Tag: children

JPII, Maciel’s children, and Christian loyalty

One of the things that amazes me about this blog is that most of the readers are smarter, holier and more eloquent writers than I am. So it behooves me that you come from all over the world to gleam what little insight I can offer. Nevertheless, it does have its perks.
For instance, I was struggling over how best to defend Pope John Paul II from allegations he knew of Fr. Maciel’s children, when shmikey chimed in with the following well-written explanation::

It occured to me […] that since the Legion insisted on addressing Marcial Maciel [MM] as [Nuestro Padre], that this may have been how [Maciel’s] children may have addressed MM as pappa, and the Vatican would not have suspected that these were his own. This may have been all part of his deception. Many priests travel with family members, and no one suspects a thing. Many priests have nicknames that are familial and are used by only their family. This is just my suspicion as to how the Vatican could be innocent if these things happened as they are revealing in this summary.

I agree.
Nevertheless, I can understand why people are suspicious and raising questions. They trusted Fr. Maciel because of his perceived closeness to Pope John Paul II. Moreover, they were taken in Fr. Maciel’s appearance of holiness, orthodox and living sanctity. And how could nobody at the top have noticed, either in the Legion or at the Vatican? Add to this the fact the Legion spent decades denying Fr. Maciel was anything but a saint, and that the Legion has not been forthcoming publicly with answers to these question, and people – including many within the movement’s middle ranks – are going to grow suspicious.
Which brings me to another point. Many blog commentators, particularly those who understand Spanish, are discussing Lucrecia Rego’s recent Catholic.net article. This is the one in which the high-profile RC member blasts former Maciel followers for disloyalty (click here) because they believe the allegations and are discussing them openly.
While she speaks passionately about loyalty to her priest friend, absent from her article is any discussion bout loyalty to the Church. I find this troubling. Loyalty works two ways. One should not expect loyalty if one is not oneself loyal.
Which raises several questions:
– How is it loyal to Christ to lead a movement bearing his name, and not apologize publicly to those who were seriously harmed by the movement’s founder in Christ’s name?
– How is it loyal to the Church when all Catholics are tarnished by a Catholic movement’s founder, including those who are not part of the movement, and the movement’s lack of public disclosure allows the founder’s “double life” to be dragged out indefinitely in the media?
– And how is it loyal to allow the name and reputation of a deceased pope to come under dark suspicion, because the movement is not more forthcoming about who knew what, when and how?
So in one sense I agree with Lucrecia. Most of this scandal could be avoided is those calling themselves good Catholics showed more loyalty.

Legion knew of children 15 years ago, CNN interview alleges

UPDATE: RC Is Not My Life has now posted English summaries of part 3 and part 4 of the CNN Spanish-language interview with the lawyer representing Fr. Maciel’s children.
Initial Post
ExLC has posted the youtube (in Spanish) here, with an English summary of key points here.
RC Is Not My Life is also providing a more detailed English summary of the interview here. Apparently Fr. Maciel concealed his true identity from his mistresses and children until 1997, when he became the center of media attention:

Q: At what point do the kids know who MM really was?
Jose, who was the one closest to MM. In June or July 1997, he gets a phone call from his father saying someone was coming to give him some money. He was to then take a cab and go and buy all the newspapers he could. This was the first time MM made it onto the cover of newspapers (probably included were all the allegations of abuse that were swirling in 1997, but they don’t say that). It was at this moment that Jose discovered MM’s double life. He didn’t tell his mother or brothers b/c he didn’t know how they would handle it. He keeps it a secret. Some people came later and took all the newspapers/magazines (he doesn’t say who).

Click here to keep reading part 1, and here to read part 2. (And check back with RC Is Not My Life later today for summaries of parts 3 and 4).

No god but the Legion, and Maciel was his profit

A friend in Regnum Christi draws my attention to the following news release, which shows up on Marketwire complete with Legion of Christ logo:

SOURCE: Legion of Christ
Aug 19, 2009 15:10 ET
Four Women Called to Serve Christ; Their Stories Available on CD
GREENVILLE, RI–(Marketwire – August 19, 2009) – Why does a woman choose consecrated life over a business career, husband and family or the opportunity to compete as a world-class athlete? The CD gives the answers.
As in Abraham’s day, God continues to call, and souls continue to answer. The new CD “Count the Stars,” created by the Regnum Christi consecrated women in Greenville, RI, tells the story of four women who heard that call and answered with their lives.
On the new CD, Luly Fernández and Lauren Hawkesworth both read their stories in first-person. Lisa Small reads Mary Maher’s story, while Stephanie Kielhorn reads Dorrie Donahue’s.
The “Count the Stars” audio book also features an original song, “Question Answered,” composed by the sophomore class at Mater Ecclesiae College, the institution of higher learning where the consecrated women of Regnum Christi prepare for their life of service to the Catholic Church.
The CDs are on sale at the price of one for $15 or two for $25. For online or credit card payment options, or if you have other questions and comments, please contact Susan Girard at (401) 949-2820 or send an e-mail to msilva@inteducators.org.
For more information on both the book and the CD, visit the Mater Ecclesiae College web site at www.materecclesiae.net.
Regnum Christi, with more than 70,000 members worldwide, is the lay movement of the Legionaries of Christ.
For an interview with one of the “stars” of the CD contact:
Jim Fair
Communications Director
Legion of Christ
312-953-9864

