An essential aspect of freedom is the right to think and believe as we ought, which is to say, according to the legitimate breadth and ambit of our Roman Catholic faith, genuinely, properly, and correctly understood.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson
***
The concern I have is that as lay faithful we should not be dragged by clergy or religious, whether individuals or institutions, into their intramural wars inside the Church. Their struggles are often partisan, highly personal, ideologically motivated, unduly dogmatic, aggressive, domineering, tendentious, idiosyncratic, and sometimes even delusional. Opus Dei, in my sad, personal experience, drops into this category.
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2023/05/opus-dei-is-cult.html
Although doctrine exists at different levels of authority and certainty, Opus Dei fails to acknowledge these defining nuances. Depending on the specific point of doctrine, different degrees of adherence is required. However, in this matter Opus Dei does not allow the members to exercise their proper freedom as Roman Catholic faithful.
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2020/12/work-of-god-or-work-of-man.html
What is problematic about this regime of censorship in Opus Dei is that it unjustifiably assumes that religious and spiritual authority is infallible in adjudicating truth. Yet we know that religious and spiritual authority in the Roman Catholic Church is infallible, or at least claims to be so, according to a very limited domain—far, far smaller, certainly, than the all-encompassing scope of Opus Dei’s Index of Forbidden Books. Opus Dei’s system of intellectual control, therefore, amounts to, simply, brainwashing.
In Opus Dei, truth is sacrificed on the altar of asceticism, through the “mortification of the intellect.”
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2017/11/placeholder.html
Public domain photo
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
THE MORAL FAILURE OF OPUS DEI
ReplyDelete“Without doubt, Opus Dei has had a great global development. However, this was made possible by paying a high cost in human suffering. While Opus Dei could be a success as an organization, it seems to be a moral and religious failure. There are no official statistics but any former member knows that many members leave Opus Dei….”
—E. B. E., Opus Dei as Divine Revelation (2016), page 169
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2017/11/is-opus-dei-cult.html
Gonzalinho
THE DOGMATIC BOX
ReplyDeletePope Francis has suggested that his conservative critics in the United States have a “suicidal attitude,” in an interview with CBS News.
Asked about criticism from “conservative bishops” in the US who have opposed Francis’ more progressive papacy and efforts to reform the Catholic Church, the Pope paused on the word “conservative,” saying a conservative is “one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude.”
There is an important difference between taking “tradition into account” and being “closed up inside a dogmatic box,” Francis emphasized.
…Some of the strongest pushback to Francis’ progressive approach has come from groups in the United States. Those who oppose Francis say they want a pope instead who lays down the law and presents doctrine in black-and-white terms.
The pope has not been afraid to call out his critics, describing some of his opponents in the US as “backwardists,” saying they have replaced faith with ideology.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/pope-conservative-critics-suicidal-attitude-hnk-intl/index.html
—Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis says his conservative critics in the church have a ‘suicidal attitude,’” CNN.com, May 16, 2024
Gonzalinho
“BACKWARDNESS”—A SICKNESS
ReplyDeletePope Francis said he implemented one of the changes of Traditionis custodes, the 2021 motu proprio restricting the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, because the allowances granted by his predecessors were “being used in an ideological way.”
The pope spoke about the Latin Mass in a private conversation with Jesuits on the second day of his April 28–30 trip to Budapest, Hungary. The text of the April 29 meeting with Jesuits was published by the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica on May 9.
During the question and answer session, Pope Francis said he was concerned about a “reaction against the modern,” or what he calls in Italian “indietrismo,” which translates in English to “backwardness.”
“It is a nostalgic disease,” he said, explaining that this is the reason why he made it necessary for priests ordained after July 16, 2021, to seek authorization from their bishop and the Holy See to offer Mass according to the 1962, pre-Vatican II liturgical books, what is commonly referred to as the Latin Mass.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254268/pope-francis-says-traditional-latin-mass-was-being-used-in-an-ideological-way
—Hannah Brockhaus, “Pope Francis says traditional Latin Mass was being used in an ideological way,” Catholic News Agency, May 9, 2023
“Backwardness” is a sickness.
