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Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most
Controversial Force in the Catholic Church
John L. Allen, Jr.
Doubleday Religion, November 2005. ISBN: 0-385-51449-2 (hardcover) $24.95.
416 pages
Reviewed by
Joseph P. Szimhart
Not much irritates a former member of a cult more than to
hear someone misrepresent details or exaggerate what happens in the cult. If
that last statement is true, think how irritated a current member of a
controversial group can be in the same situation.
A misrepresentation of one’s group or culture is a misrepresentation of one’s
behavior and identity: “That is not what we did; that is not who I am.” To
understand the nuances and complexity of any group, a critic must avoid reliance
on stereotypes and the extreme behaviors that do not represent the common
experience of group members.
Soon to be released as a major motion picture, The Da
Vinci Code, a best selling work of fiction, has dragged one controversial
Catholic group into more controversy than it deserves. That work of fiction by
Dan Brown claims to represent Opus Dei as an extremist group willing to kill and
bribe to retain its powerful, conservative position in the Catholic Church. A
key Opus Dei character in the book is a hooded albino monk who not only does the
killing, but also flagellates himself in acts of bloody penance purportedly
required by his sect. At least that is the impression I easily got from Brown’s
book.
John L. Allen, Jr., is the Vatican correspondent for the
National Catholic Reporter and a Vatican analyst for CNN and National Public
Radio. He is the author of the best-selling book Conclave, about the
selection process of a new Catholic pope. Allen has the skills, connections, and
breadth of experience to tackle this unwieldy subject. Opus Dei (literally, “the
work of God”) is a personal prelature of the Roman Catholic Church. People
familiar with Opus Dei merely call it “the Work.” Inspired by a vision in 1928,
Opus Dei’s recently canonized founder, Saint Josemaría Escrivá, conceived his
movement as a nonreligious order in which all Catholics, lay and religious, can
participate by dedicating themselves to Catholic principles and applying those
principles in every phase of life, especially secular. There is even a category
in Opus Dei for non-Catholics.
Allen opens his book by calling Opus Dei the “Guinness
Extra Stout” of the Catholic Church. In a world of “lite” and “diet,” Guinness
takes us back to an old tradition of a drink with a punch, a real beer, if you
will. Allen calls Opus Dei “the most controversial force” in the church. Not a
religious order like the Jesuits or Franciscans, Opus Dei occupies a special
category as a personal prelature—the prelate is an elected leader who
may or may not be a member of a
religious order. Opus Dei has a structure based on intensity of commitment.
Numeraries at the high commitment level are 20 percent of membership.
Numeraries are celibate, live in centers of separate genders, and follow the
daily rituals as strictly as possible. Numerary assistants, a special
category, number about 4,000 women that serve as maids and servants at Opus
centers. Associates are celibate members that live with their families,
may or may not be married, and otherwise have commitments in the world.
Supernumeraries, comprising 70 percent of
Opus Dei membership, are less committed, not celibate, and can be householders
with children and businesses. There are also cooperators, who may or may
not be Catholics, but who nevertheless practice principles of a Christian life
as espoused by the group. Opus Dei members are socially invisible, meaning that
the member wears no identifying costume or emblem and while working in society
rarely reveals that he or she is a member. This last feature, fairly or not, has
given Opus Dei the reputation of a secret society.
Personal purification rituals in Opus Dei are voluntary but
highly touted. These rituals include the discipline
or flagellation of the back with a small, whip-like cord. Another ritual
is enduring the cilice or barbed strap worn tight around the thigh for
short periods. The cilice can cause minor skin
wounds. An eye witness reported that Escrivá whipped himself so long and hard
that he would leave splashes of blood all over the floor.
However, Escrivá never required anyone to imitate him. According to
Allen, Escrivá taught that no one in the movement should do anything that
compromises his or her health. These seemingly barbaric rituals are to be done
in private and endured silently. Opus numeraries also practice mortification by
sleeping on thin boards that cover the mattress. Men will sleep on the floor
once a week. Members practice small corporeal mortification at meals by skipping
sugar, extra butter, or dessert. Members fast on prescribed days and on their
own. But Allen notes that the time he spent with Opus Dei members over a year of
research proved that members are “not especially fastidious about denying
themselves food and drink.”
Members might have an assigned spiritual director who acts
as a guide and confessor of sorts. Ritual prayer several times a day keeps each
member aligned with his or her purpose and cause, which is to represent Christ’s
message in everything. In general, Opus members are very dedicated to family,
job, church, and the mission. Members tend to follow conservative values that
align with Catholic principles. For this reason, critics see the group as a
throwback to a pre-Vatican II era.
Some ex-members describe Opus Dei as another harmful cult
that uses deceptive recruiting and brainwashing.
But is it harmful? And if it is harmful, how could a pope as astute and worldly
wise as John Paul II support an extremist organization that could damage the
Church that he so served and loved?
John Allen wrote Opus Dei both to examine these
criticisms and to expose Opus Dei to the light of journalism. This means that he
traveled far and wide to Opus centers around the world, interviewed both members
and ex-members and apologists and critics alike, and read about the group till
he thought he could not take it any more. What he left out of his book would
fill many volumes, I’m sure. What he put in should go a long way to explain many
facets of the Escrivá movement in Catholicism. Allen summarizes the history and
structure of the group and its leader in Section One. In Section Two, he covers
the group from the inside and describes its purpose as members generally see it.
