Guilt By Association: Opus Dei

Turkey Neck Republic visits Santorum's sanctorum in the affluent wilds of Virginia. We doubt there are any smoking guns: While these people are disturbed, deluded, & just plain daffy they (more likely their leaders) are just cunning enough not to be caught w/ actual meat in their mouths.

Still, some icky details:

Even with his wife, Karen, now joining him on the campaign trail, several parishioners told me that the Santorums ensure that their children attend Mass almost daily by having other congregants drive them to St. Catherine.

Those poor yawning children. Which one(s) will be the psycho killer, or the casualty of self-medication?

Nice people, too, filled w/ Gawd's love & respect:

In the ’90s, the National Catholic Reporter reported that a St. Catherine priest was one of a group of conservatives who overran a meeting in Sterling, Virginia, hosted by liberal Catholics supporting female priests and altar servers. He did not become violent, but he did not discourage his compatriots as they cut microphone cords and pushed some of the meeting participants to the ground. A police officer told The Washington Post, “There was more noise and carrying on than I’ve ever heard in my life, especially in a church.”

Pathetically funny as well:

Brian Finnerty, a spokesperson for Opus Dei’s national office, said that men and women are separated because an evening of recollection is “intended as a prayer time, rather than as a social time, and this gets people away from possible distractions.” He added that it also allows priests and lay speakers to tailor their messages. “For men, we could offer advice like, when you get home from work and your wife asks, ‘How was your day?’ saying ‘Fine’ as you look up from the newspaper is not an adequate response. Things like that.”

We must assume these people have allowed their sexuality to be so repressed by wretched old men that being in the same room w/ a member of the opposite sex would make them lose control; therefore, sexual segregation, & reinforcement of "you are all evil sinners w/ base lusts" yada, followed by a few minutes of cutting to get things back under control. Also: "look up from the newspaper?" Really? (Always 1958 in their minds, isn't it? So imagine the retrograde messages tailored for the ladies. The skin crawls.) We think not. It's 2012: Hubby's looking at Catholic schoolgirl smut on the Internet, not reading the paper.