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jam070406
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No, they are not a Catholic organization.
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SamH
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Darn.
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AngryAtheist8
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Here’s the actual article:“Slave Labor”? What, did they threaten her at knife point?She volunteered to follow them. If she didn’t like the requirements, she could’ve just “walked away.”
PARIS (AP) — Two Opus Dei followers and an association closely linked to the conservative Roman Catholic group went on trial Thursday, accused of forcing a disciple to work for more than a decade with little or no pay.
Defense lawyers portrayed it as a case about labor law, while an Opus Dei spokeswoman says the plaintiff in a Paris court chose of her own free will to follow the group.
But the trial is expected to shine a spotlight on the secretive group’s practices. Dan Brown’s bestseller “The Da Vinci Code” painted Opus Dei as a murderous, power-hungry sect, a portrayal the group vigorously protested.
Opus Dei’s founder, Spanish priest Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer, was made a saint by Pope John Paul II.
The trial came after a legal complaint by** Catherine Tissier, who was 14 when she joined the Donson hotel school in eastern France, where the religious sacraments were led by Opus Dei.**
Under the guidance of a “spiritual director,” she gradually chose to follow Opus Dei’s spiritual path and began working as a “numerary assistant.”
“I was working from seven o’clock in the morning to ten o’clock in the evening every day, seven days a week. The three weeks of holidays we had were spent with Opus Dei, where they thought us theology and pursued in-depth studies on the spirit of the (Opus Dei) founder,” Tissier told The Associated Press.
She said she got paycheck each month, but was asked to sign blank checks by her employers and never saw the money.
She described being encouraged to keep her parents at bay, and being diagnosed with depression. A doctor, whom she said was an Opus Dei follower, put her on medication.
“I wasn’t able to eat by myself, I couldn’t even wash by myself, my head was hard to keep straight. Regardless of that, I still had the same workload in the Donson school,” she said.
At age 29, she weighed just 39 kilograms (86 pounds). During a weekend visit to her parents’ home, they took her to see their family doctor, who said she shouldn’t go back.
“I started to live when I was 30. I started going out, I had never been to the movies,” Tissier says.
She first filed a lawsuit in 2001 accusing Opus Dei of “mental manipulation.” Those charges were later dismissed.
After a decade of investigation, two Opus Dei followers and the association that employed her are going on trial on charges of “clandestine work” and "remuneration contrary to dignity."
“This isn’t a crusade against Opus Dei, that’s not what’s at stake,” her lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut said. His client wants compensation and for Opus Dei to “review the status of the numerary assistant,” a job he called “dysfunctional.”
Thierry Laugier, a lawyer for ACUTE, the association that employed Tissier at the hotel, said the case revolves solely around an alleged breach of labor law.
Beatrice de la Coste, spokeswoman for Opus Dei in France, said, “Catherine Tessier was an employee at the hotel school, she was of course in contact with Opus Dei and she chose that spiritual path.”
As of 2005, Opus Dei had 4,000 numerary assistants, all women, whose full-time, paid jobs are to care for the Opus centers, doing laundry, cleaning and cooking for the numeraries and priests who live there, according to the book “Opus Dei: Secrets and Power Inside the Catholic Church,” by John Allen.
Allen cites critics of the numerary assistants, who say they are recruited from poorer classes to do long hours of manual labor and are told it’s a vocation from God to give up marrying or having children in order to serve Opus Dei.
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AngryAtheist8
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Read the article (posted above), especially the parts I highlighted.“Slave Labor”? What, did they threaten her at knife point?
Being* forced *to work without pay is more or less the definition of slave labor.
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AngryAtheist8
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From the Opus Dei official website.
I doubt you could find a more biased pro-Opus Dei source if you tried.
In response, here is the testimony of a former numerary assistant who says she was abused by Opus Dei: odan.org/tw_basic_human_rights_were_violated.htm
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AngryAtheist8
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Why should I care about what you do as a person?When I stay at my abbey, I work on the farms and do manual labour, for no pay, and I’ll do a full days work on the farms or elsewhere in the Abbey, does my Abbey therefore employ slave labour through the Oblates who knew what they signed up for?
The same is for Opus Dei, their members know what they sign up for, they believe they are called to that spirituality, it is not slave labor if the working party gives full consent, just because the Liberal media love to make a good, honest personal prelature of the Catholic Church look bad because it is the in thing to do in the west at the moment, yaknw stand up for Muslims in the face of ‘persecution’ and then persecute good honest orthodox Christians/Catholics
But if Opus Dei is preying on vulnerable young girls to create their own personal servant class, that is a different matter entirely.
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AngryAtheist8
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How can you be so sure?
The Irish Catholic Church was (and perhaps still is) very corrupt, and the Legionaires of Christ and their founder were extremely corrupt as well.
Is it really so unthinkable that Opus Dei could be hiding shameful practices too?
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AngryAtheist8
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heh, that was almost funny
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Protector
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That would include housewives, and SAHM’s I reckon. Although the “force” in the former case is “necessity”, and in the latter case a combination of necessity and love.
Protector.
