Opus Angelorum, An Old Satanic Heresy
In
Because
I know that people will not easily change from one article to another web site,
I include his article here, but advise people to visit the Fidelity web site
each and every week for in depth defense of the faith and well written and
documented articles. 
If this document does not scare people enough to be very careful about following every self-proclaimed seer in the world, I would simply say that people do not use their God given intelligence and deserve what might happen to them in the future. What happened to Elizabeth Huber has happened to many others involved in other false apparitions but I have already written about that.
Richard Salbato
The following article is taken from the Fidelity archives and written by Father J.P.M. vandere Ploeg, O.P.
http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/Archives/Fidelity_archives/OA2.html
An Old Jewish
Sect and the “Work of the Holy Angels”
by Father J.P.M. van der Ploeg, O.P.
In early September of 1991,
a 26 year old women by the name of Elizabeth
Huber was discovered wandering through the woods not far from the Austrian
Headquarters of the Opus Angelorum
(Work of the Holy Angels) near Innsbruck.
She had spent the week in the woods, burying herself, according to her
own report, under a pile of stones, to escape from the curse of an Opus
Angelorum priest as well as “the demons
of the Opus Angelorum.” Huber had
lost weight and was in a state of exhaustion, disorientation and anxiety when
discovered; however, in a few days she related some of the details of her
“retreat” at the headquarters of the Opus Angelorum and what had driven her to
flee.
The retreat took place
in a cabin in the forest. Elizabeth and
the other participants were repeatedly asked for dates when departed relatives
had died and told repeatedly of their connection with the dead souls in the
fires of Purgatory. Huber also noticed
strange sights and sounds in her room at night.
After inspecting the room she found gas jets which filled the room with
the odors of fragrant oils and incense.
During the night Huber also heard screams. By the time morning came, Huber had had
enough. Shortly after the gates to the
compound were opened, she fled into the forest and disappeared. When the local newspaper, after hearing of
her disappearance, called the OA headquarters, it was told that the OA people
had never heard of her, a fact registered in the records of the local police.
It was a scenario right
out of a cheap remake of an Edgar Allen Poe story, and the local press gave
maximal attention to all of its Gothic details.
The
Two days after the
story broke, the local ordinary of the diocese of Innsbruck, Bishop Reinhold Stecher, pressed Rome for a quick decision on the OA,
complaining that the OA had still not responded to his demand that they
distance themselves from all teachings on angels not sanctioned by the
Church.
Stecher reminded Catholics that the OA had been
forbidden any use of Church facilities in his diocese. The liberal Catholic press in
In neighboring
See Notes on Gnostic and Jewish
Sects below.
In a most remarkable way the doctrine of the permanent
struggle of angles against devils as the determining factor of human history
has been revived in our time in the “Work
of the Holy Angels” or Opus Angelorum
(OA) and its under-cover organization, the “Regular Canons of the Holy
Cross.” This order, of which St. Anthony
of
Gabriela Bitterlich (l896-1978), an Austrian widow, can be
considered the foundress of the OA. Her
father was a distinguished public servant, called Bernhard Gohnert,
and in l919 she married on Dr. Hans Bitterlich, a lawyer and civil
servant. At the time of his marriage, he
was a free-thinker, much interested in things like spiritism
and all kinds of occultism. In his later
years he became a practicing Catholic.
In l932, when Gabriela expected a child, he did not want it and informed
her that she should procure an abortion.
The abortion eventually happened, when at the request of her husband,
Gabriela lifted a stature too heavy for her.
The husband was delighted, Gabriela sad.
Gabriela was no stranger to visitations from beyond. When she was only four years old, she saw her
guardian angel. Her little brother had
locked her up somewhere in the house, and she could not free herself. Suddenly, according to her testimony, a huge
angel stood before her and unlocked the door!
In later times other angel’s appeared to her, and in l934 she saw for
the first time a large group of them.
All these particulars and many other ones are found in her biography Sie schaurte die
Engel (She saw the angels), written and published by her son Hansjorg Bitterlich, one of the leading priests of the
OA.
