u/Informal_Farm4064

I'd like to share my latest musings on my own journey into understanding of God/Source.

As a mainstream Christian, I held the belief that God created each person and thing as a discrete object, separate from her. Our job was to recognise that we were created by a higher being, not sufficient to ourselves.

Then I came to realise that we are extensions of Source, eternal consciousnesses, individualised, self-defining, free parts of Source - intimately united to Source and each other, with an illusory sense of separation. This is panentheism, as I see it.

But I am beginning to realise that the end point is pantheism, when we freely give up our very consciousness, when we unite fully with Source, when we return fully to the void, the formless potentiality of all manifestations of being.

The nearest analogy on earth for me is the new mother, delighting in her baby so much that she loses all sense of self-reflection, living only for her baby.

And so with this realisation, it seems that we are able to immerse into this limited 3D world even more, with a deeper goal of delighting or sorrowing in everything and everyone, for their sakes not ours; in this, we are - with Source - the hidden backdrop to the drama of all beings; and we gladly take on a portion of the burden of that drama in our physical bodies and feelings.

Thank you for the opportunity to share. All kind feedback appreciated.

Copyright is a reasonable legal mechanism to ensure that the rights and efforts of authors and publishers are respected and reasonably compensated for a reasonable period of time. Otherwise, there would be no money in publishing and a lot of valuable entertainment and scholarship would not see the light of day.

However, on this issue as with many others, the moral bankruptcy of the Prelature of Opus Dei is hard to beat. Not only will it not publish its own internal documents - used to control and abuse its members and potential recruits - it uses copyright law to prevent anyone else from doing so.

As a result, it is almost impossible for bishops, priests, members of Opus Dei, ex-members, other Catholics and others to see how heretical and immoral Opus Dei is in many of its beliefs and practices. This heretical mentality was noted by English Catholic clergy in their 1980 investigation into Opus Dei.

It's worth noting that Opus Dei's internal documents do not have the official seals of approval of the Catholic church - the nihil obstat and imprimatur. Yet these are the documents that interpret and apply the papal decree "Ut sit" and the 1982 "Statutes", which are the foundational documents of Opus Dei, and the documents by which Opus Dei was established as a Prelature in 1982/83.

And some of these documents - the "Instructions" - were written by the founder of Opus Dei, Monsignor Escriva, who is a Catholic saint. His schismatic and immoral tendencies are manifest in these documents, which no doubt is why they continue to be suppressed by the Prelature.

How on earth does the Vatican let Opus Dei away with this, given the incredible weight of accusations and hurt? It beggars belief. This is one of many ways in which we know that the Vatican is in the pocket of Opus Dei.

And in fact, if the Vatican had a good look at the very first internal document of Opus Dei "Introduction to the supernatural spirit of the work of God", from 1934, it would understand all too well the genesis of the controlling and heretical mentality at the heart of Escriva and Opus Dei.

In the 21st century digital era, it is just a question of time before someone publishes the internal documents of Opus Dei whatever the Prelature thinks or whatever steps their legal flying monkeys might take.

Opus Dei is a big enough phenomenon, with enough ex-members over the decades for there to be a broad range of ways in which ex-members respond to it.

Perhaps the biggest group is what I call the colluders. This group of ex-members stays in the Opus Dei family ecosystem and remain outwardly and to some extent inwardly favourable to Opus Dei. They often remain conservative Catholics and have some positive relationships with ongoing members of Opus Dei, often in their family, which they value.

Some become "cooperators" and and some ex-celibates even rejoin years later as married "supernumeraries". They may send their kids to Opus Dei schools and youth clubs.

I don't understand this group because I was never from an Opus Dei family, I had no positive relationships with Opus Dei married members when I was in Opus Dei and I was not subject to any efforts by Opus Dei members or exes to integrate me into the Opus Dei and exes ecosystem. Once I saw through the Opus Dei lies, I was off and no one from any Opus Dei family tried to stay in touch with me.

The difficulty for ex-members in the Opus Dei family ecosystem is that Opus Dei was integral to their family lives, for good and for ill. In most cases, I am sure they love their relatives in Opus Dei and don't want to blow up those relationships by opposing Opus Dei publicly.

The problem with this - also seen e.g. in the Jehovah's Witnesses - is that the issues of Opus Dei persist without serious, orchestrated challenge. The cult uses the support of ex-members to keep on the road.

