Two breaking news stories today have interrupted my week catching up on other projects. The first concerns the release of a decision in a major case before Canada’s “Human Rights” Tribunal that, to everyone’s surprise, came down on the side of freedom or speech and religion. For the past decade anti-Christian activists have been using the tribunals to persecute Christian organizations like the Knights of Columbus, Fr. de Valk (Canada’s equivalent to Fr. Frank Pavone) and Christian Horizons for promoting traditional Christian morality. For more information, check out my book with Kathy Shaidle (featuring an introduction by Mark Steyn): The Tyranny of Nice.
In writing this book, I noticed several similarities between the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and the Legion of Christ in how they try always to promote “the appearance of nice”, treat those who dissent and express legitimate criticism of their methods, and how they create hierarchies of power and contribute to a culture where the average person is reluctant to speak the truth.
The second story is the following letter reportedly sent to Regnum Christi members in Atlanta and New York by Fr Scott Reilly and Fr Julio Marti. Giselle has posted it here. Assuming this letter is legit (I haven’t confirmed with Legion sources [UPDATE – a Regnum Christi source confirms receiving the letter]) my overall impression is that this is both encouraging and substantial. It may not be perfect – and here I agree with Giselle’s criticisms, and have a few questions of my own (like “How can we be sure Fr. Alvaro and other high-ranking Legion superiors didn’t know while Maciel was still alive?”) – but these questions can be resolved later. For now, I believe this is a significant step in the right direction, and we as Catholics need to encourage the Legion and Regnum Christi to keep walking along this path.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time right now for an in-depth analysis. But here is a summary of why I believe this reported letter is significant, substantial and important step in the right direction. These points are listed in no particular order of importance, and some of the quotations are out of order from which they appear in the letter:
– “We also hope to remedy some of our shortcomings in communication – for which we are sorry-, so that together we can continue walking what will surely be a long path of healing and reconciliation with those who have been hurt by the misdeeds of Father Maciel.” This is both an admission and an apology for the Legion’s questionable communication strategy thus far.
– “As priests, our hearts go out to all those who have been harmed or scandalized by [Fr. Maciel’s] actions. To all we extend a special apology on behalf of the Legion and our General Director…” This is admission that Fr. Maciel’s actions have both harmed and scandalized the Church, and a clear apology for the harm and scandal.
– “We also regret that our inability to detect, and thus accept and remedy, Father Maciel’s failings has caused even more suffering.” This is an admission and an apology on several levels – for not accepting the truth about Fr. Maciel sooner, for not fixing the problems sooner, and for additional suffering caused to Fr. Maciel’s victims because of inaction on the Legion’s part.
– “In the recent past, after Father Marcial Maciel had retired, we came to know that he had had a relationship with a woman and fathered a child. Even more recently, there have been allegations of other relationships and other children.” and “All this leads us to value even more the wisdom and pastoral approach of the Holy See concerning the allegations of past sexual abuse against Father Maciel that had surfaced.” The expressions “fathered a child” and “allegations of past sexual abuse” is clear language, unlike vague euphemisms like “the founder’s double life.” I also believe it’s the right (and most charitable) language for the Legion to use in these circumstances. It spares us the sordid details, which the vast majority of us don’t need to know, but is specific enough to inform us what Fr. Maciel allegedly did.
– “Given the partial nature of the information available and the impossibility to evaluate immediately and in a definitive manner these complex allegations, the Legion of Christ cannot, at this time, make a statement regarding them.” The Legion is telling us what they don’t know, rather than try to avoid their potential to be true or continue to attack the alleged victims.
– “As it was stated in the communiqué published on May 19, 2006, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith investigated these issues and invited him to a reserved life of prayer and penance, renouncing all public ministry.” Given the context in which this statement appears, the Legion is de facto admitting that the 2006 invitation from the Holy See was not a reward for Fr. Maciel’s exhaustion after a “lifetime of building God’s Kingdom,” nor are they maintaining Fr. Maciel’s innocence like Christ suffering on the cross.
– “As an institution, as a family and as individuals, this unexpected turn of events has been traumatic. Being weak humans, even if reacting with Christian virtue, many of us have gone through experiences of shock, anger, disbelief, denial and fear, both humanly and spiritually. These emotions, the vast tangle of information, supposition, speculation and opinion, the different cultural sensitivities, and the Christian duty not to publicize the sins of others, have made it difficult to publish the sort of direct statement that many expected of us.” The Legion is admitting to a wide-range of human emotions, that such emotions are normal, instead of resorting to Legion “happy talk” about “serenity” and other Stepford impulses.
