Tag: abuse

No go for Jo

Several readers have pointed me to this post criticizing critics of the Legion, authored by Jo Flemings at the Just Jo blog. I will not slag her for venting her heart. I believe I read somewhere – though I may be mistaking her for someone else – that she and her husband are converts, that her husband is a former Protestant minister, and that together they have around a dozen kids. From glimpsing through her blog I noticed her oldest daughter graduated from Southern Catholic College, that her husband and at least one child is RC, and that one of her sons is a Legionary brother (seminarian) while another son is at the Legion’s apostolic schools. Sounds to me like she was recruited.
She seems like a sincere and prayerful Catholic mom, which is why I believe God will honor her prayers vis-a-vis the LC/RC. When He does, the scales will drop from her eyes. And Jo will likely find herself in a world of hurt. Seen it dozens of times with other sincere Catholic moms in her position – including Giselle. Nothing we tell her now can prepare her for the pain of this particular cross is revealed. When one’s children confront one with the truth about their experiences in the movement. Pray that her children not lose their faith over it.
That being said, a good fisking is in order when it comes to her reader D.A. Burke’s response to her posting:

Jo – I couldn’t agree more with your sentiments. I am currently reading “Pope Fiction” which deals with the question of how and why we can stay confidently committed to a Church that has regularly been subject to scandal, and abuse, and… has regularly overcome its own sin enough (by God’s grace) to do more good in the world, time, and eternity, than any other institution known to man.

This book was written by Pat Madrid, a dear friend of mine. In fact we even co-authored another book together on extreme forms of conservative Catholicism. When we started writing More Catholic Than the Pope, Pat was a supporter of the LC and tried to recruit me to RC. By the time the book was published, he had left RC and come to share many of my reservations of the movement. Today Pat is openly critical of Maciel, the Legion, and how the movement has treated Maciel’s victims.

Those who would have us abandon the Movement because of the grave sins of the founder would find themselves in a completely untenable position under many of our past Popes.

This is called hyperbole. Outside the Legion no salvation is not a defined dogma of the Church, despite the best attempts of Maciel and his supporters to make it one through their mantra Lost vocation, sure damnation. The Church can exist without the Legion of Christ or Regnum Christi. The Church existed for 19 hundred centuries without either movement. Thousands of saints were canonized without the intervention of Maciel. Dozens among the Jesuits alone.
On the other hand, Maciel’s death reportedly showed all the visible signs of final impenitance – which Catholic theology traditionally holds to be the unforgivable sin mentioned by Christ in Holy Scripture.

Would they apply the same logic and leave the Church?

No.
The Church was founded by Christ. Christ is God. Christ is perfect. Christ guaranteed the Church’s indefectibility when He promised us the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church. No such promise exists for any order within the Church. Especially not one founded by an incestuous and unrepentant pedophile. In fact, Christ makes other promises about incestuous pedophiles who harm children, not to mention religious authorities who abuse their office, and these promises are not nearly as cheery or reassuring.

Peter denied Christ! Is there any worse sin than that?

Yes, stating that one has never denied Christ (or the Holy Spirit) when one in fact was a serial child molester. St. Peter never molested or photographed himself molesting his eight-year-old child. He was, however, sorry for his sins.

Paul was a murderer before his conversion.

The word “before” here is key. Paul was not a murderer after his conversion. That’s why we speak of Paul as a convert.

Yes, they repented. Many of our corrupt Popes did not. What are we to leave?

Our false comparisons. Maciel was head of a movement. It was a movement he founded to feed his various perversions, by using the guise of Catholic piety (i.e. Vow of Charity) and orthodoxy to acquire, abuse, conceal and protect his access to unsuspecting victims. Thus the entire methodology is corrupt.
On the other hand, no Pope is head of the Church. Christ is. The Pope is merely the visible head. The Pope assumes a vicarious role on behalf of Christ. Yet Christ remains the true head of the Church.
In contrast, the longer this controversy drags on without proper apology or restitution to Maciel’s victims, especially for the role played by individual supporters in covering up for Maciel and persecuting his victims, the more it becomes clear that the movement is truly headed by the spirit of Maciel. I believe this is what other orders refer to, when speaking of the spirit of the founder, as the founding charism. In the Legion, however, the founder’s spirit has become a curse.
SHUT. IT. DOWN.

UPDATED: Extortion?