Gonzalinho
INTELLECTUAL RIGORISM
ReplyDeleteOpus Dei would…engage in “brainwashing”—invoking the obligation of obedience and attractively exhorting the pursuit of holiness, Opus Dei directors would subject the members to physical stress, especially sleep deprivation, and to incessant—in some cases, daily—indoctrination and to censorship, both of which imposed undue restrictions on their intellectual freedom within the Roman Catholic Church, in the process denying members their right to information and in particular their right to informed consent.
This regime of brainwashing equates to a type of intellectual rigorism.
At first members would submit in goodwill to the ascetical regime, which would be gradually restricted over time, increasing in intensity and severity. It would be concomitantly joined to cognitive and behavioral programming in extremist belief and practice.
Gradualism in the imposition of a controlling regime accounts for the difficulty many members underwent extricating themselves from the cult.
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2020/07/placeholder-4-of-4.html
Freedom of conscience—the freedom to act rightly, which is to do moral good and avoid moral evil—cannot be exercised without freedom of the mind. Freedom of the mind is necessary to inform the conscience so that one can make informed moral judgements.
Gonzalinho
Those who expect the soul to love without knowledge of the truth are dictators of the soul. They include real-life dictators and members of religious cults. The similarity between the rulers of authoritarian regimes and Mormons is not coincidental. They use the same playbook.
DeleteSlaves of the dictatorial state serve the god of the state, which in reality is the dictator, whether an individual or a junta or some equivalent. In a dictatorship or democracy, the state apparatus, ideology, or both, when it is elevated as the overriding reason for existence, is a false idol.
Slaves of the religious cult serve the god of the cult leader, which is a false god.
Gonzalinho
Jesus does not tell us we should not understand. He says we should believe. We should believe with understanding, for faith and reason are not contradictory or incompatible.
DeleteGonzalinho
THE IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING
DeleteNumerous times Jesus emphasizes to the Apostles the importance of understanding God’s Word. He responds to their questions and explains his religious teachings.
“Are even you still without understanding? Do you not realize that everything that enters the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled into the latrine? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, false witness, blasphemy. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.” (Matthew 15:16-20)
Jesus said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the parables?
“The sower sows the word. These are the ones on the path where the word is sown. As soon as they hear, Satan comes at once and takes away the word sown in them.
“And these are the ones sown on rocky ground who, when they hear the word, receive it at once with joy. But they have no root; they last only for a time. Then when tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.
“Those sown among thorns are another sort. They are the people who hear the word, but worldly anxiety, the lure of riches, and the craving for other things intrude and choke the word, and it bears no fruit.
“But those sown on rich soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” (Mark 4:13-20)
Understanding God’s Word is made possible with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
He opened their minds to understand the scriptures. And he said to them, “Thus it is written that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. (Luke 24:45-48)
Even when the Apostles do not understand at first, he guarantees their understanding later on.
He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Master, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered and said to him, “What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.” (John 13:5-7)
Understanding religious doctrine is important and even necessary—many examples are found in the life of Jesus, and in the witness of the Apostles and his disciples.
Gonzalinho
https://youtu.be/VO8dxJtJckk?si=H-Mfyho9lSi-X1E1
Delete—Daily Inspiration, “Fr. Carlos Martins: ‘It’s not our job to understand. It’s our job to obey!’” YouTube video, 10:40 minutes, September 8, 2024
See 2:15: “It’s not our job to understand. It’s our job to obey!”
What Father Carlos Martin asserts goes against the overall tenor of Jesus’ teachings.
Gonzalinho
THE IMPOSED CONSCIENCE
ReplyDeleteVatican II says that “we are bound to follow our conscience faithfully in all our activity and no one is `to be forced to act in a manner contrary to one’s conscience.’” Conscience is “the most secret core and sanctuary of a person...alone with God whose voice echoes in the depths of the person.” (McBrien, “Catholicism”)
It’s not only the voice that whispers what’s right, what’s wrong; it also includes the entire process of thinking what’s right or not, of deciding to do this and not that, of even choosing who’s arguing right or wrong. No longer can any institution’s prescribed conscience “substitute itself for the individual conscience.”
