The founder of Opus Dei wrote this text when planning to set up new centres of Opus Dei in Valencia and Paris. He addresses it to the lay directors of the centres of Opus Dei.

Escrivá refers to the need for directors to be holy and lead lives of Christian perfection, service, poverty, and obedience to the senior directors in order to guide others.

Much of the document is repetitive and not controversial, merely wise notions to have if one is going to take up a managerial position and be in charge of people and resources.

“Fraternal correction”

Section 24 emphasises to directors the duty they have to give “fraternal corrections”. This is the custom in Opus Dei of consulting with the director when one sees a brother or sister falling short in an area of the life of a Christian or the practices of Opus Dei. Then one gives the correction in private and reports back to the director. The person corrected needs to take it humbly.

The practice of fraternal correction is in fact a highly traumatising practice. What it leads to is a distrust of one’s brothers and sisters. At any moment, they could be keeping their eye on you, ready to consult a fraternal correction. I remember doing this and, looking back, I know it was my passive/aggression.

On the other hand, I once got a fraternal correction that I entirely deserved: I had driven a brother’s car recklessly and pranged one of the doors. In fact, that man was entitled to speak to me direct without having to consult anyone!

“Fraternal correction” is an area of the Christian life where the founder over-institutionalised something that should be more normal.

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.” (Mt18:15)

In any other Catholic organisation, there could be a mature debate about the traumatising effects of the practice of fraternal correction, and adjustments made for it to reflect all the teachings of Jesus in context. However, this is not possible in Opus Dei because the founder supposedly received the spirit of Opus Dei, in all its details, direct from God.

The spirit of Opus Dei is supposedly perfect and permanent. This is clearly nonsensical but the only remedy within the Catholic church is ecclesiastical discipline, which the bishops are either not minded to undertake or which Opus Dei resists with all its might.

Collegiality - but with sectarian exclusivity

From section 28 onwards, Escrivá writes about the collegiality of governance i.e. decisions should be made by the members of the local council of the centre as a whole, and only very rarely by the director alone.

Section 30 defines the local council as the director, assistant director and secretary. These are all lay positions. Presumably later on, Escrivá added the priest to the council, because that is the universal practice.

Section 35 deserves special attention:

“When matters pertaining to the spirit or governance of the Work are involved, if, upon studying a specific case, the members of the local Council do not all agree on the solution—provided it is not a matter of ordinary administration, in which case the majority opinion prevails—the matter should be referred to the immediate Senior Directors for their guidance and a decision. No one else should be consulted, because those who do not belong to the Work lack its spirit and the special grace of God to advise or resolve such issues.” [Emphasis added]

Here we see the genesis of the entrenched sectarian spirit of Opus Dei. We know from section 8 of the 1982 Statutes of Opus Dei that lay celibates give “full availability” to Opus Dei, and married members give the maximum possible availability. The precise remit of a local council over the life of a member of Opus Dei is not specified, neither in the Statutes nor by Escrivá in this document. There is no reference to the protected rights of the laity in the code of canon law (the 1917 code in force at the time of writing).

And now Escrivá nails that down with a prohibition on consulting others not on the local council - no diocesan priests or bishops, no other Catholics, not even other members of Opus Dei not on local councils. In the event of disagreement, the matter can only be referred upwards, to the directors of Opus Dei for the region. This is surely not acceptable in Catholic canon law.

Section 58 entrenches this:

“If you encounter any opposition from ecclesiastical or lay persons, authorities or not, remain silent: if you do not do so, you run the risk of giving credence to gossip, and of giving importance to what will ordinarily be nothing more than trifles.

Instead, inform the Senior Directors immediately, entrust the matter to the Lord, and soon the light will shine and the opposition will disappear.”

Opus Dei councils have always had carte blanche to make decisions affecting all aspects of the lives of celibate members and major influence in the lives of married members, without any regard for canon law or other Catholics or other stakeholders. This is not how Catholic organisations function or at least should function. It allows no external accountability and if there’s one thing that the Catholic bishops have learned from its painful history of reckoning up to clerical abuse, it is that external accountability is needed to protect Catholics from abuse.

Secrecy is not OK unless it is “official silence”

I have excerpted from section 38:

“You know, my children, that I dislike secrecy. … On the other hand, I am bothered by mystery and secrecy in human affairs.

That is why we call the discretion with which local Directors and Senior Directors must treat certain matters among themselves, when those matters require discretion and special care, perhaps because a person may be defamed, or perhaps because obstacles may be placed in the way of apostolic work, "official silence."”

I am reminded of Jesus’ words - let your yes be yes and your no be no - anything else is from the devil.

Anyone with any experience of Opus Dei close up knows that it is highly secretive. Yet the founder was brazen enough to say here - and on many other occasions - that there is no secrecy in Opus Dei. No doubt he persuaded himself of that. Having trained as a lawyer and having read many corrupting mediaeval Jesuit texts, no doubt Escrivá was able to come up with subtle linguistic distinctions to bat off accusations of secrecy. God knows his heart.

Confidentiality

Later, in section 54, Escrivá talks about the need for a professional sense of confidentiality, like that of a doctor or lawyer, when it comes to matters learned through one’s position on a council of Opus Dei. There are two issues with that: when it suits, confidential matters are passed around leaders and priests of Opus Dei. The disclosure of intimate information in the “fraternal chat” (i.e. spiritual direction) is expected, on pain of disobedience and sin, and I mean that literally. Most importantly, members of Opus Dei are not informed that fraternal chats are not confidential, nor of when their intimate information is passed on within the Opus Dei world, or to whom.

