When Summorum Pontificum was promulgated, we had great hopes for a liturgical renewal of Opus Dei, the particular order founded by Josemaría Escrivá and later transformed in the only Personal Prelature, a novel figure created (for them, apparently) in the new Code of Canon Law.
We knew many priests of "The Work" loved the Traditional Mass, that Escrivá celebrated until the end of his life. But the order from above, as far as we could discern, was that the priests of Opus should, whenever possible, refrain from the Traditional Mass, and celebrate "the mass of the pope," that is, the novus ordo promulgated by Paul VI.
All this exaggeration of papal imitation did not serve Opus too well when Francis came. They never said or did anything against him, but, as we know, when Francis did not like something, the attitudes of others mattered little. And he didn't like Opus Dei, and that was that. So, he initiated a wholesale dismantling of the juridical structure of the Prelature, under the operation of Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda.
That has continued under Leo XIV (or at least he has not so far put a stop to it). So, as written in Argentine blog Wanderer by a person linked to Opus under a pseudonym and who is in the know, are we on the way to an extermination of Opus Dei as we know it? Opus Dei has many issues, and these need to be addressed rationally and charitably, and in obedience to the law, but it's also filled with pious priests and faithful, people who have made vows and commitments expecting them to be fully respected and honored, according to the law: do they deserve this?
by Almadébil [Weaksoul]
With Pope Francis, a process of arbitrary intervention in multiple institutions of the Catholic Church began. Some have been forced to make statutory changes that no one requested, despite the fact that they were peacefully carrying out their spiritual and apostolic life within the Church. Others were victims of the appointment of pontifical commissioners, an evil interventionist phenomenon that followers of these ecclesiastical matters refer to pejoratively as comisariamiento. There are also institutions that have been victims of direct dissolution (forced extinction), with utter disregard for the future of hundreds or thousands of members of excellent conduct and good faith who were part of them; faithful who for decades of their lives lived their vocation happily... until Pope Francis' arrival on the papal throne.
In addition to this, there were closed seminaries, canceled ordinations, cloistered religious threatened in the essence of their very millennial charisms (with houses arbitrarily commissariated), plus a huge number of priests cunningly canceled, or expelled from the ministry... and even excommunicated, and almost a hundred bishops scandalously expelled from their dioceses without cause. All these victims of the arbitrariness of the previous pontiff, under the reign of Leo XIV, remain excluded from the ecclesiastical judicial system without being able to exercise a fair defense that would allow them to return to the regular exercise of their own vocation (as if there were a surplus of priests in the church). We trust that the new Pope will get down to work in his role as supreme judge.
One of the victims of these arbitrary acts is Opus Dei, which, although it does not appear to be threatened with extinction or dissolution, faces the imminent threat of being seriously damaged in its spirit, inspired by God in the soul of its founder (St. Josemaría Escrivá), as the Catholic Church solemnly affirmed when it promulgated the Apostolic Bull Ut Sit (March 19, 1983).
This threat is particularly evident in the uncertainty suffered by thousands and thousands of lay faithful who live their vocation in Opus Dei in apostolic celibacy (numeraries and associates), based on a commitment freely assumed, in accordance with all the laws of the Church, and for decades.
Of these, there are those who are over ninety years old, and a few who are over a hundred; there are also those who are over eighty or seventy, and multitudes in their sixties, fifties, or forties... in other words, the threat of uncertainty about what Leo XIV will ultimately do falls on thousands of people who have invested their entire lives (or a huge part of them) in serving the Church according to its laws, trying to live out their baptismal commitments to the fullest, with an ordinary life in the midst of the world.
For readers and researchers of ecclesiastical news, it is impossible to hide the fact that Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda (very influential with Pope Francis... and we still do not know to what extent he is capable of manipulating the current Pope Leo XIV) has been intent for decades on destroying Opus Dei by canonically distorting its founding charism. His proposed methodology consists of substantially altering the legal regulations of Opus Dei in order to convert the vocation of the laity of the Prelature into a sociological fact without legal connotations for the life of the Church. He has done the same with other institutions that have been intervened.
The method employed by Ghirlanda has ironic roots, since he has encouraged Pope Francis to draft a motu proprio explicitly directed against Opus Dei, which he (Ghirlanda, no one else) has christened with the title Ad charisma tuendum (Translation: To protect the charism); a cynical title whose sole purpose is to distort and/or destroy as much as possible of the charism (spirit) of Opus Dei. Although it has not yet been implemented, it poses a direct and imminent threat to the peace and tranquility of thousands and thousands of lay people who were living their vocation peacefully and fruitfully before the Francis-Ghirlanda tandem came to power in the Church.
