Ruth Kelly has tried to unknot the ties between her new job and her sympathy with the Catholic group Opus Dei in an interview with the Mirror today. "I don't see why it should be an issue at all," she said. "I have a private spiritual life and I have a faith. It is a private spiritual life and I don't think it is relevant to my job. I am here as a Catholic."
Asked if that means she is against children and teenagers being given free contraception, she tells the paper: "We have an established government policy on that ... I came here to do a job which is about raising standards in schools. I came here because I passionately believe we have a responsibility as a society to put children first."
Kelly's connections with the group - she won't say whether she is a member, but has attended its meetings and prayer sessions - have been chewed over at length in the Times this week. Columnists have been wondering how the new education secretary will reconcile some of Opus Dei's strictures with, for instance, the government's policy on teenage contraception.
But what makes an allegiance to Opus Dei so much more ominous than attendance at the Catholic mass?
After all, the group follows Vatican teaching closely. The difference, as many mainstream Catholics will tell you, is that the vast majority of Catholics don't obey the Pope's edicts to the letter, but try - often incompletely - to apply the church's principles in their daily lives.
Opus Dei adherents, who tend to ignore the more liberal Vatican II reforms the church announced in the 1960s, take papal authority far more literally. As the organisation's official website puts it, "members have no reason to try to publicise their membership" because they make it known in the way "they live their faith". Professions of faith are not enough. Members, who are overwhelmingly lay Catholics rather than members of the clergy, try to demonstrate their beliefs in everything they do.
This sense of elitism and secretive discipline (Opus Dei calls it privacy) is anathema to many Catholics. The group's recruitment activities, which focus on university students, also give it the whiff of a cult. Opus Dei's links to the fascist cause during the Spanish Civil War don't help, either. Dan Brown's bestselling thriller The Da Vinci Code introduced the group's shadier reputation to non-Catholics. (The book is "bizarre" and "inaccurate", according to Opus Dei).
The organisation is keen to point out that its members act according to their own free will. But this is just what politicians cannot do. They have to compromise endlessly for the sake of political expediency, or the greater good. How will Kelly cope when her conscience tells her not to compromise? No one knows yet, but the press is watching her very closely.
