My Bookshelf
From the Publisher:
With the expert eye or a longtime trusted observer of the Vatican and the skill of an investigative reporter intent on uncovering closely guarded secrets, John Allen finally separates the myths from the facts in Opus Dei. Granted unlimited access to the prelate who heads the organization and to Opus Dei centers throughout the world, Allen draws on a wealth of interviews with current members, as well as with highly critical ex-members, to create an unprecedented portrait of the activities, practices, and intentions behind its veil of secrecy. Allen reveals the remarkable power that Opus Dei commands in shaping Vatican policy and presents a detailed look at the full extent of its network, which includes people in key positions in politics, banking, academia, and other influential arenas. He even describes the arcane rituals - including self-flagellation - performed to preserve and promote a spiritual tradition
strange and unsettling to modern sensibilities.
From the critics:
Publishers Weekly Allen, an author and journalist covering the Vatican, opens this exhaustive study of Opus Dei by describing the 85,491-member spiritual organization of clergy and lay people as the "Guinness Extra Stout of the Catholic Church"-"a strong brew, definitely an acquired taste, and clearly not for everyone." To undertake his examination of the group, Allen visited Opus Dei outposts around the world, conducting 300 hours of interviews with members and ex-members. He also lived for five days in an Opus Dei residence and had access to high-ranking officials and private correspondence from the organization's archives. Allen thoroughly explains the group's history and motivating ideas and carefully addresses such questions as its treatment of women, secrecy, financial holdings, wielding of church and political influence and recruiting practices, concluding with recommendations for ways to improve Opus Dei's image. Allen's balanced, even reporting sometimes borders on the clinical, as when he lists the numbers of Opus Dei members inside the Vatican or analyzes the group's finances. Harsh critics of the group and those expecting more titillating details may be disappointed, but readers who are curious about this often mysterious organization will find Allen's opus on "the Work of God" most informative. (Oct. 18) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal Allen (All the Pope's Men), Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, offers an objective look at the facts concerning the highly controversial Catholic religious organization founded in 1928, Opus Dei (recently portrayed in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code as an ultrasecret, ultraconservative cabal of Catholics intent on taking over the Church). Allen is trying neither to defend Opus Dei nor to stigmatize it, but to discover its real story and put it into the context of the history of religious orders. In doing so he has interviewed both the association's detractors and its defenders and has accessed key Opus Dei documents and communities. He makes the distinctions one would expect an intelligent journalist to make (e.g., between works run by Opus Dei and those run by its members). This is particularly important when he offers a financial analysis of the association. Allen's substantial book is more balanced than Michael Walsh's Opus Dei: An Investigation into the Powerful, Secretive Society Within the Catholic Church, and it complements Joan Estruch's somewhat dated but still useful Saints and Schemers: Opus Dei and Its Paradoxes. Recommended for all libraries.-Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews Its defenders characterize Opus Dei, that ultra-Catholic movement, as a knitting circle, its detractors as a dangerous cult. Allen, Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter ,finds middle ground. Opus Dei, or "God's Work," a conservative service organization founded in 1928 by the Spanish cleric (and now saint) Josemar'a Escriva, is resolutely closed to outsiders, and it takes work indeed to get in. Allen, whose Conclave (2002) was a prescient guide to the recent papal election, likens the organization to Guinness Stout in a world of Bud Lite, inasmuch as "it makes no apologies for either its many calories or its high alcohol content." Critics hold that its doctrine can be a little content-free, mistrustful of ideas and long on pat solutions, and, thanks at least in part to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Opus Dei has a slightly sinister connotation to outsiders. Several controversies surround it. Does Opus Dei recruit? Do its leaders demand blind allegiance? Does it have an anti-Semitic element? Allen wanders through the orbits of the faithful and some of the fallen away to address such questions, chalking up good points (for instance, no Opus Dei priest has ever been accused of sexual abuse) while assessing weaknesses, including a body of doctrine that can seem confused, as when Escriva declared in a homily that freedom entails absolute devotion "to the service of the truth which redeems, when it is spent in seeking God's infinite love which liberates us from all forms of slavery." Must freedom mean submission? And is Opus Dei dangerous? Probably not, one would conclude from Allen's thoughtful consideration; it tends to square with the Catholic Church in its conservativedeclarations, but its influence may not extend much beyond its membership, which is about as large as the Australian diocese of Hobart, Tasmania. For those who follow intramural politics within the Catholic Church, a capably written examination of an organization that controls as much wealth "as a midsized American diocese."