Tag: Marcial

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.

Cough up the truth or choke on the pope

The French have saying that whoever eats of the pope will choke on him. This saying comes to mind as I survey those questioning the canonization process of Pope John Paul II in light of recent revelations about Fr. Maciel’s “double life.” The secular press and certain anti-papist strains within protestant fundamentalism aren’t the only ones questioning the appropriateness of John Paul II’s potential canonization. Adding their voice to the chorus this week are CrunchyCon’s Rod Dreher and Renew America and Liberal Traditionalist blogmeister Eric Giunta.
For the record, I believe Pope John Paul II probably was not aware of the evidence against Fr. Maciel. Given what we know about JPII, I put the odds of him knowing and not doing anything about it (and in fact continuing to praise Fr. Maciel publicly as an excellent example for youth) at about the same percentage as several young women, independently and years apart from each other, breaking into the hospital room of an elderly priest-founder and stealing his semen to impregnate themselves.
Possible? Yes. Probable? I’d sooner bet on the state lottery.
Having said that, this incident may still slow down Pope John Paul II’s canonization process. Because of the nature of canonization, it’s important that we know everything we can about the late Supreme Pontiff. Especially when allegations are as high-profile as those concerning Fr. Maciel. Thus the devil’s advocate will have his job cut out for him.
Nevertheless, over at the other end of the Church spectrum, some LC/RC supporters are still using the pope to try and shut down discussion of their movement’s charism. A recent example of this comes from Mark Polo in the comments section of the AmericanPapist blog. Mr. Polo writes:

The charism is not the same as the founder. The charism is the gift of the Holy Spirit, which at this point, is guaranteed by the Church in its approval of the Constitutions. While this is not an infallible act of Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict would be fully free to make changes or even remove this approval of the Church entirely, the assumption at this point has to be in favor of the validity of the charism. Any other attitude is really moving away from the respect that is due the Holy Father. (If we can decide that John Paul II was obviously wrong about this matter, and abused his power as Pope to approve these Constitutions, the next step is to start questioning everything else the Holy Father says. This is not a road I want to see people going down.)

Others commentators have refuted his errors in logic, so I’ll set those aside for now. The road that ought to be avoided is that of eating of the pope by continuing to invoke an approval of one’s founder and movement that was gained through deception of the founder’s piety. This was the deception used to gain papal approval, to provide oneself with the cover of Catholic orthodoxy, and persecute the founder’s victims while silencing the movement’s legitimate critics.
That being said, I am sure that many orthodox Catholics like myself, who are part of the Pope John Paul II generation of Catholic activists, will continue to defend our pope during this time. This is not to say, however, that we will be silenced by the mere mention of Pope John Paul II’s name, or that in his name our anger toward the LC/RC will dissipate.
Unlike other attacks against Pope John Paul II, this recent volley was completely avoidable. HAD THE REST OF THE CHURCH KNOWN THE TRUTH ABOUT FR. MACIEL. The controversy also could be cut short by the LC/RC coming forward with the truth and apologizing to Fr. Maciel’s victims.
Nevertheless, Fr. Maciel and his movement chose to invoke the pope as shield against serious allegations concerning the founder’s proclivity towards violations of the Sixth Commandment. An example of this can be seen in Sandro Magister’s 2003 interview with Father Miguel Cavallé Puig, LC – a Spaniard who at the time was part of the LC’s general secretariat (click here). In responding to former LC seminarians who accused Fr. Maciel of sexual impropriety, Fr. Puig states: “the true target of the accusations is not so much Father Maciel, but the church, and the pope.”
In short, Fr. Puig, like his founder Maciel, ate of the pope in the name of the movement. And for all we know, the movement may have bitten off a chunk of the Holy Spirit in proposing Maciel’s mother – Mama Maurita – for potential canonization. Do we have any outside corroboration of holiness and heroic virtue? Is anyone outside the LC/RC putting forward her cause? (Unlike the case of Gabrielle Lefebvre, whose cause has always been independent of the SSPX, Mama Maurita’s cause appears completely driven by the LC/RC and its supporters)
And thus the LC/RC finds itself choking on the very lie which it ate. Yet the movement’s supporters continue biting off more chunks of the pope, warning others of choking hazards in an attempt to stop them from noticing that the movement is choking.
Please, dear LC/RC member, I beg you. For the sake of Maciel’s victims, for the sake of your own members, for the sake of the Church and Pope John Paul II supporters embarrassed by your founder’s lies, please come forward now with the truth. You’ve eaten of the pope. So please cough up the truth and stop the choking.

