Category: Opus Dei

Each Saturday evening, in the privacy of his modest bedroom in north London, he removes his shirt and reaches for a five-tailed whip. Quietly intoning a recitation, he starts to scourge his back. The cords bite painfully into his flesh, but again and again the erect figure lashes himself. A devout Shíite? A sado-masochist? No, not at all. This is John Henry, a former professor of accident and emergency medicine at St Mary’s hospital in west London and an expert on drug abuse. Henry has given evidence to parliamentary inquiries and is a regular commentator in the media. His spiritual

The most potentially damaging portrayal in “The Da Vinci Code” is of Opus Dei, the pious religious movement founded by St. Josemaria Escriva in 1928 as a way of bringing ordinary people closer to God in their everyday work and life. At the group’s New York headquarters, a box has been installed to offer literature to “Da Vinci” fans. The box is a symbol of Opus Dei’s overall strategy as the movie’s release date approaches: Take advantage of the hype to give people more accurate information. For example, although a murderous Opus Dei monk is central to the “Da Vinci”

Blockbuster bonus: Despite the rigors of belonging the secretive sect, the group finds itself enjoying unprecedented levels of public interest It takes three years of devout learning before you can become a member and, once in, you’ll be encouraged to wear a spiked metal wire around your thigh and pray for hours a day. On top of that, most of the population will think you belong to a “secretive” group prepared to commit murder to protect the darkest secrets of the Catholic Church. And yet, despite the rigors of belonging to Opus Dei and despite the organization’s sinister reputation —

April 15, 2006(CBS) No matter how hectic Elizabeth Heil’s day gets, the graduate student sets one priority above all others. “My vocation in life is to be a good roman catholic – my specific vocation given to me within the Catholic Church is to be a good supernumerary of Opus Dei,” says Heil. Only three thousand of this country’s 70 million Roman Catholics are members of Opus Dei, reports CBS News correspondent Russ Mitchell. It’s an international group consisting mostly of non-clergy men and women known as supernumeraries. Most have families. They aspire to move closer to God by incorporating

ROME, Italy (AP) — The conservative Roman Catholic group Opus Dei said Tuesday it had no intention of calling for a boycott of the upcoming film “The Da Vinci Code,” but said it hopes the much-awaited film could still be changed so that “there aren’t references that would hurt Catholics.” In a statement released in Rome, Opus Dei said Sony Pictures still had time to make changes that would be appreciated by Catholics, “particularly in these days in which everyone has noted the painful consequences of intolerance” — an apparent reference to violence in the Muslim world sparked by the

NEW YORK: Portrayed in the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code as a secretive cult willing to murder to defend a fictional 2000-year-old Catholic cover-up, Opus Dei is promoting its softer side before the movie of the book arrives in May. Published in March 2003, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is one of the most popular books in publishing history with more than 40 million copies in print worldwide in 44 languages. The book is also controversial because the plot stems from the idea Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and had children. Because of this, the novel has

Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church By John L. Allen Jr. Doubleday, $24.95 Almost everybody from Kilimanjaro to Kalamazoo seems to know Opus Dei as a “rich, powerful, secret sect” that’s supposedly out to rule both the Catholic Church and the world. But most of this prevalent public image of Opus Dei (Latin for “Work of God”) seems based on a combination of anecdotal complaints from ex-members and popular fiction such as Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel “The Da Vinci Code.” Brown produced a highly entertaining book that