Talk:Opus Dei

GA Reassessment

Opus Dei

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delisted (t · c) buidhe 02:56, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I have started this reassessment proposal not because I have any ill will towards the article as is, but because it has been 13 years since it passed its GA nom and thought it prudent for the community to reassess its state. My rationale for reassessment is as follows:

• It lacks enough depth discussing the highly publicized role it had in Franco's government, especially its war crimes and unique legal procedures
• The history section is quite short.
• The criticism section reads more like a "he-said/she-said" (MOS:WEASEL). While I can understand how this balance of statements would help preserve neutrality, I personally feel that dividing the criticism sections into supporters and opponents rather than topic-by-topic means that the reader will not be able to gain a coherent understanding of the controversies surrounding Opus. By this I mean that the current section just floods the reader with various opinions and perspectives, meaning there is an overall sense of conflict but no actual understanding. For example, if the section was divided into:
  • Secrecy
  • Membership rules
  • Recruitment practices
  • Sexual abuse
  • Collaboration with dictatorships
  • etc.

it would be much better.

• The members proposed for beatification part does not feel very relevant to the main article. I believe it should be linked within the history or spirituality sections.
• Not going to lie I think the organization of the article makes for immensely dense reading.
• The relations with catholic leaders should be in my opinion part of the history section. See point above.

Please do reply with your thoughts on the matter. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 16:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

• I have been looking at the past GA history of this article and wanted to add the following text by Geometry guy from Wikipedia:Good_article_reassessment/Archive_33#Opus_Dei:

• Controversy sections are not a great idea at the best of times: when they are of the form "Criticism - Rebuttal" they are particularly unhelpful at achieving NPOV.
• WP:NPOV is, in my opinion, one of the most misunderstood of Wikipedia policies. I have said this here many times before: NPOV is not primarily achieved via a contest between pro- and anti- viewpoints, it is primarily achieved by writing and structuring the entire article from a neutral perspective.

While I dont necessarily agree with the first comment, I think their points are important to consider in this discussion.A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 16:58, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

• Another important point I forgot to mention is the COI of major contributors to the article, especially Marax (15% authorship, second biggest), Lafem (7.2% authorship, 3rd biggest), Walter Ching (5.5% authorship, 4th biggest), Arturo Cruz (3.3% authorship, 6th biggest), StatutesMan (2.7%, 9th biggest), and so on. Just these examples alone (definitely not all the COI or possible WP:Sockpuppet edits) account for over a third of all authorship to the article.

In regards to account just for text-added percentage, Thomas S. Major, IP 1, IP 2 plus the users mentioned above account for 62.3% of added text.

This is positively insane. I have never seen such a massive COI situation. I honestly don't even know what to do. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 17:13, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah I feel your frustration A.C. Santacruz... If I may paraphrase my thoughts when I first looked into the situation “F*cking hell thats a lot of COI.” Like you my conclusion is I honestly don't even know what to do. I personally don’t have the time to rewrite this clusterf*ck of a page and I’m genuinely concerned that I may have inadvertently killed Lafem by taking them to task so taking the rest to task is not high on my to do list. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:34, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

• • Question What is the basis of the conflict if interest? Are these editors known members of Opus Dei? –Zfish118^⋉talk 19:03, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
    • Zfish118 Some are (members of Parents for Education) while others' only editing activity is within Opus Dei-related articles.A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 19:30, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

These COI seem minor at worst, especially if the content is otherwise acceptable. From a GAR perspective, however, I agree the article is not really there as noted below. –Zfish118^⋉talk 14:57, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Zfish118: A._C._Santacruz linked the wrong group, its actually Parents for Education Foundation so there is a very real and significant COI issue here. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 12:11, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

• Delist: I agree with most of the issues previously stated about the article, particularly that controversy section should be arranged by topic, rather than defenders and detractors. Without substantial revisions to this section, the article cannot stay listed as GAR. Procedure wise, I don't see any substantial edits between the article being delisted in December 2007, and being relisted four months later in March 2008. If nothing improved after delisting, relisting would have been inappropriate. However the December 2007 decision appears to have been closed early before a consensus was reach, making it easy to challenge and reinstate. Other issues of concern I see: the list of members proposed for beatification should be limited to those where a case was formally opened by relevant bishop, and the list should include the date the case was opened and by whom. Otherwise it should be renamed as notable members, as many have an article (whether those articles are appropriate, I have not assessed). A list of canonized and beatified members would be appropriate as well, as it is a Catholic organization. The "Relations with Catholic leaders" section reads like a list of endorsements, with little substance. The history section is also weak, and redundant to the above list of proposed beauti. One notable issue is the claim that members were responsible for "babynapping". Such a serious accusation needs multiple citations and better explanation of relevance. –Zfish118^⋉talk 14:57, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

References

Members proposed for sainthood

The Focolare movement has a good section on its members who have been proposed for sainthood. A similar section here would be great. Here's the Focolare example. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focolare_Movement 2600:4040:279C:2700:6C00:5E7A:8D15:832D (talk) 02:42, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I think this would be a wonderful idea. It would also help clean up the "Post-foundational years" section that is supposed to be a section under "History". In its present form, the section mentions (lists) various individual members of Opus Dei, but does little to explain the history of the institution as such. Moving some of these names to a separate section alleviate this problem. Zosima13 (talk) 19:34, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Problems with Opus, first person testimony

