Duc in Altum

"Put out into the Deep" (Luke 5:4)



Sometimes when you run aground you need to question your perspective and start seeing things as they truly are. The foolish cling to the past. The wise find new horizons. Seeing what needs to change is largely a matter of  perspective and focus.

John Paul 2 reminds us that "Nobody can use a person as a means towards an end, no human being, nor yet God the Creator" and that even "Christ's command to love is based on the personalistic norm".

Benedict 16 reminds those formed by the Legion that Maciel twisted their understanding of the Church's mission into "efficiency at all costs".

The more you have been integrated into Maciel's system of efficiency at any cost, the further you are from the true understanding of militia Christi that the Legion's charism must be refounded on.

The time has arrived to put out into the deep and leave behind the shallowness of Maciel's system.

Anyone looking to turn away from coercive activism would do well to turn to Dietrich Von Hildebrand  "one of the great ethicists of the twentieth century" (JP2) and "most prominent among the figures of our time" (B16). Especially to his great spiritual work Transformation in Christ written at the peak of his struggle against efficiency at the cost of human freedom:

"They apply the categories of mechanism to the province of organic life and even to the realm of spiritual personality and culture..."

"Facility is their watchword; and their complacent pride impels them to treat all things in a cavalier fashion..."

"They imagine themselves able to solve every problem and to arrange everything according to some simple prescription..."

"They denature the object of their attentions and with a kind of glib dexterity doctor it, as it were, until the problem appears to be solved or, rather, enchanted away...

"They do not treat things adequately but merely tamper with them, though often with a show of success..."

Prayer and Air

"Why could we not drive it out? He said to them, 'This kind can only come out through prayer.'" (Mark 9:28-29)

In the life after RC combox Deirdre Mundy applies G.K. Chesterton's thoughts on morbid logic to waking folks up from Maciel's spell.

G.K. Chesterton:

"There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic's theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way...".

"He is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity..."

"Theology rebukes certain thoughts by calling them blasphemous. Science rebukes certain thoughts by calling them morbid..."

"If you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument..."

Deirdre Mundy:

"if someone is really integrated in Maciel's spirituality, you CANNOT reason with them... Their #1 axiom is that God created LC/RC, and that the health and safety of the Church is tied to LC/RC. #2 is that all attacks on LC/RC come from the devil..."

"Until someone starts questioning the axioms, until he starts to wonder how Maciel COULD build something good and if the Church REALLY needs LC/RC, logic can't work. Remember, insanity is a closed system-- crazy people are often PERFECTLY logical --it's just that their assumptions are wrong..."

"That's why the praying is necessary-- once there's a little crack so that God's love and their guardian angels' warnings can get through, THEN logic starts to work..."

"I think we'll make more progress with acts of love than acts of logic at this point. Help out when people need dinners. Be a good neighbor. Let the people stuck in RC know that we love them for who they ARE, not for what groups they belong to. That way, when they do start feeling the urge to leave, they'll know that they'll still have people who care about them..."

Harvesting Rot

"The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away." (Matthew 13:24-25)

life after RC:

while we cannot ditch the world (God will in His own sweet time) we can jettison those things which are so entwined with depravity that they detract from the human condition, rather than enhance it. That's what a healthy society does.

Yes, the enemy will always sow weeds into hearts, families, and societies. Good will always have to struggle against evil. And always with great love for persons and their free response.

But when the enemy sows weeds among the wheat and STAYS to manage the fields and groom the wheat to enable the weeds, good cannot imagine that the harvest of that particular field is far off.

The truth is out about Maciel, his teachings, his methods, his rules, and norms. And the wheat, that grew up enabling weeds, is now calling on the Servant of the Servants of God to replace the managers and the rotten foundation that they built on.