probity, the United States.
“Behold the proliferating dynasties of Elmer Gantries who are hijacking that nation’s psyche (while rifling through its pockets),” Michel Montvert had told me more than once, “and witness the phalanx of rapt soul-robbers whose stated strategy is to infiltrate and exploit the coercive power of government.”
Montvert was right. Despite its implied but halfhearted tradition of separating church from state, the U.S. never made an honest effort to protect against the intrusion of religion into the body politic. The recent past had seen religion woven more deeply into the fabric of governance than ever before. Although the U.S. Constitution guarantees the non-involvement of government in religion, it has spinelessly failed to hinder religion from muscling in on the affairs of state. Such laissez-faire, absent in modern France, Montvert had warned, could lead to theocratic control.
The fundamental weakness of democracy, my old friend had often protested, is that it tolerates in its very bosom the existence and propagation of undemocratic principles. With the right checks and balances, he had argued, and unrelenting vigilance, despotic ideas could be deflected. All would be lost if those who chip away at the civil liberties that democracy grants them are the very people sworn to protect the nation, by example, against the erosion of treasured constitutional rights.
De Ravaillac, like all the self-anointed moralizers who find a haven in Opus Dei, sees no conflict in a Golden Rule that also makes room for the persecution of “heretics.” His sadomasochism can be traced to a straitlaced upbringing. He owes his iron will -- or is it his fixation with martyrdom -- to a stoic lot, an ancient family with an emblazoned past, now governed by retired French Navy Commander Clovis Godefroy de Ravaillac, his father -- whom Hubert still calls “sir” -- and his mother, Clothilde Dieudonnée de Ravaillac, a woman of exceptional beauty in her youth, now fending off the ravages of sun and tropics with heavy makeup and triple gins and tonic. Hubert, their only offspring (more by accident than choice) quickly learns to manage the lovelessness of his upper crust milieu “like a man,” a lesson further beaten into him with his parents’ consent by Jesuit bullies at the Collège Sainte Croix, where his dormant bisexuality is awakened and indulged.
Outside of its own doctrinaire circle of followers and fans, Opus Dei has a dappled reputation, mostly bad. Andrew Greeley, the eminent American Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and best-selling author, has described it as
“a devious, antidemocratic, reactionary, semi-fascist institution, desperately famished for absolute dominion in the Church and quite possibly very close now to having that power.”
Calling the elite group, “authoritarian and power-mad,” Greeley warns that
“Opus Dei is an extremely dangerous organization because it appeals to the love of secrecy and the power lust of certain kinds of religious personalities. It may well be the most powerful group in the Church today. It is capable of doing an enormous amount of harm. It ought to be forced out of the shadows or suppressed.”
Opus Dei has about one million members worldwide. At least 2,000 are ordained priests. With this international cohort of dedicated warriors, Opus Dei has successfully penetrated schools and universities, banks, publishing firms, television and radio stations, ad agencies and film companies. It has been accused of deceptive and aggressive recruitment practices, including “love bombing” -- the deliberate and syrupy show of affection by an individual or group as a tool of conscription or conversion -- and instructing celibate members to form friendships, attend social gatherings and submit written reports on potential converts.
The core precept of Opus Dei is “to help shape the world in a Catholic manner.” Helpers include clergy, captains of industry, high-ranking military officers and government officials. The group “comes surrounded by a political miasma,” the British daily, The Guardian, noted recently. The super-stealthy organization was founded just before the Spanish Civil War and blossomed in the halcyon Catholic days of El Caudillo, fascist dictator Francisco Franco’s “crusade” against the Republican left. When Opus Dei came to prominence in the late 1960s it was because Franco’s cabinet included an inordinate number of Opusdeistas -- too many to be the result of coincidence.
For Father Hubert, whose passion for Christ calls for no less than the repeal of Laïcité -- the scrupulously enforced separation of Church and State in France -- membership in Opus Dei arms him with special and far-reaching powers. But the organization’s militancy, in his opinion, does not quite match his own God-driven longing to cleanse the world of heretics and deliver sinful, rudderless humanity, by force if necessary, into Christ’s loving arms. He seeks and is granted entry into the Knights of Malta, a closed fraternity of the Roman Catholic Church whose upper tier members are fastidiously aristocratic. De Ravaillac, an extremist whose family tree goes back at least 400 years and which includes a reviled regicide, meets or exceeds the Knights’ rigorous standards for admission. They consider him quite a “prize catch.”
The 900-year-old organization was formerly known as the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of the Saints John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta. Modeled after an ancient group of soldier-monks who massacred “infidels,” (Muslims, Jews and Cathars) Knights of Malta, ceremonies and rituals “inculcate lessons of chivalry and courage, and inspire a militant spirit in opposition to all non-Christian ideologies and powers.” With over 10,000 members in 42 countries, the Knights are influential Vatican surrogates with extensive ties to right-wing intelligence networks.
Originally programmed to be ruthless tactical fighters, later adopting a fiercely anti-communist stance, the Knights were instrumental in the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency. They also took part in U.S. global “black” (covert) operations. The founding fathers of the CIA, William “Wild Bill” Donovan and Allen Dulles, the longest-serving CIA director, were Knights, as were many in the CIA hierarchy, including JFK’s director, John McCone and Ronald Reagan’s director, William Casey. McCone helped engineer the 1973 military coup against Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. According to journalist Carl Bernstein, Casey gave Pope John Paul II unparalleled access to CIA intelligence, including data on spy satellites and field operatives.
There is compelling evidence that the Knights of Malta were linked to the “Rat Run,” the post-World War II getaway route used by Nazi top brass and death camp “scientists” from defeated Germany to the Americas. These thugs were issued new identities and special credentials that ensured escape from prosecution for crimes against humanity. One of them, Major General Reinhard Gehlen, a devout Catholic and legendary Cold War spymaster, surrendered to the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps in 1945. Because of his experience and useful contacts in the Soviet Union, he was freed, as were seven of his senior officers, in exchange for their pledge to gather intelligence for the United States. Flown to Washington, Gehlen went to work for Donovan and Dulles, then the Office of Strategic Services station chief in Switzerland. Gehlen handed over the names of several OSS officers who were members of the U.S. Communist Party.
A year later, Gehlen was flown back to Germany where he resumed his spy work, this time as a lackey of the U.S. He set up a dummy organization composed of 350 former German intelligence officers. That number eventually grew to 4,000. For many years, the “V-men,” (V-mann or Vertrauensmann -- trusted man) as they were known, were the eyes and ears of the CIA in Western Europe and the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Recruited among men who had as little culture, common sense, objectivity or logic as possible, they were used primarily to maintain surveillance of civilian populations in Germany and occupied countries.