UPDATE: Joe Catholic offers an excellent critique of my position in the comments section.
***********
Initial entry
Legion of Christ/ Regnum Christi contacts have asked me privately, behind the scenes, what I think of the LC/RC attempt to portray Maciel’s son Raul as an extortionist for demanding his inheritance in addition to compensation for having been sexually abused by Maciel? Let us suppose, for the sake of the argument, that the LC/RC are correct about Raul. Let us suppose that Raul engaged in extortion rather than follow proper legal procedure.
So what?
Speaking as a parent to children who are around the same age Raul was when Maciel began to abuse him sexually, including (allegedly) taking photographs, I don’t care if Raul is engaging in extortion. I really don’t.
Extortion just isn’t a big deal to me when I’m thinking about having one’s childhood innocence ripped from you, on camera, by the man (supposedly living a vow of chastity) who conceived you while taking advantage and lying to your mother. And unlike Maciel’s spiritual children, Raul can never renounce Maciel as his biological father.
Thus even though I don’t believe the official LC version of the story, it would change nothing for me as a parent if they were telling the truth this time. My concern is that Raul and his siblings receive just compensation from the LC/RC and/or Maciel’s estate for the horrible abuse they suffered at hands of Maciel.
Moreover, I find it absolutely scandalous as an orthodox Catholic layman that despite reportedly knowing of Raul’s existence since 2008, the family has been unable to receive justice from the Church in Mexico. No wonder there are so many anti-clerical Freemasons in the Mexican government and media. Bl. Miguel Pro – one of my favorite Jesuits – must be shedding tears from Heaven knowing that the Catholic peasants for whom he gave his life have now been forced to turn to their former persecutors for justice and protection from Churchmen who put their checkbook before the welfare of children.
But I suppose we ought not be surprised. After all, as Christ Himself states in Matthew 6:24: “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
In sustaining the Legion’s finances, at least we’re now clear on which master Fr Carlos Skertchly, LC serves. Pray that he discovers his Creator in this lifetime, for the sake of his soul. However, it is now time for other individual LC and RC to decide which master they serve.

REPORT: LC knew about Maciel’s son in 2008

This gets even more curious, given that up until now the LC has only admitted to knowing about the existence of one daughter, as discovered by Fr. Alvaro in an investigation after Maciel’s death. According to the San Francisco Examiner:

The Rev. Jesus Quirce, rector of the Legion’s Universidad Anahuac in Mexico City, sent a letter to The Associated Press and other news media on Thursday confirming that he had met with Raul Gonzalez several times in 2008 and 2009, though he said Gonzalez never mentioned being molested.

You can read the full report here.

Questions for me

In yesterday’s AP picks up Maciel incest allegations thread, Bill White asks me some good questions. Namely…
– Any thoughts about the historical and sociological roots of the modern wave of religious sexual abuse?
– Did it start just a couple of generations ago, or has it been with us the last two millenia or more?
To answer Bill’s second question first, clerical sexual misconduct has been with us since the beginning of the Church. It tends to come in waves. This is why tradition built up a whole body of canonical jurisprudence to prevent and punish molesters among the clergy. Had Marcial Maciel been living in the Middle Ages, he would have risked public execution for witchcraft.
Similarly, retiring to a monastery for “prayer and penance” is a tradition as old as monasteries themselves. I suspect this may be where the word “penitentiary” came from as a synonym for prison. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to conclude that monasteries were exclusively for grave sinners. In times where the secular clergy were infested with perverts and the power-hungry, pious celibates would band together and found monasteries to escape the debauchery (often sexual, financial and political) among their secular counterparts. Regardless, the Church has always struggled with the issue.
That being said, let’s look at Bill’s first question. From my experience with the recent sexual misconduct crisis to face the Church in North America, and now Ireland, I’ve come to take a dim view of the Church’s minor seminaries. Basically, ripping young teens from their families while they’re going through puberty – a time when they need the example of Mom and Dad and healthy relationships between the sexes – is a recipe for disaster down the road. Often one emerges from these seminaries a grown man intellectually and physically, but still a teenager emotionally and in terms of mental maturity.
Many of my clients were older priests who had gone through the minor seminaries, and who in their first year of priesthood had committed one or two inappropriate acts with sexual overtones against teenaged boys. This is behavior that a parent or coach would normally correct if exchanged among teens of roughly the same age, but feel no need to approach law enforcement authorities over if the two parties had been roughly the same age. I’m talking things like rolling up your wet towel in the dressing room after a shower and whacking your team-mate in the arse. It’s immaturity when exchanged between two 15-year-old boys. It’s creepy when coming from a grown man who also happens to be clergy.
So the young priest is dragged before the bishop, is rebuked severely, and shipped off to a grueling assignment away from youth for the next year or two (such as chaplain to local Catholic nursing home). He comes back to parish ministry, and ministers for several decades without further incident or complaint. However, come the sex abuse crisis, the Church opened all the old files and these priests now found themselves shipped off to “prayer and penance” because of these types of incident during their first year of priesthood. And no, I’m not justifying what they did at the time. But I feel many of these incidents might have been avoided had these priests spent their teen years with their families, rather than in minor seminaries. After all, St. Joseph and the Blessed Mother and the local synagogue were good enough for Our Lord Jesus Christ during His formative years.
That being said, the question has taken a more gruesome turn if recent allegations are true. As noted by Randie in the comments section of Life-After-RC (click here), “Maciel’s son said his abuse began when he was 7 years old. I hope we can stop splitting hairs over whether MM was a pedophile or an ephebophile.” And this is without considering the incest angle, as well as the allegation Maciel photographed the abuse of his own children.
Which is why at this point my reaction as a father to young children trumps my reaction as a canonist or Catholic journalist: SID – SHUT. IT. DOWN.

Questions for Jason Berry

Speaking solely as a concerned parent and as a former Catholic journalist, and not as a canon lawyer, someone needs to have a little talk with Jason Berry, co-author of Vows of Silence. Politely ask Mr. Berry – no, beg him for the good of the Church – to pop the following questions to his contacts and share their responses with the rest of us:
– Who in the Church and LC knew what about Maciel?
– And when did they know it?
Please get this information out now, before the Apostolic Visitation comes to an end next month. The information cannot be whitewashed if it is already public.