…Opus Dei loves to chant, “You are free!” but the organization does not operate in a manner that enables you to exercise your God-given freedom properly or fully, e.g. it asks you to commit yourself to the organization without adequately attending to the right to informed consent, violating a fundamental human right.
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-imposed-conscience.html
I, the Lord, alone probe the mind and test the heart, giving to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their deeds.—Jeremiah 17:10
Freedom of conscience—the freedom to act rightly, which is to do moral good and avoid moral evil—cannot be exercised without freedom of the mind. Freedom of the mind is necessary to inform the conscience so that one can make informed moral judgements.
Gonzalinho
THE FALSE TRICHOTOMY
ReplyDeleteTruth is its own end and pursued for its own sake. Truth, according to Thomism, is the same as love and beauty—they are transcendental aspects of being that coincide in the same being. To separate truth from love and beauty is, according to this philosophy and theology, a “false trichotomy.”
Gonzalinho
Those who seek the truth are also seeking God.
DeleteHis disciples approached him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” He said in reply, “He who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. Just as weeds are collected and burned [up] with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” (Matthew 13:36-43)
Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received. (Luke 1:1-4)
On the sabbath we went outside the city gate along the river where we thought there would be a place of prayer. We sat and spoke with the women who had gathered there. One of them, a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, from the city of Thyatira, a worshiper of God, listened, and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was saying. After she and her household had been baptized, she offered us an invitation, “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my home,” and she prevailed on us. (Acts 16:13-15)
Gonzalinho
Truth and love emanate beauty. Genuine beauty inspires the contemplation of truth and ardor of love. Beauty, truth, and love are transcendental aspects of the same being. To the extent that beauty is pure, truth and love are correspondingly radiant and unsullied.
DeleteThe Blessed Virgin Mary, God’s most perfect creature, illustrates this tripartite reality. In her apparitions endorsed by the Church, the seers all attest to being rapt by her beauty, which, while preeminently spiritual is supernaturally visible.
Gonzalinho
“God is Truth. All who seek truth seek God, whether this is clear to them or not.”—Edith Stein, Letter 259
Deletehttps://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/edith-stein-selected-quotes-from-st-teresa-benedicta-of-the-cross/
—“Edith Stein: Selected Quotes from St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross,” Crossroads Initiative, August 9, 2023
Gonzalinho
FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE
ReplyDeleteOn April 11, 1963, Holy Thursday, Pope John XXIII symbolically signed the Pacem In Terris, his eighth and final encyclical. He had been diagnosed with cancer sometime before and died shortly after, and that encyclical remained as one of John XXIII's spiritual testaments. Sixty years later, Pacem In Terris is still deeply relevant, even though the world has changed all this time profoundly.
...Each chapter of the encyclical [Pacem in Terris] begins with a declaration concerning men’s aspirations for peace, dignity, and freedom. Pacem In Terris defines human rights and links them to corresponding duties, but everything is read in the light of the divine revelation. As John XXIII explained, “If one considers the dignity of the human person in the light of divine revelation, then it will appear incomparably greater since the blood of Jesus Christ has redeemed men.”
The encyclical is the first formal recognition of human rights, but it does so through a Christian perspective.
...Among these rights is the right to “freedom in the search for truth, in the manifestation of a thought and its dissemination,” the right to honor God according to the dictate of right conscience, and the right to the private and public worship of God. It is the issue of religious freedom, indissolubly linked to freedom of conscience (and the problem of conscientious objection is fundamental).
https://www.ewtnvatican.com/articles/pacem-in-terris-the-utopia-of-john-xxiii-that-became-a-prophecy-celebrates-its-60th-anniversary-812
—Andrea Gagliarducci, “Pacem in Terris, the utopia of John XXIII that became a prophecy, celebrates its 60th anniversary,” EWTN Vatican, April 11, 2023
Freedom in the search for truth is indissolubly connected to freedom of conscience and religious freedom.
Gonzalinho
THOUGHT CONTROL: A DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC OF CULTS
ReplyDelete6 Sociological Characteristics of Cults
[2] Exclusivism
Cults often believe that they alone have the truth. The cult views itself as the single means of salvation on earth; to leave the group is to endanger one’s soul....
