Tag: Legionaries

AP picks up Maciel incest allegations

The Associated Press has now picked up, in English, the latest scandal alleging Maciel sexually molested his son and adopted step-son:

During a radio interview Wednesday, Lara Gutierrez charged that Maciel, who died in 2008 at age 87, sexually abused one of his two sons with her as well as a son she had from a previous relationship. The sons, now adults named Jose Raul and Omar, said the abuse went on for years.

Click here to read the whole report.
If your stomach still isn’t turning, Giselle offers an additional update at Life-After-RC:

More from a friend who speaks Spanish. First son recounts his abuse starting at age seven (including photos, for Maciel to keep as mementos). It got so bad that he became sexually confused and asked his dad if he could see a psychiatrist. MM says he knew a really good one in Spain and sends him over (to stay with “Auntie Norma” the other wife) and he begins counseling.

As a canonist, I’m trying to look at this latest revelation as dispassionately as I can. As a Catholic, I trust Pope Benedict to do the right thing with the AV. But as a parent to children in the same age range as Maciel’s when the LC founder began to abuse them, I have only one reaction: SHUT. IT. DOWN.

Hiding one’s crimes under a bushel basket

Deidre Mundy of the Mommy Writes blog (aka Mouse at American Papist) offers some trenchant commentary about the latest scandal surrounding Marcial Maciel and the Legion of Christ’s handling of the situation. Particularly poignant is her following observation:

This is another place where the Legion is falling short. When faced with the evidence of Maciel’s crimes, they’re NOT providing a countersign. They’re not reaching out to the victims or engaging in public penance. Instead of shining a floodlight to illuminate the darkness, they’re trying to hide the crimes under a bushel basket.

Please read her entire commentary here.

Healing, forgiveness and the Legion of Maciel

This entry expands upon a comment I wrote at Life-After-RC.com:
A friend of mine is a spiritual director to Catholic professionals who work with abuse victims. My friend once asked a directee why some victims manage to move on with their lives, while others are stuck with the horror of what was done to them. The directee told my friend: “Those who heal and move on are those who find the ability to forgive.”
It’s not easy. Sometimes one must forgive more than once before one can receive God’s healing. Often one must also learn that forgiving one’s abuser is not the same thing as making oneself a doormat for the abuser or allowing the abuse to continue. Nor does it mean that one jettisons one’s quest for human justice, or throws caution to the wind. Which is why another friend of mine, a Catholic mother of many sons and some daughters in between, has forgiven Fr. Maciel and the Legionary priests who imposed their methodology on her older sons in the Legion’s apostolic schools. However, she will not send her younger sons to these schools, nor will she allow her daughters any further contact with LC/RC-sponsored apostolates.
Nevertheless, the road to healing lay through forgiveness. We need to pray for all of Maciel and the movement’s victims. We need to pray that the Holy Spirit – for the sake of these victims, for the sake of their healing – grants them the grace to forgive. We must encourage the victims to hold the movement accountable, to continue their quest for natural justice, but to do so in a spirit of Christian forgiveness – for their sake, not Maciel’s or the movement’s. This is the only way victims can break the bonds the movement holds over them.
Likewise, I would also ask LC/RC, both current and former, to personally ask forgiveness from those you wounded in the name of the movement, whether you did so intentionally or not. This includes spouses, children, other Catholics in the parish and the movement. You may receive a cold or angry response initially, but by asking forgiveness you show true charity of souls, since you make it easier for the person to forgive, heal and move on in life.
Similarly, I would encourage you who feel victimized by LC/RC to contact those in the LC/RC who you feel victimized you by the movement’s methodology – whether it be whisper campaigns, shunning, spiritual manipulation to put apostolate before family, being recruited into thinking ill of Maciel’s victims or covering up for his abuse, being misled about the true meaning of Maciel’s invitation to retire, etc. – and tell them that you forgive them, regardless of whether these individuals feel they have wronged you or not. Do NOT, however, allow yourselves to be drawn into debate over the rightness or wrongness of LC/RC methodology, or entertain temptation to go back, or agree to drop the pursuit of natural justice. Simply tell the members you forgive them.
As St. Paul says in Romans 12: 19-21: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Likewise, LC/RC charity will be overcome by true Christian charity.

