Opus Dei is an (extreme) organization within the Catholic Church, dedicated to “seeking holiness” in every aspect of the lives of its adherents, especially at work. Its members are supposed to follow a daily two hour ritual of wearing a spiked metal chain on their thighs. This is intended to remind them of the suffering of Jesus. They believe that this life is a vale of tears, that homosexuals are so by choice, that family planning is the work of the devil, and along with it abortion. They reject the part of the constitution that separates church and State and believe that the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church was caused by the relaxation of church dogma in the 1970s. There is no such thing as over-population; on the contrary: misery and poverty are nothing when you contemplate the angelic trumpets and the glory of the afterlife. Satan, says one prominent member of Opus Dei, has used the vices of pride, vanity and sensuality to corrupt universities, politics and Protestant churches. The Roman church is all that stands in the way of wholesale damnation.

My comment: I think he has a point.  Where can I buy an iron belt with spikes, anyone?