As I was taking out the trash this morning, I was struck by reader Patrice Becker’s observation in the combox yesterday: “The ‘unique methodology’ supposedly developed by Father Maciel was almost an carbon copy of the Latter Days Saints community methodology. Having lived amongst Mormons for over nine years, I recommend every RC member read Judy Robinson’s book Out of Mormonism to discover Fr. Maciel’s methodology is not unique at all.”
Okay, I don’t know Patrice personally, so I cannot vouch for the reader’s alleged experiences with Legion priests or Mormon bishops. However, I have read Robinson’s Out of Mormonism in addition to Andrea Moore-Emmett’s God’s Brothel. I definitely see some striking similarities in methodology between Maciel and Mormonism. From the focus on programming and recruitment, to the sometimes blurry lines between church and business, to the way the head of the Mormon structure is practically worshiped. This is making sense. Way too much sense. Thanks Patrice.
Category: Legion of Christ/ Regnum Christi
Hartford Courant – 13 years after Breaking the Silence
Many Catholics now tuning into the Maciel scandal, as well as many who have followed the scandal over the past few years, keep hearing references to Jason Berry, Gerald Renner and their investigative journalism for the Hartford Courant that first broke Maciel’s “double life” to English-speaking audiences. While doing some research this morning, I came across an online reprint of the story – including some images of the original publication.
The article was published 13 years ago under the title Breaking the Silence: Head of Worldwide Catholic Order Accused of History of Abuse. Most of you are aware already of the controversy it would spark. Many have read the Legion’s subsequent responses to the story, as well as Renner and Berry’s responses to the responses. But have you read the original story?
This is your opportunity to do so. Please click here.
UPDATE: Vaca ‘source’ of Legion’s ‘charism’, ex-Legionary ‘suggests’
UPDATE: A reader points out that I missed the obvious: In trying to minimize Maciel’s relationship to the Legion, Monk argues that Maciel accuser Juan Vaca was the true founder of the Legion (at least in Spain).
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Red Cardigan vs. Monk’s sacred cowl: It’s pure fashion!
Erin Manning (aka the blogger Red Cardigan at And Sometimes Tea) has a knack for applying common sense to LC/RC sacred cows, which is why I always appreciate the clarity she brings to this debate. Thus I was not surprised when she smothered Monk’s latest cow (or is it ‘cowl’ given that Monk’s wrapping himself in it?), namely, that members of Maciel’s movement were attracted to Christ and not to Maciel.
To which Erin replies:
Monk, did you, or did you not, use a prayerbook composed of Maciel’s prayers?
Did you (collectively) receive his letters and have them read to you?
Did you celebrate his birthday and his mother’s birthday as major feasts?
There are many additional questions Erin asks of Monk, which you can read in the comments’ section of this post. At the same time, Erin is also providing another LC-supportive critic with some common sense answers. The fact she ably defends the truth despite being outnumbered is testament to the grace of the Holy Spirit in her life.
A personal apology to Maciel’s victims
Loyal reader Anon out of RC said something in her following comment that really disturbed my conscience:
I was a leader in RC and for years I said the same story that I was told, especially after 2006 – the sexual abuse victims and any of those associated with their cause were “enemies of the church” and wanted to bring down the LC, Maciel, Pope JPII and the Church. I did it innocently, although after 2006 I was so proud of my charity to Maciel and obedience to my superiors by not reading anything except what the LC told me – that he was innocent and suffering like Jesus on the cross. That was pride on my part (and also a learned feeling of guilt for checking out other sources) and not good discernment but the Lord allowed it.
After Feb 2009, I read, prayed and made my own discernments instead of just what I was told by LC. I have since apologized online at American Papist and in my heart and soul to Maciel’s original sexual abuse victims for my part in spreading the lie that they were not telling the truth and they were “enemies of the church”. It was freeing.
It finally came together after Mass today. Our pastor had touched upon the need to apologize for one’s sins – both of commission and of omission – during the homily. For the past year I have been urging LC and RC to come clean and apologize to Maciel’s victims. Yet I have never apologized for my own sins toward them.
It’s time to correct this injustice. Maciel’s victims truly remind me of how Christ suffered during His passion. Their reputations were murdered. They were accused of spreading falsehood and being enemies of God when what they had spoken was truth. Their persecution was initiated by the religious authorities of the day, to preserve a system already in place, and the persecution spread to the masses. And the victims’ suffering was multiplied by the religious persecutors turning to civil authorities to enlist the sword of the state in the silencing of truth.
Yet where Maciel’s victims most remind me of Christ is in their treatment shown to former persecutors who have apologized sincerely for helping to spread the lie, and who have asked for forgiveness from the victims. Not one of Maciel’s victims has refused forgiveness in situations that I am aware of. All have treated their former persecutors with mercy and tenderness, reassuring their former persecutors that they too were once on the inside. So they too understand.
