Something to help in this discussion between Annunciata and Augustine:
Taken from
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_Dei
As regards former members, Cardinal Schönborn states: “It is unjustified to present personal difficulties within a community as if they were a general experience.” Reader Emeritus of Sociology of the University of Oxford, Bryan R. Wilson, a scientist admired by scholars world-wide but also opposed by some others, studied the phenomenon of a former member who “shows himself to have been first a victim” then “a redeemed crusader” and “whose personal history predisposes him to bias.” Wilson states: “the suspicion must arise that he acts from a personal motivation to vindicate himself and to regain his self-esteem.” These, he says, tend to rehearse an atrocity story.
It just shows that we have to suspect those who say they have been “adversely affected”: that’s the statement of ODAN.
Here’s another from another well-known Catholic sociologist:
In [dci.dk/en/?article=210&emne= Interesting Times](
http://www.dci.dk/en/?article=210&emne= Interesting Times) , referring to Moncada and Garvey who say they are Catholics, Introvigne states that “there are only two ways to continue to brand Opus Dei as ‘a cult’ or ‘heretical’ and, at the same time remain Catholic. The first is to claim that the Pope and the Church are ‘not well informed’ about Opus Dei. Those making these claims are of course ‘not well informed’ themselves on how Rome treats controversial subjects. Critical documents are carefully collected and examined for years (in fact, it took more than twenty years for Opus Dei to obtain the status of a Personal Prelature). The second, more logical, is as Dr. Alberto Moncada did in his speech at the 1993 Barcelona meeting to claim that the Roman Catholic Church itself under the present Pope exhibits ‘cultic’ features and to impugnate the orthodoxy of documents such as the new Cathecism itself. These claims, however, are hardly compatible with claiming to remain a member in good standing and in full loyalty of the Roman Catholic Church.”
This last is taken from
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_t
pus_Dei
Please do not get me wrong: I am not saying that what Augustine said here is comparable to Moncada and Garvey. All I am saying is that something can be learned here: the personal prelature status was well studied as something that is “perfectly suited to Opus Dei.” In fact it is not just suited externally, as fitting to its characteristics, but also internally, as fitting to what God wanted His Work to be, i.e. original charism of Opus Dei.