Opus Dei leaders are also expert enough at staying on good terms with ex-members to neutralise incipient threats and prevent or soft-soap organised challenges. No doubt private conversations in which concerns are shared happen but these are grist to the mill for Opus Dei leaders. They just need to say sorry and carry on regardless. And ex-members know Opus Dei well enough to know that it's not going to easily change for anyone.

My challenge to such people is not to go ballistic like me, but first of all to hone their consciences so that they become more acutely sensitive to the oppression of Opus Dei, including on them - and gradually less tolerant of it.

Then they would do well to strategise together - at first secretly - to come up with coordinated challenges against this oppression. They have the advantage of numbers. Gradually, they should become bolder and bolder until the point where they go public and challenge others to come out of the woodwork - those who privately agree but need to see a bold group make the first move.

At that point, this bold group can say to loose cannons like me - look, we've got this. We have a momentum and know how to handle sensitivities and work with the church better than you. Have a good break from your unorthodox campaigning, in fact, all campaigning to let us do our thing.

The people who should take the lead are probably the retired. I know from my lawyer days that the love of money is the root of all lukewarmness, cowardice, judgmentalism and control-freak behaviour. I could only develop personally and spiritually once I had given up my professional career and even then it took a long time to shake off its negative effects.

I asked ChatGPT to list all the "causes of saints" related to Opus Dei members. I've copied the results at the end of this article. There are 18 causes in total.

One is a saint - Monsignor Escriva.

Two are "blesseds", including Mgr Escriva's successor, Alvaro del Portillo. They need one more attested miracle to become a fully-fledged saint.

4 are "venerable", meaning that the RC church recognises that they lived lives of "heroic virtue" but no miracles have been confirmed as attributable to their intercession.

The other 11 have had their causes opened for the purpose of examining the virtuosity of their lives and drumming up possible miracles for scrutiny.

My main point is - what is the point of all of this frenetic activity to get the church to recognise these people as saints? What impact does this have? Is the work involved truly edifying to the church officials and families involved? How much time and money is needed?

In the past, it was much less common to pursue causes of saints soon after their deaths. My concern with the modern craze for opening causes so soon is the impact on families. I personally don't think it's helpful for mourning, for family privacy, for humility to have an institutional spotlight on the life of a deceased relative, especially a young one, within a few years of their death. Surely, it's better to wait several decades, allow natural grieving and healing, and see where things lie on the "holiness" front.

More theologically, as an ex-Catholic, I personally think that the cult of saints is deeply problematic. I believe that Jesus can introduce us, so to speak, to others in the heavens once he is sure of our fidelity to him, once we have found the narrow way. But the Catholic church doesn't show that sensitivity. It proposes to us a pantheon of saints onto whom all of us can project our desires and frustrations, independently of true experiential relationship with Jesus. The church would say otherwise if challenged but I speak from my experience of Catholicism on the ground.

Ultimately, as I see it, most institutionalised Catholic devotion is a mixture of intellectual assent to doctrines and the authority of the church, combined with magical beliefs in various supernatural phenomena, like the effect of sacraments, the intercession of saints, and the glum and slightly desperate belief in a better deal on the after-life if one makes it to mass every Sunday.

I think that pastorally minded Catholic priests and lay people may share my misgivings about the focus of Opus Dei and certain parts of the church on canonisation.

List of Opus Dei causes of saints

Canonised Saints

Josemaría Escrivá Founder of Opus Dei. Beatified: 1992 Canonised: 2002

Blesseds

• Álvaro del Portillo Beatified: 2014
• Guadalupe Ortiz de Landázuri Beatified: 2019

Venerables

• Montse Grases
• Isidoro Zorzano
• Ernesto Cofiño
• Alexia González-Barros

Servants of God / Causes Opened

• Dora del Hoyo
• José Luis Múzquiz
• Toni Zweifel
• José María Hernández Garnica
• Tomás Alvira
• Paquita Domínguez
• Eduardo Ortiz de Landázuri
• Laura Busca
• Encarnita Ortega
• Ruth Pakaluk
• Pedro Ballester

I have had the good fortune of being able to leave a cult (in my case the Catholic cult, Opus Dei), without the burden of having to deal with relatives or colleagues who remain in it. And like every cult, there is no concept of respectful confidentiality in Opus Dei. There are established channels in which one is expected to reveal intimate details of one's life and the lives of others one is around, dressed up as approved or divine practices, with bad consequences for not disclosing information that could be important to the reputation, influence and preservation of the cult.

