OPUS DEI - TROJAN HORSE OF LIBERALISM IN THE CHURCH (PART V)

 

The Work: Precursor to Vatican II

 

Escriba and Montini: Kindred Spirits

 

“Paul VI said that the founder of Opus Dei was ‘one of the people who had received the most charisms in the Church’s history and had responded with the greatest generosity to God’s gifts.’ ” 

"Saint" José María Escriba y Albás smiling behind an enthralled "Saint" Paul VI during his visit to
the Tiburtino Opus Dei center in Rome prior to the conclusion of the Council.

Escriba enjoyed a close and intimate relationship of friendship with Giovanni Battista Montini, later Paul VI. When he first arrived in Rome in 1946, Montini was the first to welcome him with open arms, and their close friendship continued even after his election, as recounted by author Pilar Urbano: “He remembered Pope Paul VI, when he was still Monsignor Montini, as ‘the first friendly hand I found here in Rome; the first affectionate word for the Work which I heard in Rome was spoken by him.’ As Pope, he received Monsignor Escrivá in protracted, affectionate audiences on several occasions. During one he presented him with a chalice with the pontifical emblem embossed in ivory, identical to one he had given Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople a few weeks previously.” [1] It seems impossible to believe that Escriba could have become so intimately acquainted through a mere coincidence amidst the milieu of the Vatican where he was still a complete stranger, of all men, with the man who would later become Paul VI. There must have been something deep that so intimately connected the man who was the “precursor” to the Conciliar Revolution with the very man who would later head it and bring to its successful conclusion. We can only speculate on this point, but in any case there seems something almost preternatural about the ability of kindred spirits to find each other even when placed among a mass of different individuals, as St John Bosco observed with groups of children among whom were a select few led by the evil spirit, an observation that could surely equally be extended to adults. Giovanni Battista Montini, the son of a mother belonging to the “Craft” – her tomb is absolutely full of Freemasonic symbolism – is widely rumoured to have been a mason himself. If we are to assume that Escriba himself was an “initiate”, could this perhaps have been a case of a mason – Montini – offering a helping hand to a fellow “brother” of the “Craft”?

On January 21, 1945, Opus Dei member Professor Orlandis presented Bishop Montini with a copy of Camino, perhaps as a way to “prime” Montini for a favourable reception of Escriba in the following year. Montini appears to have taken up the spirituality of Camino with much eagerness, and accordingly Berglar tells us that, “We know that Paul VI used Camino [‘The Way’] for his personal meditation.” [2] According to Álvaro del Portillo, in an audience with Paul VI shortly after the “Father’s” death Montini remarked that after his first encounter with Camino, he thereafter enthusiastically incorporated the list of 999 spiritual maxims as part of his devotional life: “Paul VI spoke to me about Father with admiration and told me that he was convinced that he had been a saint. He confirmed to me that for many years he had been reading The Way every day and that it did great good to his soul.” [3] Interestingly, in the same interview del Portillo reveals that Montini paid out of his own pocket the expenses required for the granting of the title of “Monsignor” (“Domestic Prelate of His Holiness”), a title requested by “Blessed” Álvaro del Portillo for the “Father” no doubt in order to bolster his prestige among the Roman Curia (and to satisfy his enormous pride) as he worked towards the attainment of the desired juridical “status” for Opus Dei within the Church. Peter Berglar, in his biography of the “Founder”, Huellas en la Nieve, describes that both Msgrs Montini and Tardini helped Escriba navigate through the tortuous paths of the Vatican, helping him to obtain an audience with Pope Pius XII on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1946. In addition, both men were also instrumental in their collaboration with Escriba who was looking to erect the central office of the Work in Rome. [4]

On January 24, 1964, Paul VI received Escriba in a private audience. Ana Sastre in Tiempo de Caminar recounts how when Escriba tried to kneel before Montini as was required by the pontifical protocol, he stopped him and instead walked over to embrace the “Father” with his arms in a gesture of kindness and love. [5] In the same work, Ana Sastre describes that in an audience with Paul VI, Escriba remarked that the “Holy Father’s” own “theology of work” was identical to his own, for which he had been branded a heretic years before: “Shortly after being elected pope, Paul VI publicly declares that work can be sanctified and sanctifying. In an audience, the Founder of Opus Dei has the opportunity to tell him:

-“Your Holiness has recently spoken of sanctified and sanctifying work.”

