Tag: Christi

RETROSPECT: Gerald Renner answers Fr. Bannon

Information surfacing about the life of Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi, has forced many to view Fr. Maciel’s writings in a new light. I think this is a good thing. However, let’s not forget those who worked tirelessly for years to bring these allegations to light. Many of these folks were dismissed by Orthodox Catholics as anti-Catholic media bearing a hidden agenda.
Like the police now kicking themselves over the missed opportunity three years ago to rescue Jaycee Lee Dugard, we as orthodox Catholics need to look at why we missed the opportunity during the Boston fallout to investigate the accusations against Fr. Maciel.
With that in mind, and surprised by Jose Bonilla’s allegation that Legion superiors have known about Fr. Maciel’s children for 15 years, I’m re-reading this article written by Gerald Renner in 2000. Renner is the Hartford Courant reporter who worked closely with Jason Berry to give voice to Fr. Maciel’s victims. His article is a response to the Legion’s following open letter dismissing his investigative reporting into the Legion.
Here are some passages from Renner’s letter that in retrospect take on new meaning, in my opinion. I’ve bolded certain parts that really stood out to me:

I was told I had to seek the permission of the national director, Fr. Anthony Bannon, to write anything. But he was never available, despite calls I made to him over the course of several years. I even visited the seminary personally one day to the consternation of the seminarian-receptionist and was again told I had to talk to Fr. Bannon.
Finally, one day in 1993, Fr. Bannon himself happened to pick up the phone when I called. He told me in no uncertain terms the order did not want any publicity and that he did not trust the press. The only way he would provide information for an article, he said, if he had the right to review it after it was written, something that is journalistically unacceptable.

Which raises the question: Did Fr. Bannon know anything at the time? If so, what? For an order this focused on recruitment and building the Kingdom, why would they shy away from free publicity? As Renner muses later on the piece, “Yet, the order wonders aloud in its open letter why it’s called secretive.”
Here’s another passage that I read differently now in retrospect:

I got a call from a man who said he had been a seminarian in the Legion at Cheshire and in a satellite seminary the Legion ran near Mount Kisco, N.Y. He said he and another novice had fled from the seminary without permission when their religious superiors kept rebuffing their pleas to leave.
It was such a bizarre claim that I was skeptical. Was this a religious nut or what? But he sounded stable. We had a personal meeting, and he repeated his story convincingly. He put me in touch with three other former novices. Two of them said they had similar experiences of being psychologically coerced by overzealous religious superiors. The third, who had been in a Legion-operated seminary in Mexico said he had to beg for his passport and clothes to go home after being repeatedly rebuffed.
I turned to Fr. Bannon for response only to be told by his secretary that the Courant was only trying to stir up “scandal” and that he did not expect Fr. Bannon to respond. Only after the article appeared did Fr. Bannon send a statement denying the accusations. His statement was published in the Courant.

And let’s not forget this passage in which Renner explains why Maciel’s earliest victims, like Jaycee Lee Dugard, didn’t avail themselves of an earlier opportunity to come forward: “But those making the accusations today were young boys in seminary in the late 1950s. They say they lied at the time to Vatican investigators to protect the man they called ‘Nuestro Padre.'”

St. Pius X need not apply

In the comments box below, RC Is Not My Life chides me gently for having misunderstood her taste in ice cream:

Pete,
I chose HEATH Bar Crunch, not HEALTH Bar Crunch.
A HEATH bar is chocolate-covered toffee.
I was brainwashed by RC, not Richard Simmons!!!

Perhaps it’s in somewhat poor taste to belabor the discussion, but one of the many allegations circulating about the Legion of Christ is that the portly need not apply. I’m not sure whether or not this allegation is true. However, it comes from many sources and – now that I think about it – I’ve never seen a plump Legionary priest or seminarian.
Which got me thinking of some of the heavyweights canonized by the Church throughout the centuries. Pope St. Pius X and St. Thomas Aquinas come to mind immediately. And St. Augustine is often portrayed as bearing quite the august physique. And many Catholics are salivating over the movement to canonize G.K. Chesterton.
Based solely on their physique, and not their deep faith or intellectual prowess, would any of the four been acceptable candidates to the Legion’s seminarians? I don’t know. However, if the allegation is true, it fattens the credibility of those who accuse Legionary priests of being lightweights lacking in well-roundedness.

