I know I keep peeking back every time I say I’m taking a break from blogging, but this time I have no choice. I’m away for the next four weekends, and have lots of projects to finish during the week. This weekend I’ve been invited to give a conference on canon law at Portes des Eaux / Water Gate in Sudbury, Ontario. The community is on Pioneer Road, which is just off Highway 69 at the southernmost limit of the city – meaning folks wishing to come in from Toronto or Barrie don’t even have to drive into the city. There’s also plenty of hotels and restaurants about a mile north on the highway. It’s also right off the bypass for folks who might want to come in from Timmins, North Bay, Pembroke or Ottawa.
The conference will be in English and French, although my lectures will be given in English. Water Gate is an interesting apostolate in the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie. It was founded when a group drawing from charismatics, traditionalists, Eastern Catholics, Opus Dei, Knights of Columbus, pro-life activists, parents of (now former) LC, Marian prayer groups and other orthodox Catholics within the Sudbury/North Bay regions came together under the leadership of Lina Madore to found diocesan-based community dedicated to prayer and faith formation. Lina received strong support from the diocesan bishop, and she regularly draws speakers from both the diocese and the apostolates represented in the membership.
The lectures, of course, will be on canon law for a lay audience. The spiritual flavor will be a mixture of Divine Mercy devotion, charismatic, Opus Dei meditations, and I believe bilingual Mass offered by a French Jesuit. I’m not sure what the cost is, but their conferences are always very affordable. You can find out more information here.
The weekend after I will be in Guelph for a conference. This one is closed, since it’s being sponsored by the government. However, I should get some free time either Friday or Saturday. If anyone is interested in getting together, please email.
Finally, following a tradition that has grown among conservative Canadian bloggers, I’ll be posting one blog only this Friday, September 11. This is an annual tradition through which we offer prayers and support to our American neighbors by honoring those who were murdered on that fateful day. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithfully departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Author: Pete Vere
Victims vanish from Legion’s Spanish letter
Periodista Digital, which broke many of the recent allegations against Fr. Maciel, has now posted the Spanish version of the letter to RC faithful recently sent out in America and Germany. It is addressed to the RC in Spain. You can read the letter here.
In reading through the Spanish version, it’s about 90 percent the same of what was published in America and Germany. So no need to rehash that.
What I found interesting is the 10 percent difference. First, the letter appears much more forceful in warning RC against blog commentary. The usual stuff about charity, conjecture, etc. But second – and this really caught my attention – is the absence of any mention of allegations Fr. Maciel sexually abused seminarians in his case. This surprises me because these were the allegations that led to his 2006 invitation to retire to a life of prayer and penance.
In fact, the letter is structured in such a way as to give me the impression the Holy See invited him to retire because he had fathered a daughter, and possibly more children. There’s no mentions of earlier allegations – those made by former LC seminarians.
Now my Spanish is far from perfect. I initially thought I was missing something in translation. So I ran it through babelfish. Still no mention. I was going to call a friend who happens to be a Spanish translator, but then the comments at the bottom of the article caught my eye. Several readers, who I assume are fluent in Spanish if they’re capable of writing in the language, blast the letter for exactly this reason.
They point out three things:
1 – It’s pretty close to the same letter as the one sent off in the U.S.
2 – The major difference is the lack of any reference to the allegations of sexual molestation of seminarians.
3 – The letter gives the impression that Maciel was invited to retire because of his sexual escapades involving women.
Which raises two questions:
1): Is molesting boys not seen as a big deal by the Legion’s Spanish leadership? After all, they don’t mention it in their Spanish apology, which in my opinion also raises questions about the sincerity of the American and German apologies.
2) Does this explain the discrepancy we’ve heard about Fr. Alvaro reaching out to Maciel’s victims? After all, most of us in the English-speaking world think first of the young seminarians who first brought forth allegations against Maciel. However, they are not acknowledged in the Spanish version of this letter.
These questions are not merely conjecture on my part. The sexual abuse of minors is a serious sin. Both the American and Germans found it important enough to mention. But the Spanish version did not. Yet all three versions claim the support of LC Director General Fr. Alvaro. Given all the allegations circulating about the Legion playing games with orthodox Catholics, and all the focus that’s been put on the original victims, how can you expect us not to notice such a discrepancy?
In light of this major discrepancy, combined with the impression that the Spanish letter gives, I must retract my earlier statement that the American letter presents a step forward for the LC/RC. Most of the original victims spoke Spanish. To omit any mention of them in the language in which they were victimized is simply unconscionable, in my opinion.
Nor will I accept the excuse that the difference is cultural or linguistic. Such an argument appeals to the racism of low expectations, implying that Spanish-speaking folk are incapable of accepting the truth. This is not true, as demonstrated by the outrage expressed against the letter in Periodista Digital’s comments section.
ExLC and I will be in the basement watching football
Time to raise the white flag on the women and LC methodology threads. After reading RC is not my life‘s latest blog entry, titled Breaking Up Is So Hard To Do, I realize I’m in over my head as a guy. RC is not my life uses the imagery of being seduced and subsequently jilted by a lover to describe her experience joining and being asked to leave RC.
Here are some excerpts:
I stopped thinking seriously about my next step in life, and I jumped into RC life. I actually skipped my LSAT to go to a RC retreat. And my spiritual director told me that she thought I made the right choice. God comes first, she said, and I agreed. God first. […]
I don’t know how to explain it, but RC was always on my mind. When I was separated from it, I only thought of when would be my next contact. I’d do anything to go to a meeting or a retreat. I’d think of excuses to call the consecrated. I was nervous for days in anticipation of meeting with a LC priest. When a Youth and Family Encounter came up, there was no doubt that I’d be there. I’d find a way.
