Giselle says I shamed her into posting about how the Legion churns out Fr. Eye Candy for women. I don’t claim to understand it, but I also don’t know of any other Catholic order so particular about its grooming practices as to reportedly include them in its institutional norms. Moreover, as a guy I know there are certain priests – HLI’s Fr. Thomas Euteneuer being a good example – that just strike us as a men’s men.
That being said, I’ve often wondered over the years, privately, why most Regnum Christi members I know are women, while most of my Opus Dei friends are men. Of couples I know in “mixed marriages,” the husband belongs to Opus Dei and the wife belongs to Regnum Christi. I’ve never met a Regnum Christi husband married to an Opus Dei wife.
But back to Giselle’s comments. She says something that immediately sets off my spiritual spidey-sense:
Spiritual headship is not a trump card with these women because the Legion priests have undermined it all these years, teaching the women to wheedle their husbands for more time and money for the Legion. (There is a reason the women’s sections always outnumber the men’s sections.) For those who don’t go to the brink of divorce (or split outright), there is a squaring off within marriages whereby the wife makes her RC commitments sacrosanct and the husband acquiesces for the sake of his sanity.
I’ve been present while the Legion pitches this. One Morning of Reflection, we were all led along the path: “You are princesses (because you are daughters of a King!)” Well, technically yes (though I like “You’re a worm and no man” better). But many of the women were in tears. What the priest touched on cleverly was their brokeness, their insecurities, and their random experiences of abuse. He built them up, using his own brand of “self esteem potion” so that they were putty in his hands. They literally fought to cook for him and to be the most active and industrious volunteers in the coming years.
Some of the nastiest annulment cases I have ever participated in are those in which a priest came between husband and wife. I’m not talking an abusive situation where the priest advised the wife to get out for the personal safety of her and her children. Rather I’m talking about cases where the wife spent more time with the priest than with her husband. Most of the cases involved Catholics who would be considered orthodox.
The relationship between wife and priest was rarely one of sexual attraction. Rather, husband is busy at work, while Father is busy in the parish. Wife becomes active in the parish because Father is “such a holy priest” and she begins to put his needs before those of her husband and family back home. Relieved at the help he’s receiving, Father affirms wife for everything she contributes to the parish and gives her more responsibilities. He intentionally avoids questioning wife about her marriage and home life because he doesn’t want to know. He needs help in the parish! So long as the relationship isn’t sexual, he can justify it as necessary for the greater good of souls. And Father will tell the tribunal that wife is a good woman who hubby grew to resent when she began to take her Catholic faith seriously.
Not really. The vocation of wife and mother is not the vocation of woman religious. Both vocations are good, but there’s a reason God has separated them. No apostolate should come before one’s family.
I am also troubled by Giselle’s story of grown women being described as “princesses”. Sure I refer to my own daughters as princesses, and with three of them Disney has cost me a small fortune in Princess swag. But that’s part of the charm of being father to little girls. You raise them hoping one day they will find their Prince Charming.
However, I don’t see “princess” as appropriate to an audience of wives and mothers. As St. Paul says in 1 Cor 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” Thus I find it charming when our parish priest greets my daughters before Mass, saying “Hello princesses.” But I would find such flattery creepy if Father addressed my wife in the same way. So would she.
What pops into my mind is St. Ignatius Loyola’s Thirteen Rule of spiritual discernment – a rule drilled into the head of every Jesuit prior to ordination:
Likewise, [the devil] acts as a licentious lover in wanting to be secret and not revealed. For, as the licentious man who, speaking for an evil purpose, solicits a daughter of a good father or a wife of a good husband, wants his words and persuasions to be secret, and the contrary displeases him much, when the daughter reveals to her father or the wife to her husband his licentious words and depraved intention, because he easily gathers that he will not be able to succeed with the undertaking begun: in the same way, when the enemy of human nature brings his wiles and persuasions to the just soul, he wants and desires that they be received and kept in secret; but when one reveals them to his good Confessor or to another spiritual person that knows his deceits and evil ends, it is very grievous to him, because he gathers, from his manifest deceits being discovered, that he will not be able to succeed with his wickedness begun.
Beware of flattery. It’s never from God and there is always some seduction behind it.
And on that note, I’ll end this post by answering Giselle’s priestly pin-ups with my own:
What you see, dear reader, is 100 percent Semper Fi!