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The
Opus Dei Survival Kit
by Dimitri Knobbe, Holland
En español
- En holandés
Introduction
In August 1993 I was looking for housing in Amsterdam, preparing
myself for my freshman year in college. When I came across
this beautiful student house named Leidenhoven, which was
led by apparently nice people, I did not have to think twice
about moving in. As usual within Opus Dei, I did not hear
anything about this organization until some weeks after I
had moved in. In an early stage I started to find the atmosphere
in the house quite suffocating and things just did not feel
right, although I could not exactly tell what bothered me
at that time. Even though I was feeling somewhat uncomfortable
with the Opus Dei members, I did come close to a vocational
crisis at one point, largely due to an excessive understanding
of my personal sinfulness and human sin in general. These
thoughts were at least triggered by the Opus Dei spirituality,
by which I was surrounded.[1]
After about six months, the pressure had built up to an extent
that I had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for two
months. On my return to Leidenhoven, I was advised by the
director of Leidenhoven not to talk about my situation with
anybody since people would think I was "crazy as a loon".
He sent me to a "friend of the house" as he called
him, for psychological follow-up counseling. You have to understand
that all this time I was not fully aware of the psychological
pressure they were putting on me. This Opus Dei psychiatrist
told me basically that I should stop mourning and that I should
"pray and fight". He told me that only the Catholic
Church could save the world and that I should break all ties
with my parents, only to look them up on their deathbed. Indeed
my relationship with my parents was not a very good one, but
to say the latter exemplifies the practice of detachment advocated
by Escrivá: "Detach yourself from creatures until
you are stripped of them."[2] During the rest of my stay
in Leidenhoven, I was treated by the Opus Dei members with
cynicism due to my ongoing emotionally unstable state. According
to a book by Jef Geeraerts [3] this sort of cynicism should
be considered as givings of eleemosynae spirituales, Latin
for spiritual alms, as a way to become strengthened in the
Opus Dei spirituality. At the end of the second year, I was
asked to leave the house so that others "could get a
chance".
I will stop here writing about my own experience with Opus
Dei. Although it took me years to recover from it, my experiences
are insignificant compared to those of others.[4]
A few years later, I found out that my university was providing
Opus Dei with facilities in order to attract students to spend
their summer in Latin America working on a development program.
Of course the name Opus Dei was not mentioned - the organization
was simply named Studenten voor Ontwikkeling, Students for
Development. I decided to inform the university press about
this and they gave the subject considerable attention and,
as is usual in these cases, received an enormous amount of
letters to the editor from angry people (all Opus Dei members
and sympathizers, without saying it) after they had published
a critical article. Via this article, I was contacted by a
girl who went on one of those trips to Latin America. She
told me about the fight she and some other girls had had with
the members of the organization because nothing had been said
about Opus Dei, while, in fact, the whole trip appeared to
have been organized by this organisation. As a side note,
I would like to mention that Opus Dei traditionally is on
the side of ultra-rightwing politics in Latin America.[5]
I was also contacted by a minister who wanted to talk to
me. He had experienced Opus Dei when he was working in the
city of Maastricht, Holland, where he had been consulted by
parents whose children had become just a little too close
to Opus Dei. Proselytizing among very young children is perhaps
one of the most controversial aspects of Opus Dei.[6]
I was also contacted by the parents of somebody I knew from
boxing practice. Their daughter had been staying in the student
residence for girls De Aenstal in Amsterdam. At one point,
when their daughter seemed to slip into Opus Dei, members
of Opus Dei more or less forced their way into the house,
packed his daughter's belongings and took her away. The girl
stayed under psychological care for years, and maybe still
is. Curiously, after all this, when the guy I knew from boxing
practice happened to run into one of the female members of
Opus Dei at the university, she greeted him as if nothing
had happened between Opus Dei and his family.
1. Researching this paper
As a way to form a proper opinion on Opus Dei I started to
read many books on this organization. And because of the cases
just described, I have come to the conclusion that I should
get actively involved in the worldwide criticism that Opus
Dei has provoked over the years. However, when reading about
Opus Dei I was struck by the lack of a more profound understanding
of this organization. Although many works are highly researched,
many authors do not seem to capture the inner world of Opus
Dei. Often authors are paying too much attention to subjects
like the character of Josemaría Escriva [7], the quest
for power within the Roman Curia [8], the financial and political
scandals [9] etcetera. Even worse, some authors come up with
strange theories, like Opus Dei being a secret Jewish organization
for instance.[10]
2. My understanding of Opus Dei
The spirituality of Opus Dei should be understood against
the background of the typical form of Spanish religiosity.
This religiosity often takes the middle road between the mentality
of a knight and that of a monk, which could be considered
the result of the centuries-long struggle against Islam. Not
surprisingly, many aggressive orders have arisen from Spanish
soil, for instance the Dominicans and the Jesuits ("los
de siempre", the usual ones, according to Josemaría!).[11]
A famous member of the latter order was Baltasar Gracián,
a 17th century priest, who is often compared to Machiavelli
and the Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu. His maxim was: "Use
divine means as if there aren't any worldly and use worldly
means as if there are no divine." His book The Art of
Worldy Wisdom is literally full of opportunism but still ends
with: "Be a saint, that says everything." Apparently
some means are justified by the intention which underlies
the means. This has to be understood primarily by the way
the Catholic Church sees herself, as the only earthly provider
of divine grace, in particular by providing the gratia habitualis
by way of the sacraments. The Church as an intermediary has
known many inner conflicts as to how to operate her sacred
task. The central question, in my own words, was to what extent
individual members of the Church could be allowed to use pressure
and lies as a means to benefit the Church. With regard to
this question, the Catholic moral theology has developed several
moral systems between the 16th and 20th century. All of these
systems looked for a solution to the problem of how the individual
consciousness, wavering between an objective law and subjective
freedom, could justify a (deceptive) utterance. On the one
ultimate side there was the system of probabilism, on the
other probabiliorism. The former learned that, when in doubt,
the individual consciousness had the freedom to judge his
own pronouncements (lex dubia non obligat), the latter learned
the opposite.
