' life and of God's nature. (Gnostic doctrines assert rival divine beings and emphasize salvation through secret knowledge.) Although heresy is seldom a matter of public debate in the 21st century, the problem of embracing all beliefs that purport to be "Christian" persists. To think that noncanonical texts legitimizes diversity today "is to ignore the fact that that diversity was not accepted [in the early church]," says Ronald Simkins, director of the Kripke Center for the Study of Religion & Society at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. "It's a naive use of history." Adjustments to Easter service At the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Paul in Boston, the congregation has stripped Holy Week observances of traditional content that strikes members as offensive. On Palm Sunday last weekend, for instance, parishioners heard an adapted Passion narrative that removes biblical language seen as blaming Jews for Jesus' crucifixion. And the hundreds who observe Good Friday won't pray for those who haven't yet received "the Gospel of Christ" but for those untouched by "the grace of God" - a new gesture of respect for the Muslims who use the church for Friday worship. The goal of these adjustments, says Cathedral Dean Jep Streit, is to reflect in practice who Jesus is and what he represents. And that message-refining process, he says, echoes the debate between orthodox believers and dissenters centuries ago. "We have this give and take through the first two or three centuries [after Christ's birth], and it continues today, as it should," he says. In Atlanta, the Rev. Chip Carson plans to proclaim Jesus' triumph over sin and death when he celebrates Easter at First Metropolitan Community Church of Atlanta, a church with predominantly gay membership. But he won't provide the traditional explanation, which says God required a sacrificial atonement for human sin, because he prefers a "love-based theology rather than a fear-based theology." "Whoever is in power decides what's heresy," Carson says. "We don't tell people what to believe. We only encourage them to have closer contact with God." Who defines what's Christian? Yet the same standards hold from age to age, regardless of who's in charge, according to Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. "You can have disagreements about doctrinal interpretations of particular issues - that's why we have Catholics, and we have Presbyterians, and we have Baptists, and we have Methodists.... But if you deny the resurrection [or other core teachings], well, according to historic Christianity, you are beyond the pale." For some the debate isn't about theology; it's about freedom of conscience. The Rev. Jayne Oasin, a social justice officer for the Episcopal Church, USA., says that "to consider there to be only one truth is to me a form of oppression." wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww The following was emailed to us by an anonymous reader. The Ways of Opus Dei By David Van Biema, TIME Magazine April 16, 2006 IT'S NOT THE VILLAIN THAT THE DA VINCI CODE SETS IT UP TO BE. BUT IT HAS BEEN A MYSTERY. AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL GROUP IN CATHOLICISM In early March, Elizabeth Heil, an arts-administration graduate student at Columbia University, was watching previews in a movie theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side when she cracked up inappropriately. The trailer was for the movie The Da Vinci Code, directed by Ron Howard and scheduled to open May 19, and it featured a grim-faced fellow uttering Christ's name repeatedly and then--wham!--whaling away at his already bloodied back with an Inquisition-issue cat-o'-nine-tails. It was not an intentionally funny scene. But Heil, who was familiar with the book on which the movie is based, recognized the figure onscreen as the albino assassin Silas, a fanatical, murderous member of a bizarre Catholic group called Opus Dei, and couldn't suppress a giggle. She is a member of the actual Opus Dei. "This is so outlandish," she recalls thinking. "I wish we were that interesting." The Da Vinci Code's Opus Dei--a powerful, ultraconservative Roman Catholic faction riddled with sadomasochistic ritual, one of whose members commits serial murder in pursuit of a church - threatening secret - is obviously not reflective of the real-life organization (although author Dan Brown's website states the portrayal was "based on numerous books written about Opus Dei as well as on my own personal interviews"). Yet in casting the group as his heavy, Brown was as shrewd as someone setting up an innocent man for a crime. You don't choose the head of the Rotary. You single out the secretive guy at the end of the block with the off-putting tics, who perhaps has a couple of incidents in his past that will hinder an effective defense. That's not Heil, but it's not a bad sketch of the organization to which she belongs. In its 78 years, Opus Dei has been a rumor magnet. Successful and secretive, it has been accused of using lavish riches and carefully cultivated clout to do everything from propping up Francisco Franco's Spanish dictatorship to pushing through its founder's premature sainthood to planting