– The Legion also states the problems are beyond its capacity to handle internally, and what steps it is taking – involving outsiders – to recognize, address and correct problems within its internal culture.
– There are several statements in which the Legion tries to identify – I believe sincerely – with those victimized by Fr. Maciel.
– The Legion appears to repudiate the “lost vocation, sure damnation” mentality of the past, saying it’s okay to leave the Legion, take a break from the Legion, seek confessors and spiritual direction outside the Legion, and one is not any less Catholic or acting contrary to God’s will in doing so.
– Instead of passing the blame to the Church, the Legion is taking responsibility for its actions, showing where the Church is acting to correct the Legion’s problems, and attempting to restore trust in the Church.
Again, it might not be 180 degree turn, but given the Legion’s past handling of this crisis, 160 degrees is both substantial and encouraging. It shows the Legion is taking the scandal seriously, is taking responsibility for the problems leading up to it, and that the internal culture that led to this scandal is starting to change.
My advice to the Legion? Words need to be followed up by action. Now that the Legion is turning in the right direction, they need to begin walking forward. My advice to current LC/RC members is as follows: The one point from this letter where you are open to fair criticism concerns the claim that the Legion has tried to contact Fr. Maciel’s potential victims.
We know the Legion has contacted the RC membership, that it was in touch with Maciel’s mistress Norma and her daughter who is also named Norma. We know that Fr. Anton spoke with at least one alleged victim who had been a seminarian with the Legion. But what about those former priests and seminarians who initially brought forward the allegations in public?
Up until now they deny having been contacted by the Legion. Their allegations were public, so to a certain degree they have forfeited their right to privacy in these matters. Was there an effort to contact them? If so, when, where and how?
If not, does the Legion intend to contact them? If the answer is yes, when, where and how?
This is a point I think current RC members need to press the Legion on. How the LC answers this question will impact how everyone else continue to view the order.
My advice to the Legion’s critics? Of course this will require baby-steps at first, until the Legion is sure of its footing. So while it’s important that we keep pushing them forward, we must be careful not to push them down. As my former spiritual director use to tell me: “God doesn’t expect perfection from us overnight. But he expects improvement.” So let us continue to encourage the Legion to improve, by encouraging the Legion where it is making significant improvement.
Category: Legion of Christ/ Regnum Christi
Mgr. Palud corrects me, and he’s looking for vocations
Monsignor Michael Palud – a knowledgeable priest whose many titles includes doctor of canon law, Vicar General of the Diocese of Mandeville, and Prior General of the Missionary Society of Mandeville – has gently corrected my earlier comments about how the society was founded out of the ashes of the Fils de Marie, which were based upon media reports I had read. (And before I forget, please check out the related Journey of a Young Priest blog – well worth reading for those following the LC situation). I apologize for the inaccuracies in my initial report, and appreciate Mgr. Palud taking time to correct the record (which I have bolded and italicized) and give CL readers a first-hand account of how his institute was founded – an experience that gives hope to those currently in LC/RC:
Dear Pete,
Interesting comment, although not totally accurate. Allow me to expand. Before the Fils de Marie saga broke out, indeed a few years before that, the officials of the Propagation of the Faith advised Bishop Boyle, former Superior General of the Passionists and First Bishop of Mandeville, that he might consider founding a missionary group of men dedicated especially for mission work in the Caribbean and to sustain the missionary works of the Diocese. I was his Vicar General at the time (and still am the Vicar General of the Diocese). I encouraged Bishop Boyle to go forward. He was touched by my enthusiasm, but said to me, “Mike, I am too old to begin something new, and then again, I would need a group of men to begin this.”
When the Fils de Marie became manifestly heretical, the Superior General–after the Doctrinal Note of 2000 bearing Cardinal Ratzinger’s signature was published–ordered all the Sons of Mary “back home” to Canada. Five Sons of Mary, including myself, left the institute and remained in the Diocese of Mandeville. We were just interested in continuing our lives as missionaries, under the guidance of our Bishop like all the other missionaries in the Diocese.
It was then that the BISHOP approached us and proposed to us the project which the authorities in Rome had nudged him to do a few years earlier. He first convoked me and asked me if I remembered what he had told me about this project. “Of course, I remember Your Excellency, I even pushed your Excellency to go forward with it.”
He replied, “Yes, that is correct. I was thinking of giving that project to you and your men [who left the Sons of Mary].”
I said to him, “If that is your intention, Your Excellency, you will have to speak with the men yourself.”