…[4] Opposition to Independent Thinking
Some cultic groups discourage members from thinking independently. The “thinking,” as it were, has already been done for them by the cult leadership; the proper response is merely to submit....
Characteristics Associated with Cultic Groups – Revised
- Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished. …
- The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry, or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of Cult Mind Control
…As employed by the most destructive cults, mind control seeks nothing less than to disrupt an individual’s authentic identity and reconstruct it in the image of the cult leader. I developed the BITE model to help people determine whether or not a group is practicing destructive mind control. The BITE model helps people understand how cults suppress individual member's uniqueness and creativity. BITE stands for the cult’s control of an individual’s Behavior, Intellect, Thoughts, and Emotions.
…The BITE Model
I. Behavior Control
II. Information Control
III. Thought Control
IV. Emotional Control
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2017/10/placeholder.html
Gonzalinho
Truth, the condition for freedom
ReplyDeleteMan’s moral conscience is under an obligation to be open to the fullness of truth; he must seek it out and readily accept it when it presents itself to him. According to the command of Christ the Lord, (Cf. Mt 28, 18-20; Mk 16, 15) the truth of the Gospel must be presented to all people, and they have a right to have it presented to them. Its proclamation, in the power of the Spirit, includes full respect for the freedom of each individual and the exclusion of every form of constraint or pressure. (Cf. Dignitatis Humanae, 10)
—Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, March 22, 1986
The truth liberates. It is a necessary condition for freedom.
Gonzalinho
The Christian faithful should be free to seek, find, and embrace the truth as it presents itself to them. It should not be incorrectly or falsely imposed upon them by another.
DeleteGonzalinho
It is the profession of the truth that brings healing, not the propagation of a lie.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
FREEDOM IN OPUS DEI
ReplyDelete“I love the personal freedom of everyone, of non-Catholics too. …I love the freedom of others, yours, and that of the person who is walking down the street at this very moment, because if I did not love his freedom I could not defend my own. …The main reason is that Christ died on the Cross to give us freedom, so that we should end up in libertatem gloriae filiorum Dei [in the glorious freedom of the children of God].”
—Salvador Bernal, A Profile of Msgr. Escriva, Founder of Opus Dei (1977), page 300
Questions publicly directed to Escriva and his words in response are premeditated and staged, not fortuitously spontaneous, so that deception is involved.
“The format of previously prepared questions and answers is standard when the Opus Dei prelate appears in public. …To questions such as…’Why do people say Opus Dei takes children away from their parents?’ standard answers were given:…’Parents wish to live a Christian life, but do not have enough time for their children, but Opus Dei has the time to give those children a strong formation, new perspectives in life.’ Everything is planned beforehand.”
—Maria del Carmen Tapia, Beyond the Threshold (1998), page 312
“…Opus Dei is also an efficient machine, dominated by fundamentalist European priests, that seeks broader international influence. Although Opus disclaims this, insisting that its task is solely to guide members towards correct moral choices, there is a fatal duality in its scheme: while it pushes members to succeed as adults in the secular world, it treats them like children in religious matters. ‘You need a director [a priest] in order to offer yourself, to surrender yourself . . . by obedience’, Escriva told his followers. (He spoke to his recruits as the ‘Nursery’.) Through weekly confession, ‘heart-to-heart’ talks, or ‘confidences’, and other contacts, members of Opus receive instruction on every aspect of their lives. On the one hand they are told, ‘Obey and you will be saved’, noted Father Pedro Miguel Lamet, former director of the Spanish religious weekly Vida Nueva. On the other, they are urged to succeed in a competitive world in order to attract new members and to defray Opus Dei’s considerable financial costs. The conflict between child and adult often ends in rebellion against a ‘religious prison’, as one recruit described it, and explains why Opus has produced so many disillusioned former members.”
—Penny Lernoux, People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism (1989), pages 50-51
Exercising the “glorious freedom of the children of God” inside a “religious prison” is an internal contradiction.
The principal reason why Opus Dei functions as a religious prison is that it imposes all-encompassing thought control—an especially defining characteristic of cults.
