In the this post we looked at the falsifications of Christian life that Maciel deliberately built into his system:
- A false Gospel of Efficiency
- A false Idol to Trust
- A false Love for the Church
- A false Obedience opposed to Truth
The worst possible response would be to assume a charism can be cobbled together by retaining parts of Maciel's mission, vision, teaching, and methodology. Rather than focusing on what can be saved, the Legion must be willing to lose all of the limbs Maciel provided them with.
If any group in the Church in 50 years time traces its history back to this sorry mess, it must be be contemplative not conquering, humble not ambitious, and must serve the laity not enroll them into it's mission.
Cassandra Jones:
José Barba, another Mexican seminarian and future accuser, remembers Maciel’s tearful farewell speech on October 10:
"'I have been attacked and am subjected to a great test by my enemies… The Legion is said to be a good work, but what is the chance that the Legion, the tree, the branches, and the fruits are good, but I, the trunk, am evil? What sense is there in that?"
Vaclav Havel:
The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. … I am talking about all of us. We had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate it. In other words, we are all - though naturally to differing extents - responsible for the operation of the totalitarian machinery. None of us is just its victim. We are all also its co-creators.… We have to accept this legacy as a sin we committed against ourselves.
Changobeer:
The LC is wretchedly incapable of curing itself.
Is not full knowledge a requisite for full and free consent? Could anyone validly commit their lives to serve as priest and religious in an institution about which they really know quite little because the truth has been systematically obfuscated and discarded?
The retort that present generations are less affected by the scandalous life and legacy of Fr. Maciel and so should progress unfettered by useless hindrances like ‘truth’ and ‘full disclosure’ is disingenuous at best. Every new candidate to the LC should know up front that he is entering the only existing religious order in the Catholic Church whose Founder was a sexual predator and a pathological liar who lived a double life during the sixty whatever years of the foundation. The parents of every new recruit should be carefully informed that their son or daughter is about to put their life and conscience in the hands of an institution that has had to disown its Founder because of accusations of sexual abuse (“more than 20, less than 100”), toss out all the writings and teachings that sustain his warped spirituality and now awaits with uncertainty a judgment on its future existence. They should also know that the men presently running the organization that will exercise full and unmitigated authority over their son or daughter were hand-picked by Fr. Maciel and swore personal allegiance to him at the last General Chapter.
I will take this a step further – and believe me, it has been a long, dark and painful journey to this point – and say: who among us, Legionaries of 20, 30, 40 years or more – being of sound mind and discerning conscience – would have endured even one minute of the teaching, preaching, discipline, spirituality, methodology, spiritual direction, ‘questions’, conferences or writings of Fr. Maciel had we known that at the very time he was hypnotizing us with his lies he was sexually abusing seminarians, fathering children, running around on the congregation’s dime, duping popes, cardinals, bishops and benefactors…
It was our ignorance that held the Legion together. The LC is founded, not on the supposed sanctity and inspiration and charism of its Founder, but on the gullible and impressionable idealism of his hapless followers.
Deirdre Mundy:
I know you think that Regnum Christi helped you become the Catholic you are today. But it didn’t, really. You joined RC because you wanted to deepen your faith, because you were looking for a chance to learn and a chance to serve. You already had the desire...
You didn’t need Maciel and his warped methodology, but he needed YOU. He needed you to provide cover, so people would think he was a saint. After all, he attracted so many young Catholics on fire with love of the Lord! He needed you to provide money, to fund his luxurious double life. He needed you to provide labor, so he could build his empire.
Most of all, he needed you to provide your sons. He needed access to victims. He needed young minds that he could mold into copies of himself. He needed those boys. And he needed to convince you to give them over to his care...
You didn’t need him. But he needed your sweet, innocent sons.
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