Martin O'BrienMartin O’Brien speaks to Opus Dei numerary Paul Harman about professional integrity and ethics
Despite the evident joy around the Beatification of Bishop Alvaro del Portillo that was reflected in an article in this newspaper last week, Opus Dei is still an institution with something of an image deficit.
It’s seen by its critics as being excessively secretive and powerful, even if John L. Allen’s book almost a decade ago cast some doubt on the extent of its reputed wealth.
So if you asked ordinary Catholics with what do they associate Opus Dei, they are unlikely to mention a long-established and respected conference on media ethics that takes place in Dublin next weekend.
The Cleraun Media Conference, the brainchild of Paul Harman, information officer of Opus Dei in Ireland, was established in 1986 and comes round every two years.
Harman says the headline topic this year was determined by the words of Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium in which the Holy Father referred to “widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which have taken on worldwide dimensions”.
The conference is the only one of its kind on journalistic ethics in these islands and attracts journalists with international reputations.
Over almost three decades, contributors have included the likes of Peter Taylor and George Carey from the BBC, Diana B. Henriques and David Barstow of The New York Times and Kenneth Woodward of Newsweek who have reflected on some of the thorniest dilemmas confronting those whose TV programmes and articles form our opinions in a huge way.
Contribution
Those attending in 2012, including journalism students from all over Ireland, were spellbound by a contribution from Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy who had been seriously injured in Syria in an attack which killed two colleagues, Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik.
They also heard one of Ireland’s most gifted filmmakers, Alan Gilsenan reveal how he re-edited the landmark RTÉ series about St Ita’s asylum in Dublin at the last minute after one of the key contributors suddenly withheld his consent just before his death.
Cleraun is named after the original house on the site where the conference usually takes place, Opus Dei’s Cleraun University Centre close to UCD’s Belfield campus.
The conference, whose main sponsor is the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, has been switched this year to the Camden Court hotel due to renovations at its traditional venue.
Cleraun provides precious space to reflect on the all-important ethical dimension in a world of shrinking budgets where competition for audiences and market share has never been more intense, with journalists under inevitable pressure to cut corners.
Some years ago, Peter Johnston, Controller of BBC Northern Ireland, addressed the conference on the particular challenge of striving for impartiality and found it a valuable experience.
This year’s theme over three days from Friday evening October 17 is ‘Getting it Right Next Time’.
The conference’s stated aim, influenced by those words of Pope Francis, is “developing an investigative toolkit to help filmmakers and journalists deal with financial complexity, corruption, bribery and whistleblowing”.
Twenty speakers, including distinguished journalists and film-makers, will talk on such topics as the banking inquiry, the reporting of the Irish housing bubble and whistleblowing legislation.
Further details are at cleraunmedia.com
Interviewed in Belfast ahead of the 15th Cleraun Conference, Harman (66), a native of Howth, a mechanical engineer by profession and Opus Dei numerary for well over half his life, stresses that he is “just the catalyst”, though that would appear to understate the amount of hard work he puts into making it all come together.
Paul says he felt called to be single and celibate since he first encountered Opus Dei as a second year student in UCD.
He visits the North regularly in his role as secretary of Lismullin Educational Foundation (NI), the charity which promotes the work of Lismullin Conference Centre in Co. Meath and also in his work on behalf of the Timoney Leadership Institute, the latter “not formally connected to Opus Dei”.
“The success of Cleraun lies in a team of people and in the contributions of those attending. Its development has been due to the extraordinary assistance of people like Andy Pollak, Damien Kiberd and Maurice Sweeney to name just a few.”
He says it was Pollak’s idea to extend the Cleraun idea to the world of business which resulted in the Lismullin Leadership Forum which teases out ethical quandaries on the shop floor and in the manager’s office.
Harman says that the journalism students from such institutions as DCU, UCG and Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, receive encouragement hearing top journalists talk openly about the ethical challenges in their work “and are inspired by their integrity”.
Baptism of fire
He recalls his own baptism of fire with the media as a young production manager of an Italian textiles plant in Spiddal, Co. Galway, in the mid-Seventies.
He was invited onto a “live” programme on Raidió na Gaeltachta expecting to wax lyrically about job creation and the transfer of Italian technology to Ireland only to be grilled about the possible pollution of Galway Bay from his company’s chemicals.
“It did a lot of damage before we retrieved the situation. There was a certain innocence and naivety on my part. It brought home to me the importance of local radio and of communicating with people directly and that this was also part of my job.”
After the creation of Opus Dei as a personal prelature in 1982, Cleraun was established as a university hall of residence and student centre for 16 male students “open to all creeds and nationalities”. Young people were given “an opportunity to foment and foster Christian ideals with an emphasis on study and making full use of your time and talents”.
He recalls in those early days they invited politicians from both sides in the North to try to explain the complexities of the conflict to students who knew little about it.
Harman stresses that Opus Dei puts “an ongoing emphasis on personal freedom and that people do things because they want to” and that students are completely free to take part in or to decline participation in its religious activities.
Questioned about the prelature’s reputation for secrecy, Harman says that in his experience this is “a myth”. When pressed, he says this may have had some basis a long time ago but certainly not since the formation of the prelature in 1982 and the canonisation of their founder St Josemaría Escrivá in 2002.
Harman is a nephew of John Murray, who helped Frank Duff spread the Legion of Mary around the world and brother of Justin Harman, Ireland’s newly appointed Ambassador to Argentina.
A modest unassuming man Paul returns again and again to the idea that “God is to be found in everyday work, we encounter the holy through our work”.
This is at the heart of Opus Dei, two words which mean Work of God in Latin.
He cites words of St Josemaría – whom he met on four occasions – in a book of media interviews in which the saint called on students “to spread the love of good journalism”.
Good journalism
“Those words act as an inspiration to help spread the love of good journalism through the Cleraun project with its particular emphasis on professional integrity and ethics.”
Finally, one wondered what kind of God Paul loved and worshipped. “I try to get to know the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. I have to see God as my father and to behave like one who is very small and very young and has to put enormous trust into my father God.
“In terms of Jesus Christ I try to work at making sure that he has centre stage in my life and is my best friend, the person I want to talk to when anything is on my mind, good, bad or indifferent.
“And in regard to the Holy Spirit, the Church teaches us he abides in our Soul in grace, that he is there to help us to strive for holiness.”
One left Paul Harman feeling that Vatican II’s message that we are all called to holiness is more urgent than ever.