A few months ago, in September 2011, a corporate work of the women’s section of Opus Dei was accused of abuse in the French courts. Opus Dei is a personal prelature of the Catholic Church. It is a lay organization of the Church concerned with secular society. It has no other agenda but the Catholic Magisterium. The women’s section of Opus Dei is run by lay Catholic women under the guidance of the Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Mgr Javier Ecchevaria, a former Spanish civil engineer. The women’s section of Opus Dei (like the men’s) sets up corporate works under the control of legally registered foundations in the respective countries where they work, so as to grant them the autonomy necessary to work under different legal and social regimes. The women’s section of Opus Dei has many branches and levels of membership (like the men’s) but they have one academic and professional speciality for which they are renowned worldwide and in which they excel. This is hospitality management. They run various schools worldwide at all levels including secondary and tertiary, where they prepare students to enter the hospitality industry. Of course many of the students do not become Opus Dei members, just as many of the students attending to St Aloysius College run by the Jesuits in Malta do not become Jesuits. Some do, thank God, and I do confess that I spent several months of my youth pondering and praying whether I had a vocation to the priesthood, but God’s unequivocal answer was always that my vocation lay in the secular world, warts and all, and that is where I proceeded to plant myself.

I write this letter to underline the bias of the secular world in all things religious. Opus Dei is a good punching bag for the secular world, not least because Dan Brown’s novel portrayed it as a sinister organisation using means that are anything but Catholic. Unfortunately, many people do not or cannot distinguish between fiction and fact and prefer to dwell in a house of fantasy. However, it must also be pointed out that many people who punch Opus Dei really only have an anti-Catholic agenda and are actually trying to get at the Church.

In this particular case in France, the headlines read that lay academic members of management of a hospitality college run by a corporate work of Opus Dei were accused of abusing a 14-year-old girl! This of course was copied verbatim from the French Press Agency, which released it, and was plastered all over the world press including Malta. One of course immediately associates abuse with sexual abuse, which is an on-going concern in the Church at the moment. Newspapers know that perceptions are stronger than realities! On reading the fine print, one realises however, that the form of the alleged abuse levied against these college staff members by a French woman, Catherine Tissier, was in fact financial! The woman involved is 40 years old now and had never been a member of Opus Dei before the age of consent, ie 18 years of age. Incidentally, like all novices in a religious organisation, numerary assistants, which is the level of membership she chose, of her own will, to join as a lay member of Opus Dei, have certain obligations to their organisation. However, one cannot join an organisation and then decide not to fulfil one’s obligations under that rule, whether religious or secular. She claimed that she was not paid for the work she did and that she was systematically defrauded. Many pundits on the blog in Malta were quick to deride Opus Dei and one of them, a known lawyer, did not even have the decency to wait for the court case to end to besmirch the organisation and the whole Church. I thought then how mature and fairly opinionated this person was and how fruitful his training as a lawyer must have been. Tissier also claimed that she was not allowed to visit doctors for a medical condition she had developed.

In November 2011, the French courts ruled (they do not seem to take so long there) that there was never any financial abuse at all and that plaintiff was always adequately remunerated for her work, so much so that all social security contributions were regularly paid. It also ruled that Catherine Tissier was offered all the help and assistance to seek professional medical help from qualified physicians for her medical condition. It also transpires that this is the second court case instituted by Catherine Tissier against Opus Dei in 10 years, in an effort to seek financial remuneration, which was subsequently lost by plaintiff. Opus Dei itself also made it clear that the Prelature in no way can be legally confused with the legal personality of its own corporate works.

May I ask how many newspapers around the world, including Malta, reported the court ruling in favour of the corporate work of Opus Dei and against plaintiff? Is this food for thought? The heading of this article should have been Opus Dei liberated or Opus Dei vindicated. But then I know that in the ever narrow and spiralling corridors of some people’s minds, this would have led them to discount reading it in favour of some conspiracy theory they might harbour. It also might not have made interesting news. It has always struck me that people who believe in objective ethics always make allowances for subjective circumstances and intentions, but people who believe in purely subjective ethics never accept the possibility of objective situations but are forever relativists, shooting randomly and on a whim and changing colour according to fancy or intention. The world should be made of sterner stuff.