Several readers have asked my opinion about a new LC/RC prayer book, which reportedly continues to source Maciel. Giselle has aptly summarized the situation here. Likewise, Changobeer (the pseudonymous priest who spent 30 years with the Legion, and who was until last year one of Maciel’s most vocal defenders) warned about this impending controversy in a blog last August:
At the same time, a book recently distributed internally, ‘Cristo al Centro’, offers an anthology of Fr. Maciel’s writings and sayings – unindexed and sometimes slightly retouched – mixed with quotations from other, less dubious sources as a thinly disguised attempt to revindicate the Founder’s contribution to LC spirituality. Now we can quote the Founder without mentioning his name, read some of the things he said and wrote without that direct and oh-so-uncomfortable reference to his person. They’re already talking about revisiting the writings of Fr. Maciel some years down the road when all this ‘persecution’ has blown over…
This ties into Changobeer’s earlier critique of the “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” argument (click here). Since Changobeer and Giselle have exposed the Legion’s attempt to hide Maciel in the rear ranks, I prefer to address this controversy from a personal angle:
Quite simply, I never could get into Maciel’s writing. I tried reading material recommended to me by LC friends. But gave up after a couple of pages. What little I read was tedious, boring and inconsequential to my life as a Catholic. Which is kinda weird given that I was excited by the Code of Canon Law, not to mention arcane legal texts. I’m not saying others didn’t get anything out of Maciel’s writing, I simply could not, and was not going to pretend.
At the time, I chalked it up to being a canon law student. Many in my profession had serious doubts and reservations about Maciel and the Legion even before the original accusations became widely known. The reservations included the rumored Vow of Charity, superiors acting as confessor, the alleged raiding of other movements’ seminarians, not being able to identify a clear charism, not knowing how the Legion contributed to the wider Church community.
Maciel’s writings never clarified any of these concerns; his writings simply obfuscated them. So I walked away conflicted between my non-canonist friends in the Catholic apologetics movement who swore by the Legion as the new ecclesiastical movement most loyal to John Paul II and Catholic orthodoxy, and my friends and trusted mentors in the canon law world who were waiving red flags from their experience with other new ecclesiastical movements that had gone astray. Two things held me back from critiquing the Legion sooner: Pope John Paul II’s support for Maciel, and the many pious lay Catholics I met through Regnum Christi.
That being said, I had the opposite reaction to the writings of St. Bruno – founder of the Carthusian order. I find his writings inspiring, accessible, and clear. They are as easy on the eyes and the spirit as blueberry pie and chilled Chimay beer on the tongue. At the same time they are deeply rooted in Christian prayer and intellectual relfection. Which is why the Carthusian charism continues, 900 years later, unreformed by the Church.
Here is an excerpt from one of St. Bruno’s most famous letters, which in my opinion provides sure guidance vis-a-vis many of the issues surrounding the Maciel controversy:
Contemplation, to be sure has fewer offspring than does action, and yet Joseph and Benjamin were the favourites of their father. This life is the best part chosen by Mary, never to be taken away from her. It is also that extraordinary beautiful Shunammite, the only one in Israel to take care of David and keep him warm in his old age. I could only wish, brother, that you too, had such an exclusive love for her, so that lost in her embrace, you burned with divine love. If only a love like this would take possession of you! Immediately, all the glory in the world would seem like so much dirt to you, whatever the smooth words and false attractions she offered to deceive you. Wealth and its concomitant anxieties you would cast off without a thought, as a burden to the freedom of the spirit. You would want no more of pleasure either, harmful as it is to both body and soul.
You know very well who it is that says to us: “He who loves the world, and the things of the world, such as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and ambition, does not have the love of the Father abiding in him”; also “Friendship with the world is enmity with God”. What could be so evil and destructive then, so unfortunate, or so much the mark of a crazed and headstrong spirit, as to put yourself at odds with the one whose power you cannot resist and whose righteous vengeance you could never hope to escape? Surely we are not stronger than he! Surely you do not think he will leave unpunished in the end all the affronts and contempt he receives, merely because his patient solicitude now incites us to repentance! For what could be more perverted, more reckless and contrary to nature and right order, than to love the creature more than the Creator, what passes away more than what lasts forever, or to seek rather the goods of earth than those of heaven?
So, what do you think ought to be done, dear friend? What else, but to trust in the exhortation of God himself and to believe in the truth which cannot deceive? For he calls out to everyone, saying: “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest”. Is it not, after all, a most ridiculous and fruitless labour to be swollen with lust, continually to be tortured with anxiety and worry, fear and sorrow, for the objects of your passion? Is there any heavier burden than to have one’s spirit thus cast down into the abyss from the sublime peak of its natural dignity – the veritable quintessence of right order gone awry? Flee, my brother, from these unending miseries and disturbances. Leave the raging storms of this world for the secure and quiet harbour of the port.
For you know very well what wisdom in person has to say to us: “Whoever does not renounce all that he has, cannot be my disciple”.
It is well worth reading the whole letter, by clicking here. Why not make a donation to the nearest Carthusian monastery, asking the good monks to pray for Maciel’s victims as well as those who have been harmed by the movement. The address for their North American monastery is:
Charterhouse of the Transfiguration
Carthusian Monastery
1084 Ave Maria Way
ARLINGTON, Vermont 05250
USA