What are your thoughts on Opus Dei?

[leftyladyfrommo]

I am asking this because I have read that they are very out there - conservative to the extreme. Don't even want to recognise the 2nd Vatican Counsel.

There is a very young priest to be at the church where I attend Mass sometimes. He is extremely conservative about everything but he is also very young and hasn't much life experience yet. But he was praising Opus Dei.

Just wondering how others feel.

[shrike]

1. Most people know of Opus Dei from the Da Vinci Code

I myself know very little about them. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle -- they are not nearly as sinister as some make them out to be, but maybe not as benign as they themselves say they are.

[hedgehog]

2. I don't think I have encountered them personally

But they do have a reputation as "tattle-tales" for running to the bishop to report on other people. I did encounter one group when my sons were younger. A friend tried to introduce me to a visiting priest with "personal ties" to the Vatican. The next thing I knew, her sons, 8 & 10, were in a Spanish seminary. On their first visit home, these boys were telling their female cousins to "cover up". (The girls were wearing short sleeve blouses on a hot summer day). I'm pretty certain that group wasn't Opus Dei, but it has left me somewhat suspicious of any group claiming special ties to the Vatican or the Holy Father.

I think a key phrase in your question is " hasn't much life experience" Many times the young are much more judgmental than the old; even if they lack judgement.

[Matilda]

3. Grrrrr.

I endorse the above. Our Cardinal is a supporter of Opus Dei (although he denies that he is a
member), and he is straight out of 1950s hardline Catholicism. The Church of retribution and
hellfire.

They are tattletales, they practise mortification of the flesh (psychologists have other words for
it), believe in huge familites in these days of overpopulation problems, and are generally anti-
Vatican II.

[leftyladyfrommo]

4. That is kind of what I had heard

I can't remember what it was that I read. But what I remember was that the two sexes are kept separate. And that most of the young men are kind of pushed into the priesthood.

And I heard that they do have special "in" with the Vatican.

But I was very surprised to hear this new priest praising them the way he did.

[Reverend_Smitty]

5. I scratch my head at the young Republican phenomenon as well...

You wonder how young people could be so conservative. But maybe his inexperience is the reason why he follows orthodoxy so closely, not having much practical life experience isolates you and doesn't allow for more "liberal" beliefs. It's possible that he's romanticized this lifestyle and practical experiences in the real world might teach him otherwise.

[hedgehog]

6. Thinking it over,

I have to say that any group claiming "a special connection" makes my hackles rise. It strikes me as a variation on Gnosticism by suggesting that some among us have the "inside information".

[leftyladyfrommo]

7. Don't you think that it would be odd for a group like that to

even have a "special connection?"

[hedgehog]

8. Makes you wonder, special connection to what?

First class seats in heaven? I see a lot of Euro-centrism returning to the church and I am disturbed when some speakers' main concern seems to be to get the native Christian birthrate in Europe up higher than the immigrant Moslem birthrate. These people seem to see Rome as the center of the world. I see Rome as a place of unity for all of us, a place where the US meets China meets Brazil meets AUstalia, etc, not as a goal in itself.

[leftyladyfrommo]

9. Well, I certainly don't know.

I don't see the Vatican as much of anything but a place where great art work is all over the place.

But I was raised Methodist.

[Matilda]

10. They certainly had a "special connection" to John Paul II.

I guess it meant mainly a quick canonisation for their founder, and permission to keep doing what
they're doing; maybe there was even funding, I don't know.

I don't know how Pope Benedict views them, but I don't see any clamping down, certainly not here
in Sydney, and Cardinal Pell is a protege of Benedict.

[hedgehog]

11. I guess one question is what is a special connection worth

here on earth? I was going to say that Opus Dei or any other group is as scary as we let it be. The problem is that as long as a bishop can pull the pastor out of a parish or close the parish down entirely, we're all hostages to the local bishop. I don't think this is exactly what Jesus envisioned for His Church.

[tjwmason]

12. Mixed.

I think a good theory gone wrong.

The founding purpose of Opus Dei was to get Catholics to engage in their faith, and to carry it into the whole of their lives. The organisation itself (and its founder) have always been more questionable, there have definitely been leanings towards fascist regimes and significant questions about the control of members.

As for a young priest being conservative - in my experience this is the case. There does seem to be a tendancy from what I've seen. I know that the seminaries which only teach the old Latin Mass are full, Opus Dei isn't short of vocations. I think that one can see how conservatives would have been inspired by John Paul II and now Benedict XVI in a way that more liberal potential priests wouldn't.

