Today is the last day of our novena to Our Lady of Good Remedy for friends and family stuck in LC/RC. To find out more on Our Lady of Good Remedy, and how this novena began, please click here. Basically, it was under the title Our Lady of Good Remedy that the Blessed Mother miraculously helped St. John of Matha free thousands of Christians enslaved to Muslim overlords. Here is the daily Novena prayer, which I invite you to join me in praying for Catholics enslaved by Maciel’s movement and methodology:
Author: Pete Vere
We need to begin reconciling as lay Catholics
Suzanne – my long-time friend, fellow Canuck, and fire team partner in the trenches of Catholic pro-life activism in the Great White North – is coming under fire for having believed in Maciel’s innocence and disbelieved his victims (click here). I can understand. We go way back and I can corroborate her following reaction and description of herself:
It was a shocking level of duplicity. Very hard to digest. When you live your life to be honest and as simple as possible, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would be so two-faced.
Which is why I find it impossible to be angry with her, or to seek hidden motives for her reaction, despite our past disagreements over Maciel, or the movement he founded. There’s a small community of orthodox Catholics and pro-life activists in Canada. We’re about the same age, and we both became active around the same time, when our numbers were even fewer. Hence the temptation to believe that anyone who professed Catholic orthodoxy was our friend. Without my background in canon law and wide exposure to Catholicism in the U.S., I would likely find myself in her shoes.
So no hard feelings Suzanne. I may question LC higher-ups who claimed to known nothing of Maciel’s duplicity, but I don’t question Suzanne’s integrity for having believed them. For me this is another tragedy of this scandal. That such a kind, honest and devout young mother like Suzanne – that such a supportive friend and loyal ally in Canada’s culture war – was pitted against Aaron, Glenn Favreau, Paul Lennon and other honest men who I consider friends and allies in the Church’s internal struggle against Maciel’s methodology.
So no hard feelings, my friend.
Fr. Owen Kearns apologizes
Here is a snippet from the National Catholic Register:
I regret that in my defense of Father Maciel I took to task Gerald Renner and Jason Berry, the writers who broke the story, and their editors at the Hartford Courant. They didn’t get everything about the Legion right but they were fundamentally correct about Father Maciel’s sexual abuse and I ask forgiveness — too late for Gerald Renner, who is deceased.
To Father Maciel’s victims, I pray you can accept these words: I’m sorry for what our founder did to you. I’m sorry for adding to your burden with my own defense of him and my accusations against you. I’m sorry for being unable to believe you earlier. I’m sorry this apology has taken so long.
Click here to read the whole apology.
UPDATE: Finding Christ outside LC/RC
There’s a reason the early Christians shared their personal testimony of how they encountered Christ. For most of us, a good story captures the imagination much more readily than dry theological treatises. Which is why I’m happy to see so many former LC/RC/3gf emerging in the blogosphere to share their personal stories of leaving Maciel’s movement. One never knows when the Holy Spirit will use your story to help others in a similar situation. By sharing the truth of your experience with the movement, Christ is setting you and others free.
What do I do with my kids now that I’ve left RC?
This is a question several parents – who are shying away from RC and its derivatives – have asked me over the past month. Where does one find a program that teaches kids self-discipline, self-respect, loyalty, faith and patriotism? A program that allows kids to socialize with other good kids, and that is at the same time easy on the budget and open to large families – both homeschooling and non-homeschooling?