CHAPTER
I
SECTS AND OPUS DEI
15. Abandoning the Work of God:
Harassment of Fugitives and Social
Death
The biblical curse, according to the "Father", will be heavy on
any of his members who cease to belong to the sect. Escrivá
said: “He who leaves the Work
abandons the boat and goes into darkness”.
(166)
The dissidents of Opus Dei are persecuted, slandered, and an effort is
made to of isolate them so that they cannot tell what they have seen,
and, if they do tell it in spite of everything, so that no one will
listen to them. (167)
The media, which are largely run by or dependent
on banks that can be reached by the Work or are afraid of Opus Dei,
have paid almost no attention to these testimonies.
The Work, says Alberto Moncada, makes use of the best resources to keep
the rebel ones in check. It is also the time to open the box of
thunders and
suggest that not persevering in the sect can lead to eternal damnation,
(168)
threatening the dissident's accomplices or the neutrals ones with the
idea that the dissident has committed a grave
sin.
The departure from the Work is a curious phenomenon because, suddenly,
you feel how little you matter to some people who have witnessed years
of your best efforts. You are a file for the archives. It's over. And
the fewer signs of life you give, the better. Because you are a burning
reminder of their failures.
However, divine wrath has a genuine outlet in the persecution to which,
in many sects, they subject their former members. There are already
many published denunciations, backed by the credibility and/or evidence
of their authors, which place Opus Dei, its men, at the center of
persecution campaigns against its former members of certain social
weight.
(169) In this
way, through the many resources that the obedient men of
Opus Dei control in society, the lives and professional careers of some
of the defectors from the Work have been ruined by their excessive
loquacity. Anyone investigating the surroundings of Opus Dei always
encounters a clearly verbalized constant: fear of speaking.
María Angustias Moreno has written that leaving the Work is not
easy. If you are, and stop being, you become part of the group of those
who are absolutely marginalized. You become despicable. Overnight, all
relationships and interest in the person who is leaving are over. The
same people who said they loved him so much that they were willing to
give their lives for him, who took advantage of his best possibilities,
ignore him, forget him completely. They no longer care about what they
may need, they don't care how he will rebuild his life. He has stopped
counting for everything, they don't want to know anything anymore, they
would rather not cross paths with him in the street anymore. It is a
tangible demonstration of how little an individual really matters to
them!
The same people who, some time ago, would have been very interested in
you because you belonged to the Work, later ignore you and
avoid you because you no longer are. "Those
who leave are as if
they had died". (171)
For those in Opus Dei, leaving the Work is an unmitigated desertion, a
betrayal. A consent and pact with the diabolic temptation. From this it
is logical to deduce that whoever leaves goes to the abyss and is
hopelessly lost. His efforts are no longer of any use. I believe -
Maria Anguishes continues - that somehow they understand that those who
leave have an obligation to condemn themselves.
It is enough to leave Opus Dei to lose one's holiness.
Another numerary was being pressured, and the advice she was given to
get rid of the idea of leaving was the following: “Anyone who leaves
the Work betrays and sells Jesus”, “No one who has left the Work has
been happy”, “Hell awaits you”.
(172)
People find it hard to leave. A Colombian Jesuit even reported
suicides. (173)
So did John Roche, who claims to know directly of a
suicide in Opus Dei in Kenya and who has heard of two more women in
London, one of whom threw herself from the fourth floor of an Opus Dei
house.
“When you leave you become a
non-person, and no member is allowed to
help you”, says Maria del Carmen Tapia.“When a person leaves Opus Dei
they are on the street, financially, spiritually and psychologicall.”
(174)
Susana Crepi's father hugs his daughter and kisses her on the forehead.
“Calm down, you're free now”, he muses. “I am, Dad, but they're not”,
replies the young woman, referring to those who still remain in the
darkness of Opus Dei, in the blindness of the sect. The priest adds:
“Fortunately we have recovered Susana, but we feel the need to explain
to people what Opus Dei is all about and why it is so difficult to
leave the organization. My daughter was persecuted for months to get
her back. And the reality is that in Opus Dei there are three
categories of members: the masters, the waiters, and the dogs.”
