Duc In Altum: The First Rule of Opus Dei Club. Don't Talk About Opus Dei Club
(The Fish Rots From the Head)
Bottom: L> R Cardinal Timothy Dolan (celebrating mass in honor of Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva) seated alongside Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio. }
In June of 2012, Cardinal Timothy Dolan celebrated a mass in honor of the feast day of Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. He began the mass with some introductions, named-checking first and foremost his neighbor priest, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio twice within the first few minutes of preliminaries. In 2018, exactly six years later, just before celebrating that year’s mass in honor of the founder of Opus Dei, Cardinal Dolan introduced Escriva by citing a phrase that encapsulates Escriva’s thinking about the character of evangelization. (Cast/put) out into the deep” (“Duc in altum”), a saying so favored by DiMarzio he has used it as a title for his column in the (Diocesan newspaper), the Tablet for years. In June of 2016, Cardinal Dolan asked Opus Dei to provide a pastor and priests for Saint Agnes Church in midtown Manhattan. That church is an Opus Dei church today. In April of 2014, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, gave a talk to 300 communications experts in speech in Rome on the topic of Church Communications: Creative Strategies for Promoting Cultural Change. The conference took place at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross – the Opus Dei academy of the Vatican.
In 2014, Dolan concelebrated a mass for the beatification of Alvaro de Portillo, who served as head of the Opus Dei prelature between 1982-1994. If it walks like a duck — Opus Dei literally has its roots in fascism. New York City Catholics who don’t like fascism would not be so quick to throw twenty dollar bills into the offertory basket on Sunday if they knew an Opus Dei prelate was counting it on Monday. Ergo, Dolan will never tell.
The first rule of Opus Dei Club appears to be Don’t talk about Opus Dei Club. I’m going out on a limb here. There’s no way to know for sure, but I think Cardinal Timothy Dolan is, for most intents and purposes, be an Opus Dei priest.
There is never any sure way to know who is and who isn’t, given the opacity of all things hierarchical in/of the Roman Catholic Church, and the addition of the layer of secrecy of the Opus Dei cult itself. Its structure is designed to allow those with Opus Dei ties to simultaneously identify and disavow.
It is no secret that Brooklyn emeritus Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio is an Opus Dei priest. (Once a priest becomes a bishop, his fealty is to the pope, so in a sense his “Opus Dei” status becomes more of an orientation than an allegiance according to the Duc In Altum playbook.)
Dolan’s shadow mouthpiece, the divorced guy with the fax machine, might be some kind of Opus Dei cooperator.
The “devout Catholic” former F.B.I. Head, Louis Freeh, whom Timothy Dolan has contracted to lead the internal investigation of DiMarzio, is also alleged to have ties to Opus Dei.
In November of last year, Opus Dei issued a statement about William Barr. Rumors had been circulating about his Opus Dei ties, and flared up when the nation realized that William Barr redacted all but roughly 446 pages of the 448-page Mueller Report: “We would like to clarify,” the Opus Dei announcement noted, “that Mr. Barr is not a member of Opus Dei nor has he ever been one.”
“Member” is one of several categories of Opus Dei belonging for laypersons: members, numeraries, supernumeraries, cooperators and more. Technically, the Barr announcement may be truthful. Maybe he is not a member. Maybe he’s a co-operator or an associate. (Cooperators, for example, do not even have to be Catholic. Given Opus Dei’s extreme focus upon communication, using technology to carry out its integralist and dominionist interests, and its openness to predatory capitalism carried out in Christ’s name, this “co-operator” designation makes perfect sense.)
In January of 2019, some liberal Catholics were in a tizzy over Dolan’s choice to engage, on his radio show with neo-fascist white supremacist Attorney General William Barr about concerns about a secular effort to remove religion from the public square, but the Roman Catholic Church as a whole has been increasingly open to the incursion of “the Work” since Pope John Paul II was elevated. In the course of his radio program, Dolan praised Barr as the “great…promoter of the faith.”
It is not so much the extreme devotion that has caused so-called “liberal” and “moderate” members of the Roman Catholic Church to embrace certain Opus Dei members and influence, but the cash. Opus Dei is filthy rich.
In January of 2020, “liberal” Catholic pundits and “reporters” whined copiously about Dolan’s cozying up to Trump’s despicable attorney general, yet managed to be surprised when, four months later, Timothy Dolan complimented “the president” on his handling of a pandemic-cum-genocide/democide in which 39, 000 died likely as a result of the latter’s incompetence, vanity and stupidity.
Timothy Dolan’s obsequious maneuver in that instance was a risky one, but there was a lot of money involved. All around Dolan dioceses are possibly preparing to file for bankruptcy as a result of the onslaught of Vatican clergy child sex crime ring cases (a.k.a.“child sexual abuse cases”). Brooklyn and Rockville Centre appear likely to file for Chapter 11 before the year ends. Reaching for the money sack without giving a thought to the evil of the monster holding its “strings” is a real Opus Dei move. No scruples. For a prelate like Dolan who tried so hard and blew so much of pewsitters’ money fighting marriage equality, the prospect of support from a religious faction that has the money to impose its religious views on the secular world must be, at least in part, irresistible.