This work of 189 pages is not for sale (typical for the
OA). Though the son tries to glorify his
mother as much as possible, the book contains some data which if well
understood, do not cast Gabriela in a favorable light. As a biography it is also essentially (and
purposely) incomplete. The reader is
given no particulars about the revelations she is said to have received, nor
when they were written down and with whose help. Their subjects and contents are not
revealed. We read only a few things
about her relations with her husband, his occupations, and his character. That he was much interested in occultism is
not told. All these things were supposed
to remain secret and the reader apparently has no right to know them. But the author is good enough to tell us that
the revelation his mother had received “was truly of global significance” and
important for world history (Sie schaute
die Engel, P. 108).
It is not easy to discover and to describe the tenets and
practices of the OA, because many things we would like to know are kept
secret. Secrecy is one of the prominent
features of the OA, and before l983 (when this was forbidden by
Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the practice of secrecy
still prevails in the higher quarters of the OA. When the Austrian and German bishops issued
severe warnings against the OA, and some even forbad its activities in their
respective dioceses, the OA leadership did hot reveal to its members the true
reasons for the ecclesiastical sanctions.
Because of this silence, the common members of the OA, who are as a rule
not initiated into many of its secrets, still believe that the OA is being
unjustly persecuted by its evil enemies.
The Handbook
In spite of the disiplina arcani (practice of keeping things secret) in the OA,
some of its writings became known to the outside world. The German Bishop’s Conference asked the Holy
See to intervene and a number of writings of the OA had to be sent for
examination to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. A prominent member of the OA, who was the
first elected superior general of the Canons of the Holy Cross, assured me that
all the books of the OA had been sent to
It had also been loaned to one layman, whom the OA could
fully trust. When this man died, two
priests of the OA presented themselves within a few days to the widow of the
deceased to search his library for the secret books of the OA. The Handbook
was not found, but was later discovered among other books. From there it got into the hands of auxiliary
Bishop Heinrich Count von Soden Fraunhofen
of Munchen-Freising.
The contents were appalling and he sent photocopies of its 819 pages to
all the Bishops of German language countries and to some interested persons (I
got one). It contains, besides the names
and offices of more than 600 angels and devils, passages full of insane and
dangerous occultism of the worst kind. A
whole issue of this magazine could easily be filled with them, and therefore we
can only quote a few.
The general doctrine of the OA resembles that of the
According to the OA the angels are much more powerful than
the saints (in heaven), because the latter can only help us by their
intercession with God, but the angels can intervene in our interest through
their own power. For this reason the
veneration and cult of the angels ranks much higher in the OA than the cult of
the saints. One can see this in the so
called Kalendarium.
A number of doctrines and the corresponding practices of the
OA are for the following reasons unacceptable (because of lack of space we
mention only a few).
1.
In spite of Cardinal Ratzinger’s
l983 warning, the practice of secrecy and the corresponding vow (of secrecy) are still
considered valid for all who took it, above all for the members of the original
nucleus. The OA is wholly founded on the
very secret revelations conveyed to Mrs. Bitterlich and not destined for the
common man. We are never told in any
detain when and where she got them. The
members of the OA are to accept them without any proof of their
credibility. According to
2.
The theory that the course of human history is determined by
the struggle of good and bad angels is neither Catholic nor
Christian. The work of our redemption by
Jesus Christ is obscured by it and eventually relegated to secondary
status.
True the OA accepts the whole of Catholic doctrine, the Creed
and dogma of the Church. But the very
prominent role played by the angels tends to obscure (not to deny) parts of its
doctrine. When one reads the Kalendarium, the Handbook and other writings, one finds
himself in a strange world, no more in the Catholic one to which he is (or was)
accustomed.
3. The
OA knows the names of more than 365 angels (one for each day of the
year) and of at least 243 devils (whose names are found in
other writings of the OA according to the Handbook). Many names are very strange indeed and though
purporting to be “Hebrew,” they defy interpretation. I suppose that a good deal of them originate
from the fertile (and sickly) imagination of Mrs. Bitterlich. Not a few have been taken from the Jewish
Cabala (a syncretistic philosophical-theological Jewish tradition), as I have
proved in my article in the Una Voce Korrespondenz. Some
of these names given to angels are reserved strictly to God – such as Jahwe Jah, Elohim
– astonishing fact only to be explained by the influence of the Cabala. According to the late priest, Dr. Blasko, the names of angels and demons already known from
ancient sources were revealed a second time to Gabriela Bitterlich. Blasko himself was
a collector of those names. Presumable,
Mrs. Bitterlich got a number of already existent names from her husband, or at
least from (his?) books.
