From Dr M. Asciak

I would like to reply to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s article “The Bioethics Committee is no place for Opus Dei” (TMIS, 18 November). Sometimes I wonder if columnists who need to write an article and have nothing better to write about, simply vent their frustrations in a highly cynical fashion on others. There are times where I agree with Daphne, but her article on Opus Dei is one article that was way over the top.

First of all let me make one thing clear; no one cajoled me into Opus Dei. I did so voluntarily five years ago, first as a co-operator and then as a supernumerary. It was on my own initiative that I made it public that I was a member of Opus Dei in order to avoid the type of sensationalist piece written by Daphne last week. So in a sense she is three years late!

Opus Dei is a Catholic organisation, like so many others, for lay or secular members of society. It has its own statutes and 25 years ago, on 28 November, was declared by John Paul II as a “personal prelature” of the Church.

A “personal prelature” of the Church was the outcome of Vatican II, which established two types of parishes. Those that are geographic, such as our parishes, and those that transcended geography. Opus Dei is the first and, up till now, only personal prelature of the Roman Church, and is headed by a bishop.

Members of Opus Dei have several levels at which they can join the prelature. Priests are limited to two per cent and do not run the prelature; it is run by the bishop and several male and female lay people elected to their posts.

Members may be married or single, or they may wish to remain celibate, but nobody is forced to enter one category or the other. All membership is renewed yearly on the feast of St Joseph (19 March). Members who do not renew their membership are assumed to have decided to leave.

Some numeraries may decide that they have a vocation to the priesthood and are then ordained and incardinated as priests of the prelature. This very month 40 numeraries shall be ordained deacons and six months later will be ordained priests.

Lay members have a number of duties one of which is the lay apostolate of friends. Opus Dei members will not knock on your door but just use friendship as a medium for apostolate that all Catholics are expected to carry out ex ufficio.

Opus Dei does not have a theology of its own apart from that of the magisterium and all members are free to follow the dictates of their own reasoning beyond this. That is why Opus Dei has members in both right and left organisations across the world and the prelature does not interfere in the personal choices which lay members are free to indulge in!

According to Daphne’s logic, the bioethics committee is no place for Opus Dei members. Why exactly is this so? Catholic lay members are expected to play a part in membership of civil society just as any other group in society from the right or the left. Does it bother people that lay Catholics play an active part in secular society? They have a right to their opinion as they have a right to their religion.

I suppose that the next step would be to say that politics is no place for the Catholic laity either. It is funny how the champions of liberal society increasingly judge individuals by their religion rather than their arguments, and often judge people by their beliefs rather than their philosophy. This is the big danger with modern secular society. It is becoming a society of exclusion rather than inclusion.

There is a false claim that it is not right for lay Catholics to impose their morality on someone else. Like so many arguments, this seems to have initial plausibility but in the end must be rejected. What must be seen is that unless one is willing to grant ‘moral anarchy’ and allow everyone to decide for themselves what they will or will not do, someone’s morality is imposed on someone else all the time. The issue, then, is not whether a morality should be imposed, but whether the one being imposed is the correct one.

I am not embarrassed for example, to impose a morality on society that requires us not to kill another human being on a whim. Besides, the bioethics committee is made of several other members of different backgrounds who all have a free vote! It may surprise Daphne to know that some members of the European Group of Ethics advising the European Commission are Catholic priests and some others Catholic lay members. By her reasoning I suppose they should be sidelined or thrown out! Catholic lay members know that not all that is immoral should become illegal, but there are immoral acts that should be illegal too!

I will not enter into the merits or demerits of her own encounters with female members of Opus Dei as I have already stated that all have their freedom of opinion outside the magisterium. It does seem to me however that she should not have led them on, as she herself states in her article, but should have made it clear that she was not interested and save time and energy for all.

Finally, I sincerely believe that if she has a problem with the concept of lay or secular Catholic organisations, which seem to mildly amuse her, she should take it up with the Pope when she is next in Rome!

Michael Asciak

BIRKIRKARA