-“Yes. It is true.”

-“Your Holiness, for saying the same thing many years ago, I was accused before the Holy Office.” [6]

Escriba once remarked to an audience in Madrid that Paul VI personally made sure to visit an Opus Dei center in a socially disadvantaged part of Rome to show the hierarchy his love and affection for the Work: “Paul VI, who is so concerned for peace, with that love, that affection for the humble, that desire for equality throughout the world, that no one should lack anything, told me through Cardinal Dell’Acqua that he wanted to open the Tiburtino [Opus Dei] center before the Council’s closure so that the bishops of the world could see the love he had for Opus Dei and those who needed to raise their social position…” [7]

An article from Romana (the oficial Bulletin of Opus Dei) from 2014, adds further details about the close relationship between the “Father” and Paul VI: “However, even in the ‘official’ correspondence between Montini and Escrivá, we can detect an especially deep and close relationship between them. This was not just a matter of a mutual esteem, but also of a spiritual communion between two people the Church now sets forth as an example to all Christians.” “During the last audience that Paul VI granted to St. Josemaría, on June 25, 1973, they spoke about Opus Dei’s canonical framework and the situation of the Church. The Pope told him several times: ‘You are a saint!...’ Paul VI said that the founder of Opus Dei was ‘one of the people who had received the most charisms in the Church’s history and had responded with the greatest generosity to God’s gifts.’ ” [8]

Opus Dei: endorsed by key figures of the Conciliar Revolution

“For having proclaimed the universal vocation to sanctity, since Opus Dei was founded in 1928, Monsignor Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer has been unanimously recognized as a precursor to the Council precisely in what constitutes the fundamental core of its Magisterium, so fruitful for the life of the Church.” [9]

The secular mind-set of Opus Dei and its Founder with its attendant love for the world constitutes a spirituality in full harmony with that the Second Vatican Council, according to the liberal and modernist spirit which characterizes both the Work and Vatican II. As we have seen from the quote above, the decree for Escriba’s beatification cause states that his Work was a precursor to what constituted the core of Vatican II’s magisterium.  Vázquez reflects that Opus Dei was only too happy to see Vatican II formally adopt a spirituality embracing a progressive view of the world which they had long since adopted as their own:

“Since this is the spirit of our Work [i.e. secularism], it will be understood that for us it has been a great joy to see how the Council has solemnly declared that the Church does not reject the world in which it lives, neither its progress and development, but rather understands and loves it. Besides, this is a central tenet of our spirituality that members of the Work have strived – for almost forty years – to live…” [10]

The continuity between the spirituality of Opus Dei with that promulgated at Vatican II was confirmed by the “Founder” himself in an interview from February to the Spanish newspaper “ABC”: “For us, the Council has not represented an invitation to change our spirit, since it has confirmed with great vigour what we had been living and teaching since 1928.” [11] According to the author of an article in Scripta Theologica, the theological journal of the Opus Dei run University of Navarra, Escriba’s Work has emerged as the model for the “Way” that rest of the (Conciliar) Church should follow in order to faithfully put the Conciliar magisterium into praxis: “He [Escriba] knew that Vatican II had to be taken very seriously…. And he has come to be a model for how to bring about the authentic image of the Church outlined in the Conciliar documents.” [12] Escriba’s global assessment of the pseudo-Council and its theological outcome (spearheaded by such arch-modernists as Rahner, Balthasar, Ratzinger, Congar, etc) was thoroughly positive, making way for a new Utopian future full of hope for humanity: “As I see it, the current doctrinal environment of the Church could be classified as positive… Positive, no doubt, because the doctrinal richness of the Second Vatican Council has placed the entire Church – the entire priestly People of God – before a new greatly hopeful era of renewed fidelity to the divine mission of salvation confided to her.” [13]

