Sunday Legion roundup

I’m off to the in-laws for supper, but there’s lots of good discussion on the Legion of Christ (LC) and Regnum Christi (RC) on other blogs:
1 – Life After RC has posted LC communication director Jim Fair’s statement on recent revelations from Spanish-language new sources. You can read the statement here. Some commentators have asked whether the LC have a communication strategy. Sadly, in reading this statement it appears that the Legion has adopted the Clinton strategy during the Monica Lewinsky scandal (minus the heartbreaking apology after it had dragged on for a while): Admit only small bits of information at a time, and only after the media uncovers it first.
2 – Quoting from what appears to be LC constitutions, Pat Madrid asks: Who was Fr. Maciel’s moderator?
3 – Former LC priest Fr. James Farfaglia, who now pastors a Catholic parish in Texas, asks some pointed questions of current LC chief tomato Fr. Alvaro Corcuerra, L.C. here.
4 – Saving the best for last, ExLC blogger Landon Cody has blogged a pithy reflection on this past week. Chief among his insights, in my opinion, is the following:

The unfortunate part of all of this disaster is the fact that the day to day rules and regulations in the Legion and the Movement, the spirituality focus, and the identifying characteristics of the “Legionary Type” radicate in the pathological behavior of a man who created an institute where he could exercise complete power and control with no oversight or accountability, and live a life diametrically opposed to that of the gospel. The key is that the very institute and its rules and way of life was what permitted him to live this life on the margin of clerical respectability while using the typical modus operandi of an abuser: the search for complete power and manipulation. At the same time, the mirror image of this depravity of control became the Legion of Christ: an institute designed with a centralized, top to bottom control structure that Maciel micro managed and taught his successors to micro manage, complete with more rule books and norms and detailed minutia than any other order, congregation, or religious institute in the history of the Catholic Church.

Cody’s entire reflection is well worth a read, as is the ensuing the blog discussion. You can check it out here.

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.

Be a cofounder to the family God gave you

Over the past week, several Regnum Christi members (both current and past) have shared with me their heart-wrenching experiences as more accusations arise against Fr. Maciel. Most of these Catholic are mothers of families, although some fathers and singles have written me as well. The big question, I keep hearing, is the following: What do we do to help those left behind, those who refuse to believe any of the allegations, and who don’t want to discuss the truth?

Simply put, we pray for them. That’s all we can do. They have had over six months to digest what’s happening, and to make sense of this information. If they still are not ready to do so, or if they have done so and arrived at a conclusion different than your own, or wish to await the outcome of the apostolic visitation, then we must respect their consciences. Perhaps some may still change their minds, at which point they will come to you.
However, don’t remain idle until then. Here is something else you can – and should – do. That something is to become a cofounder and formator to the family God gave you. Your family is your first priority before God. Spend more time with them, enjoy their company and lead them to Christ.
God works in mysterious ways and the message to focus on family was hammered home to me on at least four occasions this week:
1 – The first was Tuesday evening when many of the new accusations against Fr. Maciel were still breaking. I was tempted to work on it well into evening, given the queries I had received, but my wife was physically exhausted. She has held the family together for the past six weeks while I was away doing ministry for all of July and then catching up with my day-to-day apostolate upon my return in August. So she and the baby went to bed, and the other kids and I went to the auto races like I had promised them.
I used the time driving to and from the racetrack to pray several decades of the rosary with my children, teaching my three-year-old the words to the Hail Mary. Come Wednesday morning, the LC/RC still had its problems. However, my wife was feeling rested, my children were telling all their friends what a good time they had, and my three-year-old was running around in a pull-up praying to the Blessed Mother.
LESSON: You have one priority as a parent when it comes to apostolate. That’s your family. Become a cofounder with Christ to the family God has blessed you with.
2 – Had a short conversation sometime this week with a friend of mine who use to dabble with schismatic traditionalism. He has since returned to the Church, but we spent years hammering each other online. However, our conversation this week had nothing to do with traditionalism. We simply exchanged pointers for ministry among friends and family, how to bring them closer to Christ despite the challenges of today’s culture, and how to overcome personal hurts to evangelize. He signed off telling me how spiritually rewarding it felt to be a father to his children, introducing them to their prayers and Church teaching. This is something he never felt as a keeper of liturgical minutiae. Nevertheless, the arguments we engaged in a decade ago are still waging, despite the fact neither of us participates in them any more.
LESSON: There will always be a surplus of apostolate in the outside world, as well as religious arguments and people willing to argue them. So don’t neglect your immediate family and friends.
3 – My parish pastor approached me about starting a catechetical program for young married couples in the parish. “You write for every Catholic publication in Canada and the United States promoting family,” he said. “And you travel all over the place promoting family. But young couples and families in our parish are falling away from the practice of the faith because I have nobody to put together a family religious education program in the parish you attend every week with your own family.” Point well taken.
LESSON: If there’s not enough apostolate in your family to keep you busy, there’s plenty in your local parish.
4 – I was reading one of St. John Chrysostom’s homilies on the New Testament after having read several messages from people discussing how much pressure they had felt to send their children to apostolic schools, or enroll them in this or that apostolate directed toward young people. “Don’t leave your children’s spiritual education to monks,” the Church father and doctor said, before exhorting parents to raise their children in the ways of the Lord.
LESSONS: A) There is much spiritual wisdom and advice in the saints and Church fathers that you can rediscover in your free time. 2) The Church has always recognized parents as the primary educators of their children, particularly in spiritual matters. Don’t neglect your own children’s religious education to boost your checkmarks on the apostolic deeds column.
In the end, pray for those who are taking the news hard, and keep a shoulder open for them to cry on when they need it. However, do a careful examination of your current priorities when it comes to apostolate and the prioritization of your time. Your family should come first. You should first become a cofounder to the family God gave you. This is what Christ has called you to do.

The Legion and Charism – another response to Ed Peters

Ed Peters has put together another response to the Legionaries of Christ / Regnum Christi (LC/RC) crisis, which is well worth reading. You can check it out here. Since I’m likely to be asked for a response, here’s a line-by-line:

I think that Fr. Alvaro Corcuera’s apparent claim that he knows nothing about Maciel’s behavior, except that Maciel sired a daughter, is utterly unbelievable. I have nothing else to say about this kind of stone-walling. I will simply re-endorse Dr. Germain Grisez’s and Mr. George Weigel’s proposals for direct intervention by the Holy See.


Out of Christian charity I will assume Fr. Alvaro is telling the truth. The Holy See should intervene anyway. Directly.
The situation is so muddled that I cannot see how the LC/RC can fix it without outside help and expertise. Of course I’m just one canonist out of thousands in the Church. But given how the LC/RC have maintained Fr. Maciel’s innocence for years, the severity of the allegations against him – both proven and unproven, and other structural problems within the movement, how the initial response has been bungled, it will be difficult for the LC/RC to regain the trust of orthodox Catholics without assurances that Rome has performed a thorough housecleaning of the movement.
Apologists for the LC/RC are already stating that Fr. Alvaro and the LC/RC are following Rome’s instructions. And Rome has stated it has no immediate plans to step in, but would do so if requested by the Legion. So it might be best is the Legion simply go through the official step of asking Rome to step in directly.
Moving on Peters’s rebuttal of the “reform-from-within” assertion and the “carry-on-the-charism” assertion:

Assertion 1. Because the Legion and Regnum Christi have within their ranks many obviously good and faithful Catholics, they should be allowed to try a reform from within. Response: the presence of good and faithful Catholics within an organization, particularly when the organization (in terms of Church history, if nothing else) is so young, says almost nothing about whether the organization itself is sound and/or salvageable.


Here is where I think Peters needs to make a distinction. Those making the “reform from within” suggestion (like myself) are not a unified camp. Some maintain the LC/RC should be permitted to reform from within, without any direct outside intervention. Very unlikely to work, as proven by the fact Fr. Maciel got away with his misdeeds for so long. And even if it were possible, there’s still the problem of restoring the RC/LC’s credibility.
Like Peters, I believe the LC/RC’s current structure is deeply flawed, and have for some time, according to criteria developed with Fr. Frank Morrisey – one of the Church’s foremost canonical experts on religious law and structures of institutes of consecrated life – and cult expert Michael Langone. You can read a summary of the criteria here. (Please note: I am not claiming that all of these criteria apply to the LC/RC, but those that do need to be rooted out if the LC/RC is to reform.)
Having said that, given that the majority of LC/RC members are orthodox Catholics faithful to Rome, I believe a “reform from within” is possible if the Holy See intervenes directly and appoints someone credible from outside the LC/RC to do a thorough investigation of LC/RC practices, and oversee their reform. It needs to be someone known for prayer and orthodoxy, experienced in religious life, and highly respected within the Church. For example, Cardinal Francis George from Chicago or Archbishop Seán O’Malley from Boston. Of course this assumes LC/RC members cooperate – not only in letter, but in spirit – with the reform.
Such a reform must begin with a sincere apology to Fr. Maciel’s victims, followed by restitution. Also, no more excuses suggesting Fr. Maciel’s innocence, or trying to dampen the severity of his sins. Of course the structural weaknesses that allowed Fr. Maciel to get away with his double-life for so long must also be fixed. Good faith only gets one so far. Peters identifies the question many canonists are asking, namely whether there are structural problems to the Legion, expressing them as only he can, when he states in response to the second assertion:

There is, I think, at least as much reason to wonder whether Maciel set up an institute in order to assure himself of ample access to sexual targets and unaccountable funds, or whether he suffered from some warped psycho-emotional condition that enabled him to compartmentalize pious devotional practices and sexual predation for decades on end…


Here is where I take a somewhat harder line than Peters. I don’t wonder. In fact, I’m pretty sure Fr. Maciel set up the LC/RC to, as I put it in the following interview, acquire, maintain and protect his access to victims.
I won’t comment on funds, except to say well-placed sources within and outside the LC/RC told me that Fr. Maciel was frequently given thousands of dollars in cash without any questions being asked. I haven’t looked into the issue deeply enough to give it much thought; it’s entirely possible the financial irregularities came after, as a by-product of the sexual irregularities. Of course, none of the above excludes the possibility Fr. Maciel also had a serious psychological condition.
But I’ve skipped ahead a bit. Here’s how Peters begins his response to the second assertion:

Assertion 2. Maciel’s canonical crime spree was a grave personal failing, but it does not negate the L/RC ‘charism’, and they should be allowed to continue their work. Response: This argument misses the key question, namely, whether in fact Maciel ever bequeathed an authentic charism to the L/RC…


This, then, is what separates our positions at the moment. If one believes the LC/RC lack a true charism, then Peters is right in suggesting Rome may have to shut down the movement completely and reconstitute it. (Without a true charism, there is nothing to reform.)
On the other hand, if one believes the LC/RC possess a true charism from Christ, but that it has become seriously clouded by Fr. Maciel’s sexual vice, then it may still be possible to rescue the charism. Of course it will still require delicate surgery on Rome’s part. It’s possible the movement is so far gone that the necessary reform is no longer possible. The LC/RC will have to show they are capable of true reform.
Peters then says (skipping over the part I had quoted earlier, out-of-sequence):

I do not know whether the L/RC can (following a complete leadership replacement!) reform itself from within, although I am almost certain that they cannot;


A complete leadership change may be the only thing that can save the LC/RC at this point. Certainly this is how I feel, humanly speaking, although the Holy Spirit could intervene in a way that canonists haven’t imagined. But, assuming most of the current leadership was honestly in dark about Fr. Maciel’s double-life, this speaks to a weakness in LC/RC formation that so many clergy suspected so little for so long. This is not to say they were bad people or terrible priests – only that they appear to lack a certain skill-set needed to exercise prudent governance over a large religious institute.
This is not uncommon among young institutes of consecrated life where one is dealing with leadership known for its holiness (let alone living a double-life). I’ve experienced this at least twice in my career as a canon lawyer. A young institute and its young superior come up with some grandiose ideas, or overlook the obvious. An older priest, with several years of priestly experience before joining the institute, jumps in points out what’s being overlooked, or otherwise brings some common sense to the discussion. Older priests can help guide a young superior of a young institute through sensitive pastoral issues, temper and focus the zeal of younger newly-ordained priests, and put bishops as ease knowing there is someone with experience keeping an eye on the new institute.
The problem with the current LC/RC superiors is that none of them kept an eye on Fr. Maciel. This is not surprising. Abusers cannot bear close scrutiny, which would threaten their access to victims. Fr. Maciel reportedly handpicked his superiors. Not surprisingly, he often named young priests who lacked practical pastoral experience. Which is why most Catholics would feel more confident about a reform of the LC/RC if Rome stepped in directly.

and I do not know whether Maciel developed an authentic charism for clerical, religious, and lay life, but I have serious doubts that he did.


And now the question of charism. The reason orthodox Catholics have struggled so deeply with the crisis, in fact the reason there are such strong feelings of anger and betrayal, is that the LC/RC’s good works have been visible to us for so long. But looking back in retrospect, so too have the institutional signs of Fr. Maciel’s double-life. How does one reconcile such a stark contrast?
Normally, an institute’s charism is tied to its founder and its good works. However, the two don’t match in this case. Some argue that the LC/RC’s founding charism was fraudulent from the start. Others argue that God used Fr. Maciel as His imperfect human instrument. In reflecting upon this dilemma, attempting to reconcile these questions in my own mind, I stumbled across the biography of Saint Rafael Guízar Valencia.
Saint Rafael was Fr. Maciel’s uncle and the bishop who oversaw most of Fr. Maciel’s seminary formation prior to dismissing his nephew from the seminary. Saint Rafael exemplified many of the Christian virtues LC/RC attempt to emulate as members of their movement. In fact, his life story reads like a blueprint for the LC/RC’s good works, and LC/RC members in past have recognized his influence in the founding of their movement.
Perhaps – and this is highly speculative on my part – Saint Rafael is the true spiritual founder of the LC/RC movement, and the instrument used by God to transmit its charism. It’s something for LC/RC members to pray about.