Today, Associated Press reporter Michael Rezendez broke the story of the second set of child rape allegations against Nicholas DiMarzio. Rezendez is a former Boston Globe Spotlight reporter. Mitchell Garabedian, also of Spotlight fame, is representing the plaintiff who says the DiMarzio began raping him when the survivor/plaintiff was six years old. DiMarzio claims to want his day in court even though these cases rarely wind up in court and he knows it.
Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Timothy Dolan (the “Metropolitan”) to conduct an internal (impartial) investigation of his (Dolan’s) friend and diocesan) neighbor, DiMarzio. A strategy requiring bending the (secular) law to avoid scandalizing Mother church is eminently consistent with the Opus Dei “No scruples” thinking.
Pope Francis could have averted using an Opus Dei-oriented Metropolitan to conduct an investigation of an Opus Dei bishop using an impartial Opus Dei lawyer. DiMarzio has already submitted his resignation, as all bishops must, at age 75. Why did the pope not just accept it?
If ever a fish rotted from the head, it is this one. Dolan’s tapping of former F.B.I. head, Italian national, alleged Opus dei adherent and lawyer to Russian oligarchs/gangsters, Louis Freeh by Dolan / the New York Archdiocese is as fascinating as it is revealing.
Freeh’s investigation resulted in bringing Penn State rapist Larry Sandusky down. There was, as there is with the DiMarzio case, a need for a reputation scrub. In the case of Penn State, it was the university that required the optics cleansing. In the DiMarzio case, it is the alleged perpetrator who will require the reputation scrub. Freeh’s Penn State report drew criticism from a both sides. Some thought the reporting was scant and shallow. Some thought he placed too much onus on the school itself. On first look, it appeared that Freeh had done the job well, that the good guys won and the bad guys got nailed. Others believed he had not done enough.
Freeh has been described elsewhere as a “devout Catholic.” This turned up on the Wikipedia page: “Freeh and his wife … have six sons. Freeh is a devout Roman Catholic. Contrary to rumors, he is not a member of the Opus Dei prelature … One of Freeh's sons was enrolled at The Heights School in Potomac, Maryland, … ‘an Opus Dei academy.’” Public denial of Opus Dei affiliation should always arouse suspicion. Why do they do it? For recruitment purposes. Opus Dei has changed the look of its brand in recent years. I believe the portrayal of Opus Dei in Dan Brown’s novel and the film may have catalyzed this effort somewhat.
On this same Freeh page, by the way, one of the citations about the Opus Dei prelature page points to a 2004 dispatch from Cardinal Dolan’s Catholic “bro,” the divorced guy with the fax machine, who may be another Opus Dei “co-operator, which assures us that Louis Freeh, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia “are” not members of Opus Dei. I don’t think this is true. Clarence Thomas is. Scalia likely was.
The first rule of Opus Dei Club appears to be “Don’t talk about Opus Dei Club.”
Opus Dei and other orthodox Roman Catholic sects have strong ties to the GOP and political right in the United States. In Spain (where “The Work” was born—and in much of Latin America— to practice Catholicism is to worship in Opus Dei churches.) Opus Dei is becoming legitimized and normalized within the main of the of the Catholic at a rate that would alarm many Catholics in the pews, if they knew about it.
In the United States, broadly speaking, Opus Dei’s emphases fall upon accumulating wealth and using technology to evangelize. One of the aims of “the Work” is to ensure that, in time, the world is converted to the one true faith.
It is with these aims in mind that Opus Dei leadership in the United States has successfully infiltrated US financial institutions, elite universities, the government itself and the main of the institutional Roman Catholic Church. The Opus Dei prelature holds/controls enormous wealth in the United States.
The Federalist Society, the (Opus Dei) Catholic Information Center in D.C. and the Napa Institute are all in this integralism game together. Leonard Leo’s name pops up in connection with all of these groups — Leo serves as a stealth gang leader superpower in their neofascist pantheon. is one of their superpowers. But it’s not just him. The puissance of these ultra conservative Catholic groups likely accounts for the choice of 50% of Catholics to vote for Trump.
When thinking about Opus Dei, it is important to remember that this Roman Catholic cult came into prominence under (literally) the fascist regime of Francisco Franco in Spain. John Paul II legitimized the cult, designated it as a “prelature” and legitimized it because he saw it as antithetical to Communism. Many Opus Dei adherents embrace the conviction that secular law should be aligned with Catholic law, and the belief that the it is the obligation of Opus Dei faithful to use their professional and intellectual powers to help the world evolve in the direction of the “one true faith.” These values are strongly implied in Opus Dei messaging and encoded in their Statutes.
Not enough is said about how the particulars of Catholic theology and law shape the willingness of those who put the well-being of the institutional church, before all other concerns. It is not just fringe Catholic sects who do this. It’s baked into the theology of the clerical structure. The whole of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is indirectly funding this incursion hoping to morph into a takeover.
Heresy, for example, is a greater transgression, under Catholic law, than covering up the rape of a child is. The quasi-militaristic requirement that a priest obey his superior is what allowed the clergy sex crime ring to flourish for generations. The Opus Dei Statutes (which I am only beginning to study at this point) do not, so far as I can see, much add to or contradict what’s in the Canon Code, but they do add emphasis. Maintaining unity in the institutional church comes first. No scruples. The first rule of Opus Dei Club is don’t talk about Opus Dei Club.
MMS
June 5, 2020
4pm NYC