OPUS DEI IS A CULT
Many times I have watched this video and read or viewed like materials and have been amazed at how accurately the analysis and description matches my personal experience in Opus Dei.
Describing Opus Dei according to this framework resonates with truth, and to deny it would be to deny my conscience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bRBFhMEQFk&t=1009s
—International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), “What Is a Cult and How Does It Work?” YouTube video, 58:04 minutes, October 13, 2014
I believe that in order to understand what is wrong with Opus Dei—or at least with the historical Opus Dei, because I don’t have any accurate idea about what Opus Dei is like now—it’s necessary to take off your theological hat (generic you) and put on your scientific hat for a while.
By “science” I mean “social sciences,” which is also scientific and empirical but not exactly in the same sense as the natural sciences. Nonetheless, the social sciences are indeed genuine science.
If you (generic you) watch the video of Dr. Margaret Singer on cults, the framework she uses fits Opus Dei very well. The only part about Opus Dei that doesn’t fit the framework is that the leader(s) of the cult uses their power and authority for sexual abuse.
Cults do have varying effects on their members, which ranges from the very damaging to the somewhat harmless even, depending on a variety of factors.
Dr. Steven Hassan attributes the psychological damage wrought to both thought reform and psychological totalism. His exposition holds water.
Dr. Hassan has written four books on cults:
Wearing the theological hat, the devotee will claim that Opus Dei is from God and that Josemaria Escriva is his infallible instrument.
(It’s only under some compulsion that I am constrained to use the honorific for Josemaria Escriva. It incites personal nightmares.)
Wearing the scientific hat, on the other hand, another observer will propound a different view, persuasively I might add—that Opus Dei is a harmful cult. I agree with this view.
If Opus Dei is harmful—and there are sound scientific reasons for this conclusion—then it isn’t from God at all, at least not its harmful aspects. To claim as much—its very name makes this claim—is a type of idolatry.
Opus Dei is not God. It’s a flawed—even seriously flawed—human institution.
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…Opus Dei is also an efficient machine, dominated by fundamentalist European priests, that seeks broader international influence. Although Opus disclaims this, insisting that its task is solely to guide members towards correct moral choices, there is a fatal duality in its scheme: while it pushes members to succeed as adults in the secular world, it treats them like children in religious matters. ‘You need a director [a priest] in order to offer yourself, to surrender yourself . . . by obedience’, Escriva told his followers. (He spoke to his recruits as the ‘Nursery’.) Through weekly confession, ‘heart-to-heart’ talks, or ‘confidences’, and other contacts, members of Opus receive instruction on every aspect of their lives. On the one hand they are told, ‘Obey and you will be saved’, noted Father Pedro Miguel Lamet, former director of the Spanish religious weekly Vida Nueva. On the other, they are urged to succeed in a competitive world in order to attract new members and to defray Opus Dei’s considerable financial costs. The conflict between child and adult often ends in rebellion against a ‘religious prison’, as one recruit described it, and explains why Opus has produced so many disillusioned former members.
—Penny Lernoux, People of God (1989), pages 50-51
It accurately describes the historical Opus Dei.
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How did this happen? How did a harmful cult flourish inside the Roman Catholic Church?
The social sciences, social psychology especially, can provide some answers.
Unless the institution takes steps to understand what happened as well as how to prevent it from repeating again, I’m sure it will continue to recur.
After all, religious and spiritual totalism is very much a part of the history and culture of the Roman Catholic Church.
We know that the institution is susceptible to cult origination and propagation, more so when the pope himself gives it his backing.
God is not a trickster or a tyrant. The cultic attributes of Opus Dei do not originate in God and do not reveal who God genuinely is.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
It isn’t God’s will to propagate this system. This is the good fruit of the discernment of the spirits.
