Ex-member: Don't judge Ruth Kelly's spirituality by what The Da Vinci Code says

By Christopher Howse in The Telegraph. Christopher Howse writes leaders and features and reviews for The Daily Telegraph, which he joined in 1996 as obituaries editor. He lives in Westminster.

When I was a member of Opus Dei, a certain sort of person was beastly to me because they hated Opus Dei. "Aha," they would say, if I made a mistake, "typical Opus Dei!" Opus Dei-baiting was like Jew-baiting.

No hidden agenda: Ruth Kelly

Since I left, in 1988, the same kind of people have been much nicer, on the assumption that I loathe Opus Dei as much as they seem to. I don't loathe it at all. My departure was to do with me rather than them. I didn't like getting up early and things. But I have never since met a group who are kinder, more patient or less motivated by personal ambition.

I can understand, though, why Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, doesn't want to be written off as a mere chip off the Opus Dei block. She should be condemned for her politics, if they are despicable, not for her choice of spiritual advisers.

Just at the moment, the serial on Woman's Hour is a novel called The Gowk Storm, set in 19th-century Scotland. The village dominie or schoolmaster is driven out by the local elders because he is a Roman Catholic.

He is believed to be capable of anything. One old woman saw with her own eyes how he bewitched a fish in her frying-pan and made it jump on to the floor. Of course. And the vilification of Opus Dei is just like the routine disgust with Roman Catholics in Britain in the 19th century.

In fact, Roman Catholics can look pretty strange to outsiders. In their churches they display carvings of a dying or dead man with no clothes on, nailed to a cross. As they enter their pews, they make obeisance or curtsy towards a metal box under a veil which contains nothing but what looks like a round bit of bread. Ghosts figure large in Catholic belief. Until recently, they called one of the gods they worship the "Holy Ghost".

All right, the preceding paragraph was a parody of ill-motivated observation. I know that Catholics only worship one God. The Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit (or Ghost) are three persons in one God. That's what the C of E believes, too. But it is not easy to explain simply.

Similarly, it is not easy to explain to a post-Freudian secularist that ascetical practices – penance, fasting – are not exhibitions of self-hatred. The one thing everyone wants to know about Opus Dei is whether they beat themselves with knotted cords. The inquirers hope that this is a bit of kinky sex they can hear about.

Cardinal Newman (1801-90) used to beat himself a bit. "Taking the discipline," he called it. Fr Faber, a fellow member of the Catholic congregation of priests called the Oratorians, made excuses about taking the discipline, saying it was bad for his health. Perhaps that sort of practice is impossible in the modern world.

I can't say I go in for beating myself. All Catholics are, however, bound by their religion to do some penance every Friday in honour of the Passion of Jesus Christ on Good Friday – that dying man nailed to the cross. Catholics believe he isn't dead. They talk to him, same as you'd talk to the cat, only they really think he understands.

I want to say what Opus Dei is really about, but there's The Da Vinci Code to deal with first. The chief baddy in that bad book, you must know, is called Silas, an albino Opus Dei "monk" who kills people.

But no members of Opus Dei are monks, they are ordinary civilian women and men, and they seldom kill anyone. Albinos are admitted as members, as available. So are black people, and were welcomed a long time before a lot of other white churchy people recognised them as equals.

A few facts, then. Opus Dei was founded in 1928 by a Spaniard called Josemaria Escriva. He was recently declared a saint. The Catholic Church fully approves of Opus Dei, which has about 80,000 members round the world. Its chief function is to remind lay Christians that by their baptism they have a vocation to seek holiness, which is to say, friendship with God. Ordinary people, Opus Dei declares, do not have to become monks or nuns to find God; they can offer to him their daily work.

Most members are married folk. A very few are priests. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has just asked Opus Dei to take on a parish in Hampstead, but the people who go to church there will not be Opus Dei members any more than people who go to a church run by the Jesuits are Jesuits.

What do members of Opus Dei do? They pray in the morning and in the evening. They go to Mass every day, as pious Catholics do. But most of the day is spent working, as anyone has to, and with their families. All the time, they are aware that they are in the presence of God and, as his children, inwardly offer him the things they do during the day, cheerfully. It sounds nice enough to me and almost makes me want to join up again. Perhaps they are too normal for me, though.

Anyway, because Opus Dei wants lay people to be responsible for their own actions, it never gives members any orders or advice about their professional or political lives. That was the great taboo when I was a member: you could ask for advice about praying but would never dream of asking about voting.

We wouldn't just shop at a grocer's because it was run by a member. So Opus Dei doesn't boast of having a specific MP or plumber as a member. It's up to the member. There is such a thing as privacy. Perhaps he might be hounded out of his job by those playground bullies.