So, a few days later, he convoked us all to his office, thanked us for remaining faithful to the Church and the People of God then he sat us together and gave to all present what was to be our initial legislation [remember, Paul Boyle was an excellent canonist]. One of our members asked if we could reflect on this before embarking on this new venture he was proposing to us.Indeed, the separation from our Institute had been painful. Naturally he said yes and we took time to pray and discern. Then we said yes to this project.
Our charism of course is Passionist, Marian and Missionary. We have an excellent relationship with the Passionist General and of course with our new Bishop who is a Passionist. Indeed we are considered a “branch” of the Passionists (like there are many branches in the Franciscan family).
We are configured as a Diocesan Society of Apostolic Life. After our consent to his project, Bishop Boyle formally founded and established the Mission Society of Mandeville by episcopal Decree. He received the perpetual incorporation of the first members. He then appointed a Passionist as our first Master of Novices as vocations started coming to join us. The rest is history.
We run a high school, a home for abandoned children, two parishes, a mission station and we staff the Passionist Retreat House and do retreat work..A number of us occupy curial positions. As for me, I am still the Vicar General of the Diocese, another member is the Diocesan M.C. and Liturgy Director. Another member occupied the Office of Youth Ministry for a number of years. We are also involved in tertiary education within the Catholic College of Mandeville. Our life is totally “poured out” for the sake of he missions in this developing country.
Indeed, we would welcome anyone who is serious, hard-working, has a genuine love for the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother and the Magisterium (a good sensus Ecclesiae!), has a genuine sense of mission and being with the People of God, and ready to lay down his life in the Mission Lands forever by proclaiming the memory of the Passion to our People.
We have more work than we have men. We were asked to open in other areas of the Caribbean. So, anyone interested can petition, and we will help them in the process.
I just wanted to set the record straight that we did not intend to begin something new. We did not approach our Bishop. He approached us with this project, founded our Institute, guided us, presided the first General Chapter and obtained a first grant from the Propagation of the Faith to help us begin the Mission Society of Mandeville. He has left this world, but has left us a legacy intimately tied to mission life, passionist and marian spirituality.
Out of a terrible experience of death came new life. And I am grateful for it.
Monsignor Michael Palud, JCD
Vicar general of the Diocese
Prior General of the Mission Society
Again, thank-you Monsignor for correcting the record, fpr doing so with charity, and for giving hope to others now going through what you went through a decade ago. Now let’s see if we can net you some vocations!
Okay, one more post – Maciel and Mama Maurita
One last post that I have been meaning to write for some time, on a topic that my fellow blog hobbits are now tackling. It concerns Fr. Maciel, family life, and the importance of truth. Giselle at Life-After-RC has posted the testimony of a parent who accuses Fr. Maciel of hurting his family life through Maciel’s lies, which touches upon why parents ought not treat Regnum Christi membership like a vocation on par with marriage (click here).
Meanwhile, ExLC treats us to some poetry in responding to my earlier post explaining how Fr. Maciel’s life undermines the teachings he advocates in his spiritual writings. Here’s ExLC’s poem:
Now here is the problem:
Who was Marcial Maciel?
Did he lie to his families about being a priest?
Or did he lie all along about being a founder?
And how can we ever know which one is the lie?
Or were they both a lie?
And of several thought-provoking weekend posts at RC Is Not My Life, one of them deals with this issue by comparing Fr. Maciel to television network executives in Jim Carey’s movie The Truman Show. What struck me was not only the author’s insight, which you can read here, but reader Simon’s comment in the ensuing discussion:
Based on what we now know about Maciel, there are really only two possibilities, aren’t there?
1. He concocted the Legion and RC to cover up for and fund his decadent lifestyle. The whole thing is a cynical joke, a scam. Marcial Madoff, L.C.
OR
2. Anguished by the internal contradictions of his own life, this man — so utterly lacking integrity, self-discipline, generosity, genuine piety or even a fixed identity — overcompensated. He created an organization that pressed its members to sacrifice their own personalities and stripped away their ability to discern vocations, express authentic human emotions, or even decide how to part their hair.
In the first possibility, Maciel made cynical use of authentic Catholic spirituality in order to achieve his evil ends, adding nothing distinctive.
In the second possibility, Maciel actively distorted Catholicism in response to his own bizarre interior torment, so that the result is doctrinally orthodox as a formal matter, but deeply screwed up at the level of formation and spirituality.
I’m not a psychologist. Nor do I play one on television. However, I’ve ministered inside the Church’s legal structure for close to ten years now. I’ve seen a lot in that time, and heard a lot from canon lawyers who are older, smarter and more experienced than me. Often the answer to this type of mystery can be found in the childhood relationship between a troubled priest and his mother – especially if the father was absent, abusive or had a poor relationship with his son.