Among ex-cult members who have relatives in it, there can almost be a resignation to the fact that their relative is going to talk about their business with leaders or others in their cult. That's the way the cult has always worked, one can reason, and after all breaches of confidentiality are not illegal. But of course, this is cancerous to genuine relationships and the rebuilding of personal emotional boundaries.

But it strikes me that insisting on confidentiality from relatives still in a cult is a very important thing to do, even if one knows it will be an uphill battle. This could even be an area where ex-members band together to insist on ethical behaviour from cult members they have to keep dealing with. As cults operate by asserting power, it's often only powerful, coordinated responses that might make them change, when they see that it has become in their own interests to accommodate a powerful adversary.

What do others think about this issue and the possible ways to deal with these problems? Thanks for reading.

A football World Cup is upon us (summer 2026) which reminds me of the 1998 World Cup. At the time, I was teaching English in an Opus Dei course in Teruel (Aragon, Spain) for boys who went to Opus Dei schools or clubs. I learnt the phrase "el quinto pino", the fifth pine, which means in English "the middle of nowhere", which is a fair description of Teruel, but it was a nice place.

During the course, England played Argentina. I think it was the second round or quarter final. I and the other English teachers slipped away from the college to a quiet local bar which was showing the match. We were the only people watching.

However, the bar staff and the few regulars there were amused to see us very animated while we watched. It was the infamous match where David Beckham got sent off for stroking the leg of Diego Simeone with his boot, resulting in Simeone collapsing to the ground like some poleaxed animal. Typical Argentine bad sportsmanship. I'm not bitter....We lost 2-1 I think.

As the match went on, the bar filled up with local Spaniards wearing their favourite football jerseys, not watching the match, but lining the wall watching us watch the match, with great amusement.

We slunk back to the college where we were greeted with pretty much the entire group of Spanish boys shouting gleefully at us "Argentina, Argentina". We had to suck it up.

God calls us closer to him in the depths of our hearts, in the stillness, in the peace, when we have a humble and loving disposition. A humble and contrite heart, o Lord you will not spurn.

If we feel that God is inaccessible, then we can turn our attention to a humiliation, a time when we fell short of our own expectations, or when others disrespected us. Dwell on that moment and be in it with God. Accept the situation, the feelings, the pain. We are not above adversity, opposition or contempt. This is meekness.

Ask God to show himself to us in that moment, to teach us lovingly from it and to comfort us.

Take as long as it takes - no rush, no deadline. God does not stay if we hurry him. He comes back when we've got time for him and for ourselves - it's a matter of self-respect as much as respect for him.

It's interesting that the Catholic church, after many centuries, came down against the belief in reincarnation. To prove its point, it made sure that one of the leading theologians of early centuries, Origen, was not canonised, made a saint.

Yet, mainstream Christian teaching tells us Jesus pre-existed his human form, rose from the dead and then appeared in a new body which could walk through walls. And Jesus will apparently reappear on earth at the end of time.

Amongst all that, I would challenge - in my amateur way - the most orthodox theologian to definitively rule out the possibility that Jesus has not come down here in various incarnations since the 1st century AD.

So let's imagine what he would make of Opus Dei. I imagine that if he met a distressed Opus Dei member who felt bound in conscience to stay in Opus Dei, he would simply tell them that Opus Dei is a human institution, not a divine one, and that it has no authority to bind the consciences of individuals.

Of course, there is no telling if any such person would "see" Jesus for who he is, though it is more likely that the heavily oppressed would.

If a modern Jesus came across senior Opus Dei leaders, I believe that we would have a replay of his interactions with the Pharisees of 1st century Israel/Palestine. Jesus would see their black hearts and be public about this. He would tell them in God's name to stop what they are doing. He would have his version of turning over the tables in the temple in protest at their blasphemy.

In return, Opus Dei leaders would refuse to accept Jesus for who he is, perhaps say he is from the devil - like the Pharisees did. They would try to ignore him and once this became impossible, agitate and manoeuvre against him.

