N E W Y O R K, June 18 — When teenage "Julie" told her spiritual director she was thinking about leaving Opus Dei, she says she was told she would never be happy and would go to the devil if she did.
Tammy DiNicola, as a college student, says she was told she would go to hell if she left Opus Dei.
The two women, now in their 30s, are among an undercurrent of critics of what they say are aggressive recruiting practices toward young people and a culture of control at Opus Dei, a small but growing conservative organization within the Roman Catholic Church.
Opus Dei's central theme is that people can be holy in every day life through prayer, discipline and generosity toward others. The group is unique in the church in that most of its members are lay persons and many of them, called "numeraries" and "associates," make commitments of lifelong chastity.
Numeraries contacted say they lead fulfilled, happy lives. Opus Dei's national spokesman, Brian Finnerty, a numerary member himself, says the group respects the freedom of its members and potential members. He says members are free to choose whether or not to join and remain in Opus Dei, and to submit to its practices, such as having their mail read by superiors and signing over their salaries.
"The whole process involves a recognition of the fact that there's a respect for the freedom of everybody who comes into contact with Opus Dei," he says.
But the group's critics say once a person begins to participate and the restrictions are in place, it can become difficult for him to exercise his free will and leave.
"I think 90 percent of the members of Opus Dei are good devout Catholics," says the Rev. James Martin, an editor of the Jesuit magazine America. "But I think 10 percent of their activities really raise serious questions about their methods, most especially their recruiting, and some of the things that go on inside their houses."
Presence on Campus
With residence centers near many major colleges and universities, Opus Dei seeks to attract young people.
"Youth is a time when people are open to great generosity, when they are trying to think about things, trying to think about the meaning of their lives and their plans for their lives," says Finnerty. "So I think youth can be a tremendous time for a person to grow in their faith, and so that's something Opus Dei tries to help people do."
>Opus Dei members are said to have a calling to join the group. Joining involves making annual commitments, beginning as early as 18 years old, in the form of contracts with the group over the course of a 6 ½-year period. At the end, the member chooses whether to make a lifetime commitment. One can apply to join and start living the numerary life as young as 16 ½.
"Opus Dei is recruiting on college campuses young people who are looking for answers to questions about justice, truth, order, eternal life, and so forth, and saying, 'we have the answers, but they're not simply a set of documents, it's a way of life, it's also a commitment to this cause,'" says Professor R. Scott Appleby, an expert on new religious movements at Notre Dame.
A Description of Control
DiNicola joined as a freshman student at Boston College. She moved into the Opus Dei center near the school and began living the life of discipline of an Opus Dei numerary.
She says her daily activities were precisely mapped out, some of her incoming and outgoing mail was read, expenditures were required to be accounted for, reading and television viewing were restricted, and she had to discuss with her spiritual director anytime she wanted to walk outside the center. She says she also was discouraged from confessing her sinces to non-Opus priests.
"It wasn't presented as an optional thing, you were told you need to obey your directors in everything." says DiNicola.
Like Julie, who asked that her real name not be used, DiNicola says she thought she was happy with Opus Dei life. But also like Julie, her family was having problems with it.
"Over a long period of time, our daughter's personality changed and we had a feeling whatever she was involved in was not good. She had become withdrawn from the family. That had never happened before," says her mother, Dianne DiNicola, who helped found and runs the nonprofit Opus Dei Awareness Network to inform the public about the group's practices.
"Tammy called Opus Dei her new family," says the mother. "You couldn't reason with her. She'd decided this was her life. When your environment is controlled, you stop thinking critically about things. She was not making free choices."
DiNicola decided to leave Opus Dei after the family staged an intervention, her mother says. "A person told her about all aspects of Opus Dei and she started thinking critically and she decided she wanted to leave."
Dianne DiNicola says her daughter's experiences were similar to those of hundreds of other men and women with whom she has spoken. "We are contacted almost every day, by e-mail, phone, mail, and fax," she says. "We've heard from so many people who say the exact same thing. After nine years of hearing people telling me the same thing, that has a lot of weight."
Control, Freely Given?
Opus Dei spokesman Finnerty, in a series of interviews, confirmed many of the practices described by the DiNicolas. He said, for instance, Opus Dei numeraries do turn over their salaries and eventually are encouraged to sign wills benefiting Opus Dei. They also are discouraged from reading certain literature and are encouraged to share mail with their spiritual directors, he said.
But Finnerty contends such practices do not limit members' freedom. "I think that commitments to serve others or to serve an ideal, which are freely undertaken, are not a limitation on freedom but an exercise of it."
He likens the commitment to marriage: "A person who is married is making all of his income available to his spouse and his children, he's thinking first in terms of the others."
An Opus Dei-published primer, "On the Vocation of Opus Dei," says "numerary members remain celibate to give themselves body and soul for the sake of the apostolate. In this way, they are fully available to carry out tasks for formation and direction within Opus Dei."
Massimo Introvigne, who runs the Center for Studies on New Religions in Italy, says restrictions of freedom have been common in Catholic convents and monasteries throughout the world since the beginning of Catholicism. But he says with church reforms beginning in the 1960s, strict convents have almost totally disappeared in the English- and German-speaking world.
"There may be pressures here and there, but these are not unique to Opus Dei," says Introvigne, adding, "If there are such pressures, they are wrong."
Notre Dame's Appleby says the numerary life actually resembles that of a Catholic seminarian during the 1940s and 1950s.
"Once you grant that, then what you're describing doesn't sound particularly offensive or unusual, if you grant they're using a model from about 40 or 50 years ago, not using celibate seminarians but celibate lay people," he says.
It raises a question, though, he says, about whether or not Opus Dei in its recruiting tactics is "exploiting the uncertainty and insecurity of youth." Religious conversion, he says, should involve "a diologue between the movement and the individual, a free and autonomous diologue."
But he observes it's tough from the outside to know whether that diologue has truly taken place. "You know, you can't really look into the soul of the kid next to you and know whether he's really telling the truth and is truly comfortable with the decision or being coerced."
Cult-Like Practices?
Opus Dei has been accused by critics of having "cult-like" practices. Religious scholars say Opus Dei is not a cult. But many do say it engages in practices that appear cult-like, practices used by many strict religious groups and that used to be common in some Roman Catholic orders.
Though he doesn't believe Opus Dei is a cult, Father James LeBar, who has been the Archdiocese of New York's consultant on cults for some 20 years told ABCNEWS.com that some of Opus Dei's practices resemble those used in cults:
"Yes, because they do use practices that were prevalent in the 1950s in all Catholic orders, [though] many of the orders have done away with them, the close supervision … " he says.
LeBar says Opus Dei's practices are not necessarily wrong: "If someone wishes to follow a very strict way of life, and be very closely supervised, and they willingly go into that, that's fine," he says. "But if the group manipulates people so that this happens to them and they don't know it, I'd have objection to that."
LeBar says he has been in contact with Opus Dei over the years, "hoping to help them see where the line is drawn and where they cross over it."
"What I've disagreed with at times are the methods by which they either invite people in or seek to keep them in when they want to leave," he says, but adds, "I've never found any serious problems, nothing to really raise a ruckus about."
"The main problem to me always seemed not so much between Opus Dei and the individuals but between the parents and Opus Dei, because they wanted to see their children more often," he says.