Is J.D. Vance Opus Dei?
J.D. Vance w/Opus Dei convert Franciscan University of Steubenville professor Scott Hahn
J.D. Vance was a major investor in the Opus Dei-permeated, for-profit Hallow prayer / conversion / sleep app. In October of 2022, he appeared in a lineup that included almost every Christo-fascist Roman Catholic on the integralist Catholic circuit at Franciscan University of Steubenville, is a hotbed of Opus Dei and ultra-conservative Catholicism in Ohio. ”Is J. D. Vance Opus Dei?” is a multiple choice question: a) yes b) no c) maybe osmotically d) all of the above. Critical to this analysis is that Opus Dei in the United States has already infiltrated the institutional Roman Catholic Church in the United States. It happened boiling frog style.
If it walks like a duck applies. Vance was spiritually guided and “formed” prepatory to conversion by a Dominican Opus De-ish priest and is mixed up with another with more recently who is even more public about his neofascist Catholic orientation. Vance doesn’t need to choose between being Opus Dei and not being Opus Dei. Like most of the men at the top of the Opus Dei hierarchy, he may not care nearly as much about Jesus as he does about the power and glory of the American presidency.
Vance’s discusses his discernment in the 2020 piece in The Lamp, “How I Joined the Resistance” makes clear that the conservative politics of Catholicism and the possibilities of soft integralism might have been as much of a draw as Christ was. That Peter Thiel was one of Vance’s Christian mentors says quite a lot.
Take a look at this short promo for the Aquinas Center at Princeton University. The vesting fetishization is a bit of a tell. Princeton University’s Aquinas Center was founded by Opus Dei. Dominican priest Henry Stephan, currently a doctoral candidate at Notre Dame — a university that is quite hospitable towards Opus Dei— is a Princeton graduate who, as a student there, served a “student leader” at the Aquinas Center.
This is where it’s good to self-interrupt and explain that Opus Dei is, in one regard, reminds me spiritual practices that outsiders identify as “religions,” that do not recommend or require that participants reject their pre-existing faiths or practices. I’m thinking of how one can be a Christian Buddhist or a Jewish Baha’i adherent. Opus Dei is a fully legitimized prelature of the Roman Catholic Church. But with regard to orientation, one can have a Franciscan orientation, a Jesuit orientation —and be an Opus Dei Catholic. This broad opportunistic approach to belonging is baked into the design of “La Obra” (“The Work”). Vance did not convert to Opus Dei. No one does. He converted to Roman Catholicism under the guidance of a member of a Dominican order who happened to have strong Opus Dei ties and leanings.
Opus Dei has a policy about identifying as Opus Dei. I called one of my first commentaries about the normalization of Opus Dei in the United States Church and its incursion into United States government and politics, “Duc In Altum: The First Rule of Opus Dei Club. Don't Talk About Opus Dei Club.” (The Latin part means “Put out into the deep.”)
Opus Dei Priests, priests ordained through Opus Dei, are asked to identify as such. Lay people are not obliged to reveal their Opus Dei belonging, and there are several categories of involvement. Some sign contracts. Some take vows. Members, associates, co-operators, supernumeraries, numeraries, numerary assistants (women who clean Opus Dei properties and who have, reportedly, been trafficked or are trapped in situations without benefits, fair salaries, and freedom to leave, all, theoretically work together to participate in the mission.
When the Opus Dei published a note denying that former Attorney General and traitor William Barr was a member of Opus Dei, it is called, they may have been lying. Or they may have been telling the truth, technically. Threading a needle. Maybe Barr was not a member; maybe he was an “associate” or “cooperator” and not a “member.”
By design, there are plenty of ways to be Opus Dei doing the work of Opus Dei without identifying as such, signing a paper, giving up family and sex, or becoming —if you are an uneducated woman — an indentured servant. I think this plurality of ways to be Opus Dei is one of the cult’s most powerful evangelization features.
Opus Dei members must be Roman Catholic, but a “cooperator” need not be. Opus Dei ordains its own priests, but a Roman Catholic priest ordained through a diocese can join the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, an organization founded by Opus Dei to accommodate Opus Dei orientation clerics not ordained though Opus Dei. (That Pope Francis and the Secretary of the Vatican State preside over this is something for Catholics to think about.) Priests ordained through religious orders — Franciscans, Dominicans etc — can live out the Opus Dei mission without being discouraged by their superiors or seen as turning away from their orders. That the leadership of the Opus Dei cult maintains unwavering fidelity to the pope helps this plurality of allegiance along.
