The Conservative Catholic Anti-Charism of Discernment

…is hard at work. Having shouted down such enemies of the Faith as faithful Catholics who suggested there was something amiss with Maciel, Euteneuer, and Corapi, Defenders of the Faith now return to the fray to accuse still more honest Catholics of enmity to the Faith. Witness, for instance, this story, which details the calamitous failure of oversight by Bp. Finn.

That’s bad enough. But now witness a letter I got from a reader, who agrees that this was indeed a calamitous failure of oversight–and is being pressured to shut up about it:

Incidentally, we in Opus Dei are being told to follow the party line on this: that this is nothing more than an attack by the anti-Catholic, pro-abortion Kansas City Star, and the anti-Catholic, pro-abortion district attorney for Kansas City.

Even more disturbing, I am getting pressured to change my own opinion on the matter. It’s disturbing because I never discussed my opinion with any of my fellow Opus Dei members (that I can recall). Yet a few weeks ago I get an e-mail from a numerary in our center in St. Louis urging me to tow the line. Rather than debate the issue with the man who sent the e-mail, I tried to find out from him how they knew about this, since I hadn’t discussed it with anyone in the Work. He said he had no idea, but was merely directed to e-mail me by another numerary there, the one who hears my chats (Opus Dei-speak for spiritual director).

I’m increasingly creeped out by this.

I have nothing against Opus Dei. I have a number of friends who are members and they are, to a man, sterling people for whom I have the highest regard. But this kind of soft totalitarian cloak and dagger stuff is precisely what plays into the hands of people who hate Opus Dei. I don’t blame my reader for being creeped out. And I am amazed that, yet again, the response of self-described conservative Catholics to something like this is not to deal with facts, but to try to shut up those who do on the theory that everything is due to anti-Catholicism and not to the bleedin’ obvious fact that a very serious wrong has been done. With a track record this long of fantastically bad discernment coupled with cocksureness about one’s own sterling orthodoxy and Vorisesque levels of certitude about who needs to be read out of the Church, you’d think some of these people would grow a little circumspection.