Opus Dei Awareness Network https://odan.org/ Murphy1492 (talk) 22:57, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

What is striking about this Awareness Network is its dubious content for the following reason: their testimonies come mostly from 2003-2006 (1 from 1998) and therefor are pretty outdated and limited in scope of contributed years and contributions, considering the website has been started in 1998. The website pretends to offer more testimonies in other languages, but those are dead links or links to game sites. On the maintenance of this website, the owner placed a newsletter in 2016. This source/website is dubious to me. Deomglor (talk) 07:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Changing the order of the "criticism" and "Supporting views" sections

Is there any reason why the supporting view section is mentioned first? Normally, the criticism is brought up first, and then the counter-arguments are presented.

If no convincing arguments are presented within the next few days, I will rearrange them.

Ideally, however, the entire criticism sections needs to be rewritten and joined together. If anyone has the time and expertise to do so, go ahead. Arsaces (talk) 18:52, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the criticism sections need to be rewritten. Also, some points that arise in other parts of the article should be moved to this section. This would make it easier to identify what the main criticisms are instead of running into them in various other sections of the article. Zosima13 (talk) 19:28, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

IP spam adding Opus to Sect

Just wanted to notify, a random IP has been adding Opus and other groups to the Sect page. The same IP that added it to this page a while back. Ncwfl (talk) 17:51, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Bad paragraph in the lede

People, myself included, have attempted remove this poorly written, poorly placed paragraph in the lede multiple times. There is no reason for it to be there. Let us take it out. IronicUsername44 (talk) 20:43, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

"The Catholic News Agency website published on 26 August 2024, a report headlined "Opus Dei prelate responds to those who consider group 'conservative powerful and secretive.'" The prelate pointed out in the article; "the main contribution of Opus Dei is to accompany the laity [98% of its members] so that they can be protagonists of the evangelizing mission of the Church in the midst of the world, one by one."

I agree it is WP:UNDUE in the lead. DN (talk) 23:21, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Rewrite?

It seems to me that this article needs to be rewritten and reorganized. The lede, for example, does not clearly explain what Opus Dei is, nor what its mission is. Instead, it goes into detail about its juridical approvals and governance structure. Other sections are a hodgepodge of disparate pieces of information loosely gathered together into sections. The "post-foundational" sub-section of the "History" section, for example, contains information about its becoming a personal prelature, then goes on to talk about various members, and controversies without any apparent narrative structure. It also focuses on specific events of individual members instead of the history of the institution as such. The section on "Relations with Catholic leaders" seems to be more a list of endorsements that does not add much factual content. Similarly, the section "Controversy" seems like a list of complaints and counter complaints that mention potentially controversial topics, but does little to elaborate, contextualize, or explain the background of these charges. A similar critique in the other direction can be made with regard to the "Other views" section. So, it seems to me that if we want some clear information about Opus Dei, this article needs to be rethought, rewritten, and reorganized. I would like to know others' opinions about this and suggestions of what a rewritten article would look like (I have some ideas of my own, but it would be helpful to get others' perspectives as well). Zosima13 (talk) 19:23, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I would advise against rewriting the page, I don't think you are the editor for the job (nor am I convinced that this is a job that actually needs to be done). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:12, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Proposed new lede (just first sentence)

Hello, I changed the first sentence of the lede to the following, but it was reverted either because it was "promotional" or "unreliable source" or both (sorry, couldn't figure it out. I thought it was an improvement over the current sentence. So, I would like to know what was wrong with it. Here's my proposed text.

Opus Dei, formally known as Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei, is an institution of the Catholic Church founded in 1928 by Josemaría Escrivá in Spain. Its name, Opus Dei, means "Work of God" in Latin and its mission centers on helping ordinary Christians seek holiness in everyday life, particularly through their work and daily routines.[ref: John Paul II, Apostolic constitution Ut sit, November 28, 1992]

Per WP:LEAD, the lead should summarize the article and not introduce new points that's not in the article already. The current 2nd sentence replicates the mission stated in the article and cited to Escrivá. I don't see what you want to say in the article. And why is that what you want to say is better? You might have thought it was an improvement but the WP:ONUS is on you to persuade others why it is. You haven't done that. I don't see it. DeCausa (talk) 22:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. DN (talk) 23:00, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Lede: supporters and critics

Another paragraph I think would be helpful for the lede is this.

I would change the current sentence that says: While Opus Dei has met controversies, it has strong support from Catholic leadership.

To something like the following that fleshes it out a bit more, but doesn't go into details (and can be explained in later sections):

The organization has received both support and criticism over the years. Supporters appreciate its emphasis on living out their Christian faith in the world, rather than retreating from it, which aligns with their desire to be active participants in society while maintaining strong Christian values. Critics, on the other hand, view some of its practices are overly strict and accuse it seeking to power and influence through secretive and manipulative means. Zosima13 (talk) 22:39, 21 November 2024 (UTC)