Seventy-five years ago (June 16, 1950, then the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus), Opus Dei received definitive approval of its charism, enshrined in the corresponding statutes that were then presented and extensively examined for three years by the Holy See.
It should be noted that, for classical fundamental theology, the definitive approval of the statutes of an institution of the universal Church (as was the case with Opus Dei in 1950) constitutes a dogmatic fact (along with sentences of canonization) that involves papal infallibility. And while the classification of dogmatic fact applies only to the nature of the spirit of the institution (charisma), and not to its organizational structure, we must not forget the popular saying: The order of factors does not alter the product, but it does alter everything else, so the organizational structure must be examined in detail if we want to prevent it from damaging the charism.
It is a pity that a spirit that achieved approval with the explicit and infallible support of Pius XII (1950), plus the incessant blessings of St. John XXIII, and the unconditional support of St. Paul VI, St. John Paul I (as Cardinal of Venice, he wrote a wonderful article on the charism of Opus Dei, which Leo XIV would do well to read before making a decision), St. John Paul II, and the then-Cardinal Ratzinger... who followed this process meticulously in all its details. But it is even more painful to know that today, the fact that the spirit of Opus Dei is being challenged is based simply on Cardinal Ghirlanda's intellectual whims and problems, plus his capacity for diabolical manipulation within the Holy See.
The numeraries and associates who live apostolic celibacy in Opus Dei are people who have decided not to form a human and carnal family, and they have done so on the basis of a free decision they made out of love for the Kingdom of Heaven. These days, these people are being questioned by their family and friends, over and over again, about the existence of a possible papal threat (read Leo XIV), whose objective would be the unilateral extinction of the institutional legal rights and duties acquired years ago by these thousands and thousands of lay people (men and women). This cannot be! The mission of a Pope is to provide certainty, not uncertainty. His mission is to confirm rights and respect agreements, not violate them.
The undeniable institutional threat facing Opus Dei, if consummated, would mean that Pope Leo XIV would say, for example, to a 70-year-old numerary (the same age as the Roman Pontiff): You are no longer what we agreed upon years ago, by mutual agreement and in accordance with Canon Law, and you are not because here we do whatever I want (read Cardinal Ghirlanda).This irreverent way of unilaterally altering institutional commitments constitutes a clear and flagrant violation of natural law, which, in addition to not binding any human being in conscience, affects the Holy See's international commitments related to respect for fundamental rights. What's more, telling a mass of thousands and thousands of lay faithful (as would be the case with the numeraries and associates of Opus Dei): You are no longer anything under Canon Law. You will no longer be what we had agreed. If you wish, you may continue to live where and how you are doing so, but without rights or duties guaranteed within the Church... or at least not as we agreed, at the beginning, bilaterally. And this is so because I (the Roman Pontiff) unilaterally modify your canonical state of life.These lines are intended to convey three requests to Leo XIV:1. That he silence as soon as possible the doubts generated in the mass media regarding the pontifical condemnation of Opus Dei, or its dispersion into three different institutions, in accordance with Cardinal Ghirlanda's sinister thinking: Divide and conquer!2. If you are seriously considering dividing the institution into three parts, you should know that it will be very difficult not to damage the charismatic substance of Opus Dei, which, after its definitive (and pontifical) approval in 1950, is theologically a fact. Because the unity of vocation in Opus Dei is rooted in Baptism, and not in Holy Orders, all the faithful of Opus Dei (including its priests) want to be part of the same institution because of their common status as baptized persons; or, as St. Augustine (whom Leo XIV knows very well) would say: For you I am a bishop, with you I am a Christian.
3. If the Holy Father intends to endorse an organizational change that does not affect the dogmatic fact (the approval of the charism in 1950), I believe it would be advisable for him to first consult a couple of hundred numeraries and associates who are currently giving their lives to live this spirit (and have been doing so for decades), some of whom he will have met as bishop of Chiclayo. He would be surprised by their testimonies.
Finally, with regard to supernumerary members, although all the issues I refer to are directly related, here we have chosen to express our concern about the threat of a pontifical regulation, arising from a well-known historical whim of Cardinal Ghirlanda, which could affect the peace and serenity, in the Christian life, of many celibate lay members of Opus Dei who today lead a fruitful and peaceful life.
