​Opus Dei does not use DEI

By Ed Raymond

Were women created to do the work of God?

One of the first requests made by new Pope Leo XIV was to invite an expert on the alt-right conservative Catholic organization known as Opus Dei to brief him about its activities in Argentina. Opus Dei translates from the Latin to mean “Work of God.” Although Leo is called the American pope, he spent roughly two decades in Peru as a leader in South America. He is concerned about the policies of Opus Dei in Argentina concerning girls and young Catholic women who have come under the influence of Opus Dei in his old neighborhood.

His recent battles with King Pope Donald Jesus Christ John Trump and various Cabinet Clowns such as Secretary of War-Defense Hegseth and others have American liberals calling him “Pope Bob from Chicago.” When it comes to economic inequality in the Divided States of America, he has endorsed what Senator Bernie Sanders has been talking about for two decades. This has to be a shocker for conservatives in the Vatican who approved Opus Dei and voted its founder a saint of the church.

I have kept a file on Opus Dei for half a century because members bleed themselves from a tight cilice around a leg and treat female “members” as their slaves. I will cover these weirdos later after listing evidence that economic inequality affects every economic group in the country.

“Consider the real needs of ordinary working families, such as basics like living wages, protecting Social Security, busting up monopolies, cleaning up pollution, providing affordable housing, funding our parks and libraries, and stopping price gouging,” said writer Jim Hightower. “Americans in red, blue, and purple areas agree on what the government ought to be doing — and disagree with what it is doing, but the plutocratic, moneyed elites that now fund and perpetuate America’s corrupt and dysfunctional government profit by promoting hatred in order to pit us against one another, praying that all of us don’t focus on them.”

List of evidence the DSA is floundering around like a hooked fish

CBS News reports that raising a child from birth to age 18 now costs $303,418 for a family earning the median U.S. income, or an average of $16,857 a year. Alaska, Kansas, and Montana jumped more than 20% in just one year.

Federal Reserve data from 2019 to 2022 report that the average American household’s net worth is over $1 million. But the median income is less than $200,000.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says $1 million today buys about as much as $480,000 did 30 years ago. And to spend like a millionaire did in 1996, a millionaire would have to be worth at least $21 million.

We recently lost an F-15E fighter jet to a missile over Iran. New models today cost $19,000 to $27,000 an hour to fly and maintain.

At last count there were up to 827,000 unknown viruses on earth present in birds and mammals that have the potential to infect humans. The bubonic plague is estimated to be over 5,000 years old.

The Divided States of America has 341 million people terrified. An estimated 512 million firearms have been manufactured for the U.S. market since 1899. Firearms kill 132 people a day. This carnage will not be resolved until we run out of guns and ammo — or get a Congress that will ban civilians from possessing a firearm that has a magazine capacity of more than six rounds.

Sky News and Sports Illustrated report that the FIFA World Cup official resale website lists Category One seats for World Cup soccer matches in MetLife Stadium, New Jersey at $2,299,998.85 each. Seats behind the Category One area list for $16,098.

Congress passed a law allowing arbitration to take place between health insurance companies and doctors. Plastic surgeons now take cases of breast reduction operations to arbitration where $112,000 fees for each operation have been approved. In one arbitration case which was approved, a plastic surgeon received $440,00 for a single reduction surgery. So far, Congress has refused to act.

Senator Sanders says the Trump family has made $4 billion in various enterprises since Daddy Warbucks Trump was elected president. It happens to be against the law — and morality.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science reports the Trump administration's cuts in the federal science budget will hurt America’s longstanding role in science and innovation.

Driving 100 miles in a gas car at 25 miles per gallon costs $13 on average. An electric car of the same size and weight would cost $5 to travel the same route, according to the New York Times.

The Trump administration just fired the 22 members of the National Science Board which was created in 1950 to advise the president and Congress on science and engineering policy and recommend major funding awards for research in scientific fields.

Oxfam estimates that 0.1% of households in the world have untaxed assets equivalent to about $3.55 trillion bucks in offshore accounts. “This isn’t about clever accounting,” Oxfam’s leading tax expert Christian Hallum summarizes. “It’s about power and impunity. When millionaires and billionaires stash trillions in off-shore tax havens, they place themselves above the obligations that bind the rest of society.”