Legionary detachment vs. Catholic reality

Former Legionary of Christ exorcist Fr. Damien Karras weighs in with a new commentary here. As is typical of his blog entries, he shares a lot of inside information, which can overwhelm at first. The whole piece is worth reading, however, allow me to pull out and comment upon just a few of his insights:

The Secretary General is on a whirlwind tour of LC centers spinning the yarn that there is a basis to the Legion that was not invented by the disgraced Founder and was never contaminated by his web of secrecy and falsehood.

One cannot help but think of the baptismal promises one makes every Easter: “Do you renounce Satan and all his evil works?”

Because of its ‘mystique’, the Legion can and should remain untouched by the scandal of its Founder’s life, the glaring questions about its internal structure and operations as a religious congregation and the lethal virus of doubt and distrust spreading silently through the ranks of its members.

This is my experience as well. The sense of “detachment” is a complaint I hear frequently from those on the inside. “Our superiors don’t live in the real world,” they tell me. “Their reaction to this scandal makes no sense.”
Actually, it does. And it speaks to the debate over the Legion of Christ (LC) and Regnum Christi’s (RC) charism. The detachment apparent among the movement’s superiors is not unlike the detachment lived by the founder. Remember that the spirituality preached by Fr. Maciel was severed from the life that he lived. Remember too that the Legion’s current superiors were handpicked by Fr. Maciel for their detachment; they themselves admit that they failed to notice his detachment from the doctrine that he preached. Thus Fr. Maciel imparted to his inner circle his detachment from what was real.
There’s an old saying in Catholic spirituality: “One cannot give what one has not received.” This is why the priest communes before the faithful during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. He must first receive Christ before giving Him to the faithful.
Fr. Maciel’s detachment was not Catholicism. Ours is a very real religion, existing in the physical world. What separates man from the angels is that God bound our spirit with flesh, giving our bodies five real senses (sight, sound, smell, taste and touch). What separates us from non-Christians is our belief that God took on this flesh for Himself, real flesh from the womb of a real virgin. And what separates us as Catholics from our protestant brethren is that God continues to grace us through the sacraments, which are real and tangible acts of God’s love. Hence the reason we refer to the Eucharist as the Real Presence. Real bread and wine become the real Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, giving us the opportunity to experience God through our physical senses.
To detach oneself from the real world, as Fr. Maciel and the Legion have done, is completely contrary to the spirit of Catholicism.

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…

It seems that every thousand years or so, the Church must wrestle with those Christians who profess secret knowledge. Gnosticism was the bane of the early Church, while the medieval Church faced controversy over the Knights Templar (who allegedly kept a double set of books and initiated new members through secret rites).

The Superior General has just sent an eighteen page letter meant, apparently, to motivate and strengthen the LCs in these difficult times. The meandering missive never even names the problems that are rocking the congregation to its core and basically offers three bits of advice to its confused, anguished and frustrated priests: pray, don’t read the newspapers and trust the superiors.

Thus Fr. Alvaro Corcuera, the Legion’s current General Director, continues to pass on what he received from Fr. Maciel. This cannot but speak to the debate over the Legion’s charism. The time has come for the LC/RC to get real.

Pope John Paul II and Fr. Maciel

UPDATE: Damian Thompson also weighs in on the controversy, over at the London Telegraph blog.
****
Cassandra Jones, one of the most insightful commentators on the Fr. Maciel expose, is back. This time Cassandra tackles how this crisis with the Legion of Christ is hurting the papal legacy of John Paul II. (For an earlier blog on this topic, please click here.) I’ve quoted some of Cassandra’s more pithy observations:

The circus nevertheless threatens to distract from the issue more important than Father Maciel’s personal depravity, which, if not fully, we knew about already: accounting for the damage the Legionaries have done to the Church. What interests me is how the scandal now threatens to derail the legacy of Pope John Paul II.
[snip]
What the Legionaries used to say in their vile and dishonest attempt to discredit [Hartford Courant reporter Jason] Berry’s triumphantly vindicated journalism, that he is an enemy of the pope, was distortedly true insofar as Berry has expressed unsympathy for orthodox Catholic understanding in some matters. To have decoupled truth from Gospel witness in its members is one aspect of the disaster the Legionaries have inflicted on the Church. The National Catholic Register used the same voice both to proclaim pro-life and their loyalty to John Paul and to lie in defense of a serial child rapist.

Cassandra is right. Without some serious evidence to corroborate accusations that John Paul II was aware of the situation, we ought not allow this scandal to undermine our affection for the late pope. However, we must recognize that he was not perfect, and that he made a serious mistake in trusting Fr. Maciel.
Moreover, Legion apologists should recognize that they are doing themselves, orthodox Catholics and the memory of Pope John Paul II a great disservice in invoking the pope’s approval.