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THEIR KINGDOM COME -- INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF OPUS DEI |
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10. Cold Warriors
ESCRIVA DE BALAGUER, WHOSE ASSESSORS AT THE CAUSES OF SAINTS would claim 'stood out in the history of spirituality on a level with the traditional greats', proposed to provide Pius XII with a corps of Cold Warriors capable of exercising a discreet Catholic influence in key economic sectors and ministries throughout the free world. This represented a new phase in Opus Dei's development, requiring a change in the type of persons recruited into the Work. The archetypal prospect thus shifted from university scholar to banker, company director and public administrator, reflecting the institute's need for greater resources not only to guarantee its survival but to extend its apostolate to all of Christendom. Escriva de Balaguer was perfectly aware that no institution with a bunch of street sweepers as members could influence key public sectors, nor pull in the kind of income needed to achieve all that he had in mind. Opus Dei, therefore, was not interested in street sweepers and to suggest otherwise was hypocritical. Angel Herrera -- a political strategist par excellence, who would later become a cardinal- had always stressed that the only way to make a mark on society, state or institution was by dominating its summit, advice that Escriva de Balaguer assiduously followed. But Escriva de Balaguer went further than Herrera, subordinating his political agenda to a cult of discretion. 'Remain silent, and you will never regret it; speak, and you often will,' was his advice in Maxim 639. Discretion can be an admirable attribute, but when developed into a cult it usually covers an aspiration for power. After moving to Rome, Escriva de Balaguer had his eyes opened and thereafter he viewed the world differently. In Rome he saw how the Church was really run and, according to his closest collaborators, it shocked him. He realized that power came from conquering positions of influence. For Opus Dei, the source of its growing power was the access of its members to important positions, whether in education, finance or politics. Juan Bautista Torello, a leading Opus Dei ideologist, argued that the conquest of important positions was a 'typically Christian calling'. [1] Escriva de Balaguer, his followers would assert, lived the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude with heroic devotion. But he also taught them that wielding influence was a more legitimate objective than adopting a policy of abstentionism, which allowed key posts to fall to people who were indifferent or even hostile to the Church. To better fulfil its apostolate, Opus Dei's reach for influence had to be discreet so that its 'enemies' -- and already it had a fair number -- were kept in the dark as to its real intentions. To protect the Church, Opus Dei had to wield ecclesiastical power. For this, Esetiva de Balaguer anticipated being made a bishop. But for public consumption, his cult of discretion required an opposite expression of humility. You tell the enemy one thing, and do another. With clear conscience, the Father could therefore declare: 'I never talk politics. I do not approve of committed Christians in the world forming a political-religious movement. That would be madness, even if it were motivated by the desire to spread the spirit of Christ in all the activities of men'. [2] However, Opus Dei manifestly was a politico-religious movement and Article 202 of the 1950 Constitutions proved it: 'Public office ... constitutes a privileged means for exercising the Institute's apostolate.' In line with Article 202, some of Escriva de Balaguer's Spanish sons were hard at work plotting the formation of a political 'Third Force' that would stand apart from Franco's Falange and the newly emerging Christian Democrats. The Third Force was conceived by a core of Opus Dei intellectuals who were running the NSRC. More precisely, three of the Father's more agile disciples had put forward an idea for a cultural magazine that would serve not only as the mouthpiece for the NSRC's good intentions in culture 'and science, but' also as a platform for Opus Dei's political designs. Rafael Calvo Serer, Raimundo Panikkar and Florentino Perez-Embid brought out, the first issue of Arbor in March 1943. As the NSRC's monthly review, Arbor was funded lavishly from the Council treasury and soon it became one of Spain's most prestigious publications. Of Arbor's three co-founders, Calvo Serer was the most outspoken. He had joined Opus Dei at nineteen, becoming the tenth apostle. At twenty-six he was appointed professor of history in Valencia, and later worked as director of the Spanish Institute in London. The trio's most colourful figure was Raimundo Panikkar, technically a British subject, his father being Indian and his mother Catalan. He had spent the Civil War in Germany, where his father ran an import-export business. Raimundo passed his baccalaureate in Germany and returned to Barcelona in 1940. He was then fluent in half a dozen languages and by the late 1940s he held doctorates in chemistry, philosophy and theology. This made him a valuable asset for Opus Dei. He was ordained in 1946 at the age of twenty-eight. During the 1950s he was considered Opus Dei's most provocative theologian. In Opus Dei's structure the Archangels were made the guardians of recruiting, numeraries and supernumeraries. Each Archangel was given an intercessor, called a 'vocal', at headquarters and on regional levels. The vocal oversees the work entrusted to the Archangel he represents. A key person in the work of the Archangel Raphael was the eleventh apostle, Vicente Rodriguez Casado, appointed professor of modem history at Seville University in 1942. He brought into the Work more than a score of exceptionally gifted young men, among them Florentino Perez-Embid. Perez-Embid had joined the Falange and saw Civil War action on the Cordoba front, being cited for bravery. In 1946 he shifted his activities to Madrid and fell under the spell of Calvo Serer, taking over as Arbor's chief editor when Calvo Serer went to London. In 1949 he was given the chair of history of discovery at the University of Madrid. With Calvo Serer he co-founded Ediciones Rialp in Madrid, which became the cornerstone of Opus Dei's publishing empire. Calvo Serer's book Espana sin problema, published by Rialp in 1949, won the first Francisco