The title of chapter 4 is telling: “Contemplatives in the Middle of the World.”
In Section Three, Allen addresses the criticisms about the group’s attitude
toward secrecy, mortification, women, money, politics and the Church.
Allen addresses “blind obedience” among members, and the
cult label. In chapter 13, he relates an interview with cult expert David Clark,
who exit-counseled a female member who later founded Opus Dei Awareness Network
(ODAN). ODAN has Internet presence and functions as a forum for former members.
In his last section, Section Four, Allen gives a fine “summary evaluation,” with
some advice for Opus Dei as it moves into the future.
I must admit, having come from a career in the
“cult awareness” field, that I hold a bias toward Opus Dei as a kind of
Catholic cult with harmful elements. I am also a Catholic. My early sources of
information about Opus were not only ex-members’ stories, but also several books
published before 1990, including The Secret World of Opus Dei by Michael
Walsh. Allen’s book has given me a better understanding of this movement, and I
am thankful for his hard work that lays out all the Opus Dei laundry, both clean
and soiled. The author brought me more in touch with the average member who
appears to suffer no undue harm. Allen reports that members and leaders were
more secretive prior to 1990, but this secrecy may have been a flaw that is
slowly being corrected. By following a principle of humility to work silently in
the world without bringing attention to oneself, the member is actually
following a commandment of Christ.
On the flip side, outsiders noted the lack of transparency
in a group that, for its relatively small size (less than 90,000 among a billion
Catholics worldwide), has considerable influence. Allen reports that Opus
attracts people of financial means who have sophisticated fundraising ability.
Some critics believe that Opus Dei has too much influence over the Vatican, and
that it may be the driving force behind the conservative backlash to
liberalizing elements inadvertently released by Vatican II. (In fact, only 0.9
percent of those who are Catholic bishops are Opus members). Allen looks
squarely into the problem of transparency as one of the flaws in the group,
which even the group acknowledges has led to considerable misunderstanding. The
secrecy lends itself to extreme misrepresentation in The Da Vinci Code,
for example, because there is no accessible popular information to contradict
it!
Allen substantiates charges of deceptive recruiting,
pointing out that some members would invite friends to Opus Dei activities
without mentioning that the group was behind the activities.
Another tendency was to not reveal the high demands initially to new recruits. A
third tactic was to “provoke a crisis of vocation” when a recruiter believed
that someone was ready for it. But Allen notes that not all Opus Dei members
among the hundreds he interviewed behaved this way, nor were they all
politically conservative. In fact, Allen discovered that the deceptive tactics
are not a policy from the top, but the result of overzealous members. Most
members, he found, do fall into the conservative camp, however. In principle,
each member votes according to individual conscience—Opus Dei member groups in
South America, for example, have entirely different political and social
climates than those in the United States or Spain. Another myth that Allen
exposes is that Opus Dei works in high places and does no charitable work. Opus
members have in fact set up schools and medical charities for the poor in
third-world countries. These members are actually following the spirit of the
founder, who expected every member to act in the world as Christ would.
If I have a criticism of Allen’s book, it regards factors
that may be beyond his scope. From his book, we learn that new movements, like
saints, are flawed entities and often rub contemporaries the wrong way. Allen
tells us about Josemaría Escrivá’s flaws, even if his devotees shrink from
recognizing anything beyond the legend of his holiness. But Escrivá and his more
dedicated devotees envision more than just another movement equal to hundreds of
others spawned within Catholicism. Their purpose is to infiltrate all aspects of
society with God’s grace through “the Work.” The path emphasizes work on oneself
through mortification, as if this will bring more of God’s grace into being.
Allen quotes Escrivá from his writings in The Way
(227): “If you realize that your body is your enemy, and an enemy of God’s glory
since it is an enemy of your sanctification, why do you treat it so softly?” In
The Forge, by Escrivá, he states: “What has been lost through the flesh,
the flesh should pay back: be generous in your penance.” Although members will
dispute it, in this latter regard, Opus Dei falls into the radical dualism of
the Gnostic cults that denigrate the corporeal self in favor of a spiritualized
self. In addition, Gnosticism as one of the early Gospel heresies, like much of
occultism in general, emphasizes a magical union with the divine through ritual
prayer and mortification. Simply put, God gives you more grace if you pray more
or fast more. The Gospel and especially the writings attributed to St. Paul do
not support this nonsensical approach to God. In effect, such cults tend to
separate members from a reasonable approach to faith, and to cut off one’s
reason in matters of faith is always dangerous.
Allen does not offer a neat answer to the question of how
harmful Opus Dei is. His research indicates that some ex-members have legitimate
complaints, but, like any new organization, Opus Dei has made adjustments and
decreased what appears as secrecy during the past two decades. Using his analogy
that Opus is like strong beer, one can understand how the group members might
lose the more sober approach to religion common to Catholics. His book corrects
misperceptions about conspiratorial power, and it places the mortification
rituals in context. Unless Allen missed something, I got the impression that I
suffered more mortification playing high-school football for four seasons than
an Opus Dei member will in a lifetime of religious practice!
Overall, I liked this book. It should be required reading
for anyone who wishes to get beyond the distorted image of Opus Dei portrayed in
The Da Vinci Code.
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