Sunday, September 17, 2006
FURTHER THOUGHTS ON OPUS ANGELORUM
I have had a particular devotion to St. Michael for a number of years. It is for that reason, in addition to my interest in the occult as it has impacted the Church, that Opus Angelorum has my attention.
Three issues of "Fidelity" magazine (E. Michael Jones) covered OA - July/August 1991, July/August 1992, and September 1992. I now have a copy of each of these articles. Charges made by the writer, Inge Bluemel, are essentially those contained in "The Tablet" article plus some additional concerns and comments.
In the earliest article, July/August 1991, Bluemel charges that in retreats and days of recollection sponsored by OA:
...the unsuspecting faithful are led more and more deeply into a spirituality which is quasi-Masonic in its degree-based structure--from the promise to the guardian angel at the lower end to the angelic consecration in the middle to the consecration of atonement at the upper level. The goal is to become an "alter angelus".
The article claims that OA uses a book called the "Kalendarium" which assigns a particular angel to each day and includes the angel's name, the color of the angel's robes, its special task and tools. Giving an example of one entry from this book, the author writes "...the Seraphim possess as a reflection of the divine Trinity three heads." She also claims that OA places the Kalendarium on the same level as the New Testament and call it "a continuation of the New Testament for our times." She also says that the spiritual advice one gets on retreats is that "it is important to dust thoroughly because demons are at home in dust", among other things.
I looked for a Kalendarium online. There is one mentioned in the Catholic Encyclopedia under the heading "Feast of Guardian Angels", but it concerns the Calendar of saints and only mentions one feast day of the angels. No names are included in the entry other than the familiar angelic names from Scripture.
I did find a website that gives extensive information and names about angels contained in two webpages, here and here. I also found the source of those two webpages--a website devoted to Multiple Personality Disorder. The webmaster also manages Mind Control Forums. Hmmm.
Frankly I have only skimmed through the website, but that was enough to determine that it contains the sort of information about angels that is mentioned in the "Fidelity" article.
Returning to the article, Bluemel claims that at a later stage in development the retreatant is presented the "radiation doctrine", and explains that "Some regions are inhabited by the so-called Diaradiators, namely, people who devote themselves to Black Magic so that demons can radiate through these people in order to cause damage." Midwives are also classed as Diaradiators.
Bluemel claims that the Bishop of Augsburg granted permission to print the "Kalendarium" in 1976, but subsequently withdrew the permission.
In 1983, Cardinal Ratzinger
demanded that 1) in promoting devotion to the holy angels the OA had to submit to the teaching of the Church, 2) that they were forbidden to promulgate any cult of the holy angels which made use of names which came from the writings of Mutter Bitterlich, 3) that they could not require of their members an oath of silence, and 4) that they had to adhere strictly to all liturgical norms, particularly those forbidding the reception of communion several times on one day.
The article indicates that
In 1986 quite by chance the until-then top-secret "Handbook of the Demons" fell into the hand of Church authorities, who had been kept unaware of its existence. As a result of this discovery, Cardinal Ratzinger commissioned the German dogmatic theologian Prof. Johann Auer to do a new study of the OA. The upshot of this study was that in 1988 the German Bishops Conference recommended that measures be taken against the OA, which in turn lead to an administrative order by Cardinal Wetter of the Diocese of Munich, which was followed by statements from other dioceses.
In 1990 the entire Austrian Bishops Conference issued a statement condemning the erroneous teachings of the OA.
The article further indicates that Cdl. Ratzinger commissioned theologian Johann Auer to study the OA. Among his findings: "illogical confusion in these writings by reference to similar phenomena in the Cabala", "the entire thought of the OA is traceable to paranoid schizophrenia," and "the writings lack all rationality."
Also cited is an article from the September 1990 issue of "Theologisches", a conservative German Catholic magazine, in which Fr. J.P.M. van der Ploeg, O.P., a Dominican theologian at the University of Nijmegen in Holland, accused the OA of
attempting to introduce into the Church a teaching on the angels
that is bound up with superstition and the occult, and of doing it as far as possible from the public eye and only in secret among the initiated. ...It is especially for this reason that the teaching of the OA, which is intended only for esoteric circles, is a danger to the Church.
This issue of "Fidelity" also contains the "Church Pronouncements on the Opus Angelorum" including the "Letter of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, to Joseph Cardinal Hoeffner, Archbishop of Cologne, September 24, 1983", the "Declaration of Friedrich Cardinal Wetter, Archbishop of Munich-Freising, March 25, 1988", the "Declaration of His Excellency Reinhold Stecker, Archbishop of Innsbruck, March 1990", and the "Declaration of the Austrian Bishops' conference, April 6, 1991".
That is the gist of the concerns expressed in Inge Bluemel's article in "Fidelity" magazine, July/August, 1991. I'll pick up the high points from "Fidelity" July/August 1992 tomorrow.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