Franco National Literary Award. It and a second work, Teoria de la Restauracion, published by Rialp in 1952, defined an ideological platform for Opus Dei's progressive wing. Both books maintained that the basis for Spain's value system was the Catholic Church. The history of the Church and the history of Spain were interlocked. Consequently, the national tradition was a religious tradition. While Europe was faced with the dilemma of choosing between the American Dream or Sovietization, Calvo Serer and Perez-Embid both believed that the Old Continent would be better served by a combination of German efficiency and Spanish spirituality. [3] Calvo Serer and Perez-Embid agreed that post-Civil War Spain presented a God-given opportunity to recreate a militant Catholicism that in the sixteenth century had brought the Spanish empire to the height of her creative success. They reasoned that with the modern world committed to godless materialism, whether Capitalist or Communist, the only way to head off catastrophe was to resume Charles V's crusade, not this time with the resources of a single nation, but through a powerful and vital transnational Catholic movement. Escriva de Balaguer encouraged them: in his view Opus Dei had been divinely conceived as a Catholic Regenerator with worldwide reach. [4] The development of an ideological front within Opus Dei had two consequences. First, it led to a rift among members. The progressive wing wanted Opus Dei to assume a direct political role, while the traditionalists wanted to concentrate uniquely on the spiritual lives of its members. Escriva de Balaguer became a prisoner of his own double-speak and sat on the fence throughout most of the disruption. Holding the wrong political view was sufficient cause for exclusion from Opus Dei. Just as obviously, the institute also held that only certain political criteria were acceptable for the divine plan. This soon became evident from the second consequence of the Third Force platform, which brought Opus Dei in Spain into direct conflict with the Falange. The Falange was the only political party officially tolerated by Franco, but as the fuzzy tenets of its doctrine called National Syndicalism were gradually set aside other political tendencies became accepted as long as they did not seek to create a party organization. This applied mainly to the Christian Democrats and Monarchists. Until the rise of the Opus Dei technocrats, all Franco ,governments were delicately balanced mosaics, the main colour being Falangist blue, offset by the pale white of Franco's apolitical cronies whose loyalty went unquestioned, together with a smartering of Monarchist gold and Christian Democrat green. The Falangists jealously guarded their position as the only legal party and regarded Opus Dei's growing political influence unfavourably. The Falangist youth movement operated a residence for students in Madrid called the Colegio Cesar Carlos. Its lieges, all young militants, protested against the selection process for professors, claiming it favoured Opus Dei candidates. The Cesar Carlos students took to the streets, and to make their demonstrations more biting, they composed some amusing but less than complimentary couplets or letrillas about Escriva de Balaguer which immediately soared to the top of the student hit parade. In a classic rebuttal Escriva de Balaguer called the criticism garbage and denied that his gifted sons 'would preoccupy themselves with chasing after professorships at obscure provincial universities and risk compromising their eternal salvation for a ridiculously small salary.' [5] The Cold War was in full gale by the late 1940s. Each new gust reconfirmed for the Father that Communism remained more than ever the Church's most serious enemy. After Cardinal Mindszenty's three-day show trial in Budapest, Pope Pius XII told the French Minister in Rome: 'The Church is now engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the Soviet Union, in which the stake is the fate of 65 million Catholics -- a sixth of the world's Catholic population -- living in the Soviet satellite states.' [6] Not long afterwards, the primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, was arrested. Escriva de Balaguer was determined to expand Opus Dei's apostolate in the fight against Marxism. But, he told his faithful, 'I don't want to make martyrs of my sons. I can't do anything with martyrs.' The missionaries he selected were ascetic young professionals trained in spiritual fortitude by himself and his apostles. He sent them into the world to work for God, or rather to do God's work, but not as ordinary missionaries. Proselytizing as practised by the Jesuits was, in his view, a concept of the past. God's work needed to be done in the boardrooms, banking halls and ministerial chambers of the secular state. At first the numeraries and a few wealthy co-operators were alone in underwriting these efforts. Numeraries were required to hand over their salaries to the Work's general funds and they received back a small allowance. But it was always a strain to balance the books as Escriva de Balaguer had grand tastes. Then married persons -- the supernumeraries -- were admitted into the Work. Their presence greatly enhanced the financial situation, The secular institute was not required to look after their physical well-being, something it was obliged to do for numeraries. Supernumeraries, on the other hand, could not be required to hand over their full salaries, as they had family obligations, and so were asked to make 'voluntary' contributions, at 10 per cent of their annual income, paid in monthly instalments. The result was not inconsequential. Due to the work of the Archangel Gabriel, capital flowed into Opus Dei's treasury like never before. That capital had to be managed. Opus Dei needed its own banks and, in a time of stringent exchange controls, a parallel financial network that permitted it to circumnavigate capital transfer restrictions. _______________ Notes: 1. Juan Bautista Torello, La Espiritualidad de los laicos, Rialp. Madrid 1965, p. 35. 2. Escriva de Balaguer, Christ is passing by, from the homily 'Christ the King', given on 22 November 1970. Four Courts Press, Dublin 1985, p. 245. 3. Artigues, L'Opus Dei en Espagne, Editions Ruedo-iberica, Paris 1968, p. 136. 4. Ibid., p. 140. 5. Artigues, Op. cit., p. 145. 6. Anthony Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Cold War, Michael Russell, 1992, p. 50.
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