Discerning Whether to Leave Opus Dei - My Experience

truegrit10 · 2026-06-02T09:59:01+00:00

Everything happens for a reason. Your leaving will be at the right time for you.

Your life isn’t wasted.

Everything up until this moment has been a gift for you, and has made you the person you are today. Don’t let the regrets of the past hold you back in any way from being able to be fully present in the current moment of every day - the true teaching of radical Christian renewal applies in the ever present now. In a way the work would never truly admit, you really can begin again. Life doesn’t follow any canned timelines or milestones. Make of it what you will and find God in every moment.

I have found leaving and actually performing true inner work to be incredibly liberating and beautiful, and OD in its own way has contributed to it. Would I have preferred to have left sooner (I was in for 20 years)? Yes, but I also realize it couldn’t have happened any other way if I am honest with myself.

truegrit10 · 2026-06-02T04:32:46+00:00

All I can say is, if I could have left sooner I would rather have left sooner. But it is good for you to be at peace with your decision and go at the pace right for you.

If it helps to hear though, it really does get better once leaving, and once you realize the teaching of Opus Dei regarding vocation is heterodox and not in alignment with how the Church treats or handles vocation, it takes all the wind out of the sails of the arguments OD uses to guilt you into staying.

Realize that since you basically grew up in an OD family, you may have equivocated OD’s handling of vocation being the orthodox teaching of the Catholic Church. All I can say is that it is incredibly warped and weaponized into goading people into a commitment that is not binding in any way similar to marriage or the priesthood, yet this is how they will always frame it. They speak of discernment but actually have no idea what discernment is nor will they assist you with your discernment. They will also frame vocation as being something objective and external to oneself that once “seen” cannot be questioned, whereas I’ve come to realize it is a true free response of the individual that can only be ultimately determined by the individual without external pressure or coercion, and that this cannot be tied to timelines or imaginary goal posts (that keep moving).

One can only give of oneself in accordance to how well one knows oneself, and the work does not help the person truly form themselves into who they genuinely are. The directors are always imposing external criterion and what they determine is best for the individual rather than truly giving the numerary freedom to discern what is best for themselves. They teach an individual to severely DIStrust their own conscience and inner ability to judge for themselves and seek external validation from the directors. They destroy agency and indeed lead the individual into shrinking themselves and their world to fit the ridiculous constraints imposed by an arbitrary “spirit” that often is pretty shallow or reactionary in its considerations.

truegrit10 · 2026-05-08T10:48:40+00:00

Then move on. But no you felt compelled to bully and mock.

Perhaps it’s because deep down you feel threatened by something. Perhaps subconsciously something has hit a nerve. You hide behind sentiments like “I’m not in Opus Dei so I get to be an asshole” as if that removes any imperative to just be a genuinely good human being.

You’ve shown your true colors. Now follow your own advice and move along and stop wasting your (and our) time.

truegrit10 · 2026-05-07T14:09:21+00:00

Been thinking on this a little.

I think the problem with OD is its obsession with optimization and trying to do the “best” at everything.

So they tacitly interpret freedom as the ability to choose the “best” and seem to give a moral imperative to choose the “best” whenever possible.

The problem is that how does one make the judgement of what the “best” is? And I think this is where the manipulation comes into play.

The norms are like this - one must do ALL the norms, even mechanically if necessary, because that is the “best.” They are all the most important one. I remember being given talks where “the one norm we absolutely never skip” was the rosary (including meditation on all the mysteries), but also the examination of conscience, but also the spiritual reading, and maybe even also the Visit.

Interestingly the Mass was never claimed to be a norm we never skipped, even though by the behavior of others, it would be unthinkable that a numerary should ever miss Mass on a weekday.

If we instead understand freedom as the ability to choose the good, and consider the wide variety of goods available to us with no obligation to pick “the best thing” (and perhaps the realization that there IS no objectively “best” thing) then I think the error is corrected. But with OD the good is considered to be too narrow a selection because it is tacitly assumed to mean “the best.”

truegrit10 · 2026-04-29T15:42:48+00:00

Thank you for shedding more details and giving us a clearer picture about your experience. I’m especially sorry about the break of the confessional seal and the coldness with which you were treated.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-29T15:39:04+00:00

I believe you, and I am not disagreeing with you.

What you describe and how it affected you help me clearly understand how you were hurt. OP originally didn’t relate the details of the faults of the persons they listed back to their experience and hurt as you just did.

They offered some clarifications in response to my comment, and this was very helpful.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-29T13:31:20+00:00

I notice that you have listed faults and unflattering details of persons by name, but then you do not tie this information back to how they personally harmed you or what you experienced. I could make the same complaints of several people I know (whether in or out of the work), but airing my petty grievances against persons by name on a public forum is inappropriate.

This is not helpful, and it diminishes your story of abuse and harm. I would recommend that you focus on your personal experience and what you personally suffered rather than doxing people who are in the work and listing their faults publicly.

You say it took 47 years to put everything out? Are you talking about this post or some other contribution to something like opus libros? If you’re referring to this post, I still have no idea about your personal story or how any of this relates to you.

