Opus Dei, the Catholic S&M Cult, a stone's throw away

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Opus Dei a 'liberation,' says Quebec follower of sect

"I wish women would realize that this can be a liberation," Dorothy Chabot said.

Dressed in a kitchen worker's uniform, the pocket of her white tunic featuring an emblem of stylized cooking implements, Chabot was chatting with a reporter in an impeccable small parlour decorated with paintings of gardens and a cabinet of knickknacks at a complex near Valleyfield affiliated with Opus Dei. There was one religious item, an iconic portrait of the Virgin.

The parlour adjoins a bright, spacious foyer of the Centre de Gestion Hoteliere Soulanges, where stylishly turned out teenage girls and young women whisked across the gleaming hardwood floor, exchanged cheerful goodbyes over their luggage and headed for homes across Quebec and Ontario.

It had been a busy weekend at the complex, on spacious grounds on the banks of the St. Lawrence about midway between Montreal and the Ontario-Quebec border.

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Since 1997, when she became an Opus Dei member at age 19, [Dorothy] has been what is known as an assistant numerary, or numerary assistant -- a woman who devotes herself to domestic chores.

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Yes, she said, she like other numeraries does mortify her flesh with a cilice, a barbed chain she wears around her thigh for a couple of hours a day, and the discipline, a cord with which she whips herself once a week while reciting a prayer, in her case usually the Hail Mary.

A far cry from the torments to which one of the characters in Brown's thriller subjects himself, the cilice and discipline, she said, cause less discomfort than a good jog or some of the more spiritual disciplines, such as cheerfulness in the face of all adversities.

That's supposed to be the "liberating" part. Sexual role-playing, masochism, and discipline. Someone get me a cigarette. But the most "liberating" part of all, it seems, is to deny one's own humanity. I just don't know why women don't get it!

"I wouldn't call it painful. I would call it uncomfortable," Hoffman said. "Corporal mortification is something legitimate. It's something the saints have done."

Quote from Behind The Secret Sect Of Opus Dei, another article posted today about the sect. My question to the good Opus Dei Spokesman is, if it's not painful, how is it discipline and mortification? Why wear it at all? If the saints did it, surely they suffered. Not to say that whipping yourself actually does anything positive. But if it's some kind of pussy-imitation of saints' suffering, why not wear a pair of sparkly deely-bobbers on your head? And why are you lying about this?

More doublespeak that will surely be repeated, ad nauseum, for weeks to come. Enjoy it.