I am curious if any ex-members have reached out to or utilized the healing and listening office.
For some time, I've been considering filing a complaint about my experience as an NAX. I am wondering if it is worth it to reach out and file a complaint in the hopes of getting an apology and closing that chapter for good.
I would love to hear about your experience!
Jack Valero’s book, El Opus Dei Sin Filtros, promises an authentic, "unfiltered" look at Opus Dei by sharing the stories of 20 current members. (The above image shows 1 of 6 posts made by him
on his Facebook account on under 48 hours, yep this is a grown up man who is over 70 years of age)z
While personal stories offer valuable insight, putting 20 active members forward as a definitive representation of the organization runs into major statistical issues.
The Baseline Attrition Problem
If we treat these 20 featured members as an uncurated cohort and track them over time, historical trends suggest a significant percentage will not remain:
Celibate Members (Numeraries & Associates): Attrition rates prior to permanent incorporation (Fidelity) sit between 50% and 80%. Post-fidelity they sit between 30-40%. Statistically, several young celibate members in a random sample of 20 would likely depart over time. OD does not give the official numbers for some reason even though you would think the truth and transparency here matters, likely to do with the fact that the concept of ‘belonging’ to the prelature by lay members is actually a highly contest matter inside the church.
Supernumeraries (Married Members): Dropouts among married members are lower, but long-term departure rates still sit around 30% to 50%.
The Sampling Bias: Two Scenario Outcomes
From a basic research perspective, Jack’s group of 20 leads to one of two logical conclusions:
Option A (Survivor Bias): The 20 individuals were chosen at random from current members. If so, basic probability indicates that over the next few decades, several of them will leave the
organization, making the book a snapshot of a moving target.
Option B (Selective Sampling): Jack did not choose these 20 people at random. Instead, he selected a specific subgroup of highly committed, zealous, or long-standing members who are statistically far more likely to stay.
The Verdict
Whether through survivor bias (ignoring the thousands who have already walked out the door) or selective sampling (hand-picking the most committed members to minimize future exits), a sample of 20 active members cannot serve as a valid control group.
To get a truly unfiltered picture of any institution, a study must measure both sides of the ledger: the people who stay, the subgroup selected to represent them, and the vast numbers who choose to leave.
Amigos, los libros internos que estaban disponibles en Opus Libros ya no están. ¿Existe algún otro lugar para tener acceso a esos documentos internos?
The wardrobe searches were never announced. We were told they’d happen randomly, without warning, without permission, without so much as asking. And they did. This was our obedience.
Photographs of myself with some male class mates from my cherished schooldays, vanished. Without my knowledge. Without my permission. Just gone.
A label torn off my shower gel because the image on it was deemed sinful.
And one day, I was told my soul was “in good order” because my wardrobe was tidy. I still feel sorry for the version of me who took that as praise.
Then there were the letters.
I found a letter once, in the Directresses room, from a friend I loved dearly. She was writing to tell me about the breakup of her ex-boyfriend. It had been opened but it ever reached me. I never read it. I left it there, in the spirit of “obedience.” I wrote back to her without mentioning it. She knew. She knew I hadn’t read her letter. I never heard from her again.
Even the phone calls weren’t private, we knew they could be listened to on another line.
Gifts from family or friends were handed straight to the Directresses, not kept, Redirected.
And the little money I was given by my family was snatched from my hands with a smirk: “We give everything up for Opus Dei.” Not mine to hold, not even a thank you from the greedy Directress.
Their intrusion was real. It wasn’t imagined, and it wasn’t small. It reached into the most private corners of our lives, our friendships, our belongings, our correspondence, our communications, and they did so with total impunity.
So to the ex-members reading this: do you have your own stories of boundaries crossed, of privacy violated by the Directors of Opus Dei in the name of Escriva?
Do numeraries and Nax get proper healthcare? Do they go to yearly physicals? Get obgyn care (pap smears etc)? Do they allow preventative stuff like mammograms? Do they get six month dental cleanings? What happens if they have dental issues which are extremely costly like Needing a crown or something of that nature? Also what about huge things like if they got cancer and needed chemo or needed an organ transplant? Would they just let them go?