To be continued
Gonzalinho
FREEDOM IN OPUS DEI
DeleteContinued
“…the different forms of controlling behavior and spiritual abuse are not so very different when they crop up in religious life. What is particular about them comes from the tools used, the very tools the religious life places in their hands. Respect for authority, sanctified by vow; the desire for union between all members of the community, the unity that is the legacy of Jesus’ paschal mystery, [as expressed by Him in the Last Discourse, see John 17:21]; the descriptions of union with God in terms of spiritual espousal, so often found in the great mystics; humility, sacrifice, renunciation, conversion, poverty; all of these different dimensions of religious life can be hijacked and diverted from their proper goal to be put instead at the service of a sickness that has more than a passing resemblance to cancer. Cancer, of course, is not a degenerative disease but, rather, a case of ‘life’ losing control, in a disordered process of multiplication, which ends up as something toxic. ‘How can these fundamental aspects of religious life become toxic?’
“…When looking at sects and cult-like behavior, this principle [the application of a scale of measurement, comment mine] has often failed to receive sufficient emphasis. The aim has been to discover the characteristics that per se make a group a sect or a cult. But the phenomenon of the sect also makes use of dynamics that, up to a certain point, are perfectly normal and healthy but that begin to be dangerous when their intensity goes beyond certain limits. The absence of any idea of the scale involved makes it very difficult to assess a sectarian tendency, especially since the community in question may well insist that all of the means being used are quite traditional. Perhaps we need a scale that would allow us to distinguish a harmless wind from a storm, rather than a simple definition of what it means to be a sect or a cult.”
—Dom Dysmas de Lassus, Abuses in Religious Life and the Path to Healing (2023), pages 7-8
“Those who enter religious life should be aware that its extreme nature—the tendency to push things to the limit—entails the same kind of risks as those involved in any sort of sporting experience at the extreme end of the scale. Candidates sometimes lack this awareness, which makes it even more crucial that those in positions of responsibility in the community should possess it.
“Anyone who embarks on the religious life is seeking to give herself entirely to God; she is staking her whole life. She submits herself in confidence to another person (or to a number of other people) in order to enter into an experience as yet unknown to her. With respect to chastity and asceticism, for example, she is being drawn into dynamics that are very different to those at work in the world; the common life, lived in obedience, has its own particular laws. The interior work that needs to be done can be just as radical. One postulant said after six weeks: ‘This is like being cleaned with a pressure washer!’ The image derived from his work: he had once been asked to clean some walls with such a washer. Indeed, it is true that an interior life uncovers what had lain hidden beneath the hustle and bustle of ordinary life. The fine line between what is normal and what is abnormal becomes difficult for young religious to discern, and they can end up submitting to the strangest things out of sheer generosity, if they are asked. If the formators are not prudent enough, or are unaware of the risks, more or less serious consequences can ensue. If they brazenly overstep the limits of the religious life, by demanding that their charges submit to them unconditionally and unthinkingly, then we are already on the downward spiral toward sect-like behavior.”
—Dom Dysmas de Lassus, Abuses in Religious Life and the Path to Healing (2023), pages 16-17
Gems of wisdom from Dom Dysmas.
Gonzalinho
BLIND OBEDIENCE AND THOUGHT CONTROL
Delete“Obedience, the sure way. Blind obedience to your superior.”
—Saint Josemaria Escriva, The Way, 941
“In the afternoon of the day I received the first admonition, Marlies Kücking came to my room and told me that the Father had decided the following:…that only by prayer and blind obedience would I save my soul;….”
—Maria del Carmen Tapia, Beyond the Threshold (1998), page 250
The article below is recently published—2017—yet it repeats critical statements, decades ongoing, about the proliferation of cults in the Roman Catholic Church (or Church, for short).
“...What is a cult-like aberration? (Fr., dérive sectaire)
“According to France’s Interdepartmental Mission to oversee and combat sect-like aberrations (acronym Miviludes), it has to do with the ‘corruption of freedom of thought, opinion or religion’ characterized by ‘the employment by an organized group or an individual (…) of pressures or techniques aimed at creating, maintaining or exploiting in a person a state of psychological or physical subservience, depriving them of part of their free will.’
