CHAPTER
I
SECTS AND OPUS DEI
10. Sects and Religion: the Fraudsters
of God
The problem of the sects has afflicted the Church since its beginnings.
(121) Saint Paul
had already encountered a similar problem in one of
the communities he had founded, that of Corinth. Four or five years
after he had brought it into the faith through his preaching, he noted
with deep sorrow the existence of sectarian tendencies, which he
reproached and
whipped up.
We must not forget that religiosity is something consubstantial with
the human being and one of his signs of identity that separates and
differentiates him from the fauna. Hence the danger of speculation with
the sacred, with beliefs, with faith.
Religiosity can never become a currency for defrauding man, even though
"religion" may have been conceived, as in the case of Opus Dei, as “the
kind of business that any businessman dreams of: selling goods with no
cost of production, of an imperishable character, always adaptable to
new markets and through a structure that uses the free labor of its
believers and their particular sins as sources of capitalization.
That's what paradise on earth is!” (122)
We cannot forget that raising money is the great religious objective,
it is the spiritual goal, it is the mystical end of this type of sect.
They cover their "marketing" by making the follower believe that money
corrupts, that it is something dirty, that they must get rid of it in
order to destine it to the service of God and his work, that is, for
the sect. The same money that is a source of perdition for others, is a
source of sanctification for the Work, making the accumulation of money
a sacramental activity; therefore the member has to earn money to give
it to the sect.
They exploit the supernatural, the transcendent, the religious, the
sacred sentiment, selling bulls of sanctity precisely for profane,
daily, professional work, where they can earn means of subsistence and
amass fortunes but not for those who get them, but for the Work.
Appeals are made to the heavenly dignity, to the most sensitive fibers
of the human being, the sect is divinized
to the point of daring to
give it a name, even the supreme denomination, nothing more and nothing
less than "Work of God".
REFERENCES
121. Hernando, "Cuadernos de
realidades sociales" ("Notebooks of social
realities"), No. 35/36, p 20.
122. Rodríguez, "Las sectas
hoy y aquí" ("Cults Today and
Here"), p 34.
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