Author: Pete Vere

UPDATE: Eric Sammons has blogged an entry from a reader explaining how the vocation to the priesthood and the vocation to the Legionaries are intertwined in the minds of many, which is why one often sees collateral damage to one’s faith after leaving. It’s worth reading, along with Eric’s subsequent commentary (click here).
Initial post
I was suspicious when the pseudonymous poster “Edmund Ritter” showed up on the ExLC blog a few months ago, claiming to be a Legion priest in Rome studying psychology. (Although it wasn’t clear from what I read whether he was claiming to do so privately, or within an academic context). However, ExLC vouched publicly for Fr. Ritter’s authenticity. He also reassured me privately that the two know each other well. (In non-lawyer speak, I’m passing the buck to ExLC).
That being said, I was heartened by Fr. Ritter’s following response on the ExLC blog to my recent Catholic Light posting (which ExLC reposted) explaining why we should not write-off a reconstitution of the Legion:

Your position seems to be identical to my own. If the Pope wants to suppress the LC, then let the damned thing be suppressed! But if he sees it has a chance reconstituted in new form or with a new management, then let’s go for it, those of us inside who can.
[Not] everyone here is insane. Many are simply uninformed, and they must be informed by authority. The Pope must speak clear to his Legionaries if they are to understand what has happened to them, and why. Then a reconstitution is possible and feasible — once elementary truth and justice has been established.
God has done this sort of thing before: it’s Salvation and Redemption. Adam and Eve — both insane in their rebellion and sin — beyond redemption? Not even they. Now the Church sings their ruin as the “Happy Fault that obtained for us such a Redeemer” each year at the vigil mass of Easter Sunday. I do not believe I am abusing analogy. I believe God reapplies this same method every time a sinner walks out of the confessional absolved. If God wants it, and if the Legionaries are not totally insane but respond generously and humbly, why cannot the same happen for their stricken institute?

Let’s all pray a decade of the Rosary for Fr. Ritter and other Legionaries in his position.

Someone please page Fr. Damien Karras.

[Update: According to readers with a lot more Spanish expertise than me, it appears that Espinosa was using an offer of DNA testing as a rhetorical device to call into question the paternity of recent individuals claiming to be Maciel’s children. It also appears that Espinosa is the son of Maciel’s cousin. Anyway, this is why I avoided providing a translation or analysis on this article.]
Initial post
Religion Digital has just published an explosive interview with Alejandro Espinosa, Maciel’s nephew who claims to have been molested by his uncle as a young seminarian. The allegations are numerous, serious and specific. Given my poor grasp of Spanish, I am not going to attempt translation. However, Espinosa has offered a sample of his own DNA to help establish the credibility of those claiming to be Maciel’s children [See update above for clarification on this last point].

There’s an old expression among canon lawyers, taken from Roman legal principles: Semel malus semper praesumitur esse malus. “Whoever has been convicted of evil is always presumed to be evil.” This principle comes to mind as I consider Richard Sutcliff’s following objection vis-a-vis the LC/RC scandal: “It seems as though you are very willing to publish and believe anything bad about the Legionaries, yet subject anything that might make them look at all good to the most rigorous scrutiny.”
Let’s look at this from another angle. For decades we believed the LC/RC when they told us Maciel was a living saint, that he had never said no to God, that the victims were inventing allegations against him, that they were motivated by jealousy and anti-Catholic agendas. Only we know now that the victims were telling the truth vis-a-vis the crux of this controversy, namely that Maciel was a serial pervert.
So the question arises: What else were these victims, long denounced as liars, telling the truth about? Whether or not LC/RC leadership wishes to acknowledge it, the benefit of the doubt has now shifted to the victims from Maciel and his movement. As one former RC apologist said to me recently, “Pete, we cannot tell after all these years which [alleged] victims are telling the truth and which are not. But we’d be in a much better position to face this scandal if we just assumed they’re all telling the truth.”
A second thing to keep in mind when reading this blog. I have both a telephone number and a private email address. So does Giselle. We’re quite accessible to folks inside RC/LC who share our concerns, but who don’t feel tin a position to speak out publicly. Perhaps they rely on the LC/RC for their paycheck, perhaps they have a son with the Legion or a daughter with the 3gf. Perhaps they themselves are LC or 3gf. The same is true of those who comment in our comboxes. As blog hosts, Giselle and I see the email addresses and many are recognizable from inside the movement.
The point being? Many still inside the movement find themselves frustrated by their leaders’ response to this crisis. These insiders now believe the evil they hear, in some cases claim to have witnessed it themselves, and many are alleging even more serious accusations that have not yet been reported. I can vouch that Giselle and I are sitting on several such allegations that we won’t blog about until some other media source reports it, the individual making the accusation agrees to go public, or some other credible source corroborates it. So Giselle and I keep it quiet until we can attribute it. Nevertheless, this private information often pans out.
Along the same lines, more than one high-profile member of LC/RC has copied me or summarized for me their correspondence with the apostolic visitator for their region. Other bloggers and journalists report receiving similar inside information shared with the apostolic visitators. (I suspect many readers would be surprised to learn just who inside the movement has joined the throng of bloggers expressing outrage over the leadership’s handling of this scandal.) And some of this correspondence requests that the movement be shut down completely or reconstituted with new leadership. So while pontifical secrecy binds the visitators, who can be disciplined by the Holy See for leaking information, it’s much more difficult to control the flow of information leaked by those being visited.
So to answer Richard’s question, I find many of the new allegations surfacing in the media to be credible because I’m hearing similar stories from people still highly active in the movement. Some of these people played a role in the persecution of Maciel’s victims, doing so in the mistaken belief that Maciel was a living saint incapable of such moral perversion. They feel horrible about what they perpetuated on the victims. And they’re angry about having been misled into misleading others.
Which is another reason why I believe the movement’s only shot at survival is reconstitution under a new leadership. It appears that the current leadership lacks the confidence of many of its current members, including some in high-profile positions. A movement cannot survive for long if its rank-and-file and middle management lack confidence in its leadership.