Ex-member: Life can become very hard if you don't pray

By John Allen, Jr. in Opus Dei

Ignacio G. Andreu, forty-one, is a Spanish ex-numerary who teaches phi­losophy at a public university in Barcelona. He first met Opus Dei in a small Spanish town when he was still in high school, where he grew up in a devout Catholic family, although no one in his immediate family belonged to Opus Dei. Like McCormack and Falk Sather, Andreu went on the UNIV trip to Rome when he was seventeen. He decided to join shortly thereafter. The attraction, he said, was “the spirituality ... and the freedom.” Also, like many members of Opus Dei, Andreu said the idea of sanctification of work was a powerful draw. “I was impressed by the possibility of offering my study, and then afterward, my work to God.”

After entering Opus Dei, Andreu briefly studied in Madrid and then came to Barcelona to study philosophy. He remained in and around Barcelona the rest of the time he was in Opus Dei, from the age of sev­enteen to thirty-five. At a certain stage, he said, he was assigned to work with a group of Opus Dei members in a small town outside Barcelona, where most of the members were older and, he said tactfully, “a little dif­ficult.” It was a stressful time, Andreu said, and he began to “drop his guard,” letting his prayer life slide.

“In Opus Dei life is usually very easy, but it can become very hard if you don’t pray,” Andreu said. “When you are down, maybe temptations come more easily.” That temptation, Andreu said, came in the form of a young woman. At a moment of low self-esteem and spiritual emptiness, he said, not to mention exhaustion from overwork, it was an attraction too powerful to resist. He and the young woman began an affair. In a spirit of honesty he told the director at his center what was going on. Rather than casting him out, the director suggested that he take a sabbatical to sort out what he wanted to do. (...)

Eventually, he said, he decided to write a formal letter declaring his intention to leave. “That’s the honest thing to do, because there are people who disappear and do not come back,” Andreu said.(...) Today he is in a serious relationship that may be heading toward marriage, and is also a cooperator of Opus Dei.

Andreu says Opus Dei did everything right, and that what happened was his own fault. “If you are humble, the directors will do everything to help you, everything,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense for them to treat numeraries with a whip. They want to try to keep you happy, not drive you away.” He said the trick is for numeraries to be honest with their direc­tors. “The director may say, ‘I want you to do five things.’ You may know deep down that five is too much, that you can only handle two or three, that with five you will break. But your pride takes over, you want to be strong, so you say, ‘I’ll do all five.’ But that’s not the director’s fault, that’s pride and dishonesty. I should have been honest about what was happen­ing in my life much earlier.”

“Maybe if I get married, I will become a supernumerary,” Andreu said.