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.

Can LC/RC members repent?

One of Genevieve’s readers has translated an early report concerning the apostolic visitation to the Legion of Christ. You can read it here. If this report is accurate, then I find it significant for two reasons:
1 – The reason Maciel’s earlier victims have not received an apology is because LC/RC leadership reportedly don’t want to admit the probability of Maciel’s guilt.
2 – The Holy Father is reportedly concerned that LC/RC are still following the “vow of charity” in spirit, even though His Holiness has suppressed it in law.
If both these allegations (reportedly alleged by LC rank-in-file troubled by their superiors’ response to crisis) are true, then we’re looking at a deeper question. Namely, are LC/RC leadership capable of repentance?
I cannot claim credit for the question. It comes from a friend of mine who asked me to preserve his anonymity, citing his ecclesiastical status as a local ordinary. He has been following the LC/RC meltdown with great interest because of the effect he feels the movement has had on the people of his diocese.
The question arose as he was telling me about about a pastoral situation he found himself in as a young priest. A successful professional wanted to divorce his wife of several years, abandon their children, and run off with his much younger assistant. My friend asked the professional to think it over, reminding him of his marriage vows and explaining the after-effect this would likely have on the couple’s children. “Can you face God on Judgment Day knowing full well that you have torn your family apart for selfish reasons?” my friend asked.
However, the professional was obstinate. The spark had died in his marriage, he protested, and he was madly in love with his young assistant. “Besides,” the man said, “I’m basically a good person. I volunteer at the food bank and donate my time and money to many local charities. God sees the good things that I do in this community. And speaking of God, you priests are always preaching God’s forgiveness. Are you telling me now that it’s a lie? That God cannot forgive me if I follow my heart, despite all the good things I do?”
My friend was stumped. How to explain to a man looking for any excuse to bolt his marriage that God could forgive him, without appearing to retreat on the importance of remaining faithful to one’s marriage vows and seeking marital counseling. My friend sought advice from a more senior pastor who was experienced with these types of pastoral intervention.
The more senior pastor said: “Tell him that God can forgive him if he follows through with his plan. Then add: ‘But in making this decision with full knowledge of the consequences it will bear on your family, will you be capable of repenting?'”
That is the question. (Although he could have added the following as well: “Or will you spend your life denying the consequences of your intended actions, refusing to admit you were at fault? Digging in to salve your conscience as you try to justify yourself to your children when they turn against you?”)
This is the situation in which members of the LC/RC now find themselves. The good works to which they appeal does not justify the grave evil they appear to gloss over by their actions. Maciel’s earlier victims are still waiting for an official apology, in public and in private. And can anyone show any attempt on the part of LC/RC officials to restore the good name of Maciel’s victims?
Like many other orthodox Catholics, I was prepared to cut the Legion some slack when news first broke last January. This was a great shock to those who had previously believed Maciel to be a living saint. People needed time to absorb the news and understand its implications. However, over nine months have passed since this broke. Moreover, it now seems probable that LC/RC leadership knew about this beforehand. That’s plenty of time to apologize in accordance with one’s Catholic obligations, and obligation in justice as taught in every orthodox Catholic children’s catechism.
And thus my question is as follows to those who, with knowledge of Maciel’s probable guilt and the injustice done to his victims, continue to promote and defend the movement, citing its reported good works, while refusing to acknowledge the gravity of the injustice to Maciel’s victims and the movement’s responsibility to correct the situation: “If you continue along this road, will you be capable of repenting?”
And as an added question to fellow parents, should your children clue in and turn away from the movement before you do, will you be able to keep them from turning against the Church as well? Or will you be too busy engaging in apostolate, promoting your “good works” despite the naysayers?