Thursday, December 15, 2005
OPUS DEI
"Individual initiatives"--is that a model that OD would like to see more of worldwide? Are there political objectives? Since OD is not like religious orders which have been the model for Catholic institutions prior to Opus Dei, it's hard to judge from the outside what exactly OD is about.
Why was it necessary to be (have?) a personal prelature? Why were older models for religious communities rejected? I think that this, more than anything else, makes OD seem to be secretive and perhaps even furtive, as though there is some carefully hidden objective that would be scandalous if it were discovered. Even the structure seems to imitate the esoteric groups which all have an inner circle in the know and an outer circle of members who provide camouflage. From the outside, Opus Dei looks an awfully lot like a Gurdjieff/Ouspensky Fourth Way School.