DeleteGonzalinho
Escriva and Opus Dei gave canonization a bad name. Nowadays, canonization is a Machiavellian tool that can be exploited to advance sectarian and highly partisan agendas in the Roman Catholic Church, sometimes rather aggressively. Opus Dei engages the institution through a highly politicized lens, consistent with Escriva’s own rude awakening to the corruption he encountered in the Roman Catholic Church—“My children, I have lost my innocence.” Opus Dei is no “innocent” raft of holiness in the world but looks instead like an ideological motor always kept running and revving to race.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
The concern I have is that as lay faithful we should not be dragged by clergy or religious, whether individuals or institutions, into their intramural wars inside the Church. Their struggles are often partisan, highly personal, ideologically motivated, unduly dogmatic, aggressive, domineering, tendentious, idiosyncratic, and sometimes even delusional. Opus Dei, in my sad, personal experience, drops into this category.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bRBFhMEQFk&t=1009s
ReplyDelete—International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), “What Is a Cult and How Does It Work?” YouTube video, 58:04 minutes, October 13, 2014
Possibly the only characteristic that does not directly describe Opus Dei is “mantra” or “empty mind meditation” (25:45). Opus Dei does not intentionally cultivate altered states of consciousness for its own sake or as part of its spiritual regime, through chanting or like habituation, although we would expect the manic activity and sleep deprivation of numerary life to sometimes produce altered states, including temporary psychosis.
Overall, I have said that Opus Dei numerary life is psychologically unhealthy for many reasons besides inflicting physical and psychological duress.
The institution of the Roman Catholic hierarchy is responsible for this grave spiritual abuse.
Opus Dei does pay very pointed attention to mystical graces that the members might receive and to their prayer states that might be judged quasi-mystical if not actually mystical. This data is, so to speak, Opus Dei’s stock-in-trade, or so they wish to believe.
Gonzalinho
I’ve been watching Father Vincent Lampert, Father Chad Ripperger, and other exorcists in my spare time, and I suspect that the cultic attributes of Opus Dei are the result of diabolic influence, specifically, obsession, mainly.
ReplyDeleteIn obsession the demons implant thoughts and emotions, which become harmful when they are taken up and implemented by the subject.
In the case of Opus Dei, the obsession would be reinforced by preternatural phenomena, as if to validate the thoughts and emotions of the subject led astray.
Gonzalinho
Escriva’s claims of divine revelation are highly problematic. I would say that in some cases the devil co-opts Opus Dei beliefs and practices directly deriving from Escriva. His canonization makes the issue even more problematic than it already is. The fact that Opus Dei by its own admission has made changes in beliefs and practices that were originally derived from Escriva—also, by Opus Dei’s own admission—only serves to confirm the critical point that I am making.
DeleteGonzalinho
In religious cults the term for mass psychogenic illness is “faith” and for dissociative disorder it’s “zeal.”
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
Basic core attribute of a cult is thought control together with the abuse of human rights.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
WHY PEOPLE JOIN CULTS AND WHY THEY STAY
ReplyDeleteStephen Mather
Medium
April 25, 2022
Why do people join cults and why do they stay? The answer to this question can be found in the basic psychological needs that we all share. According to Self Determination Theory developed originally by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (Deci & Ryan, 2000), people have three intrinsic psychological needs, these are: (i) a sense of autonomy, (ii) a sense of competence, and (iii) a feeling of relatedness — sometimes described as belonging.
https://medium.com/@SteEvilSheep/why-people-join-cults-and-why-they-stay-fe23cb160e51
To be continued
Gonzalinho
WHY PEOPLE JOIN CULTS AND WHY THEY STAY
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AUTONOMY
Perhaps the most important defining aspect of a cult is the reduction of the individual’s autonomy, after all a common alternative descriptor of a cult is a “High Control Group”. Cults control people’s thinking and behaviour, their choices about who to associate with, what jobs to do, who to marry or have relationships with, what to believe, and depending upon how extreme, when to eat and sleep and even in some notorious cases when to die. It is for this reason that cults are psychologically unhealthy places to live or become involved with. In addition to the psychological tole of living a life without being able to find expression of one of our fundamental needs, by removing a sense of autonomy, individuals become mere tools of the leadership and often do things that are not in their own interest.