I've noticed that when people leave organisations, they can make a hobby of slagging them off, thus proving their own superiority. But the Catholic Church is a big place, hence the name. Christians are meant to be seeking unity and loving one another, so the Bible says, not denouncing anyone who follows a slightly different way from their own.

Even the chief inspector of schools rather bafflingly called this week for us to be "intolerant of intolerance", so I think multi-cultural tolerance should at least extend to a voluntary association of committed Catholics like Opus Dei.

There's a lot of information about it at www.opusdei.org.

Ex-member: I received so much

By Alan Robinson. These are comments Alan gave in this blog which deserve to be placed in the main page.

I knew OD for ten years before becoming a member. I was a member for ten years and learnt SO much and received so much. I left believing that I did not have a true vocation. Everything I found in the Work was wonderful, and the priests (especially) and others fantastic. My one criticism is that I don't think they really "interview" and examine potential members enough. I don't think that they really checked me over enough.

[N.B. from Raul: According to Opus Dei officials, there have indeed been mistakes committed which they hope will be less and less as the directors of Opus Dei learn and mature. Thanks again to Alan for his piece.]

Back in the Garden of Eden

By Caminante from Puerto Rico in A Spiritual Journey. Caminante describes herself as: "60's and 70's generation, loving wife of a loving husband, mother of two, I love life, love God, love to pray, am Catholic, love the Beatles, Sade, Maria Callas, Andrea Bocelli, Raphael, Cezanne, Van Gogh, french lounge music, the Opus Dei concept of sainthood, Wayne Dyer, Paulo Coehlo, Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra..."

When I mention that I feel a real affinity for the Opus Dei concept of sainthood, people look at me like I am crazy. Between the idea of saints dying these horrifying deaths and The Da Vinci Code no one wants to have anything to do with it.

But to any Catholic or to any Christian for that matter, the concept of achieving sainthood is extremely attractive if you take away the martyrdom. And that is what the Opus Dei does: it takes away the necessity of martyrdom from sainthood.

You can become a saint in your everyday life, you can become a saint just living your everyday life, in your work, in your marriage, as a parent. You do not need to be extraordinary for sainthood; live your life in chastity which means no adultery, with charity, in love, and you are on your way.

Love God above all things, love your family, be excellent in your work, with your wife or husband, with your children, do your best for your parents and your family.

Be humble, know that all your talents all your ideas and creativity come from God and use them as God would want you to use them in love and for the benefit of many, and that is all that is asked of you.

Does that sound so hard or so terrible? If we all thought that way what a different planet we would be living in; I believe we would be back in the Garden Of Eden.

Friendly and family air

By Anne Soriano in Home Matters

Bishop Javier Echevarria or "the Father" as we fondly call him finally came to Manila on July 27 and left on Aug 1. Once again we saw and felt the family atmosphere of Opus Dei with the get-togethers that we had with the Father. In the general get-together that we had at SMX convention center, many people from all walks of life, members and non-members came to hear him.

With 9,000 people that gathered they said that they felt very much the friendly and family air we breathe in the Work. They also saw some other familiar faces they were not expecting to be there. Indeed, it is a small world, and many have heard or followed the Work in one way or the other.

What was the message of the Father to his Filipina daughters and sons? In summary, they are the following:

1) to be joyful and optimistic in Christianizing the world; to deal with young people, since they are the future of the world; to have a lot of hope in getting many people involved in our projects (social or otherwise), and even asking for financial help
2) to take care of the family; for husbands and wives to love each other, and to take care of the children; love should prevail in the families; to take care of the material and spiritual care in the homes
3) to avoid grudges and resentments (which many Filipinos are prone to); this goes against Christian charity; to forgive and forget.

Ex-member: I never encountered any conspiratorial non-sense

By Pat Delaney, answering allegations by someone against Opus Dei, at Greenspun. According to the accusations, life in Opus is allegedly "miserable" and Opus Dei's practices are allegedly "very far from Catholic orthodoxy". The text of Pat Delaney is the last piece in a series of posts and counter-posts at the Greenspun website.

Dear Atila,

I have known the Work for many years. In fact, I have previously been a member, and did in fact "whistle." I was an active member for five years before I decided it was not quite right for me about 8-9 years ago. Nevertheless, the people in the Work are still very much a part of my life in some ways. I have NEVER encountered any of the conspiratorial nonsense you allege. The types of things you allege cannot be proven otherwise as you allege they are done secretly.

What I have seen within the Work are many highly gifted people who live saintly lives, and less gifted ones who are willing to struggle with themselves. As with any human organization, there is an occasional idiot or two hanging around that everyone tries to be patient with in the hope that they will grow.