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AngryAtheist8
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If you truly see you no difference between girls being treated like indentured servants and women acting as housewives and stay-at-home-mothers, then you have a far more negative view of traditional feminine roles than I suspected
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Norminha
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One thing, the enemies of the Church of Christ
don’t get it is the fact the Church must go through many tribulations, as our Blessed Lord foretold His disciples. But, the enemy will NEVER prevail, simply, because her Founder will keep her until He comes back in glory.
don’t get it is the fact the Church must go through many tribulations, as our Blessed Lord foretold His disciples. But, the enemy will NEVER prevail, simply, because her Founder will keep her until He comes back in glory.
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Protector
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Quote:
the statement by Paris AP is liable to become a self fulfilling prophesy.
Protector.
No, not unthinkable. But if the case had involved a secular organisation, instead of a religious one, it would have rated no more than a one-liner in a local newspaper. Admittedly, religious organisations are generally expected to set a higher standard, but the Paris AP article does throw quotes into the public forum re- Dan Brown’s description of the Opus Dei in his work of fiction, “The Da Vinci Code”, that are overtly inflammatory, coupled with the statement,Is it really so unthinkable that Opus Dei could be hiding shameful practices too?
Given that, the book in question sold over 80 million copies, in over 40 languages it is hardly surprising that any extant organisations that were mentioned in the book would still be extremely interesting to those who had read it. Thus, even though the lawyer for Catherine Tissier said,
,
the statement by Paris AP is liable to become a self fulfilling prophesy.
Protector.
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Protector
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Not fair comment, as I was referring not to the featured Court Action, but your definition of slave labour,If you truly see you no difference between girls being treated like indentured servants and women acting as housewives and stay-at-home-mothers, then you have a far more negative view of traditional feminine roles than I suspected
However, I do apologize if I have given any offence.
Protector.
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AngryAtheist8
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Really, well what (if anything) does that mean in practical terms?One thing, the enemies of the Church of Christ
Do you expect non-Catholics to just ignore it when Catholics or the Catholic Church itself act shamefully and/or illegally?
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OchsFam
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Since you are having a problem understanding what is going on here, let me use an analogy. Let us say you have a verbal contract with someone to help work on their yard. They are not going to pay you in money, but in education. Let’s say they agree to teach you a language in exchange for your manual labor.Really, well what (if anything) does that mean in practical terms?
Do you expect non-Catholics to just ignore it when Catholics or the Catholic Church itself act shamefully and/or illegally?
Later, you and this person disagree on something. You decide to not work for him anymore for whatever reason. Does that give you the right to sue that person for slave labor since he didn’t pay you in cash? Does the fact that it was a verbal contract mean that you can get away with it since it would be your word against his?
This is exactly what is going on here. She agreed to do something with a clear understanding that she would not be reimbursed financially. While I do not know her motivation for suing, I can say with almost certainty that she was well aware of this. How so? People do not work for over a decade without pay and not understand that this is what they signed up for. Imagine if you went to work and you didn’t get a paycheck. How long would you work if you were expecting a paycheck? I imagine it wouldn’t be 10 years. Also, I am using a worst case scenario, she apparently did receive some pay is it states “little or no pay.”
Another factor is where did she live? What did she eat? She was paid and it was all understood. It was not shameful or illegal.
I just hope that it is brought out in the trial and it is enough to save the organization the cost of a payout.
God Bless.
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AngryAtheist8
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There is a perfectly good reason for making more of an issue of the Catholic Church (or similar religious groups) engaging in illegal and exploitative practices like this than say a corporation.
The reason is that the Church claims to be THE moral authority, so when the Church does the opposite of what it preaches, its more than a simple case of hypocrisy, its casting doubt on the Catholic Church’s own self-proclaimed reason for existing (for if the Church cannot serve as a moral authority, what purpose does it have at all?
).
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AngryAtheist8
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No offense taken, although it seems to me that you were playing word games to avoid the real issue of what Opus Dei is being accused of.
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OchsFam
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Have you ever read the Bible or are you just spitting stuff out to argue?There is a perfectly good reason for making more of an issue of the Catholic Church (or similar religious groups) engaging in illegal and exploitative practices like this than say a corporation.
The reason is that the Church claims to be THE moral authority, so when the Church does the opposite of what it preaches, its more than a simple case of hypocrisy, its casting doubt on the Catholic Church’s own self-proclaimed reason for existing (for if the Church cannot serve as a moral authority, what purpose does it have at all?
How much did the apostles get paid by Christ? This way of life was the norm for a disciple of Christ. There is absolutely nothing wrong with what was going on here morally. You just have to be looking at it without a bias toward society today and a hatred of the Church.
God Bless.
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AngryAtheist8
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I understand exactly what is going on here.
The woman in question is accusing Opus Dei of forcing her to work for little or no pay, of recruiting her before she was really old enough to understand what was going on and then deliberately separating her from her family and friends to maintain control of her.
Since things like this have happened before (there are modern day sweat shops in Western nations where woman and girls work in similar conditions) and Opus Dei itself has been accused of such practices before, we have every reason to take these accusations seriously.
You appear biased in favor of Opus Dei, and are thus inclined to take everything they say at face value. I however, share no such bias.
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AngryAtheist8
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I have read the Bible extensively, and was left with the impression that that book could have used a good editor
On a more serious note, I would have expected a faithful Catholic to be the first to admit that there’s a significant difference between recruiting a young girl and a man old enough to understand what he’s getting into.
Moreover, the numerary assistants are essentially domestic servants (specifically of the old Victorian type). It seems like the least an organization like Opus Dei could do is treat their servants well.
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