“The characteristics usually associated with a cult-like aberration are the following: adulation of founder or foundress, totalitarian authoritarianism, blind obedience to the superiors, depersonalization, loss of identity and autonomy, recruitment pressure, harassment, proselytism, members informing on each other, being kept busy to prevent critical thinking, unhealthy relationship to money, moral and sexual abuses, verbal and physical threats to members wanting to leave. Based on numerous testimonies, Sister Chantal-Marie Sorlin [14], circuit judge in Dijon and chief of the CEF sect-like aberrations bureau, has drawn up four major criteria:
“Personality cult; the founder takes the place of Christ,
“Cut-off from the outside world: from family and from outside news,
“Mental manipulation: fast recruitment, pressures, inducing guilt (“doubting is from the devil”), blurring the line between internal and external forums, forbidden to criticize the leaders in the name of holy obedience…
“Practical incoherence (money, morals…).
“One single criterion is not enough to define a group as cult-like aberration but when you have a handful of these signs you can start thinking of a pathological group.
“...Some similarities between Focolare, Opus Dei, and Legion of Christ
Even though each founder has received a ‘divine inspiration’ and each movement possesses its own peculiar ‘charism’, (unity for the Focolare, holiness in the ordinary for the Opus, evangelization of the world for the Legion of Christ), it is evidently clear that they all possess the same sectarian aberrations which play out in similar characteristics:
“Theological and moral conservatism,
“Anti-intellectualism,
“Aspiring to ecclesiastical and temporal power, based on their financial strength,
“Tendency to function as a ‘Church within the Church,’
“Strongly hierarchical structure,
“Strict control of the members and the organization.”
https://regainnetwork.org/2018/11/04/legion-of-christ-opus-dei-focolare-accused-as-sect-like-aberrations-by-french-catholic-experts/
—“Legion of Christ, Opus Dei, Focolare Accused as Sect-Like Aberrations by French Catholic Experts,” Regain: Religious Groups International Network, translation of an article by Pascal Hubert, La verité vous rendra libres, Golias, Magazine, #174, Mai-Juin 2017, pages 2-13
The article is pointed and incisive, and we observe the underscoring of thought control.
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2021/07/cults-were-established-and-maintained.html
To be continued
Gonzalinho
BLIND OBEDIENCE AND THOUGHT CONTROL
DeleteContinued
Escriva basically extended religious life—in this respect, an extreme, somewhat degenerate (cult) form—to celibate members of Opus Dei, the numeraries. In so many ways it is a problematic regime, in a fundamental aspect because the laity are not religious, according to the contemporary ecclesiology of the Roman Catholic Church. Cf. the following Vatican II documents:
On the laity—
Lumen Gentium, Chapter 4
Apostolicam Actuositatem, Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity)
On religious—
Perfectae Caritatis, Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life
Lumen Gentium, Chapter 6
Gonzalinho
Gems of wisdom from Dom Dysmas—
DeleteTHE CHARGE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTION AS A TYPE OF AVARICE
“People are not spiritual and mothers just because they say they are. In general, anyone who insists on offering his or her services should be approached with at least a modicum of caution. St. Jane Frances de Chantal had a bitter experience of this.
“…Here is an account of how she was literally caged by her first spiritual director.
“At that time, ‘a good religious man’ [history, happily, does not record his name] enjoyed great success as a director of consecrated souls. Jane met him by chance, we are told, one day when he had gone to pray at Notre-Dame-d’Étang, a shrine two leagues from Dijon; he at once advised her to place herself under his direction. Jane realized that he was not the guide she had seen in a vision; but in the disarray in which she found herself, she agreed: ‘Like a humble sheep, believing that it was the will of god, she allowed herself to be bound by this shepherd, who bound her to his direction through four vows: firstly, that she would obey him; secondly, that she would never leave him for another director; thirdly, that she promise faithfully to keep what he would say to her secret; fourthly, not to discuss her interior life with anyone other than him.’ This went on for two years. Jane, being generous, strove to keep up with all the prayers, fasts, methods, practices, and so on that the imprudent shepherd enjoined on her. It sounds fanciful… [A. Ravier, Petite vie de Jeanne de Chantal (Paris: DDB, 1992), 39. The rest of the story is a summary of the same book.]
