Opus Dei is pulling out all the stops to present itself as a warm and fuzzy group with a human face prior to the attack on their group they fear is coming in The Da Vinci Code movie. Early word was that the generally secretive and inward-looking and extremely devout Catholic group, having felt its reputation unfairly tarnished by the Dan Brown novel, appealed to the filmmakers to make the film without specifically referencing Opus Dei....And the early word was also that the filmmakers had acceded to this demand and turned Silas's group from Opus Dei into simply a shadowy fringe group within the Church. Now, it isn't so clear that the film has written Opus Dei out of the script, so my friends over on Lexington Avenue are mounting their own pre-film media campaign. They've brought forward all sorts of against-type members of Opus Dei. They have recently introduced me and my research team to several perky middle-aged career women who are wonderful mothers and wives. Most recently, we even met "the real Silas," a member of Opus Dei in the New York area who happens to be named Silas--Silas Agbim, a Nigerian-born stockbroker. This "real Silas" is not only not an Albino and not a monk (Dan Brown, take note: there are no monks in Opus Dei, which is a lay organization), he jokingly points out he has never murdered anyone. Opus Dei also directs anyone who is interested toward John Allen, a CNN advisor in covering the Vatican and a respected Catholic journalist. Allen has recently written the book, Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church. Allen's book is reasonably fair and balanced. However, don't think for a minute that Dan Brown simply made up a sinister role for Opus Dei out of whole cloth. He based it on something. I am guessing he had read the same persistent rumors I have read that Opus Dei was involved in some of the Latin American death squads on the 1980s, the Vatican Bank scandal of the 1970s and the possible murder of Pope John Paul I (a very similar Pope is poisoned in Dan Brown's prequel to The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons). There's a lot we simply don't know about Opus Dei...but my guess is that we will learn more in the coming weeks as the debate over The Da Vinci Code reaches a new crescendo.