Mon. Álvaro del Portillo, his right-hand man and eventual successor as Prelate of Opus Dei actively contributed to the development of the Council; in this privileged position as an “insider” to the proceedings of the pseudo-Council, he later commented that Vatican II formally adopted the (heretical) doctrines – no, the very soul – that had been adopted by Opus Dei since its inception: “In how many occasions, during the ratification of the Council documents would it have been just to speak of the Founder of Opus Dei and repeat to him: Well done, because what is in your soul, what you have tirelessly taught since 1928, has been proclaimed with all solemnity by the Magisterium of the Church!”  [14] Escriba’s contribution to the development of the “spirit” of the Council as one of the most significant of its “precursors” was not merely something that was recognized within the corridors of the Vatican or by the highest echelons of the Church hierarchy, but was already widely acknowledged within the wider Catholic world by ordinary clerics at the time of the “Founder’s” death. Hence, the well-known Spanish priest Don Juan Ordóñez Márquez, published an article in a newspaper of Seville on the day following Escriba’s death saying that, “he had possibly been the only man to whom Vatican II had little or nothing to say because for a long time he had already walked its paths.” [15]

Some of the most significant figures at Vatican II acknowledged Escriba as foreshadowing what would be officially endorsed by the Conciliar Church, as Berglar notes: “The Founder of Opus Dei, after many years of misunderstandings, had the pleasure to see that noted Conciliar Fathers, such as Cardinals Frings (Cologne), König (Vienna), Lercaro (Bologna), and others, recognized him as a true precursor of Vatican II, above all with respect to those key points that marked the way for the Council to follow in the future.” [16] Looking deeper at the individuals named in this list of unsavoury characters is useful to reveal the essence constituting the real spirit of Opus Dei. If one strips away the external manifestations of the Work, manifested in a purported “conservatism”, what is one left with? What we are interested in is seeing what remains once the outer layers of the onion have been fully peeled off. Among these figures listed by Berglar, perhaps the most significant and revealing is that of Cardinal Frings, who personally had met with the “Founder”. During the Council, it was none other than Joseph Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI, the “great restorer of Tradition”, who served as a theological peritus to Card. Frings. Ratzinger is also significant because he was the one who had personally written Frings' first progressive manifesto, delivered as a lecture on “The Council and the Modern World of Thought” in Genoa in 1961, and which caught the attention of John XXIII. Cardinal Frings is infamously recalled by history as the man who delivered the attack on November 8, 1963 against Ottaviani and the Holy Office during the Council deliberations, an attack which was described by “Deutsche Tagespost” as a “clash of the titans”. The liberal Card. Frings charged that the Holy Office, “does harm to the faithful [!] and causes scandal to those outside the church.” [17] To grasp the significance of this statement, it must be born in mind that Cardinal Frings made this bold, calumnious attack against Ottaviani and the Holy Office despite their lukewarm approach in dealing with arch-heretics such as Chardin, who was never formally excommunicated. While Frings’ scandalous attack delivered during the Council was received by warm applause by a considerable segment of the Council’s participants (despite a rule forbidding applause!), Ottaviani’s counter-reply was met with silence; an anecdote that serves as a clear symbolic illustration of the rebellious and unruly character of a liberal hierarchy fiercely determined on using the principles of the Revolution as a battering-ram to overturn and dismantle perennial Catholic Tradition. Berglar in Huellas en la Nieve (in a chapter aptly titled, “The Approved Revolution”) says that eight weeks after Escriba’s death, Frings wrote a letter to Paul VI, wherein he defined the “Founder” as, “a pioneer of a lay spirituality who had recognized with foresight the dangers and necessities of our times”, while foreseeing for Opus Dei “a place of eminent importance in the future of the Church.” [18]

