Opus Dei is heading towards its greatest transformation since the death of St. Josemaría Escrivá. The new statutes, which divide the Work into three distinct entities, will mark the end of that “unity of spirit and government” that for almost a century defined its identity.
But while Opus Dei is undergoing profound legal surgery, the Institute of the Incarnate Word — founded by the Argentine priest Carlos Buela — remains under pontifical control, navigating between denunciations, commissioners, massive “hangings” of priests and nuns, and dozens of nuns subjected to psychiatric treatment after years of internal psychological pressure.
Two Spiritual Power Projects
Opus Dei was born from the organizational intelligence of a saint obsessed with perfection. The Incarnate Word, on the other hand, was born from the disordered fervor of a South American ephebophile priest with a vocation as a caudillo. The former built a Roman precision administrative machinery; the second, an Argentine-style emotional pyramid (suffice it to recall the grotesque bonfire in Genoa after Buela’s burial, a scene that condenses the mixture of fervour and delirium that has marked the institution since its origins).
They did not lack ambitions. But if Opus Dei achieved an effective and lasting structure, the IVE barely achieved a grotesque imitation, sustained by blind obedience, inflamed discourses and chaos as a system.
In Opus Dei, discipline translated into management, obedience into method, spirituality into rigorous administration. Every decision, from the training of numeraries to the writing of internal manuals, responded to an almost entrepreneurial logic: efficiency, hierarchy and results. Rome could be suspicious, but it could not say that it did not work.
In the Incarnate Word, on the other hand, obedience became a spectacle. Fervor replaced reflection; personal loyalty, to competition; the mystique of “giving one’s life for the Word” ended in a culture of constant exaltation. Missions multiplied without planning, seminaries were opened where there was a bishop willing to close his eyes, and superiors confused government with devotion.
The result was an organization with the appearance of expansion and a background of lack of control: adolescent vocations recruited lightly, priests trained at industrial speed (the first master of novices was ordained a priest at the age of 23, with a papal dispensation), nuns exhausted by an inhuman pace of life, and an internal discourse where heroism made up for the lack of structure.
Where Opus Dei cultivated lawyers, philosophers, economists, and bishops, the Incarnate Word produced exalted preachers, chroniclers of themselves, and missionaries who confused sacrifice with disorder.
In passing, the IVE detests Opus Dei
The IVE/SSVM considers Opus Dei as soft, worldly, “not serious.” In inner circles, numeraries are mocked because they “wear makeup.” The mockery of St. Josemaría Escrivá is common in the seminaries of the Institute: his “pastry” spirituality is ridiculed. But that mockery – more than theological – was a reflection of envy: the contempt of the improvised one towards the one who knew how to build.
Because the IVE has always wanted to reach the level of Opus Dei – universities, academic centers, prestigious publications – but it does not give them the head. They tried to copy his model without understanding his logic: they wanted the fruits without the method, visibility without the structure, power without the competition.
And so, where Opus Dei built an intellectual institution, the Word raised a castle of slogans.
The scalpel of Rome
Rome has decided to act with a fine scalpel in the case of Opus Dei: to divide, decentralize and reduce the power of the prelate. There will no longer be “organic unity” between priests and laity. The prelate will retain authority over the clerics, but will lose all jurisdiction over the faithful. It is the end of an era: that of a prelature that behaved as a parallel diocese.
In the case of the Incarnate Word, Rome has not been able to apply the same procedure. The previous commissioner’s attempt to give the female branch – the Servants of the Lord and of the Virgin of Matará – the legal and governmental independence that all female religious congregations have, failed in the face of the resistance of the clerical nucleus of the Institute, determined to maintain control, and let’s say it sincerely, the consent of the nuns. who adore that style of governance.
The founder turned into dogma
In both movements, the founder became an almost sacred figure. St. Josemaría Escrivá, canonized at record speed, was elevated to the universal model of the laity. His image presides over centers and chapels, and his phrases are quoted as if they were part of the apocryphal Gospel of spiritual management .
Carlos Buela, on the other hand, did not have the intelligence or elegance of Escrivá, but he did have his narcissism. The paradox is that
The title of founder came later, deliberately constructed by his entourage to consolidate authority and silence internal criticism. Since then, every gesture and every word of Buela has been reinterpreted as part of a mystical epic.
- A heroic story of the founder is created.
- His word and his memory are sacralized.
- Criticism is demonized as “betrayal.”
And when the founder eclipses Christ, the charism ceases to be a gift and becomes a system of belonging.
The Myth of Papal Punishment
In recent years, both in the Work and in the Incarnate Word the same conspiratorial explanation has circulated:
All this happens to us because Francis is progressive and wanted to punish conservatives.
It is a comfortable narrative: it exempts from all self-criticism and turns ecclesial correction into ideological persecution.
But the myth crumbles in the face of an uncomfortable fact: in the case of Opus Dei, Pope Leo has maintained the same line. This shows that it is not a political issue, but an ecclesiological one. Rome is not punishing doctrinal fidelity, but correcting distortions of power. Neither Opus Dei nor the Incarnate Word were sanctioned for praying too much, but for confusing spiritual authority with the private property of the Holy Spirit.
Two declensions of the same error
Opus Dei and the Incarnate Word are, in essence, two expressions of the same phenomenon: charismatic clericalism, that virus that transforms obedience into organizational idolatry. One did it with method and efficiency; the other, with improvisation and delirium. The result is the same: dependence, fear, and the conviction that salvation passes through structure.
Today, Rome seems to have learned the correct reading: it is not a question of destroying movements, but of emptying them of their internal absolutism.
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