I have a question for the former Numeraries from the women’s section. If the NAX cannot go anywhere without a numerary present, does that mean for every single center big or small that has an administration there is a numerary who heads that full time? If so, as a female numerary can the directress just ask you to quit your job and be administration forever? I heard that after the center of studies a lot of female Numeraries are assigned to the administration. So effectively your career is over? What’s the criteria in selecting who gets to have a professional career or who gets to run administrations forever
Hello. Do you think Leo XIV will reject the proposed statutes of Opus Dei and instead give them new statutes dictated in accordance with the motu proprio of Pope Francis?
I’m in my late fifties and when I open Facebook I find it so weird to see the Numeraries who were with me in the Center of Studies hanging out with teenagers and kids on a regular basis. Plus it’s also fascinating that the St. Raphael centers are manned by older Numeraries because there’s so few young ones. This makes me cringe because you have late middle aged men and women hanging out with teenagers and college kids playing games with them and having activities with them on a regular basis. Does anyone else feel weirded out by this?
In 2007, an excellent analysis by Marcus Tank opened the eyes of many of us by proposing that the key to deciphering the contradictions and inconsistencies of Opus Dei lay not in historical or theological explanations, but in the founder's pathological personality. Using the diagnostic manual in force at the time, the DSM-IV, Tank brilliantly demonstrated how José María Escrivá de Balaguer more than met all nine criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. That historical-clinical analysis was a liberating milestone; however, almost two decades later, contemporary clinical psychology and psychiatry (such as the DSM-5-TR) have made a gigantic qualitative leap in the understanding of pathological narcissism.
Today, it is no longer enough to retrospectively label Escrivá as a "narcissist" or count how many of the nine criteria he met. The real question we must ask ourselves in 2026 is much deeper, more disturbing, and more enlightening: how did the complex architecture of his personal narcissism become incorporated and amplified in the very constitutional, legal, and spiritual structure of Opus Dei?
To answer this, we must abandon the caricature of the purely arrogant narcissist and delve into a dimensional, relational, and structural analysis.
In 2026, we no longer need a retrospective medical diagnosis of Escrivá to dismantle the doctrinal apparatus of Opus Dei. The true finding is structural and systemic in nature.
The accumulated historical evidence is unequivocal: Opus Dei is a closed narcissistic system. Escrivá de Balaguer could not tolerate a spirituality of freedom, gratuitousness, and evangelical charity because his own psychic fragility required a rigid, obedient militia idolatrized and centered on his person.
The drama of thousands of survivors who have passed through its centers is not a coincidence or the result of "clueless" local directors: it is the inevitable result of an institutional design conceived to protect, perpetuate, and feed the unstable grandiosity of a single man. As long as the institution continues to resist dismantling the myth and persists in its fanatical closed-mindedness, it will remain a conscience-shredding machine.
Despite the severity of this structural diagnosis, a ray of hope is visible with the upcoming premiere in the fall of THE GOOD SPIRIT: BEHIND THE DOOR OF THE OPUS DEI on HBO Max. This documentary has the potential to be a fundamental catalyst for the experiences of so many survivors to finally achieve the necessary visibility before society. By breaking the silence, this work can not only validate the pain of those who have sought justice, but also serve as an incentive for truth to prevail over institutional opacity, facilitating a path towards healing and accountability that has been delayed for so long.
To deepen the understanding of the described manipulation mechanisms, I strongly recommend viewing the new documentary 'Narcissist’s Playbook'. This work is essential for identifying the patterns of abuse and control strategies that, as we have analyzed, not only operate in intimate relationships, but also articulate the architecture of authoritarian and abusive systems.
Interesting article from Infovaticana earlier this week:
It's a follow-up on a piece they wrote in July: https://infovaticana.com/2026/07/05/santa-coaccion-escriva-y-el-gobierno-de-las-conciencias/
I thought we'd had a discussion in this sub about the July article, but I can no longer find it. If anyone can find it and comment with the link, I'll add it to this post.
In any case, TLDR: Infovaticana published a full, unredacted meditation of JME, in which his methods of coercing his "children" are clear. One of his typical, "It's not a sin to do xyz, but it is bad spirit, and bad spirit can be sinful..." And of course telling members never to go outside of OD for spiritual guidance, etc.
