CHAPTER
I
SECTS AND OPUS DEI
1. The Suspicion is Confirmed
None of them consider themselves as such (1).
Nevertheless, we are in a position to make a clear and categorical
statement regarding Opus Dei. It is one of the most powerful and
mysterious sects in the history of the 20th century. (2)
Raimundo Panikkar himself, one of the pioneers in the development of
the initial nucleus, a member of the founders, who attended the
prologue of Opus Dei, says that “what
began as a small group, more or
less charismatic, which slowly, as a result of circumstances on the one
hand and what was latent in the spirit of the founder, became what is
sociologically called a sect.” (3)
We live immersed in a process of social crisis that has created a
market of credulities. Cults proliferate, expand, penetrate, install
themselves, affect and culminate their unavowable purposes infiltrating
like smoke the social tissues, destroying and annihilating many for the
lucrative benefit of a few.
The news was front-page news. The headlines offered no space for
hesitation. The body that disseminated the information was a nationwide
media. The headlines of the newspaper read: “Members of Opus Dei
treated with deprogramming techniques in Barcelona clinic” (4).
The content of this surprising news confirmed that an undetermined
number of young aspirants and active members of Opus Dei had been
treated in Barcelona in recent months with mental deprogramming
techniques. The clinical treatments were applied at the request of
their relatives who were trying to correct, in this way, emotional
disorders.
The news added that the assistance techniques offered by Asociación Pro Juventud
("Association for Youth") and the technical team of the Center
for
Recovery, Orientation and Assistance to the Sectarian (CROAS) are known
generically as deprogramming and consist basically of a process of
information and criticism of the beliefs and behavior of the
organization to which the affected person belongs.
The first clinical treatments with deprogramming techniques for members
and followers of Opus Dei were carried out in November 1987.
About 20 families of Opus Dei members, from
various parts
of Spain, had approached Asociación
Pro Juventud
asking for
information and collaboration to “recover
their children” or to treat
them clinically.
Those in charge of Asociación
Pro Juventud - the news concluded - believe that the
dogmatic attitudes of some of the members and followers of Opus Dei are
similar to those held by members of harmful sects. The secrecy and
proselytism or apostolate of Opus Dei are, in the opinion of the
members of Asociación Pro
Juventud, some of the most negative and criticized
characteristics of the Prelature.
The note ended by indicating that “in
the first international congress
on the harmful effects of sects, held last November in Sant Cugat del
Vallés (Barcelona), some allegedly harmful and negative aspects
of Opus
Dei were discussed and debated.” (5)
The feeling that we are dealing with a pernicious sect is gaining
ground in Spanish public opinion. In a survey carried out among a large
number of young people, the statistical results of which were made
known by the first channel of Spanish Television on July 23, 1990,
during the broadcast of the second edition of the Daily News ("Telediario"), the
majority of those interviewed cited three well-known sects in Spain,
most of them saying
that Opus Dei was a “destructive
sect”.
(6) Two years before
this event, the writer Vázquez
Montalbán, in an article entitled "El Opus que no cesa", also said
“that an informative television
program in which some of the internal
contradictions of Opus Dei were expressed, for example the need for
some of its members to "deprogram" as if they were members of sects not
homologated
by established Christianity, was enough
to cause the corral of the Catholic hierarchy to be disturbed once
again”. (7)
Now we can explain better
that recommendation which, as early as 1983
and with the statement “Beware of
Opus Dei”, referred to the initiative
and caution taken by some American high schools that organized trips
for their students to Spanish universities and that, before leaving for
Spain, gave them some rules and instructions about what they should eat
or the products they should abstain from, the places of tourist or
cultural interest they should visit, the environments they should avoid
at the risk of being robbed or attacked. And among the recommendations
they gave to the young people who came to Spain to follow the courses
for foreigners, they
warned them also to be careful with an
organization called Opus Dei. (8)
The news deserved a
place in the press and was a symptom of the possible intoxication of
the sect, which tries to recruit its followers mainly among the
university community.