Even Christ stuck to loaves and fishes…

…as opposed to Legion of Christ founder Marcial Maciel who said:

[When] I meet up with the strength of youth withered and torn apart in the very springtime of life for lack of Christ, I cannot hold back the cries in my heart. I want to multiply myself…

There’s an old cliche that a stopped clock is right twice a day. So I suppose a false prophet is permitted to be right twice in his lifetime. (Maciel also reportedly told his followers during his lifetime that if the Legion failed to serve the Church after his death, he would come back and destroy it.)
Teenage snickers aside, this points to a problem for the Legion that I have mentioned on several occasions. The medium is the message. Thus it is impossible for many – including orthodox Catholics – to take seriously the Legion and Regnum Christi’s message about building God’s kingdom when their medium is Fr. Maciel. We can read Ignatius, Thomas Aquinas and John Chrysostom without giggling every time one of these saints mentions “passion” and “youth” in the same sentence. Not so with Maciel, knowing what we now know about his life.
When one speaks with the forked tongue of the devil, nobody is sure which meaning the speaker intended. The sooner you recognize this and act upon it, the sooner you move forward with the healing process.

What’s the frequency, Alvaro?

Several readers have asked me whether Jose Bonilla, the lawyer for three of Fr. Maciel’s alleged children, has a case against the Legionaries. Speaking as a canon lawyer, probably not. Fr. Maciel was a priest with a religious order. He was not supposed to own property personally, according to canon law, and most of what he raised was probably intended for the Legion, Regnum Christi, or various other apostolates – not for him personally, and certainly not for the support of his clandestine mistress and children.
Nevertheless, there might be a case if the children can substantiate rumors they were abused by Maciel. But this would be based upon their status as abuse victims, not as Fr. Maciel’s children.
In terms of the civil courts, I don’t know. I’m not a civil lawyer nor am I familiar with civil law in the Mexico, where these cases are reportedly being introduced. However, several readers have told me that Mexican civil law prohibits clergy from owning large amounts of property personally. So for the sake of the argument let’s exclude this possibility as well.
What’s left? Well, the court of public opinion.
From what Spanish-speaking readers are telling me, this has the potential to explode into South America’s Boston. Bonilla presents a perfect David behind who the secular press can rally as he faces down the Goliath of Legion secrecy, influence and power. The average person can sympathize and identify with him. Not because he’s a lawyer, but because he’s the loving father of a preschooler who suffered abuse is an Legion/RC-affiliated nursery school, for which he won a civil judgment after the school failed to cough up the accused perp.
Few media images break through the stereotype of litigators as cold, calculating, money-grubbing ambulance chasers. But a father crusading to stop the abuse suffered by his own child is one of them. Who would want their child to suffer the same horror? Show me a mother and father who, discovering their child had suffered such a horror, would not devote the rest of their life to taking down the system that allowed the abuse to happen? Thus as parents we are all Jose Bonilla – at least for the fifteen minutes in which we filter the story through the media.
And Fr. Alvaro, who appears desperate to reassure members that nothing is wrong, is struggling through his fifteen minutes as former Iraqi information minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf.
Which brings us to something else that strengthens Bonilla’s presentation before the court of public opinion: The Legion has allowed him to control the flow of information. In not fully disclosing the truth, in using vague terms to confirm only bits and pieces after the secular media reports it, the Legion is reacting to the scandal rather than guiding Catholics through it. This forces us to go to Bonilla and the secular media for information concerning the scandal.
We may question Bonilla’s presentation of the facts. Did Pope John Paul II really know these were Maciel’s children? We may wonder about some of the discrepancies in his presentation. How could the children, having received their First Holy Communion from Pope John Paul II, not have known their father was a priest until later in life? But with the Legion fog-tongued and stone-lipped (talk about a weird image!) even their most ardent apologists must turn to Bonilla for information about Maciel’s “double life”.

A Rocky Road for former consecrated?

RC Is Not My Life touched a nerve with her recent post explaining how RC formation diminished her capacity to make everyday choices. Even picking out an ice-cream flavor caused her to question her faith, she states. (Click here)
I can understand how sharing her experience is therapeutic. But how does it help other consecrated, both current and former, who find themselves in the same situation? How do they overcome their paralysis of the will when facing the same choices as my eight-year-old?
Thankfully, RC Is Not My Life offers some excellent advice – again, based upon her experience – in a followup post.
(And for the record, I think RC Is Not My Life made the wrong choice. I would have chosen Rocky Road over Health Bar Crunch, which sounds like it’s made from soy milk and contains tofu. Just kidding….OUCH!)