I received the following testimony from a young lady who spent several years as a Regnum Christi consecrated. Her experience speaks for itself, as one shared by many consecrated now grappling with the truth about Fr. Maciel. She has kindly allowed me to share it with Catholic Light readers on condition that her identity remain anonymous:
Moving Through the Bitterness
When I left the consecrated life of Regnum Christi several years ago, I promised myself one thing — I wouldn’t let myself get bitter.
I don’t know why, but it always kind of bothered me how former Regnum Christi members, or brothers leaving the Legion, would dedicate themselves to constructing Internet Web sites that spewed hatred about how the movement and Father Maciel ruined their lives. I guess to me it showed a certain amount of immaturity. I mean, we all make our own decisions in life. We can’t blame others for the paths we take that didn’t turn out as we planned.
While I decided I needed to take a break from the RC scene and find myself, I never officially left the movement, and I never allowed myself to regret the years I spent as a consecrated member of the movement. Those were the best years of my life, I would tell myself and others.
During my post-RC years, every once in a while I’d run into a Legionary, or one of those super-star Regnum Christi members (there are certain members who are truly famous in RC circles), and I’d want to get involved again. I should really get back into the swing of things, I thought. I should join a team or help out an apostolate. I wanted to be in the thick of things. It is, after all, my family! No matter what happens in my life, they will always be there for me, and I’ll be there for them.
Then 2006 happened, and Father Maciel was asked to retire to a life of penance. He’s innocent, I thought. This is just like the persecution he’d always prayed for; Father Maciel is being asked to give the ultimate sacrifice — to die in complete and utter ignominy.
But after 2006, something interesting happened. A veil started to be lifted little by little from before my eyes. I couldn’t explain it at the time, but small aspects about the Legion or RC and its members — things that I always just took in stride — would start to grate on me.
I’d see loyal RC members be assigned to important apostolic posts that they weren’t prepared for just because the Legion knew that in a pinch, they could count on them, and it would annoy me. I’d meet up with an old RC friend of mine who couldn’t bring herself to say anything bad about the Legion or Father Maciel, and I’d come away with a bad taste in my mouth. I’d catch up with an ex-consecrated member of the movement and listen to her experience inside the Third Degree (that’s what the consecrated branch of RC is known as), and wonder why her experience could be so different from mine. I’d look for more information on Father Maciel’s case on the Legion Web site, and only find vocation stories, and wish the Legion would be more transparent.
And then there was a close friend of mine — also a fallen-away RC member, and although she had never been consecrated, she had been involved in RC apostolates for years — and together we’d talk for hours about the Legion and our experiences in RC. We’d go over the good times and the bad times, and convince ourselves at the very end that there was more good than bad. Every organization is going to have some bad elements — it’s just human. Even the Church has bad apples. We can’t be surprised that at some level there is nepotism, favoritism, corruption, etc…
Coincidentally, both of us were having serious doubts about our faith. Both of us were depressed, disillusioned with life and where our paths had brought us. Both of us were angry that the best and most productive years of our lives were behind us, and we didn’t take advantage of them the best we could. We were passing through the most existential of existential crises, and we both refused to believe that all of this could have had something to do with RC and our experiences in it.
Then Father Maciel died. I was sad, but I prayed for him and I tried to see things in a “supernatural light.” (Did you know this is a virtue? It’s the ability to see all events through the light of faith. It’s easy to do, but only if you are able to suspend your reason and critical thinking skills).
I was a little taken back, however, when I read that he died in Florida. I don’t imagine retiring in Florida is what Benedict XVI had in mind when he suggested prayer and penance, but I let it go, as I let so many things go.
But what I couldn’t let go was this feeling that my life wasn’t where it should have been. What I couldn’t let go was that before meeting RC, I had this path I wanted to follow, and I took a detour — almost a decade-long if you count the years it has taken me to come to grips with my experiences. What I couldn’t let go was that I couldn’t go back. I lost a decade of my life, and I couldn’t go back. Your late 20s and early 30s are the most pivotal of your professional and social life, and mine were gone — lost.
And now, as I’m reading about Father Maciel’s love child, and prescriptive drug addiction, and his possible other children, and how he used Legion money to fund his philandering, and how the Legion hierarchy is spinning the truth in order to keep the “mystique” alive, I’m seeing things so clearly. And I’m angry, and I’m disillusioned, and I’m depressed, and, oh yeah, I’m bitter.
I’m bitter because I believed all the lies. I’m bitter because I wasted the best years of my life on a fraud. I’m bitter because people I trusted, people I looked to for guidance, people I admired, lied to me — lied right to my face. They told me stories about what a good man Maciel was, what a saint he was. They taught me to see life through a “supernatural light.” They convinced me that I was doing God’s will, that I had been blessed by God with such a beautiful vocation. They brainwashed me. They used me. And then when I was of no use to them, they threw me away. And then, I thanked them.
I’m bitter because I was loyal. I’m bitter because I wouldn’t let myself turn against them, I refused to see all the red flags that are so obvious to me now. I’m bitter because the movement and those involved in it meant more to me than I meant to the movement. I’m bitter because, in the end, I lost. I lost years, I lost dignity, I lost my way.
As I see it, my anger and bitterness — what I most wanted to avoid — is actually my way out. I’m passing through the grieving process. I’m grieving my lost years, and my lost innocence. No longer the naive 20-something, so eager to do God’s will and ready to sacrifice everything for the cause of Christ, I find myself almost an entire decade older, and an entirely different person. Holier? I wouldn’t say that. Smarter? Tons. Wiser? Time will tell. Ready to move on? You have no idea.