This reminds of an incident when I was first getting started as a canon lawyer. Along with several other canon lawyers I happened to be at a workshop explaining the process whereby priests and religious seek to return to the lay state. The vast majority of those in attendance were over 40 years of age. The handful of under 35-year-olds sat together in the back.
The presenter, a respected priest and canonist, said during his presentation: “The trigger for older priests and religious wanting to return to the lay state is seldom a love interest. The most common trigger is the death of a parent, usually the mother. Let’s be honest: how many of us are here today because our mother wanted us to become a priest or religious? How many of us would have chosen this life had we not been sent off as teenagers to the minor seminaries by our mothers?”
A look of shock and horror came over our faces in the back row, among those of us who were under 35 and had not been alive prior to the Second Vatican Council. Surely the presenter was exaggerating the “bad old days” before Vatican II! But as we watched row-after-row of older clergy and religious nod their heads in agreement, regardless of whether they were liberal or conservative theologically, us younger canon lawyers recognized that the presenter was speaking the truth. For many, it was the mother who wanted the vocation.
Now I don’t want to get carried away on this point. It’s not a bad thing if a mother, suspecting that God may be calling her son to priesthood or religious life, fosters and encourages the potential vocation. In fact, this is a good thing – if the vocation or call to discernment are a true calling from God. Thus St. Monica’s prayed for St. Augustine’s conversion, and St. John Bosco had a close relationship with his mother, who adopted the orphans served by her son’s apostolate as her own. Similarly, St. Pius X’s mother urged him to stay in the seminary when, as oldest son, he considered dropping out to support his mother and his siblings after the death of his father.
A similar story is told of Fr. John Hardon, the noted Jesuit catechist and spiritual director to Mother Teresa, and an only child who was raised by his mother after his father died in a work-related accident when the boy was only one. Reportedly, Father had thought about dropping out of the Jesuit seminary to support his mother when she began to show the effects of old age. His mother urged him to continue with the Jesuits, if this is where he felt God was calling him.
In each of these cases, the vocation is clearly present. The individuals themselves felt the call to priesthood and religious life, and those charged with their formation confirmed it. Their mothers simply encouraged them, through word and prayer, to remain faithful to God’s call. They did not seek to impose a calling that was not already clear to their the son.
This is different from being pressured into the priesthood or religious life – especially when a child’s relationship with the other parent is poor or lacking.
Mama Maurita has passed away. So has Fr. Maciel. Therefore, this avenue of inquiry can only be speculation. However, three things cause me to suspect that Fr. Maciel’s founding of his movement is tied to his relationship with Mama Maurita:
1 – Fr. Maciel had a difficult relationship with his father throughout his entire life.
2 – Fr. Maciel held his mother, who happens to have been a fervent Catholic and the niece of a bishop and a canonized saint (and who wanted to be a religious herself), in particularly high esteem.
3 – None of Fr. Maciel’s reported children (at least the ones we know about) were born until after Mama Maurita’s death. On the other hand, most of the sexual abuse allegations involving seminarians and young men seems to take place while she was still alive.
Again, I am not a psychologist. Nor was I ever Fr. Maciel’s spiritual or formation director. And having met, I never acted for him in any capacity as a canon lawyer. So this is only speculation on my part. However, it is an avenue those in the LC/RC may wish to consider in pursuing the truth about their founder.
UPDATE WITH CORRECTION – Away this week
UPDATE: Mgr. Palud corrects the following entry in his comments below, which I have also pulled into a new thread here.
Initial entry
I will be away from blogging this week, working on other projects. However, some of my blog mates might be around. Please keep me in prayer. Additionally, I would urge those following the Legion/RC threads to check out the Missionary Society of Mandeville.
This was founded as a new community when several Fils de Marie (Sons of Mary) recognized that their founder had jumped the shark, and that serious intervention on the part of the Holy See might not turn it around. (Several former LC have told me the Fils de Marie were one of the few institutes at one time whose priests and seminarians mingled freely with the LC). So they approached their diocesan Bishop [CORRECTION: the bishop approached them, after they left the Fils de Marie to remain in the diocese], a former Superior General of the Passionists, who became the bishop-founder of the new institute.
What I also find interesting is how they discerned their charism. It’s the Marian and missionary spirituality that had attracted them to the Fils de Marie (minus the theological eccentricities introduced by the founder of the former institute), combined with the Passionist charism they received from the Bishop who offered them the opportunity to refound as a new institute. They even adopted Saint Vincent Strambi, a Passionist missionary, as their new patron.
Also note the role of the Bishop-founder who remained a member of the Passionists; he offered the new institute ecclesiastical protection and guidance throughout the refounding process. [Please note the correction in the comments section.]