“The intention behind these demands is perfectly clear: this ‘religious man’ wanted to enjoy exclusive and perpetual rights over the soul of this woman, providing us with a perfect example of one of the causes of aberrant spiritual direction: power. It is worth explaining just how powerful was the dictatorial grip that this religious had over St. Jane de Chantal.
“We know that in 1602, Jane, in a state of great spiritual distress, had begged God to give her a director, and God had answered her prayers with a vision. Although she did not know who she was seeing at the time, she saw St. Francis de Sales exactly as she would recognize him two years later in Dijon. For his part, he, too, had seen the young widow, whom he did not know either, as yet. When she saw him in the pulpit in Dijon on the Friday after Ash Wednesday of the year 1604, she recognized him immediately, and he recognized her. …Yet she did not dare to speak freely because of her vow. Later, she underwent such a terrible attack of scruples that she had to solicit the aid of Fr. de Villars, who was her confessor. He reassured her completely. ‘It seemed to me,’ Jane said, ‘that the mountainous burden that had been weighing upon my heart was lifted.’ The ‘good, religious man,’ with whom she was completely open about it all, was furious, and he behaved in such a way that she was immediately plunged back into her scruples. He even went so far as to ask her to renew her vow of obedience to him. For her eventually to feel that she had at last been set free from this obligation required the repeated interventions of Fr. de Villars—who declared to her quite frankly that, if she didn’t seek to disentangle herself from this man’s direction, she would be resisting the Holy Spirit—as well as the clear declaration by St. Francis de Sales that the four vows imposed on her by the first director were ‘good for nothing, except maybe for wrecking the peace of someone’s conscience.’ ‘O God,’ she would later say, ‘how happy was that day for me! It seemed to me that my soul was changed completely, and escaped from that inner captivity in which the counsels of my first director had held me until that point.’
To be continued
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THE CHARGE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTION AS A TYPE OF AVARICE
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“Inner captivity is a strong expression, but it is accurate. Spiritual fatherhood, which ought to be a school of inner freedom, can become a kind of slavery when it seeks to impose itself in an exclusive way. [Note: Escriva’s rule that any priest or spiritual director outside Opus Dei is without exception a ‘bad shepherd’ for the members, comment mine.] This is an extraordinarily strong, and wrong, turn, since it is tantamount to taking the place of God, who is the only real master of souls.
“…St. Francis de Sales never lost sight of the ultimate goal, which was to lead her to God alone, and at the time of the Pentecost retreat in 1616, which marked a turning point in Jane’s life, he wrote to her: ‘Think no more about the friendship or unity that God has created between us.’ She replied to him: ‘My God, my true Father, how the sword has pierced!’ [A. Ravier, Jeanne-Françoise Frémyot de Chantal, sa race et sa grâce (Paris: Ateliers Henry Labat, 1983), 114]
“Ida Friederike Görres puts well what happened that day:
“All of the great spiritual directors have always known that the priest has the task of helping the soul to become free and independent, even independent of the priest himself: his role is to be the one who introduces; gently, but firmly, he must detach himself from this need [the one being directed has] to give up his or her own freedom, clinging to him and never wanting to leave him. In this struggle, too, it is his responsibility to lend the woman assistance against her feminine nature, and often against himself. [L-F Görres, Sur le célibat des prêtres (Paris: Éd. Du Cerf, 1963), 96. The quotation is found in the second part, “Considerations on the meeting between the priest and women.”]
“In the case of St. Jane Frances de Chantal, the evil did not reach catastrophic proportions, since the original director had no interest in her inner life; it was enough for her that she should be obedient to him. The bird was caged, but it had not been killed. These days, it is no longer common to find such an externally focused approach, but the desire to attach oneself to a soul has not disappeared at all. The sickness has simply changed form.”
—Dom Dysmas de Lassus, Abuses in Religious Life and the Path to Healing (2023), pages 166-69
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THE INTELLECT, DIRECTED BY TRUTH
Delete“THE SUBMISSION OF JUDGMENT
“If we submit our will by means of our vow of obedience, it nevertheless remains the case that our intellect cannot be simply set aside.
“The intellect is not as supple as the will; it is directed by truth. It can never be right for us to allow our intellect to diverge from truth.
