Opus Dei’s Influence on Project 2025

By Betty Clermont | 2 September 2024
The Open Tabernacle

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts discusses Project 2025 at the RNC. (Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

Project 2025 is a terrifying blueprint for America if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.

“It has been reported, though denied, that internal Project 2025 discussions have centered around the next conservative president invoking the Insurrection Act on the first day in office to allow the military to quell civil unrest,” the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism reported.

The report continues:

Project 2025 “would dismantle much of the federal government” and “claims to already be recruiting and training those who would replace career civil servants with conservative warriors.”

“It would end attempts to enhance equity and racial justice throughout the government and shut down agencies that track progress on this front.”

The Department of Education would be eliminated because “bureaucrats at the Department inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms.”

“Efforts to tackle issues such as climate change would be ended, and politicized research produced to back the project’s views on environmental policy.”

“It would strip rights protections from LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, women, and people of color. The evils of ‘transgenderism,’ and women’s healthcare would take priority.”

The executive branch would “impose on all Americans policies favored by Christian nationalists regarding issues such as sexual health and reproductive rights, education, the family, and the role of religion in our society and government.”

“Even if a Project 2025 favorite doesn’t win in 2024, this plan will continue to drive the thinking of the far right into the future and they will continue to push for these changes wherever possible,” the report concluded.

Project 2025’s Architect is Guided by Opus Dei

“Kevin Roberts gained notoriety this year as the leading force behind Project 2025,” a plan to “end diversity programs and increasing government support for ‘fertility awareness’ programs, like ovulation tracking and practicing periodic abstinence, instead of more reliable contraception,” The Guardian reported on July 26, 2024.

The Guardian stated:

Roberts, the architect of Project 2025, “has close ties and receives regular spiritual guidance from an Opus Dei-led center in Washington DC, a hub of activity for the radical and secretive Catholic group.”

“Roberts acknowledged in a speech last September that – for years – he has visited the Catholic Information Center, a K Street institution headed by an Opus Dei priest and incorporated by the archdiocese of Washington, on a weekly basis for mass and ‘formation’, or religious guidance.”

“In the speech which he delivered at the CIC and was recorded and is available online – Roberts spoke candidly about his strategy for achieving extreme policy goals that he supports …. Outlawing birth control is the ‘hardest’ political battle facing conservatives in the future, the 50-year-old political strategist said, but he urged conservatives to pursue even small legislative victories – what he called ‘radical incrementalism’ – to advance their most rightwing policy objectives.”

Opus Dei is not just about making sure the Catholic Church’s official anti-abortion, anti-birth control and anti-LGBTQ+ positions are passed into law.

“They are secretive, so while they are not [outwardly] part of this [Project 2025] per se, it is not surprising at all that some of their members are part of it. They see this moment in politics – and the possibility of allowing ‘woke ideology’ to win – as fundamentally changing the nature of America, western civilization and Christianity,” Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, told The Guardian.

At the top, Opus Dei “is an efficient machine run to achieve world power,” investigative reporter Penny Lernoux wrote in her book People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism.

“Opus Dei uses the Catholic Church for its own ends which are money and power …. Its members form a transnational elite. They seek to colonize the summits of power.’” Robert Hutchison wrote in the introduction to his book, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei.

“Opus Dei is a powerful, secretive organization with members in political, economic, and Church leadership throughout the world. But what is nowhere exposed – because it isn’t even perceived as a problem – is Opus Dei’s unabashed encouragement of intense economic and political ambition,” Robin Morgan, whose 1970 anthology  Sisterhood Is Powerful, was cited by the New York Public Library as “One of the 100 most influential Books of the 20th Century,” wrote on Sept. 26, 2022.

In her article “Pulling Back the Curtain: Opus Dei,” Morgan states that Opus Dei also controls the Vatican. “The sovereignty of the Holy See – the name of government of both Vatican City State and worldwide Church – provides criminal and civil immunity from any other authority to Vatican residents and officials.”

