Opus Dei—“Work of God” or Work of Something Else?

Is the organization pernicious just at the top, or all the way up and down?

Just this week, the magazine I edit, Arc, published an interview that I did with Gareth Gore, whose new book, Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church, is pretty much the most horrifying thing you can read (except for any article about the president pulling John Bolton’s Secret Service protection). (I mentioned this book in my post of Oct. 29, too.) We titled the interview “Opus Dei, Embezzlement, and Human Trafficking,” which tells you all you need to know. In the interview, Gore, a brave and intrepid British journalist—and any fan of the Bourne movies knows what happens to intrepid British journalists trying to blow the lid off scandals—

discusses all he discovered in his years globetrotting to uncover the secrets of the secretive Catholic organization Opus Dei (which means “work of God”), known to many from The Da Vinci Code (which is fiction). The true, nonfiction stuff he learned is not pretty. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

MO: Let’s get into those allegations. Human trafficking, for example.

GG: The human trafficking piece of this is probably the most interesting. I was completely unaware of this. When I was in the middle of reporting the book, my antennae were kind of peaked for anything to do with Opus Dei. And then one day I saw this story, which was run by the Associated Press, about some women in Argentina who had alleged that Opus Dei had recruited them whilst they were kids and basically entrapped them into this life of servitude. They were working fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, 365 days a year. They weren’t allowed to go out into this street on their own. They were cooking, cleaning for the elite members of Opus Dei.

MO: And living in a women’s quarters, attached to the male numeraries’ dormitories, right?

GG: Yes, and forbidden from ever speaking to the men or even having eye contact with the men. Scrubbing the floors, cleaning toilets for these elite members of Opus Dei. Many of these women had left and decided to seek compensation and an apology from Opus Dei. I saw this bit of news and I thought, “Oh, this is kind of interesting, but probably has nothing to do with what I’m looking into, which is the connections between Opus Dei and the bank.”

But then one day in the archives, I stumbled across this document which detailed how money from the bank had been used to set up this network of schools, what they called “hospitality schools,” which were used to entice young girls who were just twelve or thirteen, into this life of servitude. These women were recruited and promised a better life. They were taken away from their homes to these schools in the big cities, hundreds of miles away from their families. They were basically manipulated and coerced into joining Opus Dei as these “numerary assistants.”

So these women in Argentina have risen up and they filed a complaint at the Vatican. They sought compensation from Opus Dei in Argentina. Opus Dei turned them down. And so they went to the authorities, and just a few weeks ago, in fact, just a few days before my book came out, federal prosecutors in Argentina announced that they were formally accusing Opus Dei of having trafficked these girls. Now, I know from my reporting that this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the first case. Authorities in other parts of the world are now looking at how these young girls were recruited as children and coerced into joining Opus Dei and then trafficked around the world to wherever Opus Dei needed them, where they would work effectively as slaves.

MO: Why couldn’t they leave?

GG: Well, because they had been coerced into joining the movement. And every minute of their existence was controlled and manipulated. They were cut off from their friends, their families. They had no money. They were cut off from the support networks, and they had absolutely no financial safety net to fall back onto. And they were told that if they left, then they would go to hell, and their entire families would go to hell. They were indoctrinated and coerced on a daily basis.

MO: Then there’s the financial impropriety.

GG: I’m convinced that the Banco Popular part of the story is just one part of this hidden financial open network. I would not be surprised if there are many other businesses out there that have been used over the years to fund Opus Dei’s expansion and to fund the network.

MO: And the schools.

GG: Opus Dei isn’t open about how it recruits people into the organization it runs. But there are hundreds of schools around the world that don’t openly advertise themselves as being affiliated to Opus Dei, but that in fact are. So many ordinary Catholics out there could well be sending their kids to what they think is just a good Catholic school in their local neighborhood, but which in effect are, you know, Opus Dei recruitment centers. Numeraries are posted to these schools and tasked with recruiting kids into the organization. This is going on today in the United States.

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So. Bad stuff. And I couldn’t help but think of the piece I wrote a decade ago for The New York Times, about The Heights, a Catholic high school in Washington, D.C., that is under the religious guidance of Opus Dei (Opus Dei doesn’t technically “run” the school, but they run the Masses, the catechism, etc.). And if you read the article, you might think I went a bit soft on Opus Dei. Here it is.

The central question, it seems to me, is whether the perfidy at the top reflects the experience, or the responsibilities, of those on the lower rungs. It’s pretty clear that your average student at The Heights does not see his or her life impacted by the Banco Popular/Opus Dei scandal that Gareth Gore reports on. I also think it’s most probable that the Opus Dei numeraries and supernumeraries teaching and working at The Heights would never steal money, traffic in humans, etc. (although some may put their heads in the sand about some of it—I’d be interested to know if they are avidly reading Gore’s book, eager to know the full truth about their organization, or if they have decided it’s junk, or if they are simply indifferent). So what is their responsibility?

I have made a related argument about Scientology—see my 2007 piece (gosh, I was younger then) in The Washington Post titled “Weird, sure. A cult, no.” In that op-ed, I argued that

… good taste, as the art critic Dave Hickey says, is just the residue of someone else's privilege. Catholicism has its Gothic cathedrals, Judaism its timeless Torah scrolls. Scientology is new, but it has played an impressive game of catch-up. In its drive to be a major world religion, it will inevitably go through a period when its absurdities and missteps are glaringly apparent. But someday it will be old and prosaic, and there may still be Scientologists. And when some of those Scientologists embezzle, lie and steal -- as they surely will -- they'll seem no worse than Christians, Jews and Muslims who have done the same.

Basically, I argued, for the everyday Scientologist, the craziness at the top did not affect the daily experience much, and the theology, while weird, is no weirder than Jewish or Christian teachings would seem to the uninitiated Martian dropping in on earth.

But we’re not Martians, we’re humans, and we are entitled to have feelings about Opus Dei. If you read the interview (again, here), drop me a line and let me know yours!