conservative minions in governments from Warsaw to Washington. Brown's treatment of the group had seemed to represent an untoppable high-sewage mark--that is, until the movie trailer appeared. Says Juan Manuel Mora, director of Opus Dei's communications department in Rome: "Reading a print version is one thing. Seeing the color images is another." Yet Mora and his colleagues have inaugurated a countertrend, in part by breaking their organization's historical silence. They spoke at length on record to John Allen, a respected print and television Vatican commentator, and offered him unprecedented access to Opus Dei records and personnel. In November he responded with Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church (Doubleday), probably the most informed and sympathetic treatment of the group ever penned by an outsider. Opus has since talked freely to other journalists, including TIME's. But Opus' public relations offensive hasn't quite managed to close the gap between what critics say it is about and its own version of the story. On one side there is "Octopus Dei," or, as the current issue of Harper's magazine puts it, "to a great extent ... an authoritarian and semi-clandestine enterprise that manages to infiltrate its indoctrinated technocrats, politicos and administrators into the highest levels of the state." On the other is the portrait painted by Opus' U.S. vicar Thomas Bohlin, who sat for several hours with TIME at his group's Manhattan headquarters. Opus, he explained, is just a teaching entity, a kind of advanced school for Catholic spiritual formation with minimal global coordination or input as to how members and sympathizers apply what they learn. "You know Dale Carnegie courses?" he asked. "Businesses send their people there to learn to speak better, to organize--they teach all these kinds of things. People go there because they get something out of it, and then when they graduate, they don't represent Dale Carnegie." James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit publication America who has written critically about Opus, offers a middle ground between Dale Carnegie and the octopus: "Opus Dei provides members with an overarching spirituality for their life," he suggests. "It's an ongoing relationship that helps buttress and further shape the thought of people who are already conservative Catholics. That's a powerful symbiosis, and there's a personal connection between members, whether they're housewives or politicians. It's not an evil empire, but that doesn't mean there aren't serious issues that need to be addressed." A first journalistic pass, by Allen or TIME, cannot fully resolve all those issues. But it can answer some of the questions that have long dogged the organization, and it may also show how The Da Vinci Code could end up helping Opus Dei. HOW DID IT START? On Oct. 2, 1928, a 26-year-old Spanish priest named Josemaria Escriva was visited by a new vision of Catholic spirituality: a movement of pious laypeople who would, by prayerful contemplation and the dedication of their labor to Christ, extend the holiness of church on Sunday into their everyday work life. Escriva's title for the movement was a literal description--Opus Dei means "the work of God"--and his ambition was correspondingly large. He saw Opus eventually acting as "an intravenous injection [of holiness] in the bloodstream of society." It was controversial almost from birth. Opus threatened the era's Catholic clericalism, which privileged priests, monks and nuns over the laity, and Escriva was called a heretic. In the 1950s, several prominent Opus Dei members joined Franco's dictatorial but church-supportive regime in Spain, inaugurating speculation about the group's political leanings. The church's Second Vatican Council (1962-65) seemed to catch up with Escriva's idea of lay activism--but his rigid adherence to Catholic teaching put his system at odds with liberals who accorded the laity a wide freedom of conscience. He himself was a polarizing figure, humble and grandiose, avuncular and ferocious. Opus grew slowly but steadily, remaining below the radar of most Catholics. That all changed in 1982. Pope John Paul II, also a creative traditionalist interested in labor and faith, granted Escriva's wish that Opus be a "personal prelature," a global quasi-diocese, able in some cases to leapfrog local archbishops and deal directly with Rome. Almost simultaneously the Pope publicly constricted the competing, more liberal Jesuit order. A perception that Opus' ecclesiastical power knew no limits peaked with Escr�va's 1992 beatification, a brief (for those days) 17 years after his death. Faultfinders, notes Allen, claimed that the judging panel had been packed and Escriva's critics blackballed; they viewed his fast move toward sainthood as the muscle-flexing "ecclesiastical equivalent of [the Roman emperor] Caligula making his horse a senator." Allen sees the beatification as legitimate, as did 300,000 people who thronged Rome for Escriva's 2002 canonization. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? Opus Dei is not a kind of spiritual pick-me-up for casual Catholics. It features a small, committed membership (85,500 worldwide and a mere 3,000 in the U.S.), many of whom come from pious families and are prepared to embrace unpopular church teachings such as its birth-control ban. Members take part in a rigorous course of spiritual "formation" stressing church doctrine and contemplation plus Escriva's philosophy of work and personal holiness. Opus' core is its "numeraries," the 20% who, despite remaining lay, pledge celibacy, live together in one of about 1,700 sex-segregated "centers" and extend their training to a degree rivaling a priest's--all while holding day jobs, with most of their pay devolving to the group. That near cloistered life produces the group's most avid, satisfied members and its bitterest dropouts. Opus steers a small number of members toward the priesthood, and they exert considerable influence on the lay majority. Some 70% of the membership, called supernumeraries, are much more of this world. They bend Opus' daily two hours of religious observance around a more typical--or perhaps retro, given the large size of many of their families--existence. Opus' sureties provide a spiritual grounding to life's everyday chaos and ambiguities. While she was raising seven children in the anything-goes 1970s, says Cathy Hickey of Larchmont, N.Y., Opus gave her "an underlying stream of peace and joy." Members bring a pious concentration to jobs that might otherwise be done less ethically or carefully. Heil, the Columbia student, says Opus "helps your whole life melt into this 24/7 conversation with God." HOW SECRETIVE IS OPUS? For all its uniqueness in mission and structure, Opus Dei is best known for being secretive. It has a special set of greetings: "Pax" and "In aeternum" ("Peace" and "In eternity"). Its 1950 constitution barred members from revealing their membership without permission from the director of their center. In 1982 a new document repudiated "secrecy or clandestine activity," and Bohlin, the U.S. vicar, claims that the continuing impression is a misunderstanding based again on decentralization. "People [get Opus training] and go back to where they were," he says. "So we never march in a parade as a group because we don't form a group. And when people don't see us marching, they say, 'They must be secret.'" Yet Opus will still not identify its members, and many prefer not to identify themselves. In England, in late 2004, the Labour government's Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, went months before confirming she had received "spiritual support" from Opus. (Her exact status remains unclear.) Nor, as Allen shows in his book, will Opus formally own up to many of its institutions. Its U.S. schools tend to go by bland names like the Heights or Northridge Prep. For years, he reports, the 17-story U.S. headquarters in New York, finished in 2001, lacked an identifying street-level sign. Allen counts 15 universities, seven hospitals, 11 business schools and 36 primary and secondary schools around the world as what Opus calls "corporate works," as opposed to personal deeds. It is justly proud of 97 vocational-technical schools worldwide, which deflate the myth that Opus serves only the rich. But very few of the schools and hospitals are legally owned by Opus, which admits only to providing "doctrinal and spiritual formation." It is a tribute to the persistence of Allen and his financial expert, Joseph Harris, that they determined that at least in the U.S., Opus proper enjoys a minimum of "dual control" over them by placing members on their boards. HOW RICH IS IT? The normal assumption about such indirectness would be that the group is hiding something, and filthy lucre is a staple of the Opus myth. Two rumors about its popularity with John Paul were that it funded the Solidarity trade union and helped bail out the Vatican bank after its 1982 scandal. Poverty is demonstrably not one of Opus' vows. It has a reputation for cultivating the rich or those soon to be, at both elite colleges and its own institutions. (In Latin America many in the church feel that Opus priests served once ascendant oligarchs over the masses.) Even in the inner city, Opus is unabashedly less interested in identifying with the poor than turning them into the middle class. Bohlin jokingly distinguishes his members from "some Franciscans with holes in their shoes, driving a crummy car because of their sense of the spirit of poverty." On the basis of their study of IRS filings, Allen and Harris found $344.4 million in Opus assets in the U.S. and roughly estimate a global total of $2.8 billion. If correct, that sum approximates Duke University's endowment, yet is hardly Vatican bailout money. But those figures are only part of the picture. Opus members and its sympathizers, known as "cooperators," can be very generous, and their funds hard to track. Allen's research suggests that a most likely unexpected $60 million gift (a hefty portion of its total U.S. assets) financed much of the Manhattan building. Longlea, the group's Washington-area mansion, was donated by a couple who had just bought it for $7.4 million. Father Michael Barrett, an Opus Dei priest who pastors a chapel in Houston, recently raised $4.3 million for a new building and says, "I can assure you that cooperators and