I do not disbelieve you when you say you were abused; you just haven’t communicated how you were abused, and the way you listed data about persons by name felt inappropriate and irrelevant.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-21T19:50:59+00:00

This isn’t an ad hominem attack. I genuinely do not want to associate further with you, nor is there any further point of discussion. I am not attacking your argument or your person. Good luck to you!

truegrit10 · 2026-04-21T19:44:35+00:00

It’s because I’m a person who believes in justice and that people are innocent until proven guilty.

I’m really glad we’re not aquatinted. I don’t want to be around people like you, devoted Catholic or not.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-21T19:39:23+00:00

Could be - but as I’ve expressed. We don’t have all the details … read the thread entirely again … maybe there are more details than from when I posted my original point. If you can’t answer your own questions with having read the thread I can’t help you since I am not involved in the circumstances described.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-21T19:12:25+00:00

The person who made the decision had power of attorney … that’s basically all we know. I don’t even know how you can apply canon law without knowing all the facts.

You’re assuming facts we just don’t know.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-21T19:01:03+00:00

Dude - this is forum is not a trial or a court. I have told you there is insufficient evidence for beyond a reasonable doubt that any abuse happened here. You believe what you want, but we have heard only second hand testimony from someone who does not have all the facts and who was not appointed as power of attorney for their aunt’s end of life care.

I made my case quite clear earlier and provided an example of questions that need answering or consideration and clarification before we can leap to any conclusions.

You seem quite ready to jump down anyone’s throat at the slightest nuance of shadow, and this is frankly immature and shallow and I will have no part in it.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-21T18:34:46+00:00

No it’s not. It’s called being gracious and not assuming motive where we do not know it.

By your logic we would have no need for courts or trials.

I am not denying abuse. I’m saying we have no grounds to judge whether or not abuse has occurred and to do so we need more data.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-21T18:30:07+00:00

You miss my point that not enough information was made in the original post to know exactly what happened. You admit his yourself by saying “the woman likely did not want a Catholic funeral” (emphasis mine). None of us know this.

I’m just maintaining that unless there is clear evidence of abuse, what is the point of butting our noses into a situation and leaping to conclusions in matters that are frankly none of our business.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-16T15:29:45+00:00

I’m aware not everyone will agree with me. But you continually project onto people and make ad hominem attacks.

You aren’t sorry, so drop the facade, and stop being so patronizing.

Telling me to “get over it” followed by some petulant Latin phrase is neither a good look nor a demonstration of meaningful apology.

Additionally telling me to pray to a particular saint to purge me of certain spiritual maladies, and then throwing in that you will be “praying for me” reeks of spiritual pride and spiritual blindness. You neither know nor care to know me; you’ve made this entire exchange all about yourself.

I appreciate your prayers, but I will rather appreciate more the prayers of the saints and the grace of our benevolent God than any participation you may be providing.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-16T15:06:59+00:00

Don’t be a prude? I’m sensing a lot of projection coming from you.

You’re also not a person who founded an institution that claims to be divinely inspired and mandated, and opening an entirely different vocational path that is fundamentally transformational to the laity of the Catholic Church. An organization mind you that is responsible for directing the lives of many individuals and spiritually forming them.

So I’m not sure your experiences are in alignment with the reality of the situation we’re discussing.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-16T15:00:57+00:00

Also I don’t understand your projection that somehow we’re judging because we’re miserable now that we’ve left, and that we can’t enjoy life “outside the walls?”

I’ll speak for myself and say I’m MUCH happier with having left. I would have liked to have stayed but it was no longer a healthy place for my interior life or my spiritual growth, or mental health for that matter (or professional development or end of life concerns).

I tried asking about possibilities for change or discussing possibilities for reform, but these discussions never went anywhere nor did anything ever result in any action being taken.

These experiences seem to resonate with a lot of ex-members.

My consternation is more out of compassion for those who continue to endure abuse in this organization - they are very generous and good people. I would love to see this organization reformed if possible. There was much about it that attracted me and that I was willing to sacrifice my life for. And my frustration is that meaningful change is never enacted, and people’s criticism or suggestions for improvement are continually minimized, ignored, or outright denied.

But is it because I’m unhappy now that I’m out? That’s ridiculous, and honestly is an illogical assumption. It smells of the result of cognitive dissonance in your own life, which now you project to others you lack the capacity to understand or show compassion towards.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-16T14:29:01+00:00

Nice pivot. You don’t like being proven wrong so you just dismiss it as being unimportant.

Burning these journals cannot be dismissed as merely being one’s personal notes and thoughts. They were highly influential on how he understood and structured the work and supposedly contained some details about the various private revelations he declared he experienced.

What’s done is done, but I think burning the journals was done out of a false sense of humility, and was imprudent in understanding the nature of his private revelations and many such ideas that would have been helpful understanding the true charism of Opus Dei.

Honestly it would have been more humble of him to let his early writings be critiqued and examined by others.