Will Congress act to resolve some of these problems? Only The Shadow knows…

The Catholic Church has been wrong about sex for 2,000 years

The confusion about the big “Cs,” celibacy, contraception and instant conception has cost the Vatican and its dioceses billions of dollars because of its sexual abuse of children by hormone-charged priests and church leaders and its treatment of women as it struggles to govern its denomination. After being exposed to Pope “Bob” for a little short of a year, the world and its leaders — and particularly King Donald Trump — report the world’s Roman Catholics finally have a liberal-progressive pope who is unafraid of stating his (and the Vatican’s) positions on human rights and economic inequality.

One of his first major problems he wanted to face was the treatment of girls and women by the Catholic organization Opus Dei in Argentina. Opus Dei does not practice DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion. It was founded by an extremely conservative Spanish priest, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, in 1928. Opus Dei is in more than 70 countries and has a presence near the capitol building in Washington, D.C.

Research has exposed Opus Dei was and is involved in child grooming, human trafficking, and psychological and emotional control of young girls and women who joined the organization. Pope Leo is particularly concerned with Opus Dei in Argentina where 43 women testified they were promised an education and jobs if they joined. Instead, they were forced into working 12 hours a day, cooking and cleaning for male members without any pay. Letters to parents and homes were censored, family visits were discouraged or not allowed, and reading anything but religious books or books for children was banned. They were often left without money, clothes, and necessary female supplies and vulnerable to grooming, sexual abuse and harassment.

Federal prosecutors in Argentina are investigating Opus Dei leaders of “overseeing the exploitation and trafficking of girls, adolescents, and women between 1972 and 2015.” Conservative Pope John Paul II supported Opus Dei and led the campaign for sainthood for leader Josemaria Escrivia’. Ending Clergy Abuse, a global network of human rights defenders, sponsored a conference in Argentina. How many more billions will the Vatican and the dioceses spend to cover sexual abuse claims?

What will Pope Leo do about abortion and LBGTQUIA+ rights?

When I started teaching English at Fargo Central High the average family had four children. When I retired the average was two. Now, the birth rate is less than two. I must add when I played nose guard in a four man defensive line for the Moorhead State Teachers College football team in the 1950s, the other three players in the defensive line were Blackie, Lennie and Moochie Varriano from a family of seventeen children in Dilworth. I wonder what it cost to raise a child to age 18 then.

The word “abortion” is not in any language in any Bible, but many theologians claim it emphasizes that all human life is designed by God from conception. Jeremiah 1:5 states God’s position: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart.”

Medical authorities have been saying for decades that of 25 fetuses at the moment of conception, 20 babies will be born when they breathe their first air. But five fetuses will die of miscarriages and fatal medical problems. There must be something imperfect in God’s design.

Although every fetus is “known” in the womb, He allows about 10% of the surviving babies to be members of the LBGT+ community, although the Vatican and many Roman Catholics still consider homosexuals to be “intrinsically disordered.” Currently, one out of 100 babies will be a transgender person.

There is no doubt that economics plays a much larger role than religion in the number of abortions performed in 2026. I repeat: It takes $303,418 to raise a child to age 18. Like it or not, economics is very important in a family’s life. So is healthcare.

Read about the pregnancy of Rachel Fulton of Tennessee in the April 27 issue of The Guardian. There are thousands of American women who have gone through horrible days like Rachel Fulton has gone through because of her pregnancy.

The Tennessee mother of a three-year-old boy was pregnant with a fetus when she and her overjoyed husband found out the fetus had cystic hygroma, a disease where fluids gather where the heart would normally be, at 12 weeks. The fetus would not survive and was a danger to the life of the mother. Her doctor told her she had to wait until she was in mortal danger before she could have an abortion in Tennessee. Because of Tennessee anti-abortion pro-life laws, the only solution was a long ten-hour drive to Illinois for an abortion to save her own life.

A pro-life letter writer to The Forum wrote we had a “throwaway society” because of abortions. Abortion is an economic and medical reality because of a poorly designed Homo sapiens’ body and a capitalistic society that suffers from severe economic inequality.

Rachel Fulton outlines what a pregnant woman is faced with today: “Nothing prepares you to hear that the baby that you want is incompatible with life. And not only that he’s incompatible with life, but that he is putting my life at risk. There is nothing in the world that can prepare you for that, even if you know it might be coming.”