supernumeraries have given at the $100,000 level." That largesse, credited officially to the Galveston-Houston archdiocese, would not show up even on Allen's scrupulous balance sheet. Nor would similar Opus-generated funds. HOW MUCH POWER DOES IT HAVE? Some have said that Opus' true secret is its clout in international politics. Poland's new conservative regime includes an Opus minister and several Opus officials, according to one of the group's Warsaw directors; membership there is rumored to be a political stepping-stone. In Peru, Juan Luis Cardinal Cipriani, the church's first openly Opus Dei Cardinal, was seen as having sanctioned antiterrorist excesses by the regime of former President Alberto Fujimori; he scoffed at the accusations, writing that most human-rights groups were "fronts for Marxist and Maoist political movements." For years, Catholics in Washington have kept informal count of possible high-profile Opus people, including Justice Antonin Scalia and almost-Justice Robert Bork, Senators Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback, columnist Robert Novak and former FBI head Louis Freeh. The tally was not totally arbitrary: Freeh's child went to an Opus Dei school, and his brother was a numerary for a while; Scalia's wife has attended Opus events, and the Justice is close to an Opus priest; and Brownback, Bork and Novak converted to Catholicism under one's wing. Several have denied the rumors ("I can't stress enough that he is not a member," says Santorum's communications chief). But a bonus of Opus' new candor campaign is that it now states freely that not one of the powerful Washingtonians belongs. The more complicated question is what influence Opus Dei exerts on nonmembers. Says Bohlin: "We generally avoid talking about anything political, so as not to come down on one side or the other." Then he pauses. "But when you're talking about abortion, that's not a political issue. That's a Catholic issue," he says. "There are certain issues that we take a clear stand with the church on, and many of them are hot-button issues." Of course, you don't have to be Opus to oppose abortion, euthanasia or gay marriage. But the prelature, with an office on the capital's lobbyist-laden K Street, can act as a kind of validator to a broader spectrum of traditionalists. Scott Appleby, a Catholic history expert at Notre Dame, estimates that through programs for nonmembers and the articulate piety of its members, Opus Dei informs "about a million conservative Catholics." That's just 1.5% of the 67 million Catholics nationally, but it's a trove of motivated voters a politician can love, and may explain why Santorum has spoken at Opus events, in one case quoting Escriva: "'Have you ever bothered to think how absurd it is to leave one's Catholicism aside on entering a professional association [or] Congress, as if you were checking your hat at the door?'" DO MEMBERS REALLY WHIP THEMSELVES? The man doing penance advised his associate to cover his head with a blanket; but the observer could not stop his ears. "Soon," said the witness, "I began to hear the forceful blows of his discipline ... there were more than a thousand terrible blows, precisely timed. The floor was covered in blood." That is not an early Da Vinci Code draft. It is a description of Opus Dei founder Escriva's routine by his eventual successor, quoted in a biography of Escriva. Escriva emphasized that others should not emulate his ferocity. But numeraries are expected, although not compelled, to wear a cilice, a small chain with inward-pointing spikes, around the upper thigh for two hours each day, and to flail themselves briefly weekly, with a small rope whip called a discipline. With rare exceptions, even angry defectors don't cite self-mortification, as it's known, as their deal killer. Lucy, a former numerary assistant, told TIME it was "nothing. It's not like The Da Vinci Code." Catholic laity and luminaries, including Mother Teresa, have used it to identify with Christ's--and the world's--agony. San Antonio Archbishop Jose Gomez, an Opus member, notes self-mortification's tie to Opus' roots: "In the Hispanic culture," he says, "you look at the crucifixes, and they have a lot of blood. We are more used to sacrifice in the sense of physical suffering." WHAT ABOUT RUMORS OF MIND CONTROL? Self-mortification resonates with critics because, as Allen points out, it provides a metaphor for what they see as an "inhumane approach within Opus Dei, which demands a kind of dominance over its members, body and soul." Unnerving stories have been passed by ex-numeraries to journalists or posted to the anti-Opus website odan.org Many involve charges of deceptive recruiting, with prospective members unaware that the events they are invited to are Opus', of numeraries' realizing only belatedly that Opus expects them to sign away their paycheck and curtail relations with their families. The music they play and the publications they read are allegedly controlled, and they must report their own and others' deviations as part of a system of "fraternal correction." Center directors are portrayed as little dictators. Complaining to local bishops is futile because of Opus' semi-independent status. The