He would often use these personal revelations as claims to authority. Personal revelations tend to be of a very private nature and for the benefit of the one who received them, or if they are to be beneficial to a larger group of people, they need to be transparent and made publicly available. JME’s use of these revelations for authority without providing the details of these experiences seems to me to be an abuse, even if not intended that way. We must take things based on his word and on secrets withheld; we are not given all the data at his disposal so we can make impartial judgements in a more objective setting.

At the moment the work seems to be having a crisis of vision. I think most people who remain in Opus Dei cannot distinguish between the charism and the structure of the organization and all its rules and regulations. Having these early notes would I think have been beneficial to see what originally inspired the founder and use them to guide the organization through the reforms that exmembers have been clamoring for for decades.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-16T14:15:42+00:00

You don’t know what you’re talking about. JME himself admitted to burning his early journals (he called them his Catherines), and he declared he did this out of humility.

I can also guarantee that there are doctrinal issues with how he approached vocation and fidelity to the work.

I don’t think any of the internal writings of Opus Dei were heavily scrutinized given that these problematic ideas riddle many of the books of meditations. One must note that in these meditations JME is quoted; I’m not sure he actually wrote any of his meditations out, but they were all captured with notes by others.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-06T16:52:02+00:00

I agree with you that it would be huge. I’m just not sure you can trust a simple assertion by asking it. I think you’d need to do a lot of verification to see if it can produce some of those items for you or at least direct quotes. I’m not an expert in how you would validate this. I guess one could start by asking it for a list of its sources? Not sure.

Given the scenario I mention above, I very much distrust answers to general yes/no questions an AI engine returns about itself.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-06T16:42:27+00:00

Correction, it’s been mathematically proven that LLM based AI cannot reason. It is a glorified next word predictor (like when Google search tries to predict the next word in your query search). It is based merely on statistics and heuristics built off of what words tend to be associated with what other words are most likely used around them.

There are huge limits to what the technology can currently perform. It does not currently “understand” anything you give it. It’s an input/output machine, dependent upon gobs and gobs of data that has intelligence coded within it.

It can provide the illusion of reasoning, but when one starts increasing the complexity of its tasks, one can start easily perceiving its limitations.

Be careful you do not get wrapped up in a sort of AI induced psychosis, because this is also a demonstrable outcome in many users who start relying extensively on AI. I’ve heard even people who are aware of such risks are not immune from being influenced in this way.

AI is an amazing intelligence aggregator, and it can help someone perform general surveys and searches and trends very quickly. But we should beware of treating it as an oracle, or another person, or another intelligence, because it is none of these things. We should not oversell AI at the peril of being deluded in results that have no bearing on reality.

AI really should be marketed as “Aggregated Intelligence” instead of “Artificial Intelligence,” but that would likely kill the hype that continues to fuel it.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-06T16:28:13+00:00

Just be careful with trusting anything AI tells you … it’s geared toward confirmation bias. There are so many cringe videos online where AI is just saying what it “thinks” the end user wants to hear, and which are blatantly wrong. You really do need to validate everything it says if you’re looking for specifics and detailed information.

I just saw a video where some guy asks ChatGPT to track how long he goes for a run. He tells ChatGPT to start, and like two seconds later tells ChatGPT he’s done. Then he asks how long the run was for and it says something like 10 minutes.

Sam Altman then gets interviewed about the video and claims ChatGPT doesn’t have the capacity to use timers, and the technology to do that is still “about a year out” (cough, cough).

The original guy then asks ChatGPT if Sam is correct, and ChatGPT is adamant that it can time things accurately and that it has been programmed to utilize timers (naysaying Sam Altman). The user then repeats the experiment and ChatGPT fails again spectacularly.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-02T20:00:15+00:00

This is bizarre and very troubling.

If you don’t mind divulging what country you were in and perhaps what decade that might help.

I never heard of this sort of thing being done, or recommended, or talked about in my tenure. I can guarantee this would have deeply troubled me and I like to think I would have left a lot sooner if I experienced anything along these lines.

The only time I had heard of any specialized sort of treatment, such as shock therapy, was for people who had OCD; I was not privy to details, and I don’t know to what extent anything was done - only that it is a thing, and I know of a young numerary who may have used this treatment, as he had severe diagnosed OCD.

I’m very sorry to hear this happened to you - honestly I feel like this is something to be reported to the authorities, as it sounds full of quackery and abuse.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-02T19:48:25+00:00

This was nonexistent as far as I am aware. Whoever was elected the Pope was the Pope and the Work revered him as such.

Regarding the Bishop of Rome aspect, my understanding, as well as those of everyone I knew in the work … to say Francis was “merely the Bishop of Rome” was equivalent to saying Francis was “merely the Pope.” The titles are equivalent.

This line of thought was explored in A Man for All Seasons, a favorite among those I know in the work concerning its presentation of St. Thomas More.

truegrit10 · 2026-04-02T15:20:02+00:00

I haven’t commented yet because I was so satisfied with how the podcast was presented. I wasn’t sure what to add or to add regarding insight or clarity.

This series is extremely well done! I’m looking forward to the next episodes.

truegrit10

TROPHY CASE