Opus Dei (‘the Work of God’, shortened by adherents to ‘the Work’) is an organization with the Roman Catholic Church. From 1983 it has, juridically, been a ‘Personal Prelature’, a structure created by Pope Paul VI in 1966. This was originally intended to provide for pastoral ministries within the Church which did not have clear-cut geographical boundaries, such as military chaplaincies or chaplaincies to travellers. The structure has never been used for these purposes, however, and Opus Dei remains as the only one of its kind within the Church. It is, effectively, a diocese, presided over by a ‘prelate’, customarily a bishop. Members of Opus Dei, wherever they are in the world, belong to this quasi diocese. As with any Roman Catholic diocese, it embraces priests as well as lay men and women, some as full members (the term used is ‘numerarii’) others as associated members (‘supernumerarii’). The former are full-time, celibate members, commonly living in Opus Dei houses, the latter are usually married, or intending to marry. The numerarii members make ‘fidelities’ which have much in common with the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience taken by members of religious orders.
They are adamant, however, that Opus is not a religious order, and that its members (other than priests belonging to the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei, as it is formally known) remain fully lay men and women. There is also a rank called ‘cooperators’, sympathizers (not necessarily Roman Catholic) with the spiritual ideals and manner of life of Opus Dei, but not formally members of the prelature. The common feature in their lives is that they place themselves under the spiritual direction of Opus Dei clergy, and take as their spiritual guide the writings of the founder of Opus Dei, St Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer.
The inspiration for Opus Dei came to the founder on 2 October 1928, the Feast of the Guardian Angels, while he was making a retreat at a house on the outskirts of Madrid. He began to work with a group of lay men, who shared with him his house, as a small university hostel. Though he began with men, he early conceived the idea of a parallel organization for women. It was not until the early 1940s that he determined to found a society of priests, schooled in his own spirituality, who might look after the spiritual well-being of the members of Opus.
The development of the organization was severely interrupted by the Spanish Civil War, in the course of which Escriva had to flee Madrid to France, returning soon afterwards to Burgos, which was in the hands of the Nationalist forces. Franco’s victory, and the need to re-establish higher education in Spain, gave members of Opus Dei an opening to enter the university sector, where they became an important influence, and an opportunity for recruitment. As the organization grew, Escriva became dissatisfied with the purely diocesan status which had been formally granted to it by the bishop of Madrid.
In 1947 the headquarters moved to Rome and, in the same year, the Vatican granted the status of a ‘secular institute’, the first of its kind, which enabled it to spread worldwide. It was also in 1947 that married members (the ‘supernumerarii’) were admitted.
Opus Dei now operates in a great many countries. It has some 80,000 members in the various branches, only a small and undisclosed proportion of them full-time members. There are among them some two thousand priests, and though Opus Dei claims to be, basically, a lay organization, the central governance is in the hands of clergy. Though it has some institutions of its own apart from residences—the University of Navarre at Pamplona in Spain is its flagship enterprise—many of the undertakings which are described as being of Opus Dei are the responsibility of groups of members, not of the organization itself. Opus Dei has been much criticized within the Roman Catholic Church for its apparent secrecy—though this appears to have been mitigated in recent years—for its recruitment techniques, for its spirituality based, in particular, upon Escriva’s little book of 999 maxims, Camino (The Way’), which to some seems too reminiscent of the Spanish mentality of the Franco regime. Under General Franco a group of members came to prominence in the government, and Opus Dei has also been accused of being close to right-wing regimes in Latin America. The recruitment techniques allegedly employed by Opus were expressly criticised by Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, in ‘Guidelines for Opus Dei within the Diocese of Westminster’, which he published in 1981. Opus Dei is also regarded as theologically very conservative.