In my opinion, the way propagated by probabilism still persists
in the practices of Opus Dei, although the most extreme forms
of this system (characterized by rigorism or tutiorism) have
been condemned by the Church. I shall try to give an example.
In all intimacy, I was once called "a friend for life"
by an Opus Dei member. Since Opus Dei discourages genuine
friendships between their members and since non-members certainly
are not considered friends, this apparently friendly gesture
should be understood as a form of reservatio mentalis; the
inner reserve of somebody who says or promises something,
by choosing his words in such a manner - in particular by
giving them a different meaning than normally is expected
- that the hearer is deceived and the speaker can always deny
having said something. So the specific utterance of calling
somebody a friend for life should be considered a form of
love-bombing, which Opus Dei is often accused of. It is sometimes
hard to tell the difference between real love-bombing and
genuine cordiality in the world of Opus Dei. This has to do
with the fact that the Catholic teachings do not see the human
nature as fundamentally sinful, as in the traditional protestant
churches, but rather lacking the imago dei (since Adam's fall)
which can only be restored by following the Church. The combination
of love-bombing and ego-destruction is often the way of destabilizing
people's minds and propelling them into Opus Dei.
Opus Dei has always dismissed any criticism by saying that
all the criticism is expressed by people who "just do
not understand" their organization or by former members,
the latter often being accused of flaqueza, Spanish for lack
of character, which leads to a distorted view of reality.
At the same time however, Opus Dei has all the characteristics
of a sect, as formulated in a 1986 Vatican document [12] and
as every critical-thinking individual would agree.
Sources
[1] Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus
Dei, wrote in his booklet The
Way: "Don't forget that you are just a trash can [?]"
(maxim 592).
[2] Idem, maxim 149. A good analysis of The Way is provided
by André van Bosbeke in his book Opus Dei in België,
Breda 1985. You also might want to read the book by Klaus
Steigleder Das Opus Dei, eine Innenansicht, München 1996,
in which many maxims are cited. It is one of the best books
on Opus Dei I have read so far, because it captures the atmosphere
around the modus operandi of Opus Dei so well. The German
author Peter Hertel cites from Cronica as well as some other
documents that Opus Dei tries to hide from the public in his
book Geheimnisse des Opus Dei, Geheimdokumente - Hintergründe
- Strategien, Freiburg 1995 (published by the same author;
Ich verspreche euch den Himmel: Geistlicher Anspruch, Gesellschaftliche
Ziele und Kirchliche Bedeutung des Opus Dei, Düsseldorf
1991. A similar introduction to Opus Dei is from the hand
of the renowned author on religious subjects Michael Walsh,
The Secret World of Opus Dei, London 1989).
[3] Author of two novels on Opus Dei; Het Rashomon complex
(1992 Antwerpen/Amsterdam) and De PG (1999 Amsterdam).
[4] You could check the homepage of Franz Schaefer (www.mond.at/opus.dei/)
for other people's personal experiences. Or read the book
of Fergal Bowers, The Work: An Investigation into the History
of Opus Dei and how it Operates in Ireland Today, Dublin 1989.
[5] For instance Penny Lernoux, People of God, the Struggle
for World Catholicism, New York 1989.
[6] In particular Javier Ropero Palaéz, Im Bann des
Opus Dei, Familien in der Zerreissprobe, Düsseldorf 1995.
[7] For instance Luis Carandell, Vida y Milagros de Monseñor
Escivá de Balaguer, Fundador del Opus Dei, Barcelona
1992. I have not read this book yet, or any other in Spanish.
Quite interesting with regard to the supposed holiness of
Josemaría is the book by Kenneth Woodward, Making Saints:
How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who
Doesn't, and Why, New York 1990.
[8] For instance Matthias Mettner, Die Katholische Maffia,
Kirchliche Geheimbünde greifen nach der Macht, München
1995.
[9] In particular Robert Hutchison, Their Kingdom Come, London
1998.
[10] Alfonso Carlos de Borbón, Die Ganze Wahrheit
über das Opus Dei, Durach 1997.
[11] The quotation of Josemaría is derived from the
book by María del Carmen Tapia, Beyond the Threshold,
A Life in Opus Dei, New York 1998. To understand more about
the relationship between Opus Dei and the Jesuits, see Joan
Estruch's Saints and Schemers, Opus Dei and Its Paradoxes,
New York 1995.
[12] The booklet Parents' Guide to Opus Dei (New York 1993)
by J. Garvey describes the sectarian character of Opus Dei
using the Vatican document Challenge of New Religious Movements
(1986) as a basis. The Parents' Guide is distributed by the
Catholic organisation 'Our Lady and Saint-Joseph in Search
of the Lost Child', 305 Madison Avenue, suite 1146, New York
10165, USA (with many volunteers in different countries).
A second organisation in the USA is the 'Opus Dei Awareness
Network' (see www.odan.org). Other initiatives from within
the Catholic Church have led to the publications of Harald
Schutzeichel (Hg.), Opus Dei - Ziele, Anspruch und Einfluss,
Düsseldorf 1992 and Paulus-Akademie (Hg.), Opus Dei -
Stossgrupp Gottes oder 'Heilige Maffia'?, Zürich 1992.
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