The Man of Villa Tevere by Urbano Pilar

Author:Urbano, Pilar [Urbano, Pilar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scepter Publishers
Published: 2011-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

13

Passion for Freedom

“D

id you vote for Kennedy?”

Monsignor Escrivá’s voice cut through the atmosphere of the get-together like a knife: “Fernando, that question is out of order!”

It was 1961. Fernando Valenciano had just asked an American, Dick Rieman, if he had voted for John F. Kennedy in the recent American election. Monsignor Escrivá continued, “It’s of no interest to any of us here whether Dick voted, or who he voted for. And I would ask everyone in the Work never to bring up such topics of conversation.” 1

In 1958 Irene Rey, a Peruvian, was in a get-together in the Roman College of Our Lady and witnessed an exchange between a girl of the Work and Monsignor Escrivá.

“Father, there are elections in Sicily. I am going to go because I have to vote …”

“My daughter, I’m delighted that you’re going. But I don’t want to know who you’re going to vote for. Don’t tell me. You know very well you can vote for whomever you like, don’t you? Tell me about something else.”

People in Opus Dei never speak about politics. Monsignor Escrivá was very clear on this. “If Opus Dei had ever got involved in politics, even for a second, I would have left the Work at that very moment. So don’t ever give any credence to anything which tries to link the Work with politics, economics, or temporal issues of any sort. For on the one hand, our means and our aims are always exclusively supernatural, and on the other hand everybody in the Work respects the fact that every single one of us, man or woman, is completely free in secular affairs, and as a logical consequence is personally responsible for his or her actions. Therefore it is impossible for Opus Dei ever to take a hand in any projects other than directly spiritual and apostolic ones, which can have nothing to do with any country’s politics.” 2

The radical option of Opus Dei for freedom allows each individual to exercise his or her personal preferences on a wide variety of matters: state in life, job, cultural, sporting, or aesthetic questions. Monsignor Escrivá summed up the inheritance he was leaving in two human characteristics: good humor and love for freedom.

During the 1950s and 1960s in Spain, the presence of some members of Opus Dei in the government, universities, banks, and the media caused some people to imagine a collective “take-over” strategy. There were references to “white masons” and pressure groups. These people did not grasp that personal holiness is individual, self-determined, responsible, and free, a project in which each person maps out his or her own destiny.

“The oddity of not being odd”

The Second Vatican Council had not yet proclaimed the “universal call to sanctity” so it is understandable that many Christians at that time still thought good lay people should be a sort of appendix or “long arm” of the clergy, reaching out to the world on the orders of the clergy; they did not realize that lay people should act in the world on their own initiative.

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