Charles Kineke recalls the first time he went on a retreat with Opus Dei.

The Annapolis graduate and former F-14 fighter pilot had attended some evening meetings sponsored by the group -- whose name means "Work of God" -- when a friend asked him if he'd like to go on a four-day mostly "silent" retreat at Opus Dei's Arnold Hall in a Boston suburb.

It turned out to be a great experience, he says. People prayed and listened to a Catholic priest talk about how to practice virtue and bring one's faith into daily life. But after two days, the friend who invited Kineke on the retreat, told him, "I'm exhausted from all these prayers. Let's go out and get a beer."

So they did just that, as the retreat continued..

Not bad, not bad at all, thought Kineke, who had first learned about Opus Dei from a "friend of a friend" in his wife's home schooling network.

The retreat mirrored the meetings, known as "evenings of recollection," that he had attended over several months at St. Sebastian Church in Providence . There too, under the auspices of Opus Dei, men would come together to pray, meditate and listen to an Opus Dei priest or layman talk about an aspect of the faith before heading downtown to sing and drink beer at an Irish pub.

"I said to myself, 'this Opus Dei stuff is great. You pray some, you drink beer, sing songs and hang out with the guys. And my wife thinks it's good because I'm going out to pray, which is what she wants me to do. It doesn't get better than this.' "

Kineke acknowledges that his experience is quite different from the image of Opus Dei presented by critics whose accusations have been given new life these last few years by Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The novel, whose film version is set to open this Friday, portrays the group as a dark and sinister organization whose members flagellate themselves and will stop at nothing, not even murder, to carry out their agenda.

Most critics don't go that far, but some liberal Catholics argue that Opus Dei -- founded in 1928 by Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, a Spanish priest who was canonized four years ago by Pope John Paul II -- is an elitist organization that denigrates women. They suggest that the group's emphasis on achieving holiness through prayer and discipline could lead to religious extremism.

As with other Opus Dei members, Kineke thinks the charges about the group, which they refer to as "the Work" are off base.

'You hear stories about people being pressured to join the Work. When I tried to join, it was the direct opposite."

Kineke, a senior vice president at Citizens Bank, said he was so impressed with what he had seen on the retreat and days of recollection that he approached Robert Sylvain, who directs Opus Dei's Mathewson House on Providence's East Side, to say he wanted to join.

"He told me, not so fast, that I couldn't just join, because Opus Dei is a calling. I had to come in for a chat every week or so for four months before I was even invited. Even then, I had to go through a catechism of the faith and 18 months of (spiritual) formation. It was great for me because even though I was born and raised Catholic there was a lot of stuff I didn't know."

WITH 85,000 members worldwide, and about 3,000 in the United States, Opus Dei describes itself as an international lay Catholic group whose main focus is the sanctification of people's ordinary lives, including their work. Members say Father Escriva's great insight was that being a saint is not the province of a few, but the universal destiny of every Christian. The priest taught that holiness can be lived out in one's everyday life.

Toward that end, its members -- both married and unmarried -- commit themselves to a "plan of life," a daily regimen that includes a morning offering, a half hour of prayer, recitation of the Rosary, an examination of conscience and attendance at Mass, as well as frequent confession -- as a step toward holiness and bringing God into their homes and workplaces.

By Richard Dujardin, The Providence Journal