Catholic Light – Page 45 – (but not lite!)

The guilty conscience, according to Cardinal Ratzinger

“I brought Pope Benedict’s book On Conscience,” said my friend over breakfast this morning. Well actually he wrote it as Cardinal Ratzinger, but that’s besides the point. “You’re more than welcome to borrow it. It’s a great read that answers many of your questions.”
My friend is a theologian who specializes in the sacrament of reconciliation and the theology of conscience, confession, forgiveness and healing. With all the questions about Maciel, his methodology, and the formation of consciences in the movement he founded, I had invited my friend to breakfast in order to tap her expertise as a theologian and spiritual director. Basically we discussed issues that have been discussed here and at other blogs like Life After RC, issues surrounding reports of visible signs of Maciel’s final impenitance, the subjugation of conscience to utilitarian purpose within the movement, and the seeming inability of Legion superiors to recognize or apologize adequately for the horrors inflicted upon Maciel’s victims.
Opening Ratzinger’s book, or the English translation published by Ignatius Press, God directed me to the following passage – one that provides a good perspective of what we see happening with the movement:

Gorres shows that the feeling of guilt, the capacity to recognize guilt, belongs essentially to the spiritual make-up of man. This feeling of guilt disturbs the false calm of conscience and could be called conscience’s complaint against my self-satisfied existence. It is as necessary for man as the physical pain that signifies disturbances of normal bodily functioning. Whoever is no longer capable of perceiving guilt is spiritually ill, “a living corpse, a dramatic character’s mask,” as Gorres says.

Monsters, among other brutes, are the ones without guilt feelings. Perhaps Hitler did not have any, or Himmler, or Stalin. Maybe Mafia bosses do not have any guilt feelings either, or maybe their remains are just well hidden in the cellar. Even aborted guilt feelings… All men need guilt feelings.

By the way, a look into Sacred Scripture should have precluded such diagnoses and such a theory of justification by the errant conscience. In Psalm 19:12-13, we find the everworth-pondering passage, “But who can discern faults.” That is not Old Testament objectivism, but profoundest human wisdom. No longer seeing one’s guilt, the falling silent of conscience in so many areas is an even more dangerous sickness of the soul than the guilt that one still recognizes as such. He who no longer notices that killing is a sin has fallen farther than the one who still recognizes the shamefulness of his actions, because the former is further removed from the truth and conversion.
Not without reason does the self-righteous man in the encounter with Jesus appear as the one who is really lost. If the tax collector with all his undisputed sins stands more justified before God than the Pharisee with all his undeniably good works (Luke 18:9-14), this is not because the sins of the tax collector were not sins or because the good deeds of the Pharisee were not good deeds. Nor does it mean that the good that man does is not good before God, or the evil, not evil or at least not particularly important.
The reason for this paradoxical judgment of God is shown precisely from our question. The Pharisee no longer knows that he too has guilt. He has a completely clear conscience. But this silence of conscience makes him impenetrable to God and men, while the cry of conscience that plagues the tax collector makes him capable of truth and love. Jesus can move sinners. Not hiding behind the screen of their erroneous consciences, they have not become unreachable for the change that God expects of them–of us. He is ineffective with the “righteous” because they are not aware of any need for forgiveness and conversion. Their consciences no longer accuse them but justify them.

A fatal flaw in Legionary formation

I received the following email from a former Legionary who had been ordained with the order. I’ve removed the names of individual Legionaries to protect confidentiality:

Hey Pete, hope you are well.
I want to comment personally with you on your comment [over at Ladon Cody’s ExLC blog] that “Holiness comes from the inside. God alone knows who is holy and who is not. Externals can be deceiving. For instance, how many of us thought at one time that Maciel was holy?”
When I was still in the Legion, I commented with [John Doe], who was still in, and he told me that he commented with [another Legionary] back then and they agreed. The point is that Legion formation essentially was set up to work from the outside in. It made use of externals to build what they called the charitable or priestly heart. The idea was to practice external things: kneeling for meditation, opening doors for others, making little sacrifices at meals and tons and tons of other things, with the aim of internalizing them. The idea was not that those things would come from the heart, but that they would change the heart through simply doing them.
So many actions of every day and every moment were like magic formulas to be recited or practiced and, voila, a charitable heart! A holy priest! It is a huge internal flaw of formation in the Legion of Christ. A fatal flaw.
There is no recovering from something like this. There is nothing to save in LC formation because it is backwards.
Unfortunately, there is a whole sector of people in the Church who fixate on this type of externalization and are caught up in it, and call it holiness. It is only worth something if it does come from the heart, and then, if it produces no real fruit, it is still just a noisy gong, a clashing cymbal.

