"As I have gone through high school, different things have come up that I still go back to the notes from the classes and the seminars that we had then," she said.

Their eldest sister Ana Buckley, 21, a senior at University of Virginia, said the skills she picked up in the programs at Arnold Hall benefitted her as she survived dorm life, before moving to an apartment.

"It made it so much easier because you learned them in such a home environment that everything just seemed natural. To me it was natural that when you get up you make your bed in the morning," she said.

"The mindset wasn't that you had to do it, it was that you're doing it because it makes where you are living a more livable place. When you are in the dorms, I mean it's so tiny, you want to make as much of the space as beautiful and livable as you can," she said.

After a tour of the grounds at Arnold Hall, the Opus Dei members spoke about some of the controversies perceived to surround the organization.

The issues included mortification of the flesh -- a practice not native to Opus Dei, but practiced by a variety of Catholics and Catholic organizations including Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, and the Missionaries of Charity.

Opus Dei members at the interview said mortifications often include simple self-denial of small comforts rather than the flagellation scenes from popular films and books.

"Everybody does it in a different way. For example, I have learned that when I am taking my coffee instead of putting two sugars I put one. It sounds so simple and so dumb. You will suffer when you are taking that coffee because you are missing that sugar," Emilia Buckley said.

Even though some films portrayed Catholic life in terms violent mortification, the members talked about how much they enjoyed more recent films such as "The Way."

"What I liked about that movie was that it did give a spiritual message, but it was really raw. It was earthy. It was showing people's vulnerabilities," Jack Vercollone, 63, a cooperator married to supernumerary Paula Vercollone, 56, who had something to add.

"But have you seen St. Josemaria's movie?" she said.

Father Dick Rieman, 86, a priest of Opus Dei who resides at the Chestnut Hill Center, lived in Rome in the 1950s and knew St. Josemaria Escriva personally. The film, which Vercollone referred to, "There Be Dragons" portrayed the young saint as he started Opus Dei.

"He had a great child-like attitude toward life, which is faith. God is watching over him and loves him, as we all know. I picked it up a little bit with this guy," he said.

He said the performance given by Charlie Cox, as the young saint, so moved him that he had tears in his eyes, recalling the saint he knew as a friend.

Joe Billmeier added that the experience of Opus Dei is not controversial in quite the way Hollywood frames it.

"If you want something controversial, it is just simply that, yeah, we want to change the world. But, how are we going to change the world? It is just everything you have heard here. It is smiling when you don't feel like smiling. It's undertaking this little mortification. It is helping the guy you work with. It is using your own initiative," he said.