critics claim that when the numeraries try to leave, they are threatened with damnation. Experts who have helped extract the disaffected have likened center life to a cult. And Martin, the America editor, contends that he gets "dozens" of calls yearly from parents saying the group has estranged or brainwashed their numerary children. Opus responds that those who leave are a small minority, and Allen describes the mood around the many centers he visited as cheerful. Bohlin dismisses charges that prospective members are unaware of what to expect, pointing out that all go through an 18-month preparatory process. He says that in a group as loosely knit as he claims Opus to be, "you can't keep all the people happy all the time; you can't keep people from makingmistakes." And he says the organization has mellowed. "I was running a center as a 25-year-old," Bohlin, now 51, notes. "At this point, we hopefully have more mature people. A green organization is different from one with more experience." To those who have been hurt, he says, "the only thing we can do is try to apologize and hope people understand, and you move on with your life." WHAT IS ITS FUTURE? Prior to last year's Papal election, rumor held that Opus might end up brokering the conclave, but it turned out Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger did not need a broker. And the new Pope may be less concerned with aiding Opus than with strengthening the church's hierarchy. Nonetheless, Opus' second in command, Fernando Oca�riz, worked closely with Ratzinger on one of his last great conservative gestures as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Dominus Jesus, a reassertion of the primacy of Catholicism over other religions. Other members are "consultors" to that key office, and Opus' canon lawyers saturate Rome. Asserts John Navone, a Jesuit theologian at Gregorian University: "They're in the forefront of the Vatican." Opus' future in the U.S. is more complicated. Recently, on the 16th floor of the New York headquarters, 40 men did a guided contemplation. Two-thirds were visitors, some "meeting the Work" for the first time. While they sat, eyes closed, an Opus member intoned questions for them to ponder. "Do I realize that Christian life means finding and following Christ closely, no matter what the cost?" he asked: "Am I waging a generous inner struggle?" "Do I find in my work many opportunities for small sacrifices?" "Do I restrain my curiosity?" That last one is a particularly telling query. Restraint of curiosity is not a virtue much trumpeted in the West today. That may help explain both why Opus' membership levels appear to have remained static in the U.S. over the past few decades and, perhaps, why it has attracted so much negative energy. "I don't believe Opus Dei is either a [cult] or a mafia or a cabal," a senior prelate of another religious community in Rome told TIME. It is just that "their approach is preconciliar. They originated prior to the Second Vatican Council, and they don't want to dialogue with society as they find it." That would not describe the majority of self-identifying American Catholics, who are distinctly postconciliar, with more than 75% opposing the birth-control ban. Their sympathy for Opus Dei might be limited. Some might even feel hostile toward it: church liberals, once riding high, have understood for decades that Rome does not incline their way. They feel abandoned, says Allen, "and whenever you feel that way, there's a natural desire to find someone to blame." If that is the case--if much of the negative feeling regarding Opus at this point is displaced anger over the direction of the church--then The Da Vinci Code may be the best fate that could befall it. The movie will not deter Opus' usual constituency--conservative Catholics do not look to Ron Howard for guidance. But by forcing Opus into greater transparency, the film could aid it: if the organization is as harmless and "mature" as Bohlin contends, then such exposure could bring in a bumper crop of devotees--with perhaps even more to come if, as seems likely, American Catholicism becomes both more Hispanic and more conservative. That is the kind of outcome Julian Cardinal Herranz, Opus' ranking Vatican official, expects. Long ago, he says, when he was editing a university newspaper, someone submitted a story claiming that Opus Dei was part of a worldwide conspiracy. Fascinated, Herranz began talking to Opus members, eventually becoming one himself. "That article I read was fiction," he says. "And now I'm here. I became a priest, I came to Rome, I became a bishop, and now a Cardinal. All because I read a fictional story about Opus Dei." With reporting by Jordan Bonfante, Mark Thompson/ Washington, Dolly Mascare, Mexico City, With reporting by Sean Scully, Carolina A. Miranda/ New York, Amanda Bower/ San Francisco, Jeff Israely/ Vatican City, Lucien Chauvin/ Lima By David Van Biema Copyright � 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww �Gospel� of Judas: The Great New Fraud by Luis S�rgio Solimeo On the coattails of the Gnostic wave set in motion by The Da Vinci Code, and using the same media ploys of sensationalism, psychological impact and moral-emotional shock, the National Geographic Society has launched its new product: The Gospel of Judas. The tone of its marketing is the same as Dan Brown�s novel. It promises to unveil a mystery, disclose something hidden (read, intentionally hidden by the Church) which can change the history of mankind. The fraud in Dan Brown�s novel consists in employing a fictional work to spread the doctrine of Gnosis. He calls the Gnostic writings �the earliest Christian records� and the �unaltered gospels.