Opus Dei

A new doctrinal outline in the "Summaries of Catholic Teaching" series. Many people have found these helpful for getting to know the Catholic faith better and explaining it to others.

Opus Dei's work of spiritual formation complements the work of local churches. People who join Opus Dei or attend its activities continue to belong to their local dioceses.

God wished to manifest himself as a personal Being through the history of salvation. He raised up and guided a people to be the custodian of his revealed word. Through that people he prepared the world for the Incarnation of his Word, Jesus Christ.

Christ instituted the sacrament of Penance to offer us a new possibility of converting and recovering, after Baptism, the grace of justification

Grace “is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1999).

The virtue of faith is a supernatural virtue that enables us to assent firmly to all that God has revealed.

The liturgy is an “action of God” that unites us to Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit (cf. "Sacramentum Caritatis," no. 37).

“God himself is the author of marriage.” The intimate conjugal union between a man and a woman is sacred, and is structured according to laws established by the Creator and independent of human choice.

The God we come to know through faith and reason is "spiritual, transcendent, omnipotent, eternal, personal, and perfect. He is truth and love."

The sacrament of Holy Orders confers a participation in Christ’s priesthood. The ministerial priesthood is essentially distinct from the common priesthood of the faithful.