4. In
the Kalendarium
one meets absurd allegations. According
to one of them three angels of the order of Seraphim (the highest one) are at
the time only one angel (because they represent the Trinity). This is absurd, because in the creation 3 = 1
is a contradiction. One angel, called “Dimacheil” (a pseudo-Hebrew word with out meaning, one of
the many of this kind; feast-day on Dec. 24) received from God the office of
laying his hand on the womb of the Virgin Mary when she was about to give birth
to her child (for this reason his feast-day is on the date mentioned
above). He did and still does the same
with all the women of the whole world, beginning with our mother Eve. A formidable task indeed! Space is lacking to mention other incredible
duties entrusted to angels.
The clothes and attributes of the angels are described in
such a way that it is difficult to believe, as some defenders of the OA say,
that these descriptions are only to be taken in a spiritual sense. Nowhere is the reader warned that he should
do so. In the OA angels and devils are not pure spirits.
5. Of
all the writings of OA so far known the Handbook
is the worst of all. It was intended to
be seen by only the initiated priests of the OA. An exception was made by lending this book to
a few trustworthy persons (an imprudence which led to its discovery, as
mentioned above). The book contains the
list of angels, their place in the angelic hierarchy, their duties, clothes,
symbols and other characteristics, known from the Kalendarium
There is also a similar list of 243 devils, some of whose
names recur in the other writings of the OA.
It is believed that sicknesses, temptations and other evils which happen
to befall men are often caused by devils.
If a priest of the OA has a penitent who has persistent complaints of
this kind they may be caused by one or more infernal beings. In the Handbook,
he can find the names of the devils who bring them
about and the name(s) of the particular angel(s) whose special duty it is to
fight these demons. Then the penitent is
told to invoke this angel (or these angels), who will deliver him from his
evil. It is all very simple, but only
the priests of the nucleus of the OA are privileged to know it.
No reason is given for this secrecy. If the method described in the Handbook is a good one, this secrecy is
in the highest degree a sin against charity and brotherly love. So many people are sick, tempted, unlucky and if there were an easy means to get rid of all
this, it should receive the highest form of publicity. But alas, the OA reserved this information
only to initiated members.
When Bishop von Soden published the
Handbook, Dr. Blasko
(OA priest and leading theologian) uttered dire threats against him. He made known that he was going to ask
permission from the
6.
According to the Handbook, the devils emit very
dangerous radiations, which the book calls Wessensstrǒmungen
(p. 179), i.e., emanations coming forth from the substance of the angels, a
most absurd idea, which reminds one of the Cabala.
That the radiations are of a material kind became clear to me
for the first time in a long private conversation I had with Dr. Blasko years ago. He
wished to see me because I am a known expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls. This proves that the similarity between the
doctrine of the Essenes and that of the OA had not
escaped him. He told me that there are
radiations in the cosmos which modern science cannot explain. If scientists can discover them, this can
only be with their instruments. Consequently the radiations alluded to were of
a material kind (we saw that they have “wave-lengths”). But according to Catholic doctrine, angels
and devils are pure spirits, and no material radiation, no radiation at all can
emanate from their substance.
According to the Handbook the radiations of the devils easily
pass through black cats, black hens and roosters (if you have some, beware!),
smooth haired dogs, pigs, rats, and snakes.
Equally dangerous (by black magic) are freshly-plucked feathers of black
hens, roosters, as well as the hair of cows, pigs, cats and other animals (Handbook, p. 182, 182). Each demon radiates his own personal
wave-length in accordance with his “number”, and he has a special “sign.” If a “man of Satan” lays this sign in a shed
of his enemy, this will soon swarm with devils.
The consequences are disastrous, as one may easily guess.
If the devil happens to be Belial himself, the situation
becomes very bad indeed. His number is
45 and to fight his enemies he may use a square figure of nine small fields, in
which the number are distributed thus:
|
4 |
9 |
2 |
|
3 |
5 |
7 |
|
8 |
1 |
6 |
Each row makes up 15 and the sum of all of all of them is 45
(Handbook, p. 114, from where the
diagram has been taken). Belial spreads
this terrible magic square “on creation” (p. 114) and fills every sub square
with the number of devils indicated in the diagram. If you are unlucky enough to have the devil Ismael as you adversary, your situation is still
worse: his number is 135 (= 4 x
34). The commanding devils may also
distribute their hellish henchmen in triangles (the most demonic figure there
is), pentagons, hexagons and other figures.
