Opus Dei has been very unfairly maligned over the years

By CV in Perspective. CV replies to accusations against Opus Dei.

For those who believe that Opus Dei is a "right wing cult," just a little reminder that St. Josemaria Escriva is a canonized saint.

I have more than 10 years of personal experience with this organization. I participate in occasional retreats and evenings of recollection and have benefited a great deal, although I feel no personal vocation to "join" by becoming a lay supernumerary.

I'm here to tell you that the only thing Opus Dei is concerned with is helping lay people pursue the universal call to holiness (that's straight out of Vatican II, and St. Josemaria was championing that notion several decades before VII). In the retreats and evenings of recollection, you'll be encouraged to pray more, receive the sacrament of confession, try to attend mass more often (beyond once a week that is), and say the rosary. That's it, and that's simple Catholicism.

For a fair and balanced look at Opus Dei through the eyes of an outsider, I recommend John Allen's recent book. He writes for the National Catholic Reporter, which can hardly be considered a "right wing" publication.

While I admire Fr. James Martin's writing and think he's done a great deal to communicate the faith well, I really think he did a disservice to Opus Dei with that article he write many moons ago for America.

And hey, for what it's worth, I'm a registered Democrat :-) Go figure.

----

Well, I'm no expert on the Spanish Civil War, which was the climate in which Opus Dei took root and grew, but I'll just point again to what reporter John Allen discovered. This is from America magazine's review of Allen's book:

"..An illustration of Mr. Allen’s technique can be seen in his examination of the charge that Opus Dei’s founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá, was a pro-Franco fascist. Mr. Allen describes the accusations and fills in the historical background. “[I]t’s worth noting that in the context of the Spanish Civil War, in which anticlerical Republican forces killed 13 bishops, 4,000 diocesan priests, 2,000 male religious, and 300 nuns, virtually every group and layer of life in the Catholic Church in Spain was ‘pro-Franco.’” The author goes on to note that despite this fact, “there is no instance in which [Escrivá] either praised or criticized the regime” throughout its long reign. “In the 1930s and 1940s, when the overwhelming sentiment in Catholic Spain was pro-Franco, Escrivá’s silence was therefore often read to betoken a hidden liberalism; by the 1960s and 1970s, when Catholic opinion had shifted, that same silence was interpreted as masking a pro-Franco conservatism,” he writes. While he concedes that Opus Dei members served in Franco’s ministry, he notes that this was unusual—only eight served over the course of 36 years, in Mr. Allen’s careful account. He also describes how many Opus Dei members joined the anti-Franco opposition. “The overall impression one gets is that Escrivá strove to maintain neutrality with respect to the Franco regime, even if privately he felt some sympathy for a leader trying by his lights to be an upright Christian,” Mr. Allen concludes. “A charge of ‘pro-Franco’ cannot be sustained, except in the generic sense that most Spanish Catholics were initially supportive of Franco.... The most one can say is that Escrivá was not ‘anti-Franco’ either.”

Here is a good Q & A with Allen regarding Opus Dei:

http://www.zenit.org/article-14916?l=english

Regarding the role of suffering, by which I presume you mean corporal mortification practices, in Opus Dei, it's worth noting that these practices have been part of Catholic tradition for about 2,000 years. Opus Dei didn't invent these practices, and very holy people such as Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta were also known to appreciate the value of corporal mortification.

That said, in a society like ours, most people are inclined to strenuously avoid suffering in any way shape or form (myself included). Unless of course, it is suffering for personal gain or development such as running a marathon, or denying oneself ice cream and carbs, or undergoing plastic surgery. Then it's considered to be the kind of self-sacrifice to be admired.

I guess people who see the value in corporal mortification (fasting, for example) would say that the value of "no pain, no gain" applies to the spiritual life also.

I am sure I sound like an apologist for Opus Dei, but I speak as someone who had serious reservations about this group early on when someone close to me became involved. Since then, I have read every scrap of information I could find, positive and negative. I've read the ODAN website and books by St. Josemaria. Most importantly, I've had close contact with many, many extraordinarily humble and holy Opus Dei people, from priests to lay people (and I should also mention I've never been pressured to join, give money, etc. Some cult.)

Bottom line, IMO, they have been very, VERY unfairly maligned over the years, especially St. Josemaria.

.02 from a former skeptic.