Opus Dei, in Hollywood and Rome, by David Gibson, Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2011

Opus Dei, in Hollywood and Rome

By David Gibson
Wall Street Journal
May 6, 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703992704576305060484412884.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Charlie Cox as Josemaria Escriva in the film 'There Be Dragons'

When the wartime epic "There Be Dragons" opens in theaters today, it will cap a remarkable evolution in the popular representation of Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic society whose founder, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, is the hero of the new film.

Set during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, when Escrivá was a young man (he died in 1975 and was canonized Saint Josemaría in 2002), "There Be Dragons" was conceived by Roland Joffé, the Oscar-nominated English director and self-described "wobbly agnostic," who is hardly one to carry water for a group like Opus Dei. But Mr. Joffé offers a human and sympathetic portrait of Escrivá and, by extension, of Opus Dei.

That is quite a change from the sinister portrayal of Opus Dei in the 2006 film adaptation of Dan Brown's thriller, "The Da Vinci Code," which included a murderous albino monk in its cast of caricatures. Yet the cinematic shift is more than an artistic choice. At a deeper level it symbolizes a genuine evolution for Opus Dei, an often insular movement that many in the church once considered the bogeyman of the right.

For decades, the society's devotion to secrecy and influence in Rome only amplified stories of questionable practices and associations that in turn fueled best-selling conspiracy theories.

The late John Paul II was one of those who championed the society, and as Opus Dei flourished it became a more confident, open and mainstream movement in the church. Opus Dei's strategy of public engagement in the wake of "The Da Vinci Code" phenomenon was a model of public relations, especially for a church that can seem to make a doctrine of defensiveness.

Opus Dei officials cooperated with Mr. Joffé on "There Be Dragons," though they had no idea what the movie would be like. They needn't have worried. "I investigated Opus Dei, and I began to find a very important thing: Opus Dei is a group of people who come together to work on their spiritual life, to work on their relationship to God," Mr. Joffé said at a recent press conference in Madrid. "But Opus Dei does not have a point of view, other than to say that what you believe you must stand up for—and you must take responsibility for your choices."

The story of Opus Dei offers a counterpoint to the common view that the Roman Catholic Church harshly enforces conformity among all of its members. Of course, history offers much evidence to reinforce that stereotype. In the 12th century, Papal forces mercilessly crushed the heretic Cathars. And this week, Pope Benedict XVI removed an Australian bishop who once argued that a shortage of priests should prompt the church to consider ordaining women and married men.

Yet history also reveals an alternate Catholic dynamic by which Rome co-opts its more fractious elements, harnessing them until they are safely domesticated. That strategy was described by the 19th-century Whig historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. In a famous essay on Catholicism, he noted—as much in consternation as admiration—that the Vatican "thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts."

"In some sects, particularly in infant sects, enthusiasm is [allowed] to be rampant," Macaulay wrote. "In other sects, particularly in sects long established and richly endowed, it is regarded with aversion. The Catholic Church neither submits to enthusiasm nor proscribes it, but uses it. She considers it as a great moving force which in itself, like the muscular power of a fine horse, is neither good nor evil, but which may be so directed as to produce great good or great evil; and she assumes the direction to herself."

Which is not to say that Rome's patience is never tested. The Legion of Christ, for example, became a global phenomenon in Catholicism over the past few decades by joining a devotion to orthodoxy and secrecy with an equal fidelity to the Legion's charismatic founder, Father Marcial Maciel, who helped his community's cause by liberally dispensing funds to hierarchs in Rome. Other bishops complained of the Legion's cult-like aspects, but it was only in 2006, when the truth of Maciel's extensive record of sexual abuse and financial shenanigans was finally acknowledged, that the Vatican forced the elderly priest from ministry and launched an investigation.

Another showdown is looming between Rome and the Latin Mass Traditionalists from the Society of Saint Pius X, who went into schism in 1988 because they objected to many of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.

The church must also contend with enthusiasts of other sorts, including Catholic "charismatics" of Africa and Latin America as well as liberal factions in the U.S. Whether these maverick groups will be tamed like a fine horse or cast out like a wild one remains to be seen.