What I have also seen much of is something else. I have seen people who, when they see the opportunity for much sacrifice in their life, the sacrifices that will really need to be done to reform their spiritual life, will recoil in disgust after making an initial attempt. This often happens in the spiritual development of any person and is referred to as the "the dark night." Saint John and Saint Theresa of Avila refer to these periods as occurring twice along the path to great spiritual perfection. This path is well know and is defined by three phases: Purgative, Illuminative and Unitive and are separated by these dark periods. This is all explained quite well in "Spiritual Passages" by Father Benedict Groeschel (not in Opus Dei).

Many people when they reach these dark phases, or encounter some other great temptation, give in to the temptation and just stop trying. These people sometime find their way back to spiritual development, sometimes not. Unfortunately, rather than realize that this failure is the result of their own weakness, these people will try and blame their own personal decision on factors controlled by others.

I see this often among ex-members who wish to justify there own personal decision to leave the "Work." They associate the demands of growing in the spiritual life, with the rigors associated with living the "Norms" and other activities that EVERY person, in and out of the Work will eventually need to undertake if they are to develop themselves and grow to be a person of great virtue (i.e., a saint).

You have left the Work for your own reasons. That is fine. That is your personal freedom and your right. No one in the Work disrespects that. But you sin greatly by maligning those who, of their own freedom, choose to stay and use the Work as a vehicle for their own spiritual growth. That is all that Opus Dei really is. Its a service-provider and a vehicle for what can be great spirtual growth for those who wish to take that ride.

The LIBROS website you refer to is trash. It is set up by bitter people who wish to justify the unhappiness they have with their personal decisions by maligning others. It teaches attacks on the Church herself. It is full of relativism, skepticism and cynicalism. These are the marks of people who have turned their eyes from the truth.

I will pray for you Atila, as I'm sure your true friends in the Work regularly do despite your absence and attacks upon them. But in charity, I tell you that your present crusade is guided by none other than the Father of Lies.

-- Pat Delaney (pat@patdelaney.net), February 26, 2004.

Authentically Catholic

By a political scientist, 3 October 2008

Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Opus Dei by St Josemaria Escriva. I wish all my friends at Opus Dei a blessed anniversary!

The Opus Dei has been such a blessing to me. The priests there have heard my confession hundreds of times over the last three years (this has been such a gift). First Fr Michael and now Fr Marin have been such gentle, friendly and able spiritual guides for to me. At first I baulked at the idea of having a spiritual director and meeting him regularly. Now I can't do without it! It's so good to have someone wise and experienced to advice you and guide you. And they do it so gracefully. Spiritual direction is not scary or awkward at all ("so my friend, how has your week been?")

I've had circles (classes on the spiritual life) with Dr Ignacio, Claro and Dr Alvin and I've gained so much from them. It has helped me serve the Legion better too. I now attend, with Paul, Ferdi, Jordi, Ajith and Evan a super interesting class on Catholic doctrine with Dr Alvin. His lecturing abilities surpass most of my professors' and his jokes are priceless. He opens up for us the wealth of the Catholic Church's treasury of doctrine and teaching.

The spirituality of the Opus Dei is authentically and heroically Catholic, truly - as our Holy Father has said - "God's work"

It's great to have a beautiful oratory to pray at so near school - always a sanctuary where prayer is much easier.

The library has been a vital resource too for my own spiritual reading, for my apostolate and as help in writing allocutios and articles.

The Opus Dei retreats I have attended have been so refreshing and I come out of them with good resolutions and inspirations. The gatherings, the dinners, the barbeques, the interesting conversations about books, religion, philosophy are all cherished.

Yes I've been blessed! And I thank God for the Opus Dei!

By a political scientist

Benedict XVI: Escriva knew that we cannot make ourselves holy

Homily of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, at the thanksgiving Mass for the beatification of Josemaría Escrivá, In the Church of the Twelve Apostles, Rome, May 19, 1992

St John’s Apocalypse, which tells us of so many terrible events both past and future, also opens up Heaven upon the earth and shows us that God still holds the world in his hands. However great the power of evil, God’s victory is assured in the end.

From the depths of the world’s misery there rises a song of praise. God’s throne is surrounded by an ever-growing choir of souls who have achieved salvation, who, forgetful of self, have made their lives into a movement of joy and glory. This choir does not sing only in the next world, but is being prepared in the midst of the history of this world, and is already present among us, though hidden. This is clearly shown by the voice that comes from the throne of God himself: “Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, small and great” (Apoc 19:5).

