Re: Opus Dei (2)
This... from a religion where Priests, "brothers" and "sisters" cannot marry.
would they know the first thing about "having a family and sexuality" --i doubt it--
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The chief activity for Opus Dei women is domestic work, and the organisation has set up schools for domestics worldwide.
population-security.org
CONSERVATIVE CATHOLIC INFLUENCE IN EUROPE AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES Opus Dei: The Pope's Right Arm in Europe by Gordon Urquhart from: Catholics for a Free Choice
"Opus Dei is one of the most powerful -- and reactionary -- organisations in the Roman Catholic church today. The organisation troubles liberal Catholics, but its devotion to promoting, as public policy, the Vatican's inflexibly traditionalist approach to women, sexuality and reproductive health is cause for concern far beyond the boundaries of Catholicism. Opus Dei pursues the Vatican's agenda through the presence of its members in secular governments and institutions and through a vast array of academic, medical, and grassroots pursuits. Its constant effort to increase its presence in civil institutions of power is supported by growth in the organisation as a whole: . . . . their work in the public sphere breaches the church-state division that is fundamental to modern democracy. It is essential, then, to monitor the organisation's undertakings in secular arenas -- a task made difficult by the fact that individuals' membership is often undisclosed to the public."
CONSERVATIVE CATHOLIC INFLUENCE IN EUROPE
AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
Affiliation with Opus Dei
Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women -- An Ideology
Opus Dei’s expression of its views on sexuality and reproduction rivals the Vatican’s in its ferocity and frankness.
▪ on contraception: Opus Dei refers to “the intrinsic evil of systems of birth control inasmuch as they disfigure the nature of human sexuality.”7 Father Lino Ciccone, an academic close to Opus Dei, declares contraceptives “the first step on a way of death” and says users are guilty of “grave sin... of a seriousness and weight which are difficult to quantify but certainly enormous.”8 Contraceptives are also linked to marital failure:
“If divorce in Western countries affects 35 percent of couples, it is only 3 percent among couples who only use natural methods of birth control,” claims Francois Geinoz, the director of the Opus Dei-linked Limmat Foundation.9 Sounding a common theme among Opus Dei members that family-planning programmes are a form of “neocolonialism” Geinoz suggests that participants from developing countries see family planning “as new American methods for exercising power on the masses of the South.”’10
▪ on abortion: Opus Dei considers abortion murder, and members work to limit its legality or accessibility. To this end, Opus Dei has elaborated an ideology of argu ments cloaked in scientific language, presumably to buttress the Vatican’s arguments in purely secular terms. A doctor close to Opus Dei -- G.J.M. van den Aardweg of the Opus Dei-linked MEDO Institute (recently succeeded by the International Theological Institute for StuDies on Marriage and the Family) -- speaks of “the problems a woman is faced with after abortion” and says that “various research projects show how in such situations a strong sense of guilt takes over, often accompanied by a series of psychic and moral problems.”1'
▪ on in vitro fertilisation: Commenting on in vitro fertilisation at an Opus Dei symposium on “the Dignity of Human Life,” a speaker, Doctor W.J. Eijk, told participants that “the ends of progress do not always justify the means employed.”’2
▪ on families: In a talk entitled “Real and Unreal Families,” Dr. van den Aardweg held forth on “the current tendencies which aim to transform the concept of the family and harness it to various forms of non-matrimonial relationships, for which legal recognition is demanded.”
▪ on homosexuality: In one of his many writings on homosexuality, Dr. van den Aardweg cites, approvingly, a woman who claims to have been “totally cured” of her lesbianism, which she describes “as an amputated leg, which can never come back. “‘14
▪ on AIDS: Another MEDO Institute doctor, Dr. Joannes P.M. Lelkens, claims to have proven that the condom is not sufficient protection against the AIDS virus.’5 His article met with a storm of protest from other medical experts in the Italian press. |