Trying to measure the mental health of cult members is difficult. Studies that have tried to do this often find that people in cults self-report that they are happy and fulfilled within the group (Aronoff, Lynn & Malinoski 2000). Of course, the problem with this is that cult members may well claim to be happy because that is a requirement laid upon them by the leadership. I know when I was a member of a High Control Group, I would insist that I had the best life and was actively trying to help other people have what I had. I can now report that even when I was positively extolling the virtues of life in the Group, I was riddled with anxiety, unhappiness and frustration. Of course, it is possible that some people in cults are happy, at least for a time. Work continues on this question, but the problem is tricky because as a rule people in cults claim to be happy and people who leave claim they weren’t happy while a member. There is a further irony in that just by disbelieving cult members about their claims to be happy and certainly by trying to get them out, researchers are at risk of reducing their autonomy to stay a member.
…A person who is gravitating towards a cult may be feeling pressure from worried relatives to reduce their association or stop altogether. This sets up an apparent fight about autonomy. The cult may well prepare the new member for ‘opposition’ from family and friends and frame it as a question about whether you are going to allow others to determine for you how to serve God or save the world. The sad irony is that the final act of cult commitment may in fact feel like the ultimate act of an expression of autonomy.
To be continued 2
Gonzalinho
WHY PEOPLE JOIN CULTS AND WHY THEY STAY
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A SENSE OF COMPETENCE
We all like to feel special. At very least we all want to feel that we are good for something. Many of us struggle with feelings of self-doubt. Modern life is increasingly complex, and society can be quite unforgiving and intolerant of mistakes, so we live constantly with the experience of getting things wrong, from failed relationships to forgetting to send that email. For some people, at various points in their lives there can be a sense that something is not quite right with the world - or a concern that “maybe the problem is with me”? In either case there are times when we may feel overwhelmed by the complexity and begin to feel that there must be a better way. Cults often promise a revelation, a recipe to the ‘secret sauce’ that will finally unleash the real ‘you’, ‘the successful you’, ‘the powerful you’, ‘the thin you’ and so on. Being offered the chance to finally work out how to navigate this complex world and be a success can be very attractive.
The promises of the cult are appealing to that need to feel a sense of competence. To make the attraction even more sweet the answer is often a secret that only a chosen few have access to and yes, you guessed it you are lucky enough to have been chosen to get that answer. In order to benefit from the ‘secret source’ however, a commitment is required and a period of difficulty endured as well as obedience, devotion, labour, money etc.
A desire for competence is therefore a major reason why people join cults, but as with autonomy, the sad reality is that the promise is far from the experience while in the Group. Many groups, whilst promising cosmic levels of competence continually tell their members that they are useless, good for nothing, sinners, losers, fat, unintelligent etc. Why people stay is complex but is partly because the promise of competence is still there. The problem they are told is with them individually, and requires more work, more devotion, more love for the leadership and so they are forever ‘on the hook’ with a promise of competence that never quite materialises.
To be continued 3
Gonzalinho
WHY PEOPLE JOIN CULTS AND WHY THEY STAY
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RELATEDNESS AND BELONGING
Most cults employ tactics to make the Group appear an attractive, wonderful community to be a part of. They may engage in a practice often called ‘love bombing’ where an interested person is made to feel special and loved. Everyone is so friendly and lovey. Often the most attractive people are paraded as examples of members in media and literature. It’s not surprising that individuals want to be a part of it. Advertisers long ago recognised that to make a person buy a product it’s not the product that counts but what it says about you and the people that it associates you with.
Many experts about cults speak about the situational element of cult recruitment. It’s no coincidence that when people are going through some sort of transition or are socially isolated, they are more vulnerable to damaging cults. Why sit at home all sad and lonely when there’s this bunch of beautiful, friendly people just down the road? Whilst the other two elements turn out to be simple deceptions the feeling of belonging and relatedness may remain and even strengthen. The longer a person remains in a cult, the greater the bonds with the community. Many cults use familial terms such as father, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts to describe cult members. This is no coincidence of course. The closer you feel to the members of the group the deeper the social bonds and greater the sense of belonging. Additionally belonging to the group may also claim a relatedness to something much bigger — a Universal truth, God, the future of mankind. The desire to maintain this community and the fear of losing it becomes a strong reason to stay despite any disillusionment the person might be feeling.