This is a call to our world, a call to commit ourselves to the one thing that matters and so form part of the eternal liturgy here and now.

The beatification of Josemaría Escrivá tells us that this priest of our times now forms part of the choir that is praising God in Heaven, and that in him too the words of today’s reading are fulfilled: “Those whom he predestined, he also glorified” (Rm 8:30). This glorifying does not belong to the future but has already taken place, as beatifications remind us. “Praise our God small and great”: Josemaría Escrivá heard this voice, and understood it as the vocation of his life, but he did not only apply it to himself and his own life. He considered it his mission to pass on the “voice which comes from the throne”, and make it heard in our times. He invited great and small to praise God, and by that very fact he glorified God.

Josemaría Escrivá realised very early on that God had a plan for him, that God wanted something of him. But he did not know what it was. How could he find the answer, where should he look for it? He started his search primarily by listening to the Word of God, Holy Scripture. He read the Bible not as a book of the past, nor as a book of problems to be argued about, but as a word for the present, that talks to us today: a word in which we are each the protagonist, and need to look for our place in it, so that we can find our way.

In this search, he was especially moved by the story of the blind man Bartimaeus, who, sitting at the roadside on the way to Jericho, heard that Jesus was passing by and shouted out his appeal for mercy (cf. Mk 10:46-52). While the disciples tried to make the blind beggar keep quiet, Jesus turned towards him and asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus replied, “Lord, that I may see!” Josemaría recognised himself in Bartimaeus. “Lord, that I may see!” was his constant cry: “Lord, make me see your will!”

People only begin to see truly when they learn to see God. And they begin to see God when they see his will and are ready to make it their own.

The desire to see God’s will and to identify his will with God’s was always the basic motivation of Escrivá’s life. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This desire, this unceasing plea, prepared him to answer, in the moment of illumination, like Peter: “Lord, at your word I will let down the nets” (Lk 5:5). His “yes” was no less audacious than the Apostle’s, on Lake Genesareth, after a long and unproductive night.

Spain was convulsed with hatred for the Church, for Christ, and for God. People were trying to rip the Church out of the country at the time when Escrivá received the call to let down his nets for God. From that moment on, and throughout his life, as a fisher of God, he kept throwing out the divine nets tirelessly in the seas of our history, to bring great and small to the light, to return their sight to them.

The will of God. Saint Paul says of it to the Thessalonians: “This is the will of God: your sanctification” (I Thess 4:3). The will of God is, ultimately, very simple, and at its core it is always the same: holiness. And holiness means, as today’s reading tells us, becoming like Christ (cf. Rom 8:29).

Josemaría Escrivá considered this call as addressed not to himself alone, but above all as a message to pass on to others: to encourage them to seek for holiness, and to gather a community of brothers and sisters for Christ.

The meaning of the word “holy” has undergone a dangerous narrowing in the course of time, and this certainly still influences it today. It makes us think of the saints whose statues and paintings we see at the altars, of miracles and heroic virtues, and it suggests that holiness is for a few chosen ones, among whom we cannot be included. Then we leave holiness to the few, the unknown number, and content ourselves with being just the way we are.

Amidst this spiritual apathy, Josemaría Escrivá issued a wake-up call, shouting: “No! Holiness is not something extra, it is what is normal for every baptised person. Holiness does not consist of the sort of heroism that is impossible to imitate, but has a thousand forms and can become a reality anywhere, in any job. It is normal, and it consists of directing one’s ordinary life towards God and filling it through with the spirit of faith.”

Conscious of this message, our new Blessed journeyed untiringly through different continents, speaking to everyone to encourage them to be saints, to live the adventure of being Christians wherever their lives took them. In that way he became a great man of action, who lived by God’s will and called others to it, without ever becoming a “moralizer”.

He knew that we cannot make ourselves holy. Just as love presupposes the passive – being loved –, so too holiness always goes together with the passive: accepting the fact of being loved by God.

The Work he founded was called Opus Dei, not Opus nostrum: the Work of God, not a work of ours. He did not want to create his work, the work of Josemaría Escrivá: he wasn’t aiming to build a monument to himself. “My work is not mine,” he could and did say, in line with Christ’s words and in identification with Christ (cf. Jn 7:16): he did not want anything of his own, but to make room for God to do his Work.

He was certainly also aware of what Jesus tells us in St John’s Gospel: “This is the work of God, that you believe” (Jn 6:29); in other words, to surrender ourselves to God so that he can act through us.

Thus we come to another point of identification with the word of Sacred Scripture. The words of St Peter in today’s Gospel were something Josemaría Escrivá also made his own: Homo peccator sum: I am a sinful man. When our new Blessed saw the abundant catch he had achieved with his life, he was appalled, like St Peter, on seeing his own wretchedness in comparison with what God wanted to do in and through him.

