Archbishop Edwin O'Brien on Legion Visitation

AB O'Brien gave John Allen (at the theological morass/more ass at NCR) an interview on the subject matter of the Legion visitation.

What are the issues that the visitation should consider?

In the first place, they have to look at Maciel himself. What are the facts, who knew them, when did they know them, and why did it take so long for them to become public? They should look at the financial dimension. They also need to examine who the victims are, and what's being done to meet the needs of those victims.

Then, they need to look at the structure that Maciel created. There was a good deal of secrecy in his own life, and there's secrecy in the structures he created. It would be helpful to know why there is such secrecy.

You've been very public in your criticisms of the order. Why have you chosen to speak out?

I saw a lot of the Legion when I was in Rome, and I heard a lot about them back here in the States. When I came to Baltimore, I learned that [Cardinal William Keeler]had been dealing with them on a local basis for three or four years, asking for greater transparency, and basically got nowhere. Our priests were frustrated. When I told them that I would demand accountability and share the results with the priests' council, it got a very positive reception.

When word got out of what I was doing, I was surprised by the response. I've received some harshly negative reactions, but I've also had letters from all over the country saying 'Thank you, here's my story.' I got one just last week, from somebody who had been in the organization for seven years and left last week, saying how guilty they felt and that they're having nightmares. It seems to have such a hold on people, and we need to find out why. I don't know of any other organization that has created this atmosphere of suspicion. For their good, and for the good of the church, the full picture should be laid out.

All true. However, at this stage of the game, I don't see a penny's worth of difference between the Legion and the US Episcopal Conference.

Cardinal O'Malley is able to tell a bold-faced lie about hiring people to kill people, discredit truth and everyone and their Bishop, clams up.

A contract requires abortion referrals. Everyone at the Catholic Hospital is going to be required to describe abortion, be supportive, instructive and hand out phone numbers and the Commonwealth and Caritas has promised to monitor conversations to ensure compliance with the abortion referrals. Nobody in the Catholic Conference is Bishops, the Nuncio and the Vatican will stop the man or speak out in public about the corruption.

How could anybody have any kind of trust that raping children is something that would be treated differently than killing them? Unfortunately, the cult mentality is alive and well in the Catholic Church and it is hardly limited to the Legion..

Obedience is the last refuge for the wicked

If the shoe fits, wear it.

Catholics' Ten Most Dreaded Words: I'm from the Vatican and I'm here to help

George Weigel writes on First Things about the Ineptitude at the Vatican.

The reports have emanated from those who had been advised of the Legion’s own investigation of Maciel, but there is still no formal statement from the leadership of the Legion as to what its internal investigations have uncovered. There has been no full disclosure of what is known about Fr. Maciel’s corruptions. There has been no disclosure as to the nature and extent of the web of deceit he must have spun within the Legion of Christ, and beyond. And there has been no public recognition of what faithful, orthodox, morally upright Legionary priests believe have been grave corruptions of the institutional culture of their community.

The letter from Fr. Alvaro Corcuera to the faithful of Regnum Christi, distributed last week and immediately available online, was completely inadequate in naming these sins for what they were. Public statements by Legion spokesmen in Rome and in America have been just as bad, due largely to failures by Legion leadership and to an institutionalized culture of defensiveness.

While the Legion has a credibility problem on their hands, the more disturbing aspect of this story is the cover up at the Vatican level.

The spin they allowed in the vacuum of defending Maciel for decades.

Fathers Berg, Gill, and Williams have also conceded, admirably, their own failures to see through the web of deceit spun by Fr. Maciel. Their words reconfirm what those of us who have benefitted from the friendship of Legionary priests have known for years—there is great good here, as there is among the faithful members of Regnum Christi.

The question now is, how shall that good be saved?

It can only be saved if there is full, public disclosure of Fr. Maciel’s perfidies and if there is a root-and-branch examination of possible complicity in those perfidies within the Legion of Christ. That examination must be combined with a brutally frank analysis of the institutional culture in which those perfidies and that complicity unfolded. Only after that kind of moral and institutional audit has been conducted, and has been seen publicly to be a clean audit, can the Legion of Christ, and the broader Church

There's one thing I completely disagree with George about in his op-ed, because, it is quite frankly, just more enabling.

George suggests that an audit of the Legion be done, mandated by the Pope, by somebody who reports directly to the Pope and "he would be instructed to make recommendations (again, to the pope alone)".

Implied in this suggestion is, in the gross dysfunction at the Curia, the corruption flourishes and we need to allow it to continue to flourish as we work around the problem to solve the Maciel mystery.

Then what?

We all pretend whatever else the corruption is covering is not our responsibility?

Not good enough. Nowhere near good enough.

A curia in which no one in authority had the sense to Google “Richard Williamson,” and no subordinate had the nerve or capacity to compel the superiors to pay attention to a potential landmine, is not a curia capable of getting to the roots of the Maciel betrayal. Nor, candidly, is it a curia capable of conducting an investigation that can command public credibility. It is regrettable that this is the case, for there are many honorable people working in the Roman curia. But it is the case.

The truth is, the Vatican can rely on the culture within to keep dirty little secrets under the radar. Catholics who want to rub elbows with the Curia oppress, punish and snub whistle-blowers. The last thing they will do is make the dirty secret public. They will sit around and cordially put on dog and pony show in the presence of somebody they know is doing something harmful. When whistleblowers are abused and snubbed, some even join in kicking the wounded animal.

Numerous priests have been pulled out of their ministry for "telling". I might even venture to say - every one who ever "told" is pulled out of their ministry and persecuted.

The revelations that Maciel was a drug and people abusing sex addict all along has exposed what many of us have feared all along. We should be investigating who knew what at the Roman Curia and "disband", "dismiss", "replace" and "reform" anyone and anything whose fingerprints are on this absurdity.