Like founder, like sons…

Hard to believe a whole year has passed since revelations of Marcial Maciel’s daughter became public. Hard to believe that the Legion of Christ – the order founded by Maciel – still has not offered adequate public apology or restitution to Maciel’s earlier victims of sexual abuse. Many of these victims were minors studying for the priesthood. They were boys entrusted by their families to Maciel and the movement he founded. Their families had believed their sons were being sent off to become holy priests under the care of a living saint. One would hope than an order of “holy” and “orthodox” Catholic priests would recognize the injustice of sexual abuse committed against children in the name of Christ, and the injustice of public calumny against these victims when they came forward with the truth.
Yet in retrospect – and I say this in all sadness – we should not be surprised by the failure of Legion superiors to apologize to Maciel’s victims. We should not be surprised by the movement’s failure to apologize for Maciel’s abuse, not to mention the movement’s coverup of Maciel’s actions as well as the public persecution of Maciel’s victims.
Why?
Because like any other religious movement, good or bad, the Legion of Christ appears to derive its spirit from its founder. When the spirit of the founder is good, when the founder seeks sincerely to follow Christ and is inspired by the Holy Spirit, then we recognize the spirit of the movement as a charism. But when the spirit of the founder is evil, then it curses the entire movement.
Which brings us to what I consider the most disturbing report concerning the founder since the scandal broke. It is the recent El Mundo report of Maciel’s death. For those who understand Spanish, you can read the original report here. For those who need an English translation, former Legionary Landon Cody has kindly provided one here.
Several sources tell me that El Mundo is a reputable Spanish news source. If this is true then I am most disturbed by the following aspects of Maciel’s death, as reported by the news source:

It seems that for the previous two years, the founder had lost the faith. He did not go to mass, did not pray… The Legionaries who took care of him came to know that he felt “repulsed by religion”. […]
But the few elect who were with him at the end of his life had a hard time seeing him as an old man. For them, the last hours of the founder were a real calvary. Marcial Maciel refused to confess his sins. He did not want to and did not believe in God’s pardon. Maybe he had spent too many years accostomed to fooling the divine representative in the confessional. How to suddenly declare him a pederast, he has relations with both men and women, he had at least six children who he never took care of like a real father, the abused drugs, he coveted and obtained great quantities of money, he plagiarized the spiritual guidelines of his congregation, he lied and damaged hundreds of people without it bothering him in the least way, and God knows what more. This, God does know. So, why confess his sins? “I said no!” he blurted out to Alvaro Corcuera, who was trying to anoint the dying man with holy oils.

Of all the sins that man can commit during his time on earth, only one is unpardonable by God. It is known as the sin against the Holy Spirit, or the sin of final impenitance. It is the sin of so hardening one’s heart against God that one chooses to die unrepentant of one’s sins.
As explained by Catholic Answers apologist Jim Blackburn:

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is essentially the willful rejection of God’s grace and forgiveness.
A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture explains, “Unlike other blasphemies or sins which might be partially excused by ignorance, passion or inadvertence, this was[/is] a sin of willful malice and blindness to the light. As long as such a mentality persists, pardon is impossible, not because of any limitation of God, but because those who are guilty of this sin refuse to respond to the promptings of grace” (p.912).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states, “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss” (CCC 1864).

