The Man Who Calls Catholicism a Cult: Steven Hassan and the Machinery Behind the Attack on Opus Dei and People of Praise

The BITE Model is deceptively simple. Behavior, Information, Thought, Emotional control. Any group that exercises control over these four domains can be classified as a cult. That is it. That is the whole test.

The problem is the test has no floor. Hassan himself says it: “Destructive mind control can be determined when the overall effect of these four components promotes dependency and obedience to some leader or cause; it is not necessary for every single item on the list to be present.” Not every item. Not even most items. A “few major behaviors under each of the four components” is enough. The evaluator — Hassan — decides which behaviors count and how many are sufficient. The framework doesn’t diagnose; it labels.

And the categories are broad enough to catch anything. Behavior control includes regulating what you eat, what you wear, how much money you give, and how you spend your time. Information control includes limiting outside sources and discouraging critical inquiry. Thought control includes asking members to accept doctrine as truth. Emotional control includes teaching about sin, guilt, fear, and consequences. Any religion with a behavioral code, a membership covenant, a set of teachings, and a concept of divine judgment fits the model. The framework doesn’t distinguish between a cult and a church. It defines church as cult.

Hassan’s attack on the Catholic right is not a passing reference. It is a sustained, multi-year campaign that touches the most powerful and most secretive institutions within the Church.

He calls Opus Dei “a Catholic right-wing cultic group” in his own writing, and then applies the full BITE model to it. He takes standard features of Opus Dei life — the commitment to obedience, the practice of regular confession, the emphasis on formation, the expectation of financial contribution — and relabels each one as a cult tactic. Obedience becomes “blind obedience” and “dependence.” Formation becomes “indoctrination.” Regular confession becomes “information control.” Financial contribution becomes “exploitation.” Living in community centers becomes “restricting sexuality” and “controlling what you eat and drink.” Spiritual direction becomes “making people doubt their own memories” — which he calls “gas lighting.”

He frames Opus Dei’s recruitment of young people as predatory: “Like many cults, Opus Dei aggressively targets young persons for indoctrination, focusing on those who would be useful, such as intelligent leaders or future influential persons within society.” He frames its political influence as a threat, promoting a book about “this internationally powerful cult, at odds with Pope Francis and their power as well as their financial agenda to influence politics,” and links Opus Dei to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 as an “authoritarian playbook” being implemented by the Trump administration.

In his book “The Cult of Trump,” he places Opus Dei alongside “The Family” (the Fellowship Foundation) as a theocratic network within the Christian right, describing its members’ lives as mind-controlled: “Numeraries, and even some supernumeraries, live under high-demand circumstances — often cut off from family members… They participate in secret initiation rites, swear obedience, and submit to ‘formative norms,’ which Hutchinson describes as a form of ‘mind-conditioning,’ including reporting weekly to a director who oversees all activities, personal and professional, and confessing once a week.”

On People of Praise — the charismatic covenant community that counts Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett as a member — Hassan is equally direct. He calls it “a high-demand, cult-like authoritarian group” and applies the BITE model to it formally. He told the Associated Press: “A person who is in one of these groups has to suppress their own thoughts, feelings, desires that doesn’t align with the dogma.” He describes the group’s practices as cult tactics: “This group reportedly requires a lifetime covenant commitment, requires wives and children to be submissive to their husbands, promotes fear of losing God’s grace and hellfire, allows and even encourages corporal punishment of children and wives, engages in forced exorcisms, shuns former members, and more... Again, comparing them to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, this is a well-known tactic of cults.” And he publicly called for a Senate investigation into the group over Barrett’s nomination.

The pattern is total. There is no aspect of these institutions — from their recruitment, to their labor practices, to their theology, to their members’ family lives, to their political influence — that Hassan has not characterized as evidence of cult control.

Since 2019, Hassan has published at least eleven articles and podcast items targeting Opus Dei, People of Praise, the Legionaries of Christ, and the Community of Jesus — including formal BITE Model evaluations of both Opus Dei and People of Praise, written as if they were clinical diagnoses.

His interview subjects are almost exclusively former members with grievances against their institutions: Eileen Johnson, a former Opus Dei insider he met at the 2019 ICSA Conference and later featured in the formal BITE evaluation; Paul Lennon, a former 20-year priest in the Legionaries of Christ, interviewed multiple times over a decade; Coral Annika Thiell and Lisa Williams, both former People of Praise members, interviewed in the weeks around Justice Barrett’s nomination; Ewan Whyte, a former member of the Community of Jesus.

His most consequential activity was not an interview. In October 2020, during the Barrett confirmation fight, Hassan publicly called for “a thorough Senate investigation into Judge Barrett” — then published a formal letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee arguing that her membership disqualified her: “My objection to her appointment is not based on religion, which should be irrelevant, but upon the structure and behavior of the community.” A self-appointed cult expert, lobbying the Senate to investigate a Supreme Court nominee’s church.

The pattern is consistent: former members with grievances, the journalist behind the Opus Dei exposé, and his own Freedom of Mind consultants. Hassan does not interview current members or present the institutions’ perspective.