�1 The new fraud now attributes to Judas a �Gospel� written by unknown persons at least one hundred years after his suicide. While the message of The Da Vinci Code is that �almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false,�2 the National Geographic Society is spreading the word that �far from being a villain, the Judas that emerges in its pages [of The Gospel of Judas] is a hero.� �An authentic fabrication produced by a group of Gnostics� Liberal scholar Bruce Chilton describes the fraud in the �Gospel� of Judas. He argues that during its release, National Geographic repeatedly stated that it has "authenticated" the document, a claim simply repeated by many press agencies. However "authentic" can be a slippery turn. Mr. Chilton notes that no scholar associated with the find argues this is a first century document, or that it derives from Judas. He notes: "The release says the document was �copied down in Coptic probably around AD 300,� although later that is changed to �let's say around the year 400.� This amounts to saying that �The Gospel of Judas� is an authentic fabrication produced by a group of Gnostics in Egypt. Gnostics believed that their direct knowledge of heaven permitted them to understand what no one else knew, or could know by historical knowledge. For ancient Gnostics to believe in their own powers of divination is charming; for their flights of imagination to be passed off as historical knowledge in our time is dishonest or self-deceived.� 4 Old hat presented as novelty The present Gnostic offensive takes advantage of the fact that Gnostics misappropriated the name, �Gospel� in many of their writings to convey the impression that both canonical and apocryphal writings have equal value and that the whole problem is but an internal division in Christianity. J.P. Arendzen, a specialist in Gnosticism, describes this maneuver: �When Gnosticism came in touch with Christianity, which must have happened almost immediately on its appearance, Gnosticism threw herself with strange rapidity into Christian forms of thought, borrowed its nomenclature, acknowledged Jesus as Savior of the world, simulated its sacraments, pretended to be an esoteric revelation of Christ and His Apostles, flooded the world with apocryphal Gospels, and Acts, and Apocalypses, to substantiate its claim. � The Cainites possessed a "Gospel of Judas", an "Ascension of Paul" (anabatikon Paulou) and some other book, of which we do not know the title, but which, according to Epiphanius, was full of wickedness.� The existence of the �Gospel� of Judas and its contents is nothing new; it was known to the Fathers of the Church and other authors such as Saint Ireneus, Saint Epiphanius and Tertulian in the beginnings of Christianity. Gnostic �Saints�: Cain and Judas The apocryphal �Gospel� of Judas was written by Cainite Gnostics around the middle of the second century AD, long after the traitor�s suicide. It merely presents that sect�s fanciful doctrine. In short, the Cainites maintained that:The God of the Bible is a secondary and bad God, a Demiurge, who created the world and the moral law; � In order to combat this God, men must reject the moral law and commit all kinds of sinful aberrations; � The true God is called Sophia and is superior to the God of the Bible, who is also called Hystera; � Eve conceived Cain from Sophia, while Abel was conceived from Hystera; � By killing Abel, Cain showed the superiority of Sophia upon Hystera; � The Demiurge tried to take revenge upon Cam, Dathan, Kore, Abiron and the Sodomites, but they were protected by the good God who called them to himself and sent the Savior; � The Demiurge (Hystera) tried to prevent the Savior from executing his work of Redemption; but Judas Iscariot, who was from the race of Sophia and possessed the early Gnosis communicated to Cain, frustrated the plans of the Demiurge by delivering Jesus to death. �The Cainites,� G. Bareille notes, �attacked the Bible and rejected the Gospel but replaced them with apocryphal writings such as The Gospel of Judas. ... Such a doctrine served to unite unbalanced minds and perverted hearts, but they always remained a small group. Already in the beginnings of the 3rd century, the author of Philosophumena treats the Cainites as a group without importance. Jesus: �In secret I have spoken nothing� The tactic Gnostics employ to defend their irrational doctrines is that they are based on secret, initiatory knowledge. When they call themselves �Christians,� they claim to follow secret communication they say Jesus had with some apostle, Mary Magdalene, or in this case, Judas. Thus, the Savior allegedly taught two doctrines: one that commanded disciples to observe chastity, love one�s neighbor and practice works of