Defending Fr. Maciel from Damnatio memoriae

When the Fr. Maciel story first broke, I went on record publicly stating that the Legion of Christ (LC) and Regnum Christi (RC) could continue without renouncing its founder. I assumed at the time, based upon the American reaction of Fr. Thomas Berg, Tom Hoopes, Jay Dunlap and others of like mind, that the LC/RC would renounce the founder’s example (which is different than renouncing the founder), apologize to his victims and offer them restitution. And to their credit many of the movement’s American membership followed Fr. Berg’s example in doing so.
What I did not expect (at least after the first month) is for the movement’s upper echelons to try and carry on “business as usual”. After all, their modus operandi is what landed the LC/RC in so much scalding tequila to begin with. Which is why I puzzle at this recent Spanish-language interview with Lucrecia Rego, the founder of Catholic.net and a high-profile Regnum Christi member from Mexico. She remains one of Fr. Maciel’s most ardent apologists, having declared herself “Maciel’s other [spiritual] daughter” when the scandal first broke.
Life After RC has posted an unofficial translation here, of which I found the following excerpt troubling for two reasons: 1) It offers us a glimpse into the mindset of some of the movement’s higher echelons; 2) In attempting to defend Fr. Maciel, the interview confirmed my gut feeling that the LC/RC can only survive as a Catholic institution by completely renouncing their founder.
Anyway, read the following and draw your own conclusions:

What’s your opinion on the performance of the current leaders: Alvaro Corcuera, Luis Garza, Evaristo Sada? Do you agree with their having treacherously hidden these truths, deceiving the legionaries, and becoming accomplices themselves of the sins of the founder?
Lucrecia – To accuse the Fathers of such things is nonsense. No one is obliged to reveal another person’s sins. On the contrary, they would’ve been traitors had they revealed them. The fact that they kept it secret is a sign not of complicity, but of their faithfulness, fondness and respect. There’s nothing to complain to them about.
Jesus Christ gravely condemned the sin of scandal. Don’t you consider it scandalous that Fr. Maciel, being a priest, had a daughter, and that he then diverted vast sums of money from the Legion to provide for her?

Lucrecia – First of all, I must say that I find the whole story of the alleged daughter of Nuestro Padre to be quite implausible. An elderly many of 68… it’s very difficult at that age to even be capable of having a sexual relationship.
But let’s suppose it’s true… that, yes, the woman seduced him and was able to achieve (who knows by what means) said relationship and conception. Following this supposition, we cannot know the degree of culpability of neither the woman nor the priest because we don’t know the circumstances. Thus, there’s no scandal, because we don’t even know if the act meets the conditions to be a sin (full knowledge and full consent).
About the “large sums of money” that is said Fr. Maciel gave the mother of the girl… the press has mentioned the amounts of $5,000 to $10,000, which Fr. Maciel carried with him now and then. Are 10,000 dollars given now and then a scandalous amount to provide for a family? Absolutely not. It’s barely enough to ensure that the child (who has no guilt in the story) gets clothing, a home, food, and an education in a place that is dignified and decent. What we do know is that Nuestro Padre worked much for the Legion and that, humanly speaking, he had every right (as laborer and director of an enterprise) to dispose of some money for his personal expenses (in this case, providing for this implausible family).

Fr. Maciel’s apologists will tell us not to judge Fr. Maciel, citing Our Lord’s injunction in the Gospel of St. Matthew, but Lucrecia appears to have judged the mother of Fr. Maciel’s daughter either a liar or a seductress. This is as far from Fr. Berg’s reaction (even before leaving) as one can get. And while we’re on the topic of Fr. Berg, Lucrecia also sends some charity his way:

Fr. Thomas Berg has declared that the Legion must renounce its founder in order to survive. What do you think of these statements?
Lucrecia – What can I tell you? Fr. Thomas is free to express his opinion, and I am no one to judge him. It saddens me, yes, that he’d express himself in such manner about Our Father Founder and of our current directors, because he, having been 23 years in the Legion, is who he is only thanks to the Legion, which wouldn’t exist had Fr. Maciel not founded it. I think he should show some gratitude, regardless of how disappointed he might feel.

What we see here in my opinion is the movement’s institutionalization of Fr. Maciel’s narcissism. It’s not the Holy Spirit, the Church or the intercession of St. Joseph and the Blessed Mother that made Fr. Berg who he is. Neither the saints nor the Church’s teaching. It’s Fr. Maciel and the Legion, this high-profile RC member asserts. Was it in Fr. Maciel’s name that the bishop laid hands on Fr. Berg and raised him to holy orders? You get the point. Everything still centers around Fr. Maciel and the LC/RC, and the LC/RC only insofar as they center around Fr. Maciel. Outside of Maciel’s reach no salvation. Lost vocation, sure damnation.
This is why the LC/RC must sever themselves completely from Fr. Maciel. Since the Legion likes to invoke catchy Latin phrases, Roman military imagery, and thoughts of subjection to Rome, give serious consideration to the ancient Roman practice of damnatio memoriae.