Let us look next at Cardinal Lercaro, one of the four “moderators” during the sessions of the Council. Acording to an excellently researched article (“Le Pape du Concile”– “The Pope of the Council”) written by Fr Francesco Ricossa for the “Traditionalist” journal Sodalitium (Oct-Nov 1996), Cardinal Lercaro was seen, together with Montini (who as we saw was instrumental in helping Escriba to “set up shop” in Rome) and Cardinal Agagianian as one the likeliest members of the cardinalate to succeed him after his death: “In March 1963, a few months before his death, he confided to Bergamo native Mgr Pietro Sigismondi from the Propaganda for the Faith: “My suitcases are ready and I am calm: the one who will come after me will lead to its conclusion the little good that I have achieved, above all the Council. There is Montini, Agagianian, and Lercaro.” (p. 38) Cardinal Lercaro was “Ortolani’s man”: “The lawyer Umberto Ortolani, Cardinal Lercaro’s ‘gentleman’ during the 60’s, was later part of the history of the masonic lodge P2 [Propaganda Due], and was implicated in the failure of the Ambrosian Bank.” In a letter written during the Council, Lercaro had critized sharply the Scholastic tradition of the Church which he saw as part of “certain perhaps anachronistic riches of a glorious past”; illustrations were “scholastic systems of philosophy and theology; educational and academic institutions, etc.” Lercaro believed that this culture might “prevent the Church from opening herself to the true values of modern culture and to ancient non-Christian cultures.” [19] That is, that it might prevent the Church from embracing modern Civilization as had been defined and condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, and perhaps even more unsettling, to the cultural milieu of pagan antiquity! The monk Giuseppe Dossetti, an expert advisor to Cardinal Lercaro during the Council and whose partisan machinations helped to ram through the progressive agenda of the liberals, made this rhetorical question about Opus Dei, which he followed with his own answer, “How do they differ from Freemasonry? In the fact that they have special authorization to ordain priests.” [20]

Cardinal König also personally knew and dealt with the “Founder”. Regarding his presumed initiation into masonry, the abbé Ricossa had this to say in his article on Sodalitium, “Among the various presumed affiliations, one is particularly well-founded, that of Franziskus König, archbishop of Vienna since 1956, created cardinal by John XXIII on December 15, 1958. Roberto Fabiani [author of I Massoni in Italia], always well informed, affirms without hesitation and mincing his words that Cardinal König is a mason and specifies that he is a member of the secret Freemasonic lodge ‘Giustizia e Libertà’ in the [Roman] Piazza del Gesù.” The very least that could be said of König is that he had been very active in opening avenues of dialogue with masons. Further, Ricossa states that König was one of the most prominent supporters for the election of Karol Wojtyla in the 1978 conclave. [21] Of Escriba, König stated that, “In my opinion he was a man energized by a magnanimous spirit.” For him, the “canonization” meant that Escriba, “now belongs to the Church's treasury; he's welcomed to the multitude of saints.” [22] Opus Dei bishop and former Prelate, Javier Echevarría was personally present when König met with the “Founder”, and again remarks that the Austrian Cardinal viewed him as a precursor to the pseudo-Council: “During the 1960s I personally witnessed his meetings with St. Josemaría Escrivá, Opus Dei’s Founder. As the Cardinal himself made clear in his writings, the foundational idea of Opus Dei impressed him as an anticipation of some of the most timely teachings of Vatican II…” [23]

Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio is not among those in Berglar’s list of cardinals who saw the “Founder” as a precursor to Vatican II, but as someone who nevertheless was clearly sympathetic to the Work he is someone that clearly deserves closer scrutiny. After some investigation, one finds that Baggio, who at one time held the important Vatican post of Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops was listed in the so called “Pecorelli’s List” of masons. One can only wonder whether the murder of Pecorelli one year later in 1979 in Rome from four gunshot wounds has anything to do with the publication of the “Pecorelli List”. Ana Sastre quotes Baggio who expressed that the joy of Opus Dei members at seeing their liberal revolution fully approved at the Council should be shared by all Christians: “The reasons for their joy are also a motive of joy for all men of good will in the entire Church.” [24] In an article on the Italian journal Avvenire on July 26, 1975, Baggio highlighted the “revolutionary” aspect of the “spiritual message of Mons. Escrivá de Balaguer”, who had called the ordinary “man on the street” towards sanctity. [25] In the same article, Baggio recalled, “how in 1946 he had the good fortune of meeting Mons. Escrivá de Balaguer with whom he developed a permanent friendship; respectful and discreet, but no less affectionate and profound because of that.” Baggio was startled by the rather unconventional appearance of Opus Dei’s central headquarters in Rome with “nothing in common with the ecclesiastical buildings of the conventional kind.” According to Escriba, the lay ambience of the surroundings, decorated by plants and flowers rather than ubiquitous religious symbols, “formed part of the Work’s own lay spirituality, which tried to sanctify – to the point of heroism – ordinary life [!]”. Here we have an interesting novelty: a concept of “sanctification” requiring the removal of religious elements!

