By saying it is an “offshoot,” you are implying that it deviates from Catholic teaching in some discernible way. Mortification is a very ancient practice and the only “innovation” within this group is that they take the communal life of the celibate religious (nun, monk, friar, etc.) and adapt it to lay people (married or celibate).

If you’re getting your definition of Opus Dei from Dan Brown, that speaks more about yourself (and your views on proper scholarship) than it does about this Vatican-approved Catholic movement.

You deliberately did not answer anything, despite a whole lot of vomit coming out of your upper-front orifice..

Any wonder: you know that Opus Dei are medieval freaks who scare the hell out of most Catholics. It’s no longer 1478, we hate to tell you.

I’m also not going to continue to argue with a moron, and we are certainly not going to discuss whether Jim et al policy is to let some outside deadhead decide if something is “social-political” vs “religious-theological” One is allowed and one is not. Strict theological rules. That, frankly, sounds too much like something Opus Dei would do… and we don’t see Jim going there.

In our experience Jim seems to be swift, and rely on the following…

Importantly, ‘They’ have rules about sheer stupidity. That’s the rule you need to be most mindful of. ‘They’ do tolerate differing opinions here… but congenital stupidity appears not to be a legitimate excuse for a mindless evangelical post that refuses to address the questions.

Yeah, snort, whatever. Read it as you like, it’s their blog. They’ll let you know the reality.

But to be perfectly honest, we think you need more personal friends rather that more blog time. If you had more friends you might be better able to put the Church in context.

Let us know when you are more qualified.

—————————–

ps: as the other half of grantdale, I can now declare this exchange ended for both of us. The other withdrew from the field too soon, the twerp.

Now please permit me to deal with your wonderful postscript.

I am more than happy to have Opus Dei fully examined, but they are not. I suspect it’s because — unlike homosexuality — the more people know about, the more they’d reject it.

I am sure you are “happy to have Opus Dei fully examined.” I’m sure you’d be happy to write an expose on the group as long as an encyclopedia volume.

Anyone who doubts that you are the one on this thread obsessed with Opus Dei needs only to read your PS.

avoid using the term ‘gay activist’. It enables people to peg you to within the millimetre.

Well, hells bells! This is a new form of political correctness I’ve never heard of before: The term ‘gay activist’ is unspeakable.

I was under the impression that Timothy Kincaid was involved in real activism on pro-homosexual issues. I thought ‘gay activist’ was an accurate description of such a person.

But wait! It seems the accuracy of the phrase itself isn’t the issue, but rather the precision with which I portray myself by using it.

To tell me — and everyone else — just what my having the temerity to type out gay activist said about me. And why should I be so keen to hide it?

Trying to draw a parallel between the past 40 years of open gay activism and the past 40 years of secretive Opus Dei activism is beyond laughable. It does you no credit.

I suppose it would do me no credit — if I had done anything like it.

What I actually did was:

1. Point out that attempting to discredit a point of view by critiquing its position in the mainstream is an intellectually dishonest form of argument.

2. Note that, since homosexuality has been considered outside the mainstream for most of American history (and still is so considered in many places), this tactic is especially foolish for anyone who is pro-homosexuality to use.

You are arguing with a boogey man of your own invention, grantdale, not with me.

I talk nonsense?

I am accused of doing so all the time on this blog for no other reason than that I think differently than most of the readers.

Of course I know that the Franciscans isn’t for the laity. That is beside the point of my analogy. Most priests aren’t Franciscans either. That doesn’t render the Franciscans outside the Catholic mainstream, nor does it suggest the order is unpopular with Catholics in general.

Any Catholic group you can name will count only a small portion of Catholics as members. This fact tells us nothing about the popularity or mainstream status of said group. That was the sole point of my analogy.

* * * * *

It is always delightful to enter into dialogue with someone here at BTB only to be told I was arguing something I wasn’t arguing. And then be called a liar to boot!

Marriage isn’t just marriage to Damon Owens, and the reasoning is highly constricted. It has place as one of the ONLY two choices that he offers for life: heterosexual marriage or ‘consecrated celibacy’

That is neither here nor there. In the quote of Owens that I gave, he said “As Catholics, we have even greater responsibility and burden,” so I don’t see what about his talk of consecrating one’s celibacy is so problematic. He is, I believe we can safely presume, a believing Catholic, i.e. a Catholic who sincerely believes what his Church teaches and tries to live accordingly. It is unsurprising that such a Catholic would want other Catholics to do the same.

I wrote that Owens’ views — as he had summarized them — didn’t “seem at all extreme or outside the mainstream for a believing Roman Catholic.” As for my claim that a “great many Protestants would fully agree,” are you suggesting that mainstream Protestant moral teaching now approves of fornicating?

I hope you now see, grantdale, what I meant: ‘Devote yourself to marriage in God’s name, or devote yourself to celibacy in God’s name’ sounds like perfectly orthodox Christian teaching to me.

Now, I do not personally care about Damon Owens’ views on marriage. My only concern was that Timothy not paint Owens’ views as something they are not so as to suggest Owens has no business speaking about gay marriage.

This demand by Owens is plainly and outright rejected by the overwhelming majority of lay people within the Church; let alone Christians outside it.

Here you are leaving the realm of ethics and entering the realm of theology per se. How mainstream Owens’ theology of marriage is within Catholicism isn’t properly determined by how lay Catholics would judge it, let alone by the opinions of non-Catholics. It is properly determined by how Catholic theologians would judge it.

