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The Southern Cross, Page 4 Commentary Thursday, April 27, 2000 An itchy trigger finger? O n Holy Saturday, at about 5:00 in the morn ing, Federal agents in combat gear invaded the Miami home of Lazaro Gonzalez, where his great-nephew Elian Gonzalez had been living with relatives, and removed him at gunpoint. Later that day, Elian was flown to Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, and reunited with his father. Once a definitive judgment is received from the courts, he will presumably return to Cuba with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. There was no real doubt that this complicated case would end with Elian’s return to his father’s custody. International law and foreign policy con cerns tipped the scales heavily in that direction from the first. There was, in fact, a growing impa tience with the delaying tactics of Elian’s Miami relatives, whose understandable detestation of Fidel Castro and Cuba’s Communist government seemed to blind them to all other realities and claims. But the raid itself was barbaric and troubling. Agents of the Justice Department, formed into a SWAT-like team, invaded the house with a batter ing ram. They were armed with pepper spray and automaic weapons, which they pointed at the unarmed family, shouting “We’ll shoot, we’ll shoot!” The legal basis of this raid was extremely shaky. Although the Immigration and Naturalization Service had declared that Lazaro no longer had custody of the boy, the INS had not required him to hand over Elian. The uncle, an American citi zen, had not violated any law, court order or even bureaucratic requirement. The INS could have sent the agents to knock on Mr. Gonzalez’ door. As George F. Will has remarked, “The INS preferred to smash the door.” Indeed, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the government’s attempt to deny Elian due process of law. The court had accepted his lawyer’s appeal, but had yet to hear the arguments or to mle on the appeal, when the Attorney General, Janet Reno, ordered the raid. The Miami raid again reveals the itchy trigger Q uestion: Recently I heard of “Opus Dei”— some affirming [things and] some negative. Please discuss this in your question and answer series. —Mill McDermott A nswer: Opus Dei (Latin for “the work of God”) is an organization of Catholic lay men and women who formally dedicate them selves to apostolic works on behalf of the Church, while living out their vocations in the world. Their stated mission is “to promote among Christians of all social classes a life in the middle of the world fully consistent with their faith and to contribute to the evangelization of every sphere of society. In short, it is to spread the message that all the baptized are called to seek holiness and to make the Gospel known.” A Spanish priest, Blessed Josemaria Escriva, founded Opus Dei in Madrid in 1928. Escriva’s provocative insight, innovative for its time, was that the Catholic laity had a highly significant role to play in bringing the world to Christ, even in the midst of their daily, secular situations—ah idea Federal agents remove 6-year-old Elidn Gonzdlez from his great-uncle's house in Miami early April 22. The Cuban refugee boy was later reunited with his father at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, finger of the current administration, as previously seen at Waco and in Serbia. Whenever this govern ment finds its deadlines ignored, it seems to act with an adolescent temper and to try to force the issue with violence, whether the question is firearms violations, diplomatic negotiations or a child-custody case with international implications. When the Branch Davidians holed up in Waco and refused to surrender on weapons charges, the negotiations dragged on until the Justice Depart ment’s patience snapped. The result was a ghastly inferno in which 87 people were incinerated. Two years later, Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred Questions & Answers which is not so new today, thanks to Apostolicam Actuositatem (1965), the Second Vatican Council’s “Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity.” Escriva died in 1975 and was beatified in 1992, but even today his presence looms large within the organization, particularly through the legacy of his copious writings. Escriva’s onetime personal sec retary, Bishop Javier Echevarria, is the current Prelate of Opus Dei. Since 1928, Opus Dei has grown to approxi mately 80,000 members worldwide. In that time, it has set up many high schools, universities and centers of lay formation, both in the U.S. and around the world. In Rome, for example, it oper ates the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, as well as the University of Navarra in Spain. Its members are involved in a wide variety of pro jects in fields such as education and vocational training, medicine, and the media. In 1982, Pope John Paul II established Opus Dei as a “personal prelature”, a special type of structure under canon law which allows diocesan priests and lay people to formally affiliate with it as something like a “floating diocese.” So, for P. Murrough Federal Building in Oklahoma City in revenge for Waco. When the Serbian regime was slow to agree to the American position in talks over Kosovar, the State and Defense Departments basically decided to bomb Serbia into compliance. The innocent died with the guilty in the undeclared war that followed. On Saturday, the Justice Department again lost patience and rather than pursue further talks or wait for a definitive judgment from the courts, swept in with their equivalent of a SWAT team. The photographs of the Justice Department com mandos, with fingers on the triggers of then- weapons, have alarmed the world. Granted that the Branch Davidians were obvi ously “whacko,” that Slobodan Milosevic’s “ethnic cleansing” was hard to distinguish from the </> Holocaust, and that Elian Gonzalez should have H been handed over to his father before now, the a) ^ means of effecting the resolution of these crises 2. have been characterized by a violent impatience ° unbecoming a great power, let alone a great repub- lie. In Elian’s case, his forcible removal from what z had become his home smacked more of Castro’s u usual methods than of traditional American ones. In the propaganda war that underlay this latest crisis, the United States had nothing to gain by a precipitous, impatient recourse to force of arms against a law-abiding—if stubborn—household. It had a great deal to lose by such an action, includ ing its claim to be far more supportive of the fami ly than any communist government. As the pictures of Elian shrieking in the arms of a federal agent as he is dragged from his home in the pre-dawn raid on Holy Saturday, with helmeted federal agents behind them, it was hard not to see Christ in the panicked boy and all too easy to see the agents as latter-day centurians, enforcing the arbitrary decrees of a present-day procurator. May God forbid that any further crises will be resolved in such a violently adolescent way by this or any American administration. —DKC example, within this prelature men can be ordained as priests for Opus Dei without neces sarily belonging to a territorial diocese, and lay people may receive sacramental ministry from them without recourse to a parish church. Opus Dei has sometimes come under fire for its controversial style of operation, which has been variously perceived as elitist or even secre tive—charges which have been vigorously denied by the organization’s leaders. Still, it is definitely part and parcel of Opus Dei's message that being one of their members is one of the best ways of fulfilling a vocation to be Catholic in the world. It is up to individual Catholics to determine whether Opus Dei's way is actually God’s way for them. —James B. Knapp, Jr. James B. Knapp, Jr., is Coordinator of Technology Services for the Diocese of Savannah. He holds a master's degree in the ology from the John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C.