For example, I learnt after I left Opus Dei that local councils write a report on each numerary who intends to do the “fidelity” (= make the official, permanent commitment to Opus Dei after 6.5 years) and send to the senior directors - see https://opuslibros.org/nuevaweb/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3480 There are several other types of reports on individuals in section 18 here https://opuslibros.org/documentos_internos.htm

In practice, the whole leadership and priest network of Opus Dei is a gigantic gossip network.

No close friendships

In section 87, Escrivá writes:

“Try to keep away from our homes those who easily form close friendships,...”

This is so sad but also so much the reality of living in an Opus Dei centre. Emotional warmth is official and contrived - you quickly learn not to be open and vulnerable to anyone except your spiritual director once a week. In fact, if one did develop a deeper friendship or even just open up honestly, you would get a fraternal correction. No wonder most us ended up with major psychological problems. I’m happy to talk about mine because they are in the past and I am not ashamed of anything in my life any more. But within Opus Dei centres, such humanity is stifled and punished, whatever pious words to the contrary are said.

Manipulation to keep people in Opus Dei

Sections 94 and 95 help me to understand some of the painful and underhand tactics inflicted on me in Opus Dei to try to keep me in.

94. If you see that any member of your household is beginning to slacken in their fervor or their work, let another prudent and good-hearted brother speak with them frequently; and let them walk together on the occasion of some apostolic work or professional task, so that sincere confidences may be fostered. This spiritual fellowship between brothers—if necessary, combined with fraternal correction—bears more fruit than many rebukes from a spiritual director.

I got this manipulative treatment from Thomas D’Andrea, a US philosophy academic based in Cambridge, UK, who unironically specialises in moral virtues - see https://www.csppr.org.uk/aboutus.html

Throughout my time in Opus Dei, I was subject to the following breaches of confidentiality and cold-shoulder treatment from fellow numeraries in the centres where I lived, especially the Spanish or Catalan ones:

“95. If another, shaken by temptations, falters in his vocation, have his discreet brothers pray to the Lord for him. Do not forget that, although you Directors are the ones who must pray most intensely for the people or matters of your house, it is good to involve other of my children so that they may specifically entrust to God the matters that currently concern you. This unifies and improves the atmosphere.”

After I confided my doubts about my “vocation” to Opus Dei to my spiritual director, I would suddenly see a change in tune from various “brothers” (Jordi Viñas, Father Peter Damian-Grint). They turned cold or adopted a concerned look, sometimes sighing visibly (Father James Pereiro, Jack Valaro) or making supposedly casual references to “perseverance” (Neil Pickering). I can tell you from the depths of my heart that these were some of the most painful experiences of my time in Opus Dei.

The sense of manipulation of my life goes right back to my birth, when I was orphaned for Catholic moral reasons (conception out of wedlock, single mother) and spent the first 6 months of my life in the Catholic orphanage at the Crusade of Rescue, Ladbroke Grove, London. I was then placed by that agency for adoption by an alcoholic Catholic couple from Glasgow.

I still live with this and it makes me utterly determined to bring down the evil edifice of Opus Dei, no matter what the personal sacrifice. God has allowed this burning passion in my heart to combat the unredeemable evil at the heart of Opus Dei.

A burden of conscience on members of Opus Dei to manipulate

At the same time, I do not judge or condemn those brothers of mine who manipulatively tried to keep me in Opus Dei, because of the following instruction of Escrivá in section 97:

“...should a defection [= a person leaving Opus Dei] occur for which we could not explain the causes, I would not excuse from sin—and sometimes, from grave sin—the Directors and those of my children who have lived with that person.”

If you don’t do your utmost to keep someone from leaving Opus Dei, there are eternal consequences. What a terrible, evil and fraudulent emotional and spiritual burden for anyone to carry!

“Compelle intrare”

Finally, Escrivá ends the document with this Latin phrase, in section 103. This means “compel them to come in,...” and is a well-used phrase in Opus Dei, to encourage members to evangelise. It is from the parable of Jesus in Luke 14:23 about getting people from the highways and byways to come to the marriage feast. Church figures like Augustine of Hippo have interpreted this to justify forced conversions while many Christian writers, like CS Lewis, interpret it in a more gentle way. Clearly, Escrivá followed the coercive interpretation.

As an aside, when you radically surrender your life to God, just being in the presence of others can be enough to challenge them deep down on areas of their lives where they are resistant to change. God uses the physical presence of his own lovers to communicate joy and challenges to others, without those lovers even knowing about it.

We can see this perhaps more clearly if someone relates an anecdote to us in which they acted lovingly. This can remind us of similar incidents in our lives where we did not act as nobly, and convict us of the need to change inwardly. It is a powerful witness but it does not override our free will, which is the crucial point, a point that Escriva never learnt, to the huge detriment of the spiritual and emotional welfare of 100s of 1,000s of people.

Thank you for reading.

Michael Chambers

Critical introduction to "Instruction to directors", 1936

[Full text of the internal document here: https://opendei.co.uk/document-3-instruction-directors ]