During their time in Opus Dei, they are exposed to fear and guilt and
to the spiritual survival of their own members outside, in the open, in
the world. Its purpose is to ensure that members are not tempted to
leave the closed space of the organization, the enclosed area of the
sect. That is why they make the existence of their members dependent on
the group, leaving them destitute, to avoid the temptation of returning
to normality.
Nor should we dismiss the fear that many followers may have of the sect
itself, when it comes to considering abandonment.
In the Work it is assured that everyone who leaves is because he has
stopped living practices of piety - which they call "rules of the
plan of life" - or because he has been preoccupied by personal,
selfish
problems. Other causes they also adduce are insincerity, lust or pride.
With these arguments they calm and temper those who, remaining within,
might fall into the weakness of leaving.
When Covi Carcedo G. Roces left the Work, he was told that “he would
disappear”, that “they would
water the streets of Oviedo with his
blood”, but he says that “they
do everything cowardly, not with the
courage that is born of honesty and truth, but with the cowardice that
is born of profit”. On his departure he filed a complaint
against Opus
Dei for fraud. (176)
They try to fill you with fear, explains MRS. “They repeat that
you will be condemned, that they are the truth, and that the others are
traitors.” (177)
“These are the classic arguments of
moral blackmail.”
(178)
Usually those who leave are traumatized by the experience
Some examples are provided by Alberto Moncada.....
Miguel Fiscac, the
well-known architect who entered Opus Dei at its earlier stages, left
it
because of the moral conflicts he himself has related, when he married
Ana María Badell and today he does not want to know anything
about the Work of God, nor about its partners.
Antonio Pérez, a rising star in Opus Dei, had to suffer one of
the
most tenacious persecutions when he left the Work as part of a
painful journey of self-enlightenment...
Maria del Carmen Tapia went
from being the director of Opus Dei to being a prisoner in the same
institution, in an abrupt change of heart.
Raimundo Panikkar was the
other star, the intellectual, of that first group of postwar opusdeists
who dramatically moved away from the institution.
Francisco José
de Saralegui, an old Christian, had an important role in the economic
activity of the Work until his departure... (179)
Jesús Ynfante
tells us that Antonio Pérez Hernández de los Granales was
number one in the race to become a lawyer for the Council of
State, a companion of Amadeo Fuenmayor and a very brilliant man for
those who knew him; he had been ordained a priest and entered the
Priestly Society of the Holy Cross in 1948. He was also the rector of
the house on San Justo Street in Madrid. One day he left everything and
disappeared with what he was wearing, that is, his suit and shoes.
Located in Mexico, they try to convince him to return with negative
results. Then
Opus Dei forced him to change his name and he promised not to return to
Spain for the rest of his life. (180)
In general, when an adept leaves a sect, such as Opus Dei, he or she
presents the following psychological picture: 1) Depression; 2) Feeling
of loneliness; 3) Negative self-evaluation; 4) Guilt complex; 5) Low
level of autonomy in adapting to daily behavior; 6) Reduction in mental
acuity; 7) Tendency to fall into altered states of consciousness; 8)
End of the chosen complex; 9) Aversion towards the sect because of the
traumatic experience; 10) Fear of the sect.
In order to rehabilitate some members and get them back to the notion
of reality and frein many cases it is necessary to deprogram them
to regenerate and make them forget the bitter nightmare.
REFERENCES
166. "Área Crítica",
op cit.
167. Ibid.
168. Moncada, "El Opus Dei: Una
interpretación", p. 116.
169. Rodriguez, "El poder de las
sectas" ("The Power of Cults"), p. 75.
170. Moreno, "El Opus Dei, anexo a
una historia", pp 84-85.
171. Ibid, p 87.
172. "A. L. M. N.," Opus Dei member.
173. Walsh, p 183.
174. Ibid. p 183.
175. "Interviú" magazine.
176. Covi Carcedo G. Roces, "Tiempo" magazine (July 21, 1986).
177. Newspaper "El País"
(May 1, 1988).
178. Carandell, op cit, p 30.
179. Moncada, "Historia oral del
Opus Dei", p. 11.
180. Ynfante, "La prodigiosa
aventura del Opus Dei", p. 353.
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