The readers of this article are hereby warned!
Also dangerous are plants and mud. I know a lady who was ordered by a priest of
the OA to destroy a nice vase in her possession; because it was “dangerous” (it
contained some mud). Devils may lie in
wait everywhere and therefore initiated members of the OA often pronounce
exorcisms against them.
Devils can also easily radiate through witches, midwives,
Gypsies, revengeful old peasants (Handbook, p. 292). Badly educated children roaming through the
streets of a city or village easily fall into the clutches of demons and very
bad things may happen.
We could quote many more examples of these warnings, which
ultimately originate from old and well-known popular superstitions, some of
which are dangerous nonetheless. The are now taught as having been revealed, with divine
permission, by angels. This is as
preposterous as it is ridiculous.
In l983 the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith sent a
letter to the president of the German Bishop’s Conference, then Joseph Cardinal
Hǒffner.
In it the OA is told to keep to the doctrine of the angels as taught by
the Church, its Fathers and its Doctors.
Evidently the “doctrine” concerning the angels of the OA is much more
than what the Church allows; it is quite novel and quite incredible. It has never been taught by the Church and it
remains shrouded in secrecy.
The same Congregation also prohibited the use of the “names”
of the angels as known from “presumed revelations” received by Mrs. Gabriela
Bitterlich. In spite of this prohibition the OA continues to use its Kalendarium and other books, in which these names are
prominent. The vow of secrecy has also
been prohibited. Contrary to the spirit
of this interdiction, the practice of secrecy continues as before.
We ask those who continue to defend the OA, in spite of the
interdictions of a good number of German and Austrian Bishops, and the warnings
of
Some defenders of the OA write extensive apologies in defense
of it, but never enter into the objections raised above. To these people I say, put the cards on the
table gentlemen, and only then we will speak again – if you will still desire
to do so.
Notes:
The Essenes, a Jewish sect which
lived in the time of Jesus near the shore of the lake of the Dead Sea, to the
south of
According to the well-known Jewish writer Flavius Josephus
(first century A.D.) there were three principal Jewish sects in his time: the
Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Essenes. The Gospels only mention the first two and
not the Essenes.
It has been said that John the Baptist was one of them and that Jesus of
Nazareth had connections with them. It
is abundantly clear that Jesus was not an Essene and although John the Baptist
may have had connections with them, it is pretty certain that he was not a
member of the sect.
The discovery of the manuscripts of the sect (popularly
called the “Dead Sea Scrolls,” though most of them are only fragments) in l947
and following years stirred many emotions and still does nowadays, because a
number of those of Cave 4 (all in very fragmentary state) have not yet been
published, though they were discovered more than 40 years ago. It has been supposed by journalists that the
fragments contain secrets which “the
That the Jews of Qumran were Essenes
is nearly universally accepted. Their
tenets are characterized by their dualism, probably borrowed from the Persians
and adapted to Jewish monotheism.
According to Zarathustra, the Persian prophet,
the universe is governed by two independent principles, a good one and a bad
one. This system is called Dualism (duo
= two) and has been taken over by Manicheism,
Gnosticism, the medieval Catharists in France, as
well as the Jewish Cabala, and other writings.
Persian dualism included the idea that there is a continuous struggle in
the world between good spirits (under the command of the supreme good
Principle, called Ahura Mazda) and the bad ones
(commanded by Ahriman). Dualism is an attractive theory because it
explains the origin of the evil in a world created, according to us, by an
eminently good God.
Since the Babylonian captivity (begun in 586 B.C.) there has
always been a large body of Jews in greater
We find this theory in a document of Qumran called the “Rule
of the Sect” or the “Manual of Discipline,” published in l951 (
In Persian dualism, Ahriman and his
bad spirits are bad by nature; in the doctrine of the Essenes
they have become bad because of their sin.
In this way essential dualism has been avoided and Jewish monotheism
saved. But it is clear to every student
of Jewish religion that even the mitigated form of dualism, as professed by the
sect of Qumran, is a Fremdkorper,
as the Germans say; a “foreign body” in the doctrine of both Old Testament and
rabbinic Judaism. Human history is not
determined by the invisible struggle of two armies of spirits, with God looking
on in heaven and intervening at the last moment. True, angels are sometimes sent by God to
fulfill missions on earth and they may counteract the bad influence of the
devil. But this does not imply the
universal, even cosmic dualism of
After the destruction of