In response, IV received a letter—not from OD or its reps, not from the Vatican, but from the company that holds the copyright to JME's writings, forcing them to take down the portion of the writings that they don't want published. A Spanish corporation (run by OD members, no doubt) is in charge of cherrypicking which of JME's writings is fit for public consumption and what's for internal use only. And they sue anyone who publishes the stuff they don't want outsiders to see.
One other fun tidbit from this article: JME died intestate—that's right, the man who coerced thousands of people into writing their wills for the benefit of OD, died himself without a will.
I was recently broken up with out of the blue because my boyfriend told me he wants to live a "consecrated" life. This came as a complete shock to me as we had just finished a course/retreat on discerning marriage and had actively talked about marriage and kids. When we first met he was so sure that if our relationship worked out, we would be married in 2 years (we dated for about a year and a half). At first I was devastated because I thought it meant that he was discerning the priesthood so there was nothing I could do to go against God's will (we are both devout Catholics).
But further analyzing his whole breakup speech (because he had something written down when he was breaking the news) and upon researching recruitment tactics by OD, the language he used did not seem like a calling to the priesthood but rather the language used when OD is trying to convince someone of their "vocation".
He said he wanted to live a consecrated life and had received many signs that pointed to it even in the early stages of dating. That those "signs" had stopped for a while (which is why he would talk about marriage) but had recently came up again. He said he had been discerning this with his spiritual director and had recently received a "random" call from a priest back home that had also suggested he had a vocation.
He asked that I pray for him since he was going to be leading a life of celibacy (chastity in our relationship had always been especially hard for him). I asked him if he was going to finish his studies or join seminary right away (he has 3 years left to finish and I was still thinking this was a call to priesthood). He told me that he was going to finish school and then see about joining a seminary or becoming a deacon or a consecrated layperson that he didn't know yet but that we couldn't be together anymore.
He also asked that I didn't tell any of our friends or his roommates the true reason for the breakup as they "won't understand" and it could impact him finishing his degree because people would question why he was still in school if he had a "calling". It's also worth noting that it has been about a month and a half since the breakup and he hasn't spoken to anyone about it or even told them it happened. He's just going about his normal life expecting not to get asked why I'm not around anymore (I'm not sure what he's saying to the people who do ask). But I know this because I had to break the news to our mutual friends weeks after even though he had seen them during that time. He also asked that I not contact his parents anymore and that I should block them on social media.
We would go to Eucharistic Adoration every other Thursday but in February he told me we couldn't go together anymore because he had joined a men's young adult group that met on Thursdays and that he would now be going to Adoration on Tuesday (because of my schedule I couldn't go Tuesdays). I did notice him growing a bit distant but I attributed it to stress from school as this last semester was particularly difficult for him. I now realize that he was probably going to meetings at the centers.
I saw him about a month post breakup and had a brief hello and smile. That night he blocked me from all social media (he hadn't done it yet after the breakup). I read that spiritual directors tell them to completely erase the other person from their lives so as to not fall into "temptation" or have them doubt their "vocation".
To give some background; he attended an OD private school back in his home country and his family were/are supportive of it but not members. He came to the US for university and coincidentally the school he goes to has several centers nearby (I didn't know this until a few days ago doing research). He briefly lived in an apartment close to these centers and would always mention how it was the best placed he had lived in, that he wished he could have stayed there as it was convenient for everything.
He is very intelligent, has high academic goals, he will have a very high earning potential once he is done with school, is completely devoted to the Catholic faith, super good looking and outgoing and his family is upper-middle class back in his country so he fits the "type" they look for.
He had mentioned OD occasionally in conversations about where he went to school and what his family/religious life was like back home but never tried to talk me into it or suggest we go to a center or anything like that. A lot of his personal ideals do reflect the teachings of OD (sanctifying everyday life, offering your sufferings, daily mass, frequent confession, etc.).
All this to say that I have no actual proof but also zero doubts that this was him breaking up with me to join the order because his "spiritual director" and others at these centers want him. Am I crazy for thinking this? Can I actually help him so that he doesn't make a mistake? (I feel like he's still in the probationary period so it's not too late). Should I tell his roommate and friends so that we can try to support him? Should I tell his parents? HELP!