To be continued 4
Gonzalinho
WHY PEOPLE JOIN CULTS AND WHY THEY STAY
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…Cults are often seen as something mysterious, deploying exotic methods of mind control. The reality is that, in the main they use well understood psychological and social processes that employ deception as well as coercion. While the actual beliefs and practices may seem strange, the processes are rooted in the exploitation of normal needs and desires such as the need to feel a sense of autonomy, competence and belonging. Unfortunately, many of these cults exploit these natural psychological needs and set up a situation where the individual behaves in ways that are not in their own interests. The cult’s promises turn out to be empty and the individual finds themselves in a coercively controlling situation without the autonomy and feeling of competence that attracted them initially. They may be left with a sense of community and a fear of losing it, but with little else to show for their years of service.
Stephen Mather MBPsS is a Podcaster and Corporate Leadership and Management Trainer & Coach with a Bachelors Degree in Psychology and a Masters in Organizational Psychology. He was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and studies cults and high control groups.
https://medium.com/@SteEvilSheep/why-people-join-cults-and-why-they-stay-fe23cb160e51
Scientific psychology is potentially a very good source of information on human susceptibility to harmful religious beliefs and practices. We should examine what science says about religion in society and evaluate it carefully, because science of quality deserves at least our judicious review. Using religion solely to investigate religion itself risks the possibility of looping logic error or infinite loop.
Gonzalinho
5 PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS WHY PEOPLE JOIN CULTS
ReplyDeleteAccording to cult experts, an individual’s desire for a comfortable, secure and smooth-sail life is a bait used by cultic movements to get followers. Potential members are duped with promises of a perfect life if they join the association.
Though different cults vary in their practices, the recruitment process is almost identical. Most formations use psychological principles to manipulate and net new members.
Below are some psychological reasons that may make a person an easy prey to a cult;
(i) Desire for a better life
The desire to have a better life may hook someone to a cult. It is common for cults to be masked as self-improvement groups with enticing benefits. Cult founders exploit vulnerable and ambitious persons yearning for a good life amidst the everyday challenges.
During recruitment, a potential member is enticed with partial information riddled with promises of an improved lifestyle. In the process, cult followers use psychological tricks to loop in people that are in pursuit of better but unrealistic lifestyles.
(ii) Source of identity
A cult offers friendship, connections, and a form of an extended family. The movement is a strong, thriving and loyal community. It is a perfect answer for a vulnerable person struggling to fit in society.
A cult identity gives members a sense of importance, acceptance and offsets vulnerability. Followers form emotional, social and psychological bonds that are difficult to break. It is normal for families to lose for good any kin that enrolls in a cult.
To be continued
Gonzalinho
5 PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS WHY PEOPLE JOIN CULTS
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(iii) Desperation or severe lack [of affection, compassion, or belonging]
Most people join a cult as an answer to challenges or severe lack of affection, compassion, or belonging. The desire to have a well-defined and comfortable life may make such individuals susceptible to conniving movements.
The charismatic cult leaders create emotional, physical, and psychological dependence by love-bombing followers with the love, comfort, and compassion they yearn for.
(iv) Traumatic experiences
The timing of recruitment into a cult is crucial. It is a herculean task to trick a sober and sane person to join the obscene group. It is, however, easy-peasy to trick a person that is in a difficult situation due to their vulnerable status.
A person undergoing a traumatic experience such as a divorce is vulnerable and easy to manipulate. According to Rachel Bernstein, a cult specialist, most cult survivors confess, “I wouldn’t have joined the cult if I wasn’t going through a difficult life experience at the time of enrolment.”
(v) Emotional love-bombing
Cult recruiters identify and love-bomb persons that are emotionally troubled, stressed, or in difficult situations. Love-bombing is an emotional and psychological abuse disguised as excessive flattery.