Yvon le Vaillant, in his book document entitled "La Santa Mafia",
published in Mexico in 1985, tells us that in Italy a famous doctor,
known in the international psychoanalytical media, when she learned
that the son of one of her patients had been admitted to Opus Dei,
revealed to her that she had several patients who had managed to leave
Opus Dei and that these were neurotic, adding that “this is a crime.
They are under a spell.” (9)
The picture that said
book describes about these people is that “when
you look at them from the front, you are surprised to realize that they
are not really them, that they are not themselves, that they seem to
live next to them, as if deprived of their own personality. It is that
they are empty of body and soul, tied hand and foot to an absorbing
organization: 'The Work'”. (10)
It is the archetypal
picture presented by people who are caught in the nets of such a
sectarian spider's web. The magazine Spielgel
speaks of a "mousetrap".
In a wide-ranging report published under the title "El Opus Dei, el
verdadero poder en España" ("Opus Dei, the real power in
Spain"),
in the magazine Tiempo,
perhaps the one with the largest circulation
today, which is not at all sensationalist and covers a large area of
general information, it was stated that “more and more parents are not
resigned to the legal impotence to get their children out of what they
consider to be brainwashing. In Valencia” - the report continued
-
“there
is a psychiatrist who has specialized in deprogramming young people who
have been captured by Opus Dei.” (11)
It is precisely
proselytism, the daily activity for most of the numerary members of
Opus Dei, that is their first commandment, according to John Roche,
professor of History of Science at the University of Oxford and a
member of the Work for 14 years, “Today
they are beginning to capture
children between the ages of 8 and 9... a file is being prepared in
which little by little data is being collected: age, studies, hobbies,
social environment, family, attitude towards religion and towards Opus
Dei,
contacts with people in the Work...”. (12)
Among the conclusions of the report was that the power of Opus Dei in
Spain is so hidden that 38% of Spaniards are convinced that the
Institute, founded by Monsignor Escrivá de Balaguer, is “a sect,
a pressure group, an economic mafia or a political group”. (13) The
director of the weekly magazine, José Oneto, himself wrote in an
editorial in connection with the report that was published, that “Opus
Dei today continues to be immersed in mystery in our country, and we
wanted to clear up some of that mystery, some of that hidden power. The
survey, carried out by OTR and Emopublica with 1200 interviews from all
over Spain, is significant in itself: quite a few Spaniards think that
Opus Dei is an "economic mafia" or a "pressure group". Moreover, many
Spaniards (35%) are convinced that the fundamental aims of "the Work"
are
to influence politics as a pressure group or to achieve certain
economic ends.” (14)
With
difficulties, with much
effort and work, with arduous investigations, light was being seen at
the end of the dark and gloomy tunnel.
This book, prepared after several years of exhaustive dedication to the
collection and comparison of irrefutable data and contrasting sources,
may be the trigger for the implementation of the "providential death"
for those who write it, so the warning goes ahead with a dart taken
from the very bowels of The Way, the maximum 340 that reads: “Do not be
afraid of the truth, even if the truth brings you death”.
REFERENCES
1. Julián García Hernando. "El fenómeno de las
sectas". Cuadernos de realidades sociales, Nos. 35/36, p 27
(Madrid: Instituto de
Sociología Aplicada, January 1990)
2. "El Opus por dentro" p 33, in Area crítica No. 2 (July
1983)
3. Alberto Moncada, "Historia oral
del Opus Dei", p 131 (Barcelona:
Plaza & Janés, 1987)
4. "El País"
Newspaper, p 4 (July 11, 1988)
5. Ibid. "El País"
Newspaper, p 4 (July 11, 1988)
6. "El País"
Newspaper, p 50 (July 25, 1990)
7. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. "El Opus que no
cesa". Interviu
(January 14, 1988).
8. "Diario 16" Newspaper
(October 3, 1983)
9. Yvon Le Vaillant "La Santa Mafia:
El expediente secreto
del Opus Dei", pp 69-70 (Mexico: Edimex, 1985)
10. Ibid, p 213.
11. Article "El Opus Dei, El
verdadero poder en España" Tiempo magazine (April 11, 1988)
12. Ibid, p 15.
13. Ibid, p 10.
14. José Oneto, Tiempo
magazine (11 April 1988)
Index of Chapter I
Prologue
Next Section
Complete Index