And…
Years later, I was asked to leave RC. I took the rejection with grace at the time, but I still feel the sting so many years later. Why wasn’t I good enough? What did I do wrong?
And even though distance from the movement has given me the certainty that I’m better off, it still hurts to know that the movement I gave up everything for, didn’t feel the same. I feel stupid, I feel cheated, I feel betrayed. And way back in the back of my mind, I know that if RC came knocking on my door today asking to have me back, I’d think about it.
I can understand where RC is not my life is coming from. I sit on several tribunals where people share how they found themselves seduced into bad marriages. But as Giselle warned me before tackling this issue, most guys will miss many of the nuances being discussed. So I think I will sneak down into basement with ExLC and watch football.
Hopefully my Packers will have put the Brett Favre drama behind them this season, and rebuilt their defense over the summer.
Who says there’s no ‘LC’ in irony?
Expressing outrage at my Let us prey… entry, Fed up RC states: “1. It is a sin to make false accusation without [sic.] subtantial basis to prove the facts.”
Since Fed up RC appears to be presenting this principle as universally applicable to Catholics, I will respond with a quote attributed to Fr. Owen Kearns, in which the high-profile LC priest reportedly describes Juan Vaca (Maciel’s first accuser) as “a proud, status-conscious man angered and disappointed at his professional failures.”
That’s quite the accusation against a former colleague. To my knowledge Fr. Kearns has not retracted it publicly. And as of this writing I am told Mr. Vaca has not received an apology from the Legion. So where’s the proof?
Let us prey…
Giselle says I shamed her into posting about how the Legion churns out Fr. Eye Candy for women. I don’t claim to understand it, but I also don’t know of any other Catholic order so particular about its grooming practices as to reportedly include them in its institutional norms. Moreover, as a guy I know there are certain priests – HLI’s Fr. Thomas Euteneuer being a good example – that just strike us as a men’s men.
That being said, I’ve often wondered over the years, privately, why most Regnum Christi members I know are women, while most of my Opus Dei friends are men. Of couples I know in “mixed marriages,” the husband belongs to Opus Dei and the wife belongs to Regnum Christi. I’ve never met a Regnum Christi husband married to an Opus Dei wife.
But back to Giselle’s comments. She says something that immediately sets off my spiritual spidey-sense:
Spiritual headship is not a trump card with these women because the Legion priests have undermined it all these years, teaching the women to wheedle their husbands for more time and money for the Legion. (There is a reason the women’s sections always outnumber the men’s sections.) For those who don’t go to the brink of divorce (or split outright), there is a squaring off within marriages whereby the wife makes her RC commitments sacrosanct and the husband acquiesces for the sake of his sanity.
I’ve been present while the Legion pitches this. One Morning of Reflection, we were all led along the path: “You are princesses (because you are daughters of a King!)” Well, technically yes (though I like “You’re a worm and no man” better). But many of the women were in tears. What the priest touched on cleverly was their brokeness, their insecurities, and their random experiences of abuse. He built them up, using his own brand of “self esteem potion” so that they were putty in his hands. They literally fought to cook for him and to be the most active and industrious volunteers in the coming years.
Some of the nastiest annulment cases I have ever participated in are those in which a priest came between husband and wife. I’m not talking an abusive situation where the priest advised the wife to get out for the personal safety of her and her children. Rather I’m talking about cases where the wife spent more time with the priest than with her husband. Most of the cases involved Catholics who would be considered orthodox.
The relationship between wife and priest was rarely one of sexual attraction. Rather, husband is busy at work, while Father is busy in the parish. Wife becomes active in the parish because Father is “such a holy priest” and she begins to put his needs before those of her husband and family back home. Relieved at the help he’s receiving, Father affirms wife for everything she contributes to the parish and gives her more responsibilities. He intentionally avoids questioning wife about her marriage and home life because he doesn’t want to know. He needs help in the parish! So long as the relationship isn’t sexual, he can justify it as necessary for the greater good of souls. And Father will tell the tribunal that wife is a good woman who hubby grew to resent when she began to take her Catholic faith seriously.
Not really. The vocation of wife and mother is not the vocation of woman religious. Both vocations are good, but there’s a reason God has separated them. No apostolate should come before one’s family.
I am also troubled by Giselle’s story of grown women being described as “princesses”. Sure I refer to my own daughters as princesses, and with three of them Disney has cost me a small fortune in Princess swag. But that’s part of the charm of being father to little girls. You raise them hoping one day they will find their Prince Charming.
However, I don’t see “princess” as appropriate to an audience of wives and mothers. As St. Paul says in 1 Cor 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” Thus I find it charming when our parish priest greets my daughters before Mass, saying “Hello princesses.” But I would find such flattery creepy if Father addressed my wife in the same way. So would she.
What pops into my mind is St. Ignatius Loyola’s Thirteen Rule of spiritual discernment – a rule drilled into the head of every Jesuit prior to ordination:
Likewise, [the devil] acts as a licentious lover in wanting to be secret and not revealed. For, as the licentious man who, speaking for an evil purpose, solicits a daughter of a good father or a wife of a good husband, wants his words and persuasions to be secret, and the contrary displeases him much, when the daughter reveals to her father or the wife to her husband his licentious words and depraved intention, because he easily gathers that he will not be able to succeed with the undertaking begun: in the same way, when the enemy of human nature brings his wiles and persuasions to the just soul, he wants and desires that they be received and kept in secret; but when one reveals them to his good Confessor or to another spiritual person that knows his deceits and evil ends, it is very grievous to him, because he gathers, from his manifest deceits being discovered, that he will not be able to succeed with his wickedness begun.
Beware of flattery. It’s never from God and there is always some seduction behind it.
And on that note, I’ll end this post by answering Giselle’s priestly pin-ups with my own:
What you see, dear reader, is 100 percent Semper Fi!