University of Cambridge
Vocations to the Secular: An Ethnography of the Men's Branch of Opus Dei Britain
Abstract
dc:description.abstractOpus Dei is a Roman Catholic organisation founded by Josemaría Escrivá in Spain, 1928. The group preaches the “sanctification of ordinary life,” which means members practice their faith within the milieus and roles they inherit and inhabit in social life. Their ordinary lives are a calling – a vocation – from God, and they understand living, working, and praying intentionally and virtuously as forms of religious praise. The group is split between a men’s and a women’s branch, though they teach the same doctrines in both, and consider each other as equals within what they call the “family” of Opus Dei. Opus Dei arrived in the UK in 1947 and slowly established a small footing in the world of English Catholicism. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork primarily in London, my thesis illustrates male members’ experiences within the organisation’s local and global structure. I document how a vocation to Opus Dei entails the dedication of one’s life to the sanctification of one’s ordinary life through self-disciplinary regimes of piety and the structures of a spiritual family, which demand commitment to specific social relations within the group. In this thesis, I argue the struggle of sanctifying ordinary life expresses itself in various unresolved tensions – those between work and prayer, the religious and secular, and freedom and hierarchy – and that these tensions are inherent to the ideologies and practices of Opus Dei. The thesis covers the structural components that compose a vocation to Opus Dei in three broad arcs. The first arc chronicles an expansion in the Roman Catholic Church’s understanding of *opus Dei* as monastic liturgy, into the concept of Opus Dei as a liturgical ethos in ordinary life. The next arc details the necessary hierarchical relationships established in Opus Dei and how they relate to members’ vocations. Lastly, the final arc describes how Opus Dei institutionally reproduces itself through the mobilisation of its members’ life forces.
Degree
thesis:*- Name dc:type.qualificationname
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
- Doctoral
- Grantor dc:publisher.institution
- University of Cambridge
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2024
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Ngo, Hoa Francisco
- Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
-
- Laidlaw, James
Subjects
dc:subject × 6Rights
dc:rightsIdentifiers
dc:identifier.*- DOI dc:identifier.doi
- https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.111446
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/372573