mercy. The other was a secret doctrine that contradicted these precepts. Thus, the way of salvation for common people, and even for happiness on this earth, would be the arduous way of the cross, mortification and humility, while a minority of �chosen ones� would be allowed to indulge in the unbridled abuse of pride and the flesh. Obviously, the men-symbols for these chosen ones are none other than Cain and Judas: the murderer of his own brother and the traitor of the Redeemer. However, Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself declares this aberrant and illogical concept of two doctrines to be false. After Judas� kiss of treason and Jesus� arrest, answering the Jewish high priest, Jesus clearly said: �I have spoken openly to the world: I have always taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither all the Jews resort; and in secret I have spoken nothing.� �And Satan entered into Judas, who was surnamed Iscariot� It would be a blasphemy to suppose that Jesus Christ picked Judas to betray Him. He picked Judas as apostle because that was his vocation. At the time he was chosen, Judas was properly disposed to follow that vocation. It is true that Our Lord, being God, knew all things and therefore was aware that Judas would not persevere in the good, but would fall away from virtue and finally would even betray Him.12 But while God knows what will happen, this knowledge is not what determines what happens, particularly in the case of a free and rational creature. Having created man free, God does not remove this freedom even when man uses it for evil. That is what happened with Judas. Our Lord tried to do good to him until the end by washing his feet before the Last Supper and calling him my friend when receiving the kiss of treason. However, He did not prevent Judas from consummating his treason. The Evangelists report that Judas betrayed Our Lord instigated by the devil. �And Satan entered into Judas, who was surnamed Iscariot, one of the twelve. And he went, and discoursed with the chief priests and the magistrates, how he might betray him to them.� �[T]he devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray him.� When Our Lord said to Judas �that which thou dost, do quickly,�14 it was not a command, but permission. At the same time, it was a final appeal to Judas� conscience as if to say: Have you really resolved to betray Me? However, given the hardness of the traitor�s heart, Our Lord said of him: �It were better for him, if that man had not been born.� This is the man they are now trying to make into a hero. When people flee from the truth, they accept any absurdity that seeks to replace it. 1. The Da Vinci Code, pp. 245-248. For a refutation of Dan Brown�s fantasies, see: TFP Committee on American Issues, Rejecting the Da Vinci Cod, (The American Society for The Defense of Tradition, Family and Property � TFP: Spring Grove, Penn. 2005). 2. The Da Vinci Code, p. 235. 3. http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/jump.jsp?itemID=3051&item 4. 'Gospel of Judas' Called An Authentic Fabrication, �The New York Sun, April 7, 2006 (emphasis added), http://www.nysun.com/article/30588. 5. Cf. Stefan Lovgren, Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him, �National Geographic News,� April 6, 2006, 3. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0406_060406_judas.html. 6. Gnosticism, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI, 1909 , Online Edition Copyright � 2003 by K. Knight, http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:w77KG6TEeucJ:www.newadvent.org/ cathen/06592a.htm+Gnostic+Gospels&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=9. 7. W.H. Kent, Judas Iscariot, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIII, http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Ow_TBsX_IF4J:www.newadvent.org /cathen/08539a.htm+epiphanius+gospel+judas&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6. 8. For Gnostics, Sophia is an androgynous being, that is, both masculine and feminine. 9. Cf. G. Bareille, Cainites, in A.Vacant-E. Mangenot-E. Amann, Dictionnaire de Th�ologie Catholique, (Paris:1932) Letouzey et An�, t. II, cols. 1307-1309. 10. G. Bareille, col. 1308. 11. St. John 18:20. 12. Speaking to the apostles, Jesus said: �one of you is a devil� (St. John 6:71). 13. St. Luke, 22:3-6; St. John, 13:2. 14. St. John 13:27. 15. St. Mattew 26:24. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
| Hey... I liked your article. You might be interested in my comments, here: Cafeteria Catholicism � April 22 06 9:19 AM When I first saw this headline in my RSS reader I let it slide for a few days. I had supposed it was just another conservative rant about how terrible it is to think for yourself. But on closer inspection it's not a bad article at all. The one thing I might add, however, is that the Catholic Church is admittedly imperfect on Earth and, in some respects, in a state of development. So the hope in Cafeteria Catholicism (and its many different perspectives) may be that over time the Church will embrace valid points while rejecting the false. Regards, Michael Clark, [email protected] April 21, 2006 http://www.earthpages.org http://www.michaelwclark.com |