But back to my own sin toward the victims. Unlike Anon out of RC and so many others reading this blog, I cannot claim to have acted in good faith. Mine are sins of omission. Mine are the sins of the Apostles who fled when the angry mob came for Christ, despite knowing that the victims were innocent.
From the moment I first heard of the allegations against Maciel, I knew they were true. A close relative is a civil attorney who in the Canadian legal system is considered an expert in cases alleging clerical sexual misconduct. While studying canon law I had been taught by one of the Church’s most respected canonical experts on this topic – a former consultor to the Holy See. The Church’s sexual misconduct crisis was all over the North American media, and I had represented accused priests. With the canon law community I had also voiced strong support for Fr. Tom Doyle (not a popular figure at the time) and strong criticism for the failure of Churchmen to put children first. So I had the professional knowledge and experience to know better.
Yet there is one circumstance that aggravates my sin even more than any of the above. It is that I first heard the allegations FROM SOME OF THE VICTIMS THEMSELVES. Personally, not through Jason Berry or Tom Doyle. In person, not over the phone or by email. At a hotel in Atlanta, shortly after delivering the following paper (scroll down a page) to an international conference on cults, on the topic (ironically!) of what the Church considers signs of cultic behavior in new religious movements. Over supper with Giselle who introduced me to the victims. I sat with Aaron, Jose Barba or Juan Vaca (I cannot recall who) [UPDATE: Giselle has confirmed both were present at the meal.] and some of the other victims. They looked me in the eye and described the sexual abuse they had suffered. Their faces were the faces of every other legitimate victim of clergy sexual misconduct I had met in person. The modus operandi they described was that of many priestly abusers whose cases I had worked on. I knew these victims spoke truth.
And if I had any doubts about their veracity – I didn’t – several of my colleagues in the canon law world confirmed the horror I experienced, sharing experiences with former LC that corroborated my own, but warning me as a young canonist to tread carefully since the LC and Maciel were at the height of their power within the Church. “Everything you heard is true,” said one respected canonist familiar with the situation through previous work in Rome. “But I’m convinced that nothing can be done about it until the next Pope.” And that is what pains me still about the situation, given the love and admiration I feel for Pope John Paul II.
So I fled. I refused to take a public stand on the issue, or communicate directly with the victims (Giselle knew how to get hold of me – discretely – if they needed canonical advice), or put my name to anything that could be traced back to ReGAIN or Maciel’s victims. I guarded my words carefully and spoke in ambiguities when a high-profile North American representative of the Legion confronted me afterward about my meeting with Maciel’s victims. I resorted to the same verbal gymnastics when approached by people I knew to be LC, RC, friends or family of members, or movement supporters.
I continued to critique LC/RC quietly on other issues of concern to canonists, using the general consensus in my profession as cover, but I avoided mention of the victims. I kept quiet about the allegations, and hurriedly changed the topic whenever they came up.
It took me until 2006 to steel my courage and speak up publicly in support of the victims. Only when the Holy See released its 2006 communique “inviting” Maciel to retire to a life of prayer and penance. But by then I knew the gig was up. It might take LC/RC years or even decades to come around to the truth about Maciel. Some likely will never come around. But as Msgr. Scicluna noted in his recent interview, for any semi-competent canonist there was no sugar-coating what the Holy See meant by its ‘invitation’. Speaking out at this point required little moral courage.
In light of all this, I wish to apologize:
– To Maciel’s victims and other victims of alleged abuse within the movement for not speaking up sooner in your defence, despite knowing that you were speaking the truth.
– For the not returning your phone calls or emails, for insisting that I be contacted anonymously and quietly through Giselle.
– To Giselle for making you take time away from your family, and for the inconvenience I caused by putting you in the role of mediator.
– For not defending you when your reputation was sullied in public by supporters of Maciel and his movement, despite knowing that you were innocent of the accusations against you and that the persecution was unjust.
– For contributing to the delay of justice in your case, which also means that justice was denied to you.
– For putting my professional career as a canonist and Catholic journalist before your pain and the correction of injustices against you.
– For re-victimizing you through my silences and other sins of omission.
And to members of LC, RC, friends and family of people on the inside, fellow parents and other Catholics, I apologize:
– For my use of ambiguous language whenever you approached me with concerns, whether you shared them or had simply heard rumors.
– For allowing you to continue believing in good conscience that Maciel was innocent and his victims were liars.
– For not speaking up sooner and warning you, when I knew the truth, that Maciel was an abuser and that his accusers were victims.
– For any harm to you, your family or your friends that may have come through my silence, use of ambiguous language, or other sins of omission.
Please forgive me. Please pray for me. Please join me in apologizing to victims of Maciel and the movement whose reputations were unjustly tarnished for coming forward with the truth.
And please note that there are no hard feelings toward you from my end. As noted by Anon out of RC, there is nothing more freeing than the truth of an apology.
A Saint’s words concerning the current situation
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