Re: Opus Dei.
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Beyond the Threshold: A Life in Opus Dei. / (book reviews)
Author/s: Joseph Cunneen
Issue: March 11, 1998
By Maria del Carmen Tapia. Continuum, 364 pp., $29.95.
First read about Opus Dei in a New York Times article in the late '40s. It was described as a Spanish-born secular institute for idealistic Catholic laypeople who wanted to make their work in the world a path to spiritual growth. Since then I had seen sketchy accounts which linked Opus Dei to Generalisimo Francisco Franco and right-wing politics in Spain. But I knew very little about the organization until I read Maria del Carmen Tapia's book.
Tapia worked for almost five years as a personal secretary to Opus Dei's founder, Msgr. Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer. Disillusioned, she wanted to bring her experience with the organization to the attention of Pope John Paul II and of the Christian community as a whole. Her book is a comprehensive account of the inner workings of the women's branch of Opus Dei. It should fascinate sociologists and feminists and contribute to needed self-criticism in the Roman Catholic Church.
Surprisingly unembittered, Tapia wastes no time speculating on Opus Dei's political ties or possible financial scandals. She reports what she has observed, exposing something more serious: a deformation of spiritual life built into the very formation of its members and a sectlike secrecy primarily concerned for the advancement of this "church within the church." Escriva's contempt for the Jesuits is instructive. He tells members of Opus Dei's central government, "I would prefer a million times that a daughter of mine die without the Last Sacraments than that they be administered to her by a Jesuit." No one who reads this book can fail to be disturbed by Opus Dei's independence from local church authority now that John Paul II has given it the status of a "personal prelature."
As an attractive and intelligent young woman, engaged to be married, Tapia manifested a spiritual idealism that made her open to pressures to join Opus Dei as an act of perfect sacrifice. There was a contradiction from the start between the organization's presentation of itself as a "secular," more modern apostolate than that of existing religious orders and its requirement of vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Tapia's description of a retreat she made at an Opus Dei center will remind older Catholic readers of the distorted way in which religious vocations were urged on young people 40 years ago. Surprisingly, the man who preached at that retreat was Raimon Panikkar, a priest who has since left Opus Dei and established an international reputation for interreligious scholarship.
Tapia describes her training as "the making of a fanatic." In many ways, her life in the organization resembles the lives of thousands of nuns before Vatican II, marked by an exaggerated emphasis on rules, avoidance of worldly distractions, unquestioning obedience, meditation and mortification. In addition, Opus Dei was so secretive that prospective members could not inform their parents of their intentions. Flagellation was a prescribed practice, and the things members confided to their superiors were used to make them instruments of the organization. Constant warnings against "bad spirit" were really directed against asking questions, making the slightest criticism or showing Escriva less than total veneration.
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