“Submission of the intellect is desirable in particular situations, where opinions differ, perhaps. Painting with pure white or off-white is simply a question of preference and has nothing to do with truth, in the proper sense of the word. It follows that the monk’s excessive attachment to his own preference in this area is clearly an imperfection.
“But this doesn’t apply in all circumstances. If the superior asks for the tractor to be filled with cooking oil, a monk who knows anything about engines will not be able to set aside his own understanding. He knows perfectly well that if he does this, it will cause serious damage to the engine. Moreover, he can’t assume that this is the superior’s intention, so he has to let the superior know. If the superior persists in thinking that it is in fact a very neat solution and that the engine won’t suffer as a result, the monk will find himself in a difficult situation. He will have to judge whether the evil, here, is grave or not. [Cf. Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelica testificatio, quoted above]
“…There are clearly defined limits within which submission of the intellect is possible: we are really talking about situations where the evidence of the known truth is not compelling. This principle gives considerable freedom: only those situations where there is no major reason to prefer one point of view over another invite the religious to submit his intellect, too. In all other cases, the rights of conscience are to be maintained.
“For his part, Francis de Sales takes pains to explain that he only asks for blind obedience (as he explains it) for things of little importance. If the matter at hand is planting cabbages, and the superior wants them to be planted in a stupid way, the consequences are sufficiently unimportant for obedience to prevail here. If it is a question of planting fifteen hectares of cabbages, and the detriment to the community could be more significant, then the sister has a duty to warn the superior of her mistake.
“…In any event, we need to emphasize strongly that the submission of the intellect is limited to situations concerning things a religious ought to do. Obedience in no way allows a superior to lay down what a religious must think. Our intellect must be submitted to Christ through the Church, and while the superior must teach this submission to the Church, he must not go beyond this. It is not the superior who holds authority in matters of faith or morals, since he is himself subject to this obedience to the Church, in the same way all religious are. …it is clear that he cannot give any such command in the realms of politics, philosophy, and so on. Of course, he must ensure that the religious in his care receive the proper formation, but this is not a matter of obedience: the understanding must be convinced; it cannot be forced. Neither can the superior give commands in spiritual matters; these questions will be treated in greater detail in relation to spiritual abuse.”
—Dom Dysmas de Lassus, Abuses in Religious Life and the Path to Healing (2023), pages 114-116
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SPIRITUAL AVARICE
DeleteThe claim of exclusive rights of spiritual direction or confession over a soul is indicative of spiritual avarice. The spiritual director or confessor wishes to exercise an illegitimate prerogative over the supervision of the soul, amounting to an inordinate desire for the possession of the soul, which is a type of spiritual avarice.
“Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become unhappy and peevish because they don’t find the consolation they want in spiritual things. Many never have enough of hearing counsels, or learning spiritual maxims, or keeping them and reading books about them. They spend more time in these than in striving after mortification and the perfection of the interior poverty to which they are obliged.
“Furthermore, they weigh themselves down with overdecorated images and rosaries. They now put these down, now take up others; at one moment they are exchanging, and at the next re-exchanging. Now they want this kind, now they want another. And they prefer one cross to another because of its elaborateness.
“…What I condemn in this is possessiveness of heart and attachment to the number, workmanship, and overdecoration of these objects. For this attachment is contrary to poverty of spirit, which is intent only on the substance of the devotion, benefits by no more than what procures this sufficiently, and tires of all other multiplicity and elaborate ornamentation. Since true devotion comes from the heart and looks only to the truth and substance represented by spiritual objects, and since everything else is imperfect attachment and possessiveness, any appetite for these things must be uprooted if some degree of perfection is to be reached.
“…They, therefore, who are well guided from the outset do not become attached to visible instruments or burden themselves with them. They do not care to know any more than is necessary to accomplish good works, because their eyes are fixed only on God, on being his friend and pleasing him…. Their pleasure is to know how to live for love of God or neighbor without these spiritual or temporal things. As I say, they set their eyes on the substance of interior perfection, on pleasing God and not themselves.”
—Saint John of the Cross, The Dark Night, Book I, Chapter 3, paragraphs 1-2
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The so-called “freedom” of Escriva is a religious prison.
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