No doubt, many good people over the 100 miserable years of Opus Dei have tried to speak in God's name to the founder and leaders, remonstrating about the abuses and errors. However, they have not cut through the coercion and lies in enough depth to shake the institution. Jesus also failed against the Pharisees at the time.

But Jesus also prophesied that "not one stone would be left on another". This is traditionally thought to refer to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in AD 70 and the dispersal of the Jewish people.

I believe Opus Dei is under the same judgment. Perhaps it will fade out over several decades or perhaps the fading will end sooner with a sudden collapse.

If Pope Leo suppressed Opus Dei for just 6 months, it would give enough time for most members to make significant progress in deconditioning - as long as they kept their distance from leaders and priests. They would regain sufficient autonomy to make some freer decisions as to what Opus Dei, Catholicism and God mean to them and what sort of spiritual life to have moving forward.

After 6 months, Pope Leo could meet the leaders of Opus Dei again in a new way and talk terms more as equals, with some new-found humility on the Opus Dei side - or what would be left of it.

I wanted to share this sadness here where I might be understood better. I got a job offer recently to work as a support worker in a children's home. For me, holding down this job would have been the most amazing achievement.

I was given up for adoption at birth for Catholic reasons, then an orphan for 6 months, then adopted into an alcoholic family, my adoptive mother died, I was adopted again aged 10, and later as a young adult I was in a Catholic cult for 9 years.

I have done all the forgiving I need to do and have peace in my heart. I have a beautiful experience of being a dad of a secure 9 year old boy and 53 years of being on this earth and surviving.

But just starting the training for the job made me realise quite quickly that I won't have the emotional resilience to be there for these kids. I want to support them more than any other job I have wanted to do. But I know now I can't. The emotional regulation centres in the brain are just not there or not developed enough. The damage is too deep - probably deeper in many ways than many of the people I would be helping. I won't be able to model emotional regulation to them. The overwhelm will come fast. I over-identify with kids I have never met but just heard about.

This really hurts me. I really wanted this job. They didn't tell me overtly not to continue but I knew that it wasn't realistic. I know it's the right decision not to continue. But I had to give it a go to find out for myself. I need to be kind to myself now and accept more deeply that my limitations are not my fault. I feel adrift and unsure what to do in life right now. Thank you for reading.

In Opus Dei, we were taught that the "norms" i.e. the regular spiritual practices should fit like a glove in one's life. We were told how to relate to Opus Dei by Opus Dei. It was a question of "get with the programme" or "you're in the army now."

But if those of us in or close to Opus Dei took a step back and tuned in to our feelings about Opus Dei, what would they be like? Sometimes visualisations and contrasts can help us to describe how we feel about any relationship. I will try out a few here.

Does the relationship with e.g. Opus Dei feel more like

- a comfortable glove or a straitjacket

- a smoky, acrid space or a clear panorama across the mountains with fresh air

- a babbling brook in a forest glade or a sewer pipe gushing into a murky lake

- a peaceful ocean at sunset or a raging tempest at sea

- a warm embrace with a lover or the grip of an angry parent telling you to pull yourself together

Make up your own and try them out, with any relationship.

You might reflect that the relationship is in part one and in part the other, or something more in the middle, or it used to be one and has turned into the other.

If one does alarm oneself with the truth of a dramatic representation of a relationship, that may be enough work for one day. Hold on to it as a stimulus for making plans to change tack.

Trigger warning: poor relationship with birth relatives

Without going into detail, I have a burning grievance against some of my birth relatives, with whom I reunited a long time ago. The relationship eventually broke down through lack of respect for me. I know they don't see it that way.

For them, they were happy for me to be part of their family on their terms and my "mistake" was to stand up for myself when that burden became intolerable. Since then, my birth mother's husband has shown me real contempt and to be honest, there is now a feud between me and them.

Most people would say - deal with your feelings, move on. But this means accepting the disrespect and I just can't do that. I don't have any bad conscience about my feelings. In fact, I feel peace.

It's not even about forgiveness of them - I have done all that work. It's about self-respect. They also disrespected my son, who I feel has a right to know who his relatives are even if they don't want close contact.

It's a long shot for now but has anyone had any experience of mediation in these circumstances? Even online? I'm trying to find a way through. I would be open to hearing their side of the story.