A cult member may befriend and comfort the hurting person to win their trust. The victim is duped into joining the movement where he is promised to get answers to their challenges.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-reasons-why-people-join-cults-psychological-dominicah-kanyi
—Dominicah Kanyi, “5 Reasons Why People Join Cults: A Psychological Perspective,” Linkedin, June 27, 2023
According to scientific psychology, a major reason for joining a cult is emotional dysfunction—for example, a deleterious emotional need for “friendship, connections, and a form of an extended family,” “desperation or severe lack of affection, compassion, or belonging,” trauma, dealing with “emotionally troubled, stressed, or difficult situations”—that arise from social and especially familial difficulties.
Cults represent a psychologically unhealthy and damaging way of dealing with these issues. Joining a cult compounds the problem rather than solves it.
Consulting a competent clinical psychologist is possibly one ameliorative step in the right direction.
Gonzalinho
ARE THERE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A CULT AND A RELIGION?
ReplyDelete“Cult” is a term that has evolved over the years. The word is used to describe any movement that promotes “socially deviant” practices. In modern society, an association is labeled a cult based on social perspectives.
Technically, cults are legal so long as they don’t engage in criminal activities.
Some religious factions like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are called cults because of strict religious practices. Regardless, they are legal since their activities are within the law.
Below are significant differences between a cult and a religion;
Recruitment process: A cult usually recruits members through coercion or deception. An individual is enticed with attractive promises that include a better life without challenges. Mind-control, manipulation and love-bombing are part of the conversion process.
Religion is usually a family or generational voluntary association. A person may be raised through a particular religious practice or join the group voluntarily. The individual transitions from initiation to full membership without coercion or engaging in unreasonable activities.
Relationship with non-members: A cult isolates the followers from non-members be it family, friends or colleagues. They are forced to stay within the group and are isolated from the external world. Their activities exclude outsiders and are mysterious.
Religion is a socially accepted association that operates publicly and within the law. In most cases these activities are inclusive and enhance social ethos. Religious activities are public, legal and beneficial to society.
Social perception: Cults propagate radical religious practices that are against social norms. The socially deviant practices of the movement taint the social perception of the group. The questionable activities stigmatize and hamper the acceptance of the association.
Contrary to cultic groups that are repulsive to society, religious movements usually have a positive perception. Communities are receptive to religious activities since they operate within the law and improve lives.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-reasons-why-people-join-cults-psychological-dominicah-kanyi
—Dominicah Kanyi, “5 Reasons Why People Join Cults: A Psychological Perspective,” Linkedin, June 27, 2023
Scientific sociology offers useful insights with respect to the attributes that define cults and also provides reasons why those attributes are harmful to cult members.
To be continued
Gonzalinho
ARE THERE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A CULT AND A RELIGION?
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The attribute of legality does not exempt cults from responsibility for the harm they cause. Cults may operate within the law and yet maintain and propagate psychologically harmful beliefs and practices.
Generally, cults are harmful because they violate fundamental rights. They engage in extremist thought control and violate the members’ right to information and to informed consent, besides their right of conscience. Cult beliefs are extremist, and they impose corporate beliefs in a coercive manner.
Coercion and deception violate the rights of the members to information and to informed consent.
Secrecy, the purpose of which is the control and manipulation of members, also violates their right to information.
When psychologically healthy social activity outside the cult is coercively restricted by the cult and without the informed consent of the members, the constraints violate their rights.
Religious organizations should not be simply legal. They should benefit society at large and their own members especially. Cults which violate the fundamental rights of the members and impose overbearing thought control on them in a manner that violates their rights bring about psychological harm.
Scientific understanding should lead us to scientific practice. A useful first step in regulating harmful cultic beliefs and practices in the Roman Catholic Church is to translate our scientific understanding of cults into evaluative criteria to identify them and to formulate corrective actions to counteract their harmful propagation.
Gonzalinho
The historical Opus Dei is a cult—it’s been called “Catholic Mormons” by Kenneth L. Woodward—and a corruption of true religion. Those who deny it don’t know what they’re talking about. They live in denial because it threatens the religion that they wish to believe is faultless.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
Why, it has been asked, should we be so publicly critical of the institution? The passivity and cover-up that some Catholics advocate is precisely what propagated the clerical sexual abuse that persisted in the institution for many decades. I don’t believe in the clericalism of the past. Today’s reform requires transparency and accountability from the institution.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho