*Is Opus Dei a secret cult? Does it exert control over its members? Does it promote physical penances? Who is the man who founded it and why? If we just recently read or watched The DaVinci Code these could be worthwhile questions. That is, if we accept that it is a historical documentary, which it isn’t; it is pulp fiction and much of what is portrayed about Opus Dei is fiction.
Opus Dei is a personal prelature of the Catholic Church, meaning it is an institution under the direct governance of the Vatican, rather than under a local bishop or head of a religious order. Its members include about 93,000 laypersons and about 2,000 priests with about 70% of members living in private homes, leading family lives with secular careers and 30% living celibate lives in Opus Dei centers. Self-mortification is an ancient Catholic practice—think fasting and abstinence for Lent—but it is promoted as a part of a person’s total life.
St. Josemaría Escrivá, who founded the society in 1928 in Madrid, Spain, wrote, “Choose mortifications that don’t mortify others.” In other words, do penance that will lead oneself and others to love of God. St. Josemaría founded Opus Dei to help people become holy through sanctifying ordinary life. “Saint Josemaría explained that Christians working in the world should not live ‘a kind of double life. On the one hand, an interior life, a life of union with God; and on the other, a separate and distinct professional, social and family life.’ On the contrary: ‘There is just one life, made of flesh and spirit. And it is this life which has to become, in both soul and body, holy and filled with God.” This is the essence of the Catholic life; what we are called to be and do!
* https://www.flickr.com/photos/opus-dei/13599152113
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