Stephen King gets it? Does Fr. Alvaro?
Cassandra Jones posted a report of Fr. Alvaro’s homily at yesterday’s Legion of Christ professions in Cheshire. You can read Cassandra’s report here. Fr. Alvaro spent quite a bit of time asking for forgiveness, Cassandra states. But in reading over the report I keep asking myself Forgiveness for what?
Fr. Alvaro appears to allude to the Fr. Maciel scandal on several occasions. I say “appears to” because one is never entirely clear from reading Cassandra’s report that this is what the Legion’s Director General is referring to in sprinkling spiritual advice with mea culpas. As Cassandra’s source reports: “I wanted to know how the scandal would be handled, so that’s what I will emphasize. It was not mentioned directly at all, of course, but a lot of what Father Alvaro was saying seemed to relate to it very closely.” (Emphasis mine). For an order whose defenders were quite specific in denouncing their founder’s victims, “seemed to” is not enough.
Allow me to digress as I confess the following: I have a weakness for Stephen King. (Or in current Legion-speak, “The troubling imagination of a certain modern author has integrated itself into my personal library, which is kept separate from my professinal and spiritual library.”) Some of it goes back to my budding years as a writer, exploring Catholic themes through short horror stories. Some of it, I am sure, is due to the ministry God has called me to as a canon lawyer, which often deals with the darker aspects of man’s fallen nature.
Regardless, there’s a common discrepancy in Stephen King’s writing that I first noticed when reading Needful Things. It’s in the way he portrays clergy. Protestant clergy are generally nutty fundamentalists, no different than Hollywood’s usual stereotype. This contrasts with how King typically portrays Catholic clergy – conservative, heroic, dedicated to the welfare of their flock and of their community, and struggling to overcome one or two minor personal flaws. In short, King often portrays Catholic clergy both sympathetically and realistically as good ministers struggling to be saints.
What makes this fascinating is that King is not Catholic. He was raised by his mother, a strict Methodist who struggled as a single mother to hold the family together after King’s father walked out. It’s his wife Tabitha who is Catholic. Moreover, he disagrees strongly with the Church’s teaching on contraception, as he has made clear through both his fiction and non-fiction. Nevertheless, his fundamentalist protestant clergy tend to be one-dimensional fanatics (The Stand‘s Mother Abagail a noted exception), while his Catholic clergy tend to be multi-layered, reflective and human. The contrast becomes all the more fascinating when King’s Protestant and Catholic characters interact.
Which brings me back to Cassandra’s report about Fr. Alvaro’s homily yesterday. As I read through the report, wondering what Fr. Alvaro was asking forgiveness for, my mind wandered to an incident in one of King’s books. It begins with the child of a Bible fundamentalist doing something naughty to a Catholic neighbor. It might have been a rude insult or a small act of vandalism, and I think the book was The Regulators. I can’t recall the details and it’s been several years since I read it, so I apologize if I recall the story vaguely or incorrectly.
Yes, I apologize. Specifically, I apologize for my recollection that is not as specific as my apology. And this, according to King as he describes the incident, is what distinguishes devout Catholics from fundamentalist Protestants.
In the book, the child’s father frog-marches the kid before the victim of the child’s bad behavior. The child alludes to the wrong-doing, if I recall correctly, but doesn’t actually name it. The child beats himself up verbally, inviting the wronged party to follow up with a physical beating as the kid’s father watches on. What follows is my recollection of the passage.
The victim suppresses a smirk, looks down at the child, and says something along the lines of “I just want you to do one thing. Look me in the eyes and tell me what you did wrong.”
Upon hearing this, the child transforms from resigned and robotic to visibly uncomfortable. He begins to squirm and looks up at his father with a pitiful gaze. Father is as horrified as son and begins to protest as parent. Speaking through the voice of the narrator – or perhaps the child’s victim – King launches into a thought about how admitting to one’s wrong-doing is the worst form of punishment one can inflict upon a Christian fundamentalist, who sees no value in the sacrament of confession. On the other hand, Catholics understand that freedom from sin only comes when one lets it out by confessing to the wrong-doing. What an interesting insight from a writer of psychological horror.
In short, Stephen King gets it. He may not have been raised Catholic; his novels may be saturated with dark themes and four-letter words; he may lack the grace of holy orders, of advanced degrees in Catholic theology, of being the head of a large Catholic order – but in spending a lifetime observing and writing about the darker side of our fallen nature, he understands that forgiveness and healing are tied to a specific admission of one’s wrong-doing and guilt. So he gets it.
Here’s the question: Does Fr. Alvaro?