Joe, you're right that the church has sometimes tried to hold Opus Dei at bay. In the UK, Cardinal Hume took that as his cue to put out strongly worded advice about anyone contemplating membership. Similarly with far more extremist cults such as the Neocatechumenate, which has broken up and destroyed many families both here in the UK and elsewhere.

Unfortunately John Paul II has become increasingly accommodating, and even openly supportive, of these factions - possibly driven by desperation a few years ago, with the catastrophic fall in vocations. There could hardly have been a stronger signal of support for Opus Dei than the canonising of its controversial founder. Hume's successor has had the ground cut from under him. A Neocatechumenate parish openly flourishes in central London and London now has its first Opus Dei parish.

By your own account it seems the Catholic church is willing to accommodate, and pussy-foot around, people who see nothing wrong with what was done in the name of that church in (for instance) Croatia, Bosnia and Slovakia. Under the watch of John Paul II it has degenerated into a miasma of authoritarian rule on the one hand, and hypocritical compromise on the other. Surely its critics are entitled to heap approbrium on this wretched institution without being accused of bigotry.