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["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

The secret life of Opus Dei

Ruth Kelly says the Catholic group's support is a private matter, but it is
surrounded by a reactionary miasma

Michael Walsh
Wednesday January 26, 2005
The Guardian

Rocco Buttiglione, the erstwhile Italian EU commissioner, must have some
sympathy with Ruth Kelly. Instead of getting on with the job to which Silvio
Berlusconi had advanced him, he was closely questioned by European
parliamentarians about his religious beliefs. His candidature was eventually
withdrawn, and he departed to found a new Catholic political alliance.

Now here is Ruth Kelly, eager to get stuck into her new role as secretary of
state for education, and yet all everyone wants to know, apart from how she
copes with a cabinet rank and four small children, is where Opus Dei fits
in. If indeed she is a member. No one is saying. She has spiritual support
from them, but that is a private matter, she told David Frost on Sunday.

Maybe, but her answer is rather disingenuous. Opus Dei comes surrounded by a
political miasma. It was founded just before the Spanish civil war, but came
fully into being in the heady Catholic days of Franco's cruzado. Camino (The
Way), the handbook that guides the spiritual life of Opus Dei adherents, was
published in its final version just as the civil war ended. When Opus came
to prominence in the late 1960s it was because Franco's cabinet contained a
remarkably large number of Opusdeistas - far too many for commentators to
believe it a coincidence. Senior members, including Opus's founder St
Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Marqués de Peralta, were involved in
negotiating the handover of power to the then Prince Juan Carlos, rather
than to his father, Don Juan.

Opus members were powerful operators in 1960s Spain and again, it was
alleged, during the Aznar government. The organisation's public persona in
Spain wasn't helped by the discovery that adherents helping to fund its
remarkable growth were involved in two of that country's major financial
scandals. The sinister, secretive image was boosted in the US when an FBI
agent was convicted four years ago of spying for the Russians. He was an
Opus member, and his brother-in-law an Opus Dei priest. The lurid picture in
Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, of an Opus Dei "monk" wreaking mayhem around
Europe on the instructions of his religious superior, has only added to
their curiosity value.

If a member, Ruth Kelly would have been a typical recruit, the sort of
person targeted by the organisation as a potentially influential member of
society. They tend to recruit from the middle class, give adherents a
traditional theological education, and subject them to an old-fashioned
spiritual training - including wearing spike bracelets, and beating oneself
with a cat o'nine-tails. Given this conservative background, it is scarcely
surprising that many Opusdeistas turn out to be supporters of rightwing
regimes. Kelly, on the left of centre, is therefore something of an
exception.

Their moral views, however, are more of a piece, and highly unlikely to
deviate from those espoused by the Vatican. And these, as Buttiglione and US
presidential contender John Kerry both found, can be something of a handicap
in public life, especially when the Vatican tells politicians to toe the
Catholic line on matters such as abortion. From the status of women to the
teaching on stem-cell research to the recognition of same-sex unions, Pope
John Paul II has resolutely followed a path at odds with the modern world.
Catholic parliamentarians have too often to struggle between their faith and
the convictions of the vast majority of their constituents. As Aidan O'Neill
QC put it in a recent debate at Lincoln's Inn presided over by Cherie Booth,
should they attempt to enact a form of Catholic Sharia? Many Catholics would
say no, but Opus members are fiercely loyal to the present Pope. He has not
only canonised their founder, but has also given them a new juridical
structure which, they believe, fits their particular way of life.

For Opus is one of a kind. Within Roman Catholicism it has a unique status
as a "personal prelature", a kind of diocese without geographical
boundaries, with which all its members are associated, but to which its
full-time members belong. They are priests and lay people. That makes it
different from traditional religious orders which are usually one or the
other. Opus embraces all classes of society, married and single, priests and
lay people, men and women - though in the last case, never the twain shall
meet. The recently constructed US HQ in New York has separate entrances for
men and women. There are even, according to the authors of The Rough Guide
to the Da Vinci Code, gender-specific parking lots.

In this country, Opus's HQ is in Bayswater, west London. Its members run
university halls of residence and youth clubs - fertile territory for new
recruits. In the US and elsewhere there are Opus Dei schools, hot on
traditional values. But not yet in Britain. In a variant of the postcode
lottery, devout British parents have been known to relocate to Ireland where
such colleges may be found. The education secretary says she wants more
independent state schools, strong on discipline. Her spiritual advisers may
have suggestions.

· Michael Walsh is a Catholic scholar and the author of Opus Dei