He used to call himself a “founder without foundation” and “a clumsy instrument”. He knew and saw clearly that all of this was not done by himself, that he could not do it, but that it was God acting through an instrument which seemed totally disproportionate. And that is what “heroic virtue” ultimately means: making a reality of what God alone can do.

Josemaría Escrivá recognised his own wretchedness, but surrendered himself to God without worrying about himself, holding himself ready, instead, for whatever God wanted. He got rid of self, and of all self-interest.

Again and again he would speak of his “madnesses”: the madness of beginning without any means, beginning in impossible circumstances. They seemed to be madnesses that he had to stake everything on, and he ran the risk. In this context, the words of his great compatriot Miguel de Unamuno come to mind: “Only madmen do what is reasonable: the wise can only do foolishness.”

He dared to be something like a Don Quixote of God. After all, does it not seem quixotic to teach, in the middle of today’s world, about humility, obedience, chastity, detachment from material possessions, and forgetfulness of self? God’s will was what was really reasonable to him, and that showed that the most seemingly irrational things were really reasonable.

The will of God. God’s will has a specific place and a specific shape in this world: it has a body. The Body of Christ has remained in the Church. Hence, obedience to God’s will cannot be separated from obedience to the Church. Only if I include my mission in my obedience to the Church do I have the guarantee that my own ideals can be considered God’s will, the guarantee that I am really following his call.

So for Josemaría Escrivá the basic measure of his mission was always obedience to and union with the hierarchical Church. This does not imply any kind of positivism or dictatorship.

The Church is not a power-structure, nor is she an association for religious, social or moral purposes that has to work out methods of achieving her aims better, updating and replacing those methods as necessary. The Church is a Sacrament. That means that she does not belong to herself. She does not do her own work, but has to be ever available to do God’s. She is bound up with God’s will. The Sacraments structure her life, and the centre of the Sacraments is the Eucharist, in which we touch the real presence of Jesus Christ in the most direct way.

And so, for our new Blessed, ecclesiality meant first and foremost living in the centre of the Church, which is the Eucharist. He loved and proclaimed the Eucharist in all its dimensions: as adoration of our Lord present among us in a hidden but real way; as a gift in which Jesus gives himself to us again and again; as a sacrifice, in accordance with the words of Scripture, “Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a body hast thou prepared for me” (Heb 10:5; cf. Ps 40:6-8).

Only Christ can share himself out, because he has offered himself up in sacrifice, because he has surpassed himself out of love, because he has surrendered himself, and surrenders himself still. We will only manage to become like the Image of the Son if we enter into this movement of self-giving love, if we become sacrifice. Love is not possible without the passive aspect of the passio which transforms us, opening us up.

When Josemaría Escriva fell seriously ill at the age of two and was despaired of by the doctors, his mother decided to dedicate him to Mary. Despite huge difficulties, she took her son up the steep, rough path to the shrine of Our Lady of Torreciudad, and there she offered him to the Mother of the Lord, asking her to be his mother. So all his life Josemaria knew that he was under the protection of our Lady, who was his Mother.

In the room where he worked, opposite the door, there was a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe; whenever he went in, his first glance was for her. And his last glance of all was also for her. At the moment he died, he had just gone into that room and looked at the picture of his Mother, when he collapsed on the floor. As he died, the Angelus bells were ringing, announcing Mary’s “fiat” and the grace of the Incarnation of her Son, our Saviour. Under that sign, which had been there at the beginning of his life and had shown him his road, he returned to God.

Let us thank God our Lord for this witness of faith in our times, for this untiring herald of his will, and let us ask, “Lord, may I also see! May I recognise your will and do it!” Amen.

Benedict XVI: Work is a Means and Path of Holiness

By Benedict XVI's address to Italian Artisans. Benedict XVI refers to the founder of Opus Dei as a "Saint of our times."

Dear friends, continue with tenacity and perseverance to preserve and put to good use the productive craft culture that can give life to important opportunities for balanced financial progress and encounters between men and peoples.

Furthermore, may you as Christians be committed to living and testifying to the "Gospel of work", in the awareness that the Lord calls all the baptized to holiness through their daily occupations.

Josemaría Escrivá, a Saint of our times, notes in this regard that since Christ who worked as a craftsman took it into his hands, "work has become for us a redeemed and redemptive reality. Not only is it the background of man's life, it is a means and path of holiness. It is something to be sanctified and something which sanctifies" (Christ Is Passing By, Homily, n. 47).