God alone judges the eternal fate of Maciel. We cannot know what conversation took place between God and Maciel in the final moments of the founder’s life. Perhaps, as he was breathing his final breath, the prayers of all his followers cracked the hardness of his heart, allowing him to make peace with a God he had betrayed throughout his life. One can fool the wisest of popes and presidents, but one cannot fool God. And God forces each of us to face the truth of our sins. Better to face Him in the confessional during this lifetime.
Nevertheless, we cannot ignore this report of Maciel’s death – a report that describes all the visible signs of final impenitance. “A tree falls in the direction it is leaning,” my Benedictine spiritual director use to say when explaining the importance of living a Christian life in preparation for facing God in death. If Maciel’s heart remained consistent with the double-life he led, if his heart remained true to his reported actions facing death, then he died either unable or unwilling to repent. In which case, but without judging, his eternal fate seems bleak.
This is something every Legionary and Regnum Christi member must reflect upon, two years after the death of their founder. Not only because the movement continued to describe Maciel as a saint in Heaven, despite an alleged death that suggests anything but. Not only because several top Legionaries reportedly witnessed the visibly unholy death of the founder. But because this spirit of impenitance, so visible (allegedly) in founder’s death, has cursed his movement that refuses to renounce him. Just as Maciel reportedly appeared to choose death rather than repent of his sins, so too have current Legion superiors vis-a-vis Maciel’s movement. Bossuet’s description of Jansenist nuns seems apt in this situation: “They are as pious as angels and as proud as devils.” But even more fundamental as Christians, what we are witnessing is St. Paul’s warning to Romans: “For the wages of sin are death.”
I pray the founder’s impenitance has cursed the Legion and Regnum Christi as institutions only. I pray that God softens the hearts of individual Legionaries and Regnum Christi members, so that they not follow the spirit of their founder into the grave. Let the curse die with Maciel’s movement. May Our Lord Jesus Christ free Maciel’s victims and followers from the curse of Maciel’s impenitance. And let us pray that no further soul risks eternal damnation because of the scandalous example of Maciel and those within the Legion who covered up for him.

Mariologist Hauke on Medjugorje: “Don’t let the devotees fall into the void”

(Translated from the German-language Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost. Thanks to reader budapestinensis for spotting a translation error on my part. The corrected word is marked in red below.)
(UPDATE 2/9: A Dutch translation of the interview is now available on-line at In Caelo et In Terra.)
(UPDATE 2/18: Translations into other languages are welcome. Bienvenidos, lectores de Panorama Católico internacional.)
(UPDATE 2/22: Fr. Hauke has responded to critics from the Medjugorje movement.)

The Medjugorje phenomenon and the discernment of spirits: a conversation with dogmatic theologian Manfred Hauke
For years there has been discussion of the phenomenon of the alleged “Marian apparitions” that took their origin in Medjugorje: Does the Mother of God really appear to the seers who originated in Medjugorje? Or are the experiences parapsychological fruits of the seers’ unconscious? Are they a deceptive manipulation or even a trick of evil forces? According to reports, there are plans at the Vatican to have the Medjugorje phenomenon conclusively investigated by a commission. Regina Einig asked the chairman of the German Society for Mariology (Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Mariologie), professor of dogmatics and patristics at Lugano, Manfred Hauke, about the subject.
Wherein can we find the theological meaning of Marian apparitions?
Appearances of the Mother of God belong to the charism of prophecy, in which the mysterious working of the Spirit of God comes to expression. St. Paul emphasizes: “Do not quench the Spirit! Do not despise prophetic utterances!” (1 Thess. 5:19-20). The book of Proverbs already emphasizes: “Without prophecy, the people become demoralized” (Prov. 29:18). According to Thomas Aquinas, prophetic revelations after the Apostolic era are not given in order to spread a new teaching of faith, but serve to guide human action. Theology speaks here of “private revelations”, inasmuch as the content conveyed does not belong to general and public revelation, which closed with the Apostolic era. “Private”, then, means a reference to an individual person, a group or even the whole Church in a particular historical situation. “Private revelations”, or (better) prophetic revelations help us to recognize the “signs of the times” (Lk. 12:56) and act accordingly. Following Pope Benedict XIV, the recognition of a private revelation by the responsible bishop is not the basis of any duty to believe, in the strict sense (fides divina), but it states that one can approach the apparitions with a purely human faith (fides humana) based on reasoning. So no Catholic is obliged to believe that the Mother of God appeared in Lourdes and Fatima; but the Church states that the reports of the apparitions are worthy of belief and a Catholic may believe in them and cultivate a corresponding spirituality. Yes, the Church has even set several memorial days in the liturgical calendar and issued corresponding Mass formulas. Prophetic revelations are not the normal case of Christian life, but an exception: “Blessed are they who do not see and yet believe” (Jn. 20:29). The Catechism of the Catholic Church stresses with St. John of the Cross: In Jesus Christ, the eternal divine Word, God the Father has shared everything with us (cf. Hebr. 1:1-12). “Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty” (CCC 65).

A forgotten vocation

It’s good to see, via Cardinal Rode, that there is going to be a teaching document this year on the vocation of the religious brother. The lack of attention given to brothers, and the consequent devaluing of this sacred vocation, is a significant problem: I expect it contributes to confusion about the parallel vocation of religious sisters.