Opus Dei - Grave concerns

[FourthWorld]

There is a lot that is good about Opus Dei - they obey the Pope and teach solid Catholic doctrine. The organisation is full of very good people, and most of them very happy at that. However, there are a couple of characteristics pertaining to the organisation which I find very worrying.

1. Firstly, “recruiting”. Now, by recruiting I don’t refer to the usual criticisms of the group as targeting individuals, love-bombing etc etc. Instead I refer to how the idea of a vocation is presented to would-be members. A vocation is something that should emanate from someone’s heart; it should not be planted in it by someone else. All too often however, it appears that Opus Dei members suggest to persons involved in their activities that they think they would make a good numerary, or alternatively ask whether they have thought about joining the organisation.

Now, this is not the same as telling someone **definitively **that their vocation is to be a numerary or supernumerary, but when powerful rhetoric is used alongside it with words such as ‘sacrifice’ and ‘God’s will’ then suddenly that person will probably question whether they do in fact have a vocation to Opus Dei.

Becoming a full member of the group does take several years, during which the person in question will discern whether or not he or she is being called, but under the supervision of the spiritual directors this will primarily involve “listening to what God tells you”.

I do not wish to undermine this process but imagine (if you will bear with me in this analogy!) that you are a law student hoping to go into commercial law. One day however, a human rights lawyer asks you whether you have considered being a human rights lawyer. You haven’t, but it is presented to you as being more of a sacrifice and doing more public good, and suddenly you feel morally compelled to become a human rights lawyer, even though really you would prefer to be a commercial lawyer.

This is what happens with Opus Dei. Many morally correct young men and women, hoping one day to be married and have children, are one day asked whether they have instead considered becoming Opus Dei numeraries, and suddenly a seed of doubt is planted in their mind. Because they are such good people and wish to serve Our Lord fully, they feel that getting married would somehow now be less of a sacrifice and would be rejecting God’s call. But crucially, God’s call did not originate from within them - it came from outside, from a member of the organisation.

That young person may well become very holy, and even a saint, but that does not negate the wrongfulness of what initiated their journey. The truth is that many Opus Dei numeraries would love to get married and have children, but they believe that in doing so they would be turning their back on God. Rejecting a vocation from God is sinful, this is certainly true, but my basic point is that this vocation must come from **within **and must **originate **from within. Opus Dei tramples on this notion, and although the members often do it with only good intentions, believing that it is impossible not to like the organisation, it is all the same very wrong. The world needs good fathers and mothers just as it needs commercial lawyers and human rights lawyers and God will call us **naturally **to whichever path we take.
(This criticism is of course applicable not solely to Opus Dei but to parents who desire their children to become religious, or priests who would like a male parishioner to join them in the prieshood. However, in Opus Dei this occurs systematically, not in as far as it is directly ordered by the hierarchy but that members feel that this is their duty).

1. My second worry concerns assistant numeraries. I’m not exactly sure what it is that I find creepy about the idea of the assistant numerary; the fact that they can only be women, that they serve the men (n.b. I am in no way a feminist) or that they are primarily drawn from uneducated, poorer backgrounds. Can it really be God’s will that they amount to little more than unpaid servants, never to be married or have children? The poor things probably go straight to heaven but how someone can think their lifestyle is befitting of a human being is beyond me.

 

[Jozefo]

Why must “this vocation” originate from within? When someone ‘receives the call’, does not the very language refer to the call as coming from without?

 

[FourthWorld]

I understand what you mean Jozefo, but the first thought in someone’s mind when discerning a vocation should be something like, “Gee, Fr Joe/Sr Mary/these numeraries really impress me, I’d really like to be like them” and not “so and so numerary has just said I should think about joining Opus Dei - I haven’t thought about it before but maybe that’s what God really wants for me”. As I said before, these people are often such good people and want to do everything for God that they are convinced that the only way to do this is to become a member, even if it means being upset at leaving behind previous dreams.

(I do not mean to suggest that this is the only way someone can discern a vocation - the thought can suddenly hit someone praying in Mass or even running in the park. My point is that the vocation should be put there by God, who will tell us naturally Himself what our path in life is)

 

[FourthWorld]

I might also add that Opus Dei’s standard defence at such criticisms is that members and would-be members are completely “free” to do whatever they wish. However this plays solely on the literal meaning of ‘free’ - of course in theory they are free to do anything they want to do, but psychologically they can feel trapped.

It’s not equatable to, for example, one day deciding to drink Pepsi instead of Coca-Cola.

It’s more like desiring to support a different baseball or soccer team to the one your family and friends have always supported - of course there’s nothing actually stopping you doing it but the external influences and pressure on you not to do that would be so huge that whether you decide to do it or not the experience will be traumatic.