Hi Ecce Homo:
I posted a rather lengthy reply on another thread to a question as to whether or not Dr. Scott Hahn is a member of Opus Dei (he is), and since most of it is relevant to your question here, I’ll re-post it with only very minor changes in response to your question:
Opus Dei, as pointed out above, is a personal prelature of the Catholic Church, founded by St. Josemaría Escriva in 1929 and formally elevated to the status of personal prelature By Pope JPII in 1982.
If you don’t understand what a personal prelature is, don’t worry… not many people would since Opus Dei is presently the only Catholic group that enjoys this status. Basically, it means that the members of Opus Dei have their own bishop (presently, Monsignor Javier Echeverría) and that, under his authority, they form a kind of “borderless diocese” if you will. But they are also subject to the authority of bishops in whose diocese they may reside.
So, in all that pertains to their vocations as members of “the Work” as they refer to it in English, as well as their spiritual formation and direction, they are subject to the authority of their prelate. In matters relating to everything else (i.e., their participation in activities in a parish or their diocese) they are subject to the authority of the local bishop.
Some people DO have a problem with them, yes. One reason is the personal prelature thing… some people regard it as a way of circumventing the authority of the local bishop (similar to what you said above about impinging on the authority of the parish priest) and allowing them to do things without his consent. I don’t believe this is fair, and I haven’t found it to be true.
Others object to the strict separation of men and women in all of their activities. Not only are students in the schools which members organise and run divided by gender, but the teaching and administrative staffs too. There are no male teachers or staff in girl’s schools and no women in the ones organised for boys. In addition, celibate male and female members of the work receive their spiritual formation separately and do not participate in retreats or engage in apostolic activities together. Totally separate.
You may remember that the DaVinci Code painted them as an ultra-secret sect within the Church. They are generally accused even by good Catholics of being secretive about their organisation, its structure and its internal organisation. Too long to go into here, and there is some truth to it, but a lot of this depends on one’s perspective and what “openness” ought to involve. To really understand why the group developed the way it did, you have to understand something of the time and place in which it was born–Spain, in 1929, in the very anti-clerical and anti-Catholic atmosphere that existed just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. That war and all its attendant issues and horrors have profoundly marked at least two generations of Spaniards and its effects are still being felt today.
They are also accused of “hard-sell” recruiting tactics when seeking out potential vocations, and of targeting only bright, well-educated and professional men and women. I will only say here that I have met some zealous ones… and as for the latter charge, well, given their spirituality of the sanctifying nature of work well done and offered to God, that holiness is everyone’s vocation and that for the laity it’s to be found in the fulfillment of one’s professional and family duties… it’s logical enough. They believe in the responsibility of Christians to transform society from their places of work, and so they do seem to place a lot of emphasis on finding and forming professional men and women in the spirit of The Work. But their members do run inner-city programs for disadvantaged youths and charitable foundations for the poor too.
As far as I know, St. Mary of the Angels Church in Chicago is still the only parish staffed by priests of the Prelature of Opus Dei in the U.S. It’s a good parish. And the majority of the parishioners are not members of Opus Dei either.
Sorry for the really long reply. I’ll just add before closing here that 1) no, I am not a member of Opus Dei, that 2) no, I’m not inclined to become one either, for reasons which I won’t go into here, but which should not be regarded as reflecting negatively on Opus Dei–my reasons are largely personal, though I do disagree with their approach to things on a few important points-- that 3) yes, I do know quite a few members of Opus Dei and have quite a few close, personal friends who are in the group, and that 4) there is a good book by John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter (not a likely candidate for the Opus Dei fan club roll) in which he closely examines the group and ends up with a surprisingly favourable opinion of them.
Sorry I’ve just watched waking the dead with Trevor Eve and I just couldn’t resist!
