Pope Benedict XVI’s decision last July to take control of the
Legionaries of Christ was a calculated risk.
Amid a withering clergy
abuse crisis, the pope chose an overseer to remake an international
religious order built on the “charism” of a founder who sexually abused
seminarians and fathered out-of-wedlock children, including two sons who
claim they are incest victims.
The late Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, lionized for most of his 86
years, is now the scapegoat for nearly everyone drawn into the legal
quagmire he left: the Legion and its lay group, Regnum Christi; the
pope; Vatican officials; and high-profile Legion supporters who in the
past strongly defended Maciel against charges of abuse.
Just last month, the Vatican ordered Maciel’s photo removed from
Legion facilities and banned sales of his writing, among other
restrictions. However, hammering the memory of Maciel, like some statue
of a fallen dictator, does little to answer the serious questions that
still linger from his life of deception.
The story of the Legion of Christ and Maciel will continue to unfold
in 2011. Interwoven into this story, however, has been a larger one, the
story of the way the highest Catholic authorities entrusted to run the
church reacted to the Maciel scandal, what decisions they made and what
these decisions say about their own views of church and its mission.
It helps, then, to stand back and answer a few basic questions: Why
did this scandal happen?
How could John Paul II, a pope who showed
brilliant moral vision in the face of Soviet communism, ignore the
pedophilia allegations that trailed Maciel for decades?
Why did he
continue praising Maciel for six years after ex-Legionaries filed a 1998
canonical case with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger?
How could Maciel’s supporters,
especially in the United States, so easily dismiss the testimony of so
many credible accusers?
Considering the order’s strange history that
keeps coming to light, is Benedict’s decision to reform the Legion
realistic?
While the question for Benedict is both immediate and risky, there is
probably more at stake, depending on how those questions are answered,
for the late John Paul and his legacy.
How the story evolves and who
controls the narrative could greatly influence whether John Paul
continues to be viewed purely in heroic terms or as someone whose papacy
was tainted by a scandal that came to light just five years after his
election, but that he acknowledged only in the late days of his reign.
It was in 1983 that John Paul approved Legion bylaws that allowed
Maciel to insulate himself from scrutiny.
In the order’s “private vows,”
Legionaries pledged never to criticize the founder, and to report on
anyone who did.
Five months before his death, John Paul approved Regnum
Christi statutes that are in some ways as strange and excessively
controlling as the private vows.
Benedict revoked the private vows in 2007, after banishing Maciel
from active ministry.
Maciel died in 2008.
A Vatican investigation of
Regnum Christi, the lay arm of the order that some describe as a cult,
is currently under way.
As Cardinal Velasio De Paolis, the papal
delegate and canon lawyer, oversees the writing of a new Legion
constitution in Rome, Benedict appears to be gambling that it is better
to salvage than to dismantle the organization, despite its many
disillusioned ex-members, and the opinions of six U.S. bishops who
banned the Legion and Regnum Christi from their dioceses.
Benedict is
now pushing the Legion to compensate Maciel’s victims, especially older
victims who have no legal recourse for abuse from long ago, a striking
departure from the Vatican’s historic aloofness to legal remediation.
The Vatican has no mechanism for compensating victims.
In essence, the
pope is pushing the Legion as a judge would in trying to get two parties
to settle a dispute. Bishop Ricardo Watty Urquidi of Tepic, Mexico, one
of five prelates charged with investigating the Legion for the Holy
See, said as much to reporters in Mexico May 18: “We need, then, to take
care of [Maciel's] victims, as much inside as outside the Legion, and
to compensate them for damages. This is something we all agreed on, and
the pope accepted — just as he has been doing, and bravely so.”
The pope
has evinced a pastoral approach to the Legion’s 800 priests, 2,500
seminarians and 60,000 Regnum Christi members.
He calls down Maciel for a
“twisted, wasted life,” in Light of the World: The Pope, the Church,
and the Signs of the Times, a new book-length interview with Peter
Seewald.
At the same time, Benedict praises the “dynamism and strength
by which [Maciel] built up the Legionaries.”
He told Seewald: “Naturally
corrections must be made, but by and large the congregation is strong.”
The Legion certainly is strong by some measures. In Rome, the order
symbolizes wealth and orthodoxy.
The Legion college campus, Regina
Apostolorum, provides newly invested bishops a residence, Mater Ecclesia
hall, for introductory training.
“The facilities and grounds are
spectacular and the Legionaries have been superb hosts,” wrote Bishop
David M. O’Connell of Trenton, N.J., in a Sept. 13 Web post.
“Meals are
well prepared and served by members of the community who have
demonstrated an uncanny ability to anticipate virtually every need.”
What O’Connell describes is vintage Legion, catering to the most
powerful churchmen. De Paolis has a commission of canonists and
Legionaries drafting a new constitution for the Legion in Rome.
Meanwhile, the order faces lawsuits in Connecticut from one of Maciel’s
sons, an alleged incest victim, and in Rhode Island from a woman
contesting the will of her aunt, Gabrielle Mee, a Regnum Christi member
who died before it was known that Maciel had fathered children.
