Enough with the persecution complex and the vain efforts to sound sane and reasonable! I'm talking about you, Opus Dei. You're using this Da Vinci Code movie opening to make your case that you're a bunch of great folks. Ordinary people, like that neighbor who just put in new shrubbery.
Don't kid a kidder. Your agenda is plain as day. You want to make the world Roman Catholic, you're planning the New Inquisition, you wander nostalgically back to an era when Protestants, Pagans, and Little Old Ladies got barbecued for an afternoon's entertainment.
I had heard of Opus Dei before reading The Da Vinci Code (dreadful book). Of course I was having fun by calling these people Inquisitors, but anywhere that you get big money flowing, influence follows. And I do believe (as did Time Magazine) that Opus Dei has curried influence by spreading around money. Quietly.
Burning people at the stake? No. Promoting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage? You betcha. Lobbying against abortion rights? You betcha.
Today, May 19, 2006, the Philadelphia Inquirer devoted half its op-ed page to an editorial by Gregory J. Sullivan, a lawyer from Bucks County, PA who is a member of Opus Dei.
I quote from this editorial:
"The animating spirit of Opus Dei is unity of life. Msgr. Escriva (founder) once observed that Christians must not live 'a kind of double life. On one hand, an interior life, a life of union with God; and on the other, a separate and distinct professional, social and family life.'
"As our culture becomes more and more secularized and indeed paganized, unity of life becomes an increasingly difficult -- but all the more crucial -- virtue to live."
It is this passage, gentle readers, that inspired my rant (avoid cheeky beaky if you don't want to see hyperbole and humor).
Perhaps I don't understand Mr. Sullivan's point, but it does seem to me that he's encouraging the readers of the Philadelphia Inquirer to see secularization and paganization as evils to be undermined in the spirit of "unity of life."
As a Druid, I'm often called "pagan," though I don't approve of the term. Is Mr. Sullivan suggesting that my religious practices, devoted to harming no one, undermine "unity of life?" If so, how? Could it be because I'm not Roman Catholic?
Yes, I was being glib about barbecues and God's performance review and all that. But I'm very uncomfortable with the money trail from evangelicals of all sorts (including, but not limited to Opus Dei) rolling into political coffers. We have an Establishment Clause in our Bill of Rights, and I would like to see it honored.