It's possible that I have mentioned this before, but the residence I'm staying in, Netherhall House, is actually run by Opus Dei. Yes, THE Opus Dei which are the bad guys in The Da Vinci Code (I haven't actually read the book myself). For those of you who have been living under a rock, they are a conservative Catholic organisation which has a tradition of being highly secretive, has been lambasted as a cult by their critics.

In the run-up to the release of the movie at the end of this week, there has been huge media coverage of the organisation. In part, it is a public relations coup by the OD upper echelons to use the publicity from the book to promote itself. For example, their website has had their visitor count increased over a hundred-fold since the book came out. I wouldn't say much more about OD as whole, since there's much more material out there (books, websites etc), although it runs the full spectrum in terms of veracity.

As far as my own experience is concerned, I knew that Netherhall was run by OD when I first came to take a look, but I didn't really know anything about the organisation. The first hint of weirdness was that there was a bunch of old single men living in an adjoining building who seemed to be doing something religious all the time, whether it was mass or prayer meetings. The other hint was the fact that even for a male student residence, there were some strange rules regarding women. We have to leave our rooms at 10.30 am so that the 'cleaning staff' can clean the living areas. What makes this strange is that there is TOTAL isolation between us and the cleaning staff, to the extent that there is an elaborate system of doors to ensure that there is absolutely no contact.

In general though, the OD members here are nice people, although they have pretty conservative views on social issues. No one has tried to convert me, although I have known people who were converted while living here as students, so it's probably just the fact that they knew I'm too much of a hard-core atheist to start with.

Back to the Da Vinci Code, the publicity that OD is getting is really astounding. We've had at least 2 camera crews over here filming the place in the past week (one of them from New Zealand!), and there have been articles in all the major newspapers about OD in the past week. A couple of the students here have been interviewed, although I doubt the OD people will want the likes of me to be interviewed in an article about OD!

In any case I'd rather wait for my own moment of fame instead of trying to get 15 seconds of it off someone else...