The Mee
estate that went to the Legion totaled upwards of $7.5 million,
according to the Hartford Courant.
Both lawsuits seek financial
settlements from the order, arguing that senior Legion officials long
knew of Maciel’s twisted life.
Foxes guard the hen house
Five days before Watty’s May remarks in Mexico, Legion superior
general Fr. Álvaro Corcuera sought forgiveness of Juan Vaca, one of
Maciel’s oldest victims, who, as a young priest, beseeched the Vatican
to oust the Legion founder.
Corcuera told Vaca that Legionaries in Rome
were reading a 1976 letter he had sent to Pope Paul VI in which he
identified 20 other sexual abuse victims. Vaca sent the document to the
Vatican two more times. Corcuera told Vaca a Legion committee in Rome
was considering reparations.
“Unfortunately, we addressed these things
very slowly and late,” Benedict conceded to Seewald.
“Somehow they were
concealed very well, and only around the year 2000 did we have any
concrete clues.”
Why the pope fixed on the year 2000 is unclear.
Vaca’s
dossier on Maciel, which also sought dispensation of his vows, went to
the Vatican from his bishop in Rockville Centre, N.Y., in 1990.
Ratzinger’s office approved the dispensation in 1993, while ignoring the
abuse accusations.
Nevertheless, Benedict’s admission of a response
“slowly and late” is a rare admission about the systemic failure to
prosecute Maciel. Several of the priests on De Paolis’ committee to
rewrite the constitution were strategic figures in Maciel’s life.
The Irish-born Fr. Anthony Bannon directed the North American work of
Regnum Christi for many years from the Legion headquarters in Cheshire,
Conn.
Regnum Christi members discussed Maciel’s letters in study
groups. Targeting new members and raising money was central to the
group’s mission. Small, far-flung groups of consecrated women live as
celibates in Regnum Christi communities, often staffing Legion schools.
A
key figure in the Rhode Island lawsuit, Bannon was an architect of
Legion fundraising and the Web site campaign against Maciel’s early
victims. Bannon’s presence, among five other priests on De Paolis’ group
drafting a constitution, is like the proverbial fox guarding the hen
house.
Bannon’s apparatus touted Maciel’s heroism to inspire seminarians
who, in turn, accompanied priests on fundraising calls to targeted
benefactors.
Of the other Legion priests on the commission to revise
the constitutions, Fr. Roberto Aspe Hinojosa is a Mexican and one of
Maciel’s earliest and closest followers, according to Sandro Magister in
L’espresso, a prominent Italian newsweekly.
A Spaniard, Fr. José García
Sentandreu, oversees the Legion’s apostolate works, while Fr. Gabriel
Sotres was head of the order’s communications for two decades. How De
Paolis can hope to find the ethical balance for reforming the Legion
from these men strains credulity.
On Sept. 12, Vaca sent an e-mail to
De Paolis claiming that because of quotes he provided for the 1997
Hartford Courant investigation of Maciel, the Legion tried “to destroy
my professional reputation by false declarations in the National
Catholic Register” — the Legion-owned weekly paper — “and on the
Legionnaire community Web site, LegionaryFacts.org.”
Legion priest Owen
Kearns, editor of the Register, had written on LegionaryFacts.org
following the Courant story, “Vaca is seeking revenge because he was
incompetent in his job, and was being demoted.”
“Vaca is just one of
the disgruntled old men instigating a campaign of lies and calumnies
against our beloved and innocent founder,” wrote Kearns and Bannon in
the Register.
The comment also appeared on the Legion Web page.
Kearns
recently issued an apology in the Register to the Courant; the late
Gerald Renner, who wrote the original Legion story for the Courant; and
this writer, with unnamed victims mentioned in passing.
What is Regnum Christi?
Regnum Christi, the other part of what Maciel called the Movement,
states on its Web site that it is not a cult because the Catholic church
does not approve cults.
Did John Paul understand Regnum Christi?
That
is hard to imagine, given Benedict’s decision to open an investigation
of the Legion’s lay wing.
Is it a cult?
Do certain practices amount to
brainwashing?
These questions gnaw at Genevieve Kineke, an orthodox
Catholic, wife, and mother of four in East Greenwich, R.I., who has
chronicled the Movement with scholarly resolve on her blog.
Kineke is
one of several women who left Regnum Christi over practices they
considered deceptive. The group formed a loose network to assist others
who leave.
Regnum Christi cultivates wealthy couples, particularly stay-at-home
mothers, while seeking consecrated celibates to live like nuns and staff
Legion schools.
“When people leave the Movement it cuts through
families, friendships and parishes,” said Kineke, who has been an
unofficial counselor to about 200 people in the last 10 years.
“Some are
so spiritually scarred they find it difficult to trust the church at
all — the manipulation has been too traumatic.”
Another ex-Regnum Christi member, who asked that her name not be
used, waged a virtual one-woman campaign briefing Baltimore Archbishop
Edwin O’Brien, who banned the Legion and the lay wing from his
archdiocese.