So, from among these four cardinals we have discussed, we find two who we have very good reason to believe were masons (Baggio and König), one other listed as a possible candidate for bringing the Conciliar revolution to a successful outcome (Lercaro) and with dubious ties with a lawyer tied to the para-masonic lodge P2 and the failure of the Ambrosian bank, and another (Frings) whose most infamous distinction during Vatican II could perhaps be considered his calumnious denunciation of Cardinal Ottaviani and the Holy Office – a perverse denunciation, moreover, that was met with warm applause by a majority of the Council’s participants. Of course, years later “Saint” John Paul II “The Great” would become one of the Work’s most ardent admirers and supporters; the man who oversaw the removal of the penalty of excommunication for belonging to secret societies such as Freemasonry in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, and who presided over the apostasy at Assisi in 1986 where the Buddha was placed with his blessing over the tabernacle. This is the stuff of which the men who enthusiastically praised Escriba and his liberal Work were made of.

REFERENCES

1.     Pilar Urbano, El hombre de Villa Tevere, p. 447.

2.     Berglar, Opus Dei, p 249.

3.     Álvaro del Portillo, Interview on the Founder of Opus Dei, p. 18.

4.     Huellas en la Nieve by Peter Berglar, “La Revolución Aprobada” https://opusdei.org/es-es/article/la-revolucion-aprobada/

5.     Ana Sastre, Tiempo de caminar, p. 483.

6.     Ana Sastre, Tiempo de Caminar, (“El espirítu de un concilio”).

7.     Josemaría Escrivá, talk in Tajamar, Madrid, 1-X-1967: in Lázaro Linares, Antes, más y mejor, p. 163.

8.     Romana, n. 59, July-December 2014, p. 346-348. https://romana.org/en/59/about-saint-josemaria/blessed-paul-vi-saint-josemaria-and-blessed-alvaro/

9.     Decree for the introduction of the beatification cause of Escriba y Albás, Seco, 1986, 196; Extracted from Santos y Pillos by Joan Estruch.

10.  El Fundador del Opus Dei, A. Vázquez de Prada, Rialp, p 31.

11.  Historia Internacional Journal, year 1, no. 6, September 1975, by Fernando García-Romanillos.

12.  MONS. JOSEMARIA ESCRIVA DE BALAGUER, UN HOMBRE A LA MEDIDA DE LA IGLESIA (University of Navarre), Franz Koenig, SCRIPTA THEOLOGICA 13 (1981 / 2-3).

13.  Point no. 23 in the book Conversaciones by José María Escriba in the chapter “Espontaneidad y pluralismo en el Pueblo de Dios”.

14.  Vázquez, p. 336.

15.  Mons. Escrivá de Balaguer, Salvador Bernal, Rialp, p 267.

16.  Berglar, p. 303.

17.  Desert Sun, Volume 37, Number 83, 8 November 1963.

18.  Berglar, Huellas en la Nieve, available at https://opusdei.org/es-es/article/la-revolucion-aprobada/

19.  Giacomo Lercaro, Lettere dal Concilio 1962-1965, ed. G. Battelli (Bologna: Ed. Dehoniane, 1980), 332.

20.  A colloquio con Dossetti e Lazzati. Intervista di Leopoldo Elia e Pietro Scoppola, il Mulino, Bologna, 2003 https://www.opuslibros.org/nuevaweb/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9302

21.  Sodalitium Oct-Nov 1996, note no. 39 listed in p 38.

22.  “Interview with Franz Cardinal König about Blessed Josemaria Escriva”, 1-31-2002. Interview conducted by Ricardo Estarriol, correspondent in Vienna for La Vanguardia. https://opusdei.org/en/article/interview-with-franz-cardinal-konig-about-blessed-josemaria-escriva/

23.  Bishop Echevarría: “Thank you, Cardinal König, for your help and your friendship.”, 4-3-2004. https://opusdei.org/en-us/article/bishop-echevarria-thank-you-cardinal-konig-for-your-help-and-your-friendship/

24.  Tiempo de Caminar, p. 659.

25.  Berglar, p 138.