[hedgehog]

13. I think the question of new priests is a loaded one

What if it's not that the conservative rules are attracting young men, but that they are repeling young men? We may never know how many young men (and women?) have been lost to the priesthood because they looked at the current structure and decided that they would never fit in.

[Matilda]

14. Everything you wanted to know about Opus Dei.

I found this site while I was looking for information about something else - it's very comprehensive
and factual, not at all hysterical. But Opus Dei is even more cult-like than I imagined.

Here's the link to ODAN (Opus Dei Awareness Network):

http://www.odan.org/what_is_opus_dei.htm

Makes very interesting reading.

[demosincebirth]

15. I am alway skeptical when I read articles about something or someone

and don't know who wrote them, or whether they have bone to grind.

[CBHagman]

16. An interesting wrinkle in the Opus Dei coverage.

I was reading an article in The New York Times recently about the fact that El Salvador has completely criminalized abortion (to the point where an ectopic pregnancy is not automatically terminated but monitored until there are signs of a pending rupture, if I remember the article correctly). The author of the article suggested that the influence of Opus Dei is behind the ban. I can't verify the claims, but the account itself was very interesting. See the link below.

Aargh. It turns out you have to purchase it. At any rate, you can check it out at the library or online (paid in the latter case).

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60D14FE3B540C7A8CDDAD0894DE404482

[knitter4democracy]

17. I taught at a girls school they tried to take over.

They're pretty weird. The school is owned and run by Ursulines--very liberal women, those amazing Ursuline sisters. Opus Dei tried to take over the board, pressured the school principal and president to fire the two most liberal religion teachers over a silly sex ed issue (mostly through sending out fliers to other parents full of misinformation and lies), and even got one of their religion teachers hired there.

I was there through the last part. That teacher always seemed a bit off, but he seemed harmless until we started getting reports on what he was actually saying in his classes. I taught the sophs my last year there, the same grade he taught, and they started telling me how much he was scaring them. I talked with the head of the religion dept. about it after failing to get through to him, and it wasn't long after that when the principal was told by a parent that he'd been seen at an Opus Dei meeting and was obviously serious about it.

Opus Dei controls many schools and universities, and we don't know about it. They're secretive, to the point of never releasing even a roster of who's in it and which properties they own and control. I may be Eastern Orthodox, but after seeing what I did, I don't trust them at all.

[CBHagman]

18. The International Herald Tribune...

...also has Jack Hitt's New York Times article on Opus Dei, El Salvador, and the criminalization of abortion. I've provided a link to the part about how ectopic pregnancies are handled. Frightening stuff.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:LE972hKHDsUJ:www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/09/america/web.0409abortioncomplete.php+%22opus+dei%22+%2B+abortion+%2B+%22el+salvador%22+%2B+ectopic&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

[kwassa]

19. Infamous FBI spy Robert Hanssen was a member of Opus Dei

as was Louis Freeh, the FBI director.

"Hanssen's wife Bonnie found Hanssen out due to some strange behaviour; Hanssen half-confessed that he sold some worthless facts for $20,000. Bonnie made him confess to a priest, identified by the New York Times as the Reverend Robert P. Bucciarelli, former head of Opus Dei in the USA. The actual confession and advice is privileged; the priest did not break his vow of confidentiality; the spying continued for years."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

[Joe Chi Minh]

20. They are elitists who, like all elitists in whatever sphere,

labor under a massive misapprehension, namely, that they are the Lord's Anointed; when in terms of spirituality, and more specifically Christianity, they are the dogs bodies, and it is the poor non-academic working people who are the royalty.

They had what was called, I think, the Blue Brigade, fighting with the Nazis, and apparently have a dagger on the wall of one of their chapels. Their late founder, a priest, actually paid for an aristocratic title!

One comical thing about him is that apparently he taught that women were weaker than men spiritually, when the reverse case is a matter of common observation, as well as being arguably indicated in various passages of scripture. I believe that the primary, though not exhaustive reason why Christ became a man rather than a woman, was pursuant to the principle and purpose of his incarnation, i.e. in a spirit of humility. Likewise, there seems to be indications that women are closer to God the Father in his eternal essence.

[demosincebirth]

21. they sound like some christian fundamentalis I know.

[Joe Chi Minh]

22. I would hope so.