“I’ve always suspected the flaws in the organization are
endemic to it,” O’Brien told NCR’s John L. Allen Jr. in 2008.
“There’s
no remedying them, because it’s so deeply ingrained.”
Prelates in
Minneapolis-St. Paul; Columbus, Ohio; Los Angeles; Miami; Ft. Wayne,
Ind.; Baton Rouge, La.; and Richmond, Va., have banned the Movement from
their dioceses.
In some houses of consecrated Regnum Christi members, the day begins
with a woman entering bedrooms or a dormitory at 5:20 a.m., shouting:
“Christ our king!” The women bolt out of bed and reply: “Thy kingdom
come!”
“It took me a long time to conclude it was a cult,” said Kineke. “I
realized that the Movement entirely suppressed the true nature of
freedom. Everything from posture and demeanor to verbal responses is
scripted. The Movement uses smoke and mirrors to suggest the disciplined
convents or seminaries of years past, but Maciel produced a culture
that strips away basic freedoms. They thrive on efficiency, reaching
quotas, meeting deadlines like a hard-core industry. Everyone read
Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. ‘Time is
kingdom’ was Maciel’s gospel, meaning that you had to always be urgently
working for the Movement. For women who did not need a job, you felt
the Kingdom depended on you.”
Kineke’s blog, life-after-RC.com, is a major link on the Web site of
regainnetwork.org, administered by Paul Lennon, a family therapist in
Alexandria, Va. Lennon left the Legion and his priesthood in the 1980s
after a falling out with Maciel over his dictatorial practices.
In 2007
the Legion sued Lennon and ReGAIN, alleging intellectual property theft
for the posting of the Legion constitution.
The real target was ReGAIN’s
message board, which had become a clearing house for people leaving
Regnum Christi and sharing Legion information.
Unable to raise funds for
a long legal fight, Lennon dismantled the message board and returned
the constitution.
Maciel died several months later, and within two years
the world knew about his children.
At a Nov. 30, 2004, celebration with Maciel at the Vatican, John Paul
praised Regnum Christi for fostering a “civilization of Christian
justice and love” and approved their statutes. Among the rules:
103. Recruitment happens in stages, going successfully from kindness
to friendship, from friendship to confidence, from confidence to
conviction, from conviction to submission.
494. No one shall visit outsiders in their homes, deal with them
frequently or speak with them by telephone without justifiable reasons
or for apostolic purposes. …
509. The center’s Director or Manager shall review all correspondence
from members of the center and release that which he or she judges to
be opportune.
An apostolic visitation — a Vatican investigation — of Regnum Christi
has just started.
“Therefore, any changes, if needed, to Regnum Christi
statutes would come later,” Legion spokesman Jim Fair told NCR.
Benedict’s dilemma
John Paul’s conflicted view of the sex abuse crisis registered in his
April 2002 address at the Apostolic Palace to the cardinals of the
United States.
Stating that the sexual abuse of youngsters was
“rightly considered a crime by society” and “an appalling sin in the
eyes of God,” he said: “To the victims and their families, wherever they
may be, I express my profound sense of solidarity and concern.”
He then defended the bishops for “a generalized lack of knowledge”
and taking the “advice of the clinical experts,” meaning therapists at
treatment centers where bishops sent the priests.
Then, in reference to
offending priests, he said: “We cannot forget the power of Christian
conversion, that radical decision to turn away from sin and back to
God.”
He also declared: “People need to know there is no place in the
priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young.”
What was John Paul’s answer?
“The power of conversion” for clergy
child molesters or “no place in the priesthood” for them?
Conversion or
exclusion?
On the worst church crisis in centuries, John Paul
demonstrated ambivalence, not certainty.
Benedict inherited a huge mess from John Paul.
Ratzinger’s detachment
in the 1980s as a cardinal from serious cases, recently exposed in the
European press, The New York Times and The Associated Press, equally
underscores John Paul’s lack of leadership, as well as more systemic
factors: The Vatican monarchical system has no separation of powers and
no bona fide court system for criminal prosecution. Benedict in theory
has the power to demote, punish or call down cardinals, but that would
violate unwritten rules of the hierarchy.
As De Paolis began making personnel changes in the Legion last month,
Benedict’s prospects of a reform to boost his image from the scandals
earlier this year appear to hang on whether De Paolis can secure Legion
financial resources to produce a victims’ compensation plan.
That would
be a historic breakthrough and sign of visionary papal leadership.
Judges in democratic countries oversee negotiated settlements all the
time — not so Vatican tribunals under canon law.
A deeper question is whether the Holy See has control of the Legion, and if so, just how the pope will change the organization.
On Nov. 11, De Paolis responded to Vaca: “I have received your e-mail
dated November 3, 2010. Sorry for my delay in answering you, but at
present I have many commitments to meet. As far as your case is
concerned, I think that the only solution is to address to the
responsible [parties] of the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ.
God bless you.”
SIC: DI/IE