The attack on these institutions does not run through Hassan alone. It runs through an ecosystem of ex-member platforms, journalists, scholars, and — now — prosecutors and the Vatican itself, all using the same framework.

Direct attackers. ODAN — the Opus Dei Awareness Network, founded in 1991 after Dianne DiNicola’s daughter joined the group — has spent three decades publishing Opus Dei’s “questionable practices,” describing its recruitment as “aggressive and similar to the tactics used by totalistic groups.” During the Barrett confirmation, Salon called People of Praise an “extremist quasi-Catholic cult” that “shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the Supreme Court.” Gareth Gore, author of “Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church” (2024), wrote in the National Catholic Reporter that “Opus Dei is at its core an alleged abusive cult that preys on vulnerable individuals and even children.” And in February 2025, Max premiered “How I Left the Opus Dei,” a four-part docuseries built on the testimony of thirteen former members.

Academic legitimizers. Joan Estruch, research director of sociology at the Universitat Aut\u00f2noma de Barcelona, devoted an Oxford University Press book to dissecting Opus Dei as “a ‘total institution’ within Catholicism.” Sarah Barringer Gordon, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times that groups like People of Praise “can become so absorbing that it’s difficult for a person to retain individual judgment.” Adrian Reimers, a twelve-year former member of People of Praise who teaches at Notre Dame, published “Not Reliable Guides,” describing how a wife’s husband “is, in fact, her personal pastoral head. Whatever she does requires at least his tacit approval.” In June 2022, the International Cultic Studies Association’s annual conference hosted “Catholic Cults in our Midst?” — presented by Paul Lennon, the same ex-Legionaries priest Hassan interviews.

Institutional actors. The campaign reaches into the Vatican itself: in a private audience on March 16, 2026, Gore handed Pope Leo XIV the Argentine prosecutors’ investigation request and urged a formal independent investigation of Opus Dei. And in December 2025, Ending Clergy Abuse — the global survivors’ network — hosted the first international gathering of former Opus Dei members in Buenos Aires, an event the Pope himself privately encouraged.

Hassan built the theory. These actors are applying it independently. Opus Dei and People of Praise are not facing one man’s campaign — they are facing an ecosystem that has adopted the framework and is pressing it in courtrooms, in newsrooms, in academic presses, and inside the Vatican itself.

Some of the institutions in this story carry real scandals, and this page does not defend them. The Legionaries of Christ harbored Marcial Maciel — a serial predator whose abuses were real, documented, and criminal. The Argentine Opus Dei prosecution involves allegations that women were recruited as minors and held for years in unpaid domestic servitude — grave allegations that, if true, are crimes and deserve prosecution on the evidence. Nothing on this page excuses any of it. The argument here is narrower and it is about everyone else: a framework elastic enough to name Opus Dei, People of Praise, and ordinary Catholic discipline as cult behavior cannot tell the difference between Maciel and a monastery — and that is precisely the defect.

This is not theoretical. The legal framework Hassan has spent decades building is already being applied to Opus Dei in a criminal prosecution that mirrors his characterization exactly.

In Argentina, 43 women have alleged that Opus Dei recruited them as minors with promises of education and a home, then forced them to work for years as unpaid domestic workers in the organization’s residences. The prosecution — federal prosecutors Mar\u00eda Alejandra M\u00e1ngano, Marcelo Colombo of the federal anti-trafficking office PROTEX, and Eduardo Taiano — has formally charged Monsignor Mariano Fazio, the organization’s second-in-command, with human trafficking and labor exploitation. The plaintiffs’ attorney, Sebasti\u00e1n Sal, has also requested the inclusion of Monsignor Fernando Ocariz, the Prelate of Opus Dei, in the investigation. These allegations are serious and, if true, criminal, and they should be tried on evidence. What matters for this doctrine is how the case is being built: the prosecution’s theory reads like a checklist from the BITE model — recruitment of minors (framed as “deceptive recruitment”), unpaid domestic labor (framed as “labor trafficking”), isolation from family (framed as “information control”), and a regime of “semi-slavery” (framed as “emotional control”). When the theory of the crime is the framework itself, every Catholic religious order that recruits young people, houses them in community, and assigns them work stands in the same exposure.

In England, former numerary Michael Chambers is bringing civil claims against Opus Dei and three Catholic bishops for psychological injury, backed by an expert psychologist’s report — the first claims of their kind against English bishops.

The statutory framework is permanent. Federal courts have held that consent is no defense to forced labor charges: a defendant can be convicted even if the victim initially consented, on the theory that coercion can vitiate prior consent. Approximately $140 million per year in federal anti-trafficking funding supports training judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement in this framework — roughly $1.1–1.2 billion in cumulative spending since FY2010.

Opus Dei is not facing a random assortment of plaintiffs’ attorneys. It is facing a criminal prosecution in Argentina — brought by 43 women whose allegations read like a checklist from his BITE model — and civil claims in England backed by expert psychological evidence. The framework Hassan built is not just an attack on Opus Dei. It is a threat to every religious organization in America.