“While we worry about ‘dark money’ and SuperPACs, the Catholic Church can move unlimited funds – foreign and domestic – to think-tanks, media, voter suppression efforts, and every other means available to subvert democracy,” Morgan reports.

Opus Dei can hide funds that are the source of its power because “the Church has roughly 5,000 prelates around the world who are heads of dioceses. Each has the capacity for hidden bank accounts, investments, slush funds named for a phony charity or foundation. Under the guise of ‘freedom of religion,’ those prelates in industrialized countries operate with no governmental oversight. In the U.S., there are 195 dioceses, and the bishops control around 40,000 organizations, agencies and foundations each with a 501(c)(3) tax code,” Morgan notes.

In the U.S., Opus Dei also has a 501(c)(3) tax code because it is classified as a “religious organization.” “That means they pay no taxes, provide a tax deduction to their donors, and have no legal obligation to produce financial statements showing truthfully where their money comes from or goes,” per Morgan.

Opus Dei already controls the Supreme Court of the United States.

The power of Opus Dei should not be underestimated.

“The current Supreme Court was built by The Federalist Society, with its ‘interlocking nonprofits working on media campaigns and other initiatives generating public support for conservative judges,’ all coordinated by Leonard Leo, according to a report in The Washington Post,” Morgan states.

“This has been going on for years, even pre-Trump. The extremely powerful man who forwarded five names to the Senate for approval as Supreme Court justices was Leonard Leo, a self-declared Opus Dei operative. Leo was also the executive vice president of The Federalist Society, and Chair of the Board of Directors of the CIC (which, by the way, is two blocks from the White House). Leo hits every base. All this is a matter of record,” reported Morgan.

“The 2010 SCOTUS ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission reversed century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections. The 5–4 majority in favor of Citizens United were the same Catholic justices who gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013: Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito. As for the decision that overturned Roe . . .” Morgan wrote.

“Writing the 2008 majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, Justice Antonin Scalia … found that the Second Amendment supports an individual right to possess guns …. A series of Supreme Court decisions since Heller has reaffirmed this broad understanding of gun rights under the Constitution. As a result, legislatures seeking to pass gun control measures for public safety purposes have seen their options shrink sharply,” the supreme.justia.com website noted. (emphasis mine.)

“In a shocking and lawless opinion, the Supreme Court granted presidents broad protections from criminal prosecution for ‘official acts’ they undertake while in office. This ruling from the Court’s conservative supermajority pulls a new constitutional rule from thin air. And it raises daunting, unjustifiable barriers to criminally prosecuting lawbreaking presidents. Trump is now positioned to renew his push to dismiss the charges against him and evade accountability for the grave crimes he’s accused of committing against our democracy. The Court has left the rule of law in tatters — even as it looks the other way,” the Brennan Center for Justice wrote on July 2, 2024.

“The Supreme Court is taking aim at the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to stop pollution and curb climate change – even in cases that don’t directly involve the agency. In one of the biggest cases this term, the justices struck down the Chevron doctrine, a powerful legal tool that for 40 years had helped federal regulators defend their rules in court. The high court also reached out through its emergency docket to halt EPA controls on smog-forming pollution that wafts across state lines,” E&ENEWS by Politico reported on July 3, 2024

“The decisions built upon prior losses for EPA in major climate and water cases over the last two years, as well as other rulings this term that tamped down the authority of federal regulators to craft rules for the rest of the nation to follow.

The Supreme Court has already added two significant environmental cases to its calendar, and conservative justices are signaling interest in revisiting the long-dormant nondelegation doctrine, which says Congress can’t hand off too much power to executive agencies,” the report continued.

Recall that the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism report warned us:

“Even if a Project 2025 favorite doesn’t win in 2024, this plan will continue to drive the thinking of the far right into the future and they will continue to push for these changes wherever possible.”

VOTE – OUR ONLY PROTECTION

Our only protection against the terrifying changes proposed by Project 2025 is to vote against the world envisaged by Opus Dei and their allies, not only for president but also to make sure all the Democratic down-ballot candidates are elected to Congress.

Reprinted with permission from the author.

Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America (Clarity Press, 2009).

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