List of points

One characteristic of all Christian life, no matter what form it takes, is the 'dignity and freedom of the children of God'. Throughout your teaching, you have insistently defended the freedom of the laity. To what exactly do you refer?

I refer precisely to the personal freedom of every layman to take, in the light of principles given by the Church, all the concrete, theoretical or practical decisions which he considers most appropriate and most in agreement with his own personal convictions and aptitudes. For example, decisions referring to different philosophical or political views, to different artistic or cultural trends, or to the problems of professional and social life.

All those who exercise the priestly ministry in the Church should always be careful to respect the autonomy which a Catholic layman needs, so that he will not find himself in a position of inferiority in relation to his fellow laymen, and can carry out efficiently his own apostolic task in the middle of the world. To attempt the opposite, to try to instrumentalise lay people for ends which exceed the proper limits of our hierarchical ministry, would be to fall into a lamentably anachronistic clericalism. The possibilities of the lay apostolate would be terribly curtailed; the laity would be condemned to permanent immaturity and above all, today especially, the very concept of authority and unity in the Church would be endangered. We cannot forget that the existence among Catholics of a true diversity of criterion and opinion in matters which God has left to the free discussion of men is in no way opposed to the hierarchical structure or the unity of the People of God. On the contrary, it strengthens them and defends them against possible impurities.

People have sometimes said that Opus Dei was organised internally along the lines of secret societies. What is to be thought of such a statement? Could you give us, with this in mind, your own idea of the message you wanted to address to men of our time when you founded the Work in 1928?

Ever since 1928 my preaching has been that sanctity is not reserved for the privileged few and that all the ways of the earth can be divine. The reason is that the spirituality of Opus Dei is based on the sanctification of ordinary work. The prejudice must be rejected that the ordinary faithful can do no more than limit themselves to helping the clergy in ecclesiastical apostolate. It should be remembered that to attain this supernatural end men need to be and to feel personally free with the freedom that Christ won for us.

To proclaim and to teach how to practise this doctrine I have never needed anything secret. The members of the Work detest secrecy because they are ordinary faithful, the same as anyone else. They do not change their status when they join Opus Dei. It would be repulsive for them to carry a sign on their back that said, 'Let it be known that I am dedicated to the service of God' . That would be neither lay nor secular. But those who associate with members of Opus Dei and are acquainted with them realise that they belong to the Work, for, even if they do not publicise their membership, neither do they hide it.