An anonymous reader wrote in the comments box below:
My wife is a member of RC, […] On the one hand, she is quite shocked about the revelations concerning Fr. Maciel and disappointed in the current LC leadership (at least at the top) for failing to come clean, but on the other hand she likes and admires the LC priests and RC members at the local level. As her husband, I can say that she has developed spiritually in positive ways since joining, though sometimes I fear she is too influenced by opinions she hears by those in authority in RC. (In my case, I’d say that my experiences with LC have been rather mixed.) Here is the dilemma I am facing: though not a member, I am involved in an RC apostolate with my wife, and the question I keep asking myself and my wife is, at what point do we cease being victims of a cover-up and become co-perpetrators of it? In other words, naturally we don’t tell the people whom we want to benefit by this apostolate about the allegations concerning Fr. Maciel or about the possibility that members of LC knew about Fr. Maciel’s actions. We have made non-RC friends through this apostolate; naturally we don’t tell them about the allegations. Do we have a duty to tell them?
One of the biggest allegations to surface during this scandal is that the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi (LC/RC) use their schools and apostolates as “recruiting mechanisms” for the LC seminary. Who is in charge of this seminary formation? The priests at the top, or those with who you and your wife rub shoulders at the local level?
Knowing what you now know about the Legion and its founder, and suspecting what you don’t know with moral certitude but nevertheless feel has the “ring of truth” to it, are you comfortable with your son entering the Legion as a seminarian or your daughter consecrating herself a 3rd Degree member of Regnum Christi?
And what about these other parents you come into contact with? Would they be comfortable with either possibility for their children without knowing what is going on right now? Who will they blame if these allegations are proven down the road, once their children have been “integrated” into the movement? Will it just be Fr. Maciel and those at the top?
Will they still be your friends?
More importantly, can you live with your conscience? Knowing that you knew or had reason to suspect strongly, but intentionally concealed the information for the sake of “growing the Kingdom”?