In response to my earlier post Maciel, Mom and the Messiah, Still RC - For Now, Anyway shares an interesting comment at Life-After-RC:
My understanding of "Mama Maurita's consecration" is that it happened shortly before she died (within a year perhaps?) and that she was exempt from the ban on smoking cigarettes that all the consecrated must follow. "NP" himself exempted his mother and no one I know complained of "special privilege" because, really, are you going to tell your elderly mother she can't smoke?
Did Christ exempt His mother from suffering at the foot of the cross?
There are two reason why I find Fr. Maciel's exception for Mama Maurita so interesting. The first is that special exceptions for the founder (or those close to him in this case) is one of the red flags canon lawyers use to determine that something is amiss in a new religious movement (click here and scroll down)..
The second reason is that many people report that Fr. Maciel was perpetually accusing the Jesuits for having lost their charism of fidelity to Rome. So how was Fr. Maciel's reaction any different than than the Jesuit response to Pope Pius XII's ban on religious smoking?
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