Those who pay attention to Roman Catholic convert news and stories notice a pattern defined by specious-appearing zeal, a need for a reputation-cleansed. I have come to think of it as a kind of Marvel Comic salvation. The kind of desire for a clear good/evil binary that comes out of trauma or arrested development is often part of the attraction of adults seeking conversion to Roman Catholicism. Many are drawn to the family values binary, and this works well for politicians. The conversions of Newt Gingrich and Candace Owens (both Opus Dei) exemplify the way conversion to conservative Roman Catholicism can ramp up political and economic power in the United States. Like many curious Christians, Vance was drawn to the intellectual tradition of Roman Catholicism. I love it too, and it has a fancy side. Opus Dei is intensely stratified, and in the cult, men are men and women are women. It is not hard to see why a Catholicism-curious man with political aspirations, an addict mother, and a wife who is his intellectual equal would be drawn to Opus Dei.
Dominican priest, Henry Stephan, supported Vance’s conversion, but Vance conferred early on in his discernment with Dominic Legge
earliest conversations about converting the who was a student leader at Princeton and is a scholar at Notre Dame which, though not Ivy League, is very hospitable to Opus Dei Catholics, is not technically Opus Dei, but my bet is he’s profoundly mission-aligned with “La Obra” (“The Work.”)
Closer to the White House, Dominic Legge, a Dominican priest with a Yale law degree, has an affiliation with the (ultra conservative) Dominican House of Studies in D.C. He trained in Law at Yale and earned a doctorate at the Opus Dei-saturated Catholic University of America. Here’s a description of Dominic House from the August 25th New York Times:
known in Washington for attracting a conservative intellectual crowd, and potential converts who hold high professional positions. Like Nicodemus, they come knocking on the door at night,” Father Aquinas Guilbeau, a Dominican priest, said. (The New York Times, August 25, 2024)
Legge, according to this report, was the first priest with whom J.D. Vance discussed converting to Catholicism.
In 2016, to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the order’s founding, the Dominican House of Studies hosted a celebration with speakers like Supreme Court Justices Alito and Antonin Scalia, as well as guests like the conservative activist Leonard Leo.
Whether Vance is officially Opus Dei is the wrong question.
Many of the men, and it is mostly men, who increase the Opus Dei fold are likely not members. I suppose I might describe them as osmotically Opus Dei, or Opus Dei by association. This feature of the Catholic integralists’ method of operation makes them both very successful and very dangerous.
Dominic Legge and Samuel Alito are friends. Fake German princess and apparent Christofascist erstwhile socialite Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, who gave Alito nine hundred dollar opera tickets, is but a wee indicator of a global Roman Catholic integralist menace.
Gloria von Thurn und Taxis…who has faced criticism for her defense of far-right politicians in Germany, told the Guardian that she first met Alito in Rome – she could not remember what year – and that both were friends of Dominic Legge, a priest and Yale Law graduate in Washington who Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, has often cited in discussions about his adult conversion to Catholicism. (The Guardian, September 13, 2024)
Is Dominic Legge Opus Dei? Probably not. He doesn’t have to be.
One of the things that makes Opus Dei so powerful is that they are filthy rich and happy to collaborate in the the kind of fascism in which they gestated and were born with mission-aligned Christofascist integralist (and dominionist) allies.
That Nicodemus reference is rich, and almost poetic. Nicodemus is a Christ-curious “law and order” figure who comes looking for “the Lord” under cover of night. An apt patron, perhaps, of the Opus Dei politicians, bankers and judges who militate clandestinely to make off with Americans’ money, liberty, justice, and compassion for one another.
It is useful to know that for many Opus Dei adherents and their mission-aligned allies the God and Christ part is secondary. The Spanish priest Josemaria Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, incorporated secrecy into the Opus Dei plan at the start. There were numerous reasons for this, not the least of which was that his nation and the city in which he began to build Opus Dei were on the brink of a particularly unholy war.
But the secrecy remains part and parcel of Opus Dei today, and the exceptionalist “no scruples,” “ends justify the means” ethos is an Opus Dei core belief. Again, Opus Dei is an intensely stratified cult. It structure is male supremacist with obscenely wealthy men at the top governing the humble cross-carrying, self-flagellating servants of Christ on need to know basis. Many hands with or without explicit official affiliation make light work. The various diversity of levels of commitment make “La Obra” (“The Work”) look more like a devotional interest group and less like a fascist cult.
Is JD Vance Opus Dei? He doesn’t have to be. “If it walks like a duck” applies. Opus Dei is inclusive. Catholic fascists are all Opus Dei-aligned.
MMS
OCtober 23, 2024