None of this has anything to do with the purpose of this blog. Box Turtle Bulletin deals with the social-political, not with the religious-theological. The sites own mission statement says,

It doesn’t matter if you’re Republicans or Democrat; liberal or conservative; Christians, Jew, Muslim or Buddhists; or even agnostic or atheist. Gays and lesbians are members of each of these groups, as are those who oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians.

Timothy’s post read like a complaint that Opus Dei members like Owen aren’t liberal Protestants like himself instead of the conservative Catholics that they are. My opening objection was a warning about doing this sort of thing.

I elaborated on this very point in my first reply to you. You don’t seem to have read it all that thoroughly.

Nobody has replaced “your concern” with one of their own. On that you are fabricating points of argument.

Au contraire, grantdale. You accused me of “pick[ing] and choose[ing] particular statements from Opus Die [sic].” As I told you before, I did no such thing. I compared a quote of Owens to Timothy’s assertion about Owens’ own beliefs. The one who was fabricating points of argument was you, not I.

Please do not dig an even deeper hole for yourself by calling me a liar again. Our entire conversation can be easily checked by anyone right here on this very page.

Buddy, if you want to object to a Timothy’s actual statement that Opus Dei is a rather extreme offshoot … you had better be ready to discuss the Opus Dei viewpoints on suffering. And many others.

Buddy — I will reciprocate the favor even thought it should be clear we will never be buddies — Opus Dei’s views on suffering and other matters are wholly irrelevant to my objection. I objected to Timothy’s unstated, but still very clear, reasons for mentioning Opus Dei in the first place: to make Owens guilty of being a weirdo by association. (If you haven’t gotten this point now, my buddy, nothing short of a jackhammer applied to your head is likely to do the trick.)

A post about Damon Owens of necessity must examine his viewpoints …

If the post is on how Owens thinks, this is true.

and that requires Opus Dei to be mentioned.

No, it does not.

Just how relevant Owens’ membership in Opus Dei is depends on the particular matters being examined.

For his part, Timothy didn’t explain — in any way — how Damon Owens’ views on marriage are related to are influenced by Opus Dei.

Doing so doesn’t make the post about Opus Dei, although this is obviously the real concern about the post from yourself.

No, it isn’t. My real concern is exactly what I said it was in my original post, which I elaborated on in my first reply to you (as well as here). It isn’t my fault you are too involved in psychological projection to actually comprehend what I wrote.

do you see what you’ve gone and done? That’s right: turned a post about Damon Owens into a post string full of discussion about Opus Dei.

The obsession with Opus Dei is yours, not mine. If this thread has become all about them, the ownership of the deed belongs to you.

The comparison you are using — Opus Dei members vis-a-vis Catholic laity in general — is a way of allowing “Catholics to decide just how extreme or not an offshoot Opus Dei is.”

However, when you delve into a Catholic group’s views on suffering and purgatory, as grantdale did, the questions of extremism and mainstream status are ones of how the groups views fit in with Catholic thought in general, and with Church teaching in particular.

Don’t talk nonsense Dave.

The reason most Catholics are not Franciscans is the exact same reason most Catholics are not priests or nuns: it’s a religious order. Few feel called.

Opus Dei doesn’t operate that way, and you know it.

What you have neglected to do is quote Damon Owens’ complete views around marriage. Marriage isn’t just marriage to Damon Owens, and the reasoning is highly constricted. It has place as one of the ONLY two choices that he offers for life: heterosexual marriage or ‘consecrated celibacy’, both on the same basis.

That’s right. ‘Personal rejection or renunciation of sex’ is not enough for lay people — they must otherwise ALSO be consecrated.

Go pull out your leather-bound Code of Canon Law and tell everyone exactly what the choice of ‘consecrated life’ means.

This demand by Owens is plainly and outright rejected by the overwhelming majority of lay people within the Church; let alone Christians outside it. Waffle all you like: people are simply not doing it. Nor feeling a need to. Nor being pestered by the Church about it.

You may like to try argue that a viewpoint that almost nobody bothers with is ‘mainstream’, but I rather suspect that Timothy has called it correctly on that basis alone.

The other point you took issue with was Timothy’s statement that “[Owens] is affiliated with some rather extreme offshoots of the Catholic Church”.

You started your post with that very objection. Nobody has replaced “your concern” with one of their own. On that you are fabricating points of argument.

Buddy, if you want to object to a Timothy’s actual statement that Opus Dei is a rather extreme offshoot … you had better be ready to discuss the Opus Dei viewpoints on suffering. And many others.

Because it’s those viewpoints that determine it to be an extreme offshoot. A post about Damon Owens of necessity must examine his viewpoints, and that requires Opus Dei to be mentioned. Doing so doesn’t make the post about Opus Dei, although this is obviously the real concern about the post from yourself.

Now… do you see what you’ve gone and done? That’s right: turned a post about Damon Owens into a post string full of discussion about Opus Dei. I think we’d call that an ‘own goal’.

Keep up the good work.

ps avoid using the term ‘gay activist’. It enables people to peg you to within the millimetre. I am more than happy to have Opus Dei fully examined, but they are not. I suspect it’s because — unlike homosexuality — the more people know about, the more they’d reject it.

Trying to draw a parallel between the past 40 years of open gay activism and the past 40 years of secretive Opus Dei activism is beyond laughable. It does you no credit.

I believe I have answered your objections in my reply to grantdale.