Then, we will have gone a long way towards resoring credibility, "saving" not only the Legion but the many priests and parishes who are suffering from the ineptitude, dysfunction and corruption.

We can do better than this?

Holy fire, come dwell in each heart.
Grant us the gifts your love imparts.
Free our tongues to boldly proclaim
"Jesus is Lord forever!"

Jesus Christ, you are my life,
alleluia, alleluia.
Jesus Christ, you are my life.
You are my life, alleluia.

Blogsphere Abuzz Big Maciel News: Who's Your Daddy

A mistress and at least one child, possibly others.

I'm confused.

I thought Maciel was gay?

I don't get it. It turns out he was a drug abusing sex addict?

He used the Church to grab any thrill or high he could latch onto?


The Legion confirms something is askew, without specifics and is trying to encourage letting bygones be bygones:

“We’ve learned some things about our founder’s life that are surprising and difficult to understand,” Fair told CNA on Tuesday.

“We can confirm that there are aspects of his life that weren’t appropriate for a Catholic priest....

“Obviously he had human feelings but it remains true that through him we received our charism, which has been approved by the Church.

“Our commitment remains and we‘re going to go forward and love Christ and serve the Church,” he remarked.

Asked to verify the specific allegations, Fair replied:

“Fr. Maciel died over a year ago and obviously whatever has happened is between him and God and God’s judgment and mercy, so we’re going to let him take care of that.”

Not sure this is a winning strategy.

There are many innocent & good priests and lay people in the Legion who have to go on doing the work of the Church. Yet, there is something profoundly disturbing about the ongoing culture of silence and secrecy.

Steve Skojec who was involved in the Legion at the time dozens of seminarians accused Maciel of inappropriate sexual activities, reacts here.

This man who the Legion describes as having “the spirit of obedience to the Church that has always characterized him” had “had a mistress, fathered at least one child, and lived a double life”, after he had already been accused by “more than 20 but less than 100″ of his own priests and seminarians of sexual abuse, and had been described in terms depicting a disordered addict by his own trusted LC priests as early as the 1950s. I vaguely recall being told when I was with the Legion that Fr. Maciel made it clear that he had “…never said no to Christ.” Wish I could find that quote. Whether or not it was what he wrote, they certainly acted like it was true.

The link in Steve posts describing observations of Maciel's habits includes spiritual neglect, trading his Breviary for Reader's Digest, avoiding the Blessed Sacrament, lack of discipline, disclosures of confidential information - including information obtained in the Confessional, habitual lying and exaggerations, splurging on exclusive hotels and restaurants, drug abuse, sexual addiction & abuse.

The documented conduct of Maciel, these most recent revelations of mistresses and children don't leave a lot of room to believe the Vatican was unaware or had doubts about the validity of the allegations.

The Legion is between a rock and a hard place, the innocent of any wrongoing are faithfully serving the Church -- leading people from temptation and into salvation. Many observers passed the information along.

When you start getting information from many sources telling you one of your children is smoking crack, at some point, you are going to go into his room and start looking for a crack pipe. For the Vatican to not follow through on the myriad of complaints - -when the conduct was so egregious, well, it is subpar.

Steve continues:

I am angry because I allowed myself to be sucked into this group, like so many of the good people I met there. They turned my love of God into an asset for their own purposes, and when they were done with me they stabbed me in the back. The damage this did to my faith persists even today. I made an act of the will to completely trust God through this charism, and I was betrayed. I was made to believe that the rest of the Church wasn’t good enough, and when I left, I found no solace in a faith devoid of my elite purpose, my sense of mission, my fellowship with those who were chosen.

Through the prayers of many, I retained my belief, and I strengthened my Catholicism with education and an appreciation of tradition. But I have been cynical since those years, harboring a secret anger even I was no longer aware of. I trusted no one. I refused to seek spiritual direction again after it had been used against me. I saw God as antagonistic, temperamental, unreliable - helping sometimes and hurting others as it pleased Him. I avoided committing myself to any subgroup of the Church. I was wary of any but the most common devotions. I became even more risk-averse than I had been by nature, and spent years feeling residual vocational anxiety and hurt.

It’s taken a lot for me to get to where I am now, and I find that the vestiges of these things are all still here. I never got closure, never received an apology, never got a response to my request for answers. And when I tried to warn people of the dangers inherent in this group, they often ignored me, or at least refused to believe me.

There's something Steve said that's haunting, because it's so true:

"They turned my love of God into an asset for their own purposes, and when they were done with me they stabbed me in the back."

Orthodox Catholics are so easy to exploit. While we are focused on our zeal to serve God, our trust is hijacked. The stabbings from the people in all the various orthodox camps are more shocking than the abuse itself.

The culture of coverup and secrecy goes well beyond the Legion or the Vatican - it permeates every aspect of our culture. No matter how many people you contact to warn - abusers and predators are protected, sheltered and allowed to victimize and consume.

****UPDATE

A great discussion about the new Maciel revelations and how they affect the Legion is going on at the Long Dropping of the Other Shoe.

Part Two of the discussion here.


As someone recently and correctly put it, with all the disturbing allegations, with DNA in their hands, the Legion was forced to abandon their meme that Maciel was the next Padre Pio. Beyond that, they want to leave us with a "cliffhanger"about the scores of allegations.

Is that acceptable?

To me, this begs the question: Institutionally, how bad does conduct have to be before somebody on the inside with authority will stand up and say "this is wrong"?

Are all the allegations true? What did the cover up entail? Who saw what and who told whom to keep mum about it?

Answering these questions can vindicate the institution from the scourge of being labeled a cult.

Otherwise, I fear the good work and mission of many solid and faithful priests in the Legion will be kept under the bushel. They have a credibility problem on their hands.