The Legionaries of Christ and Fr. Marcial Maciel

The Legionaries are admitting that their founder Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado who died last year, has surprised the Legion with aspects of his behavior who were not appropriate for a Catholic priest. The behavior was not specified. But there are different stories circulating in different blogs and news agencies that affirm that Fr. Marcial had a double life that included inappropriate sexual relationships with minors - sexual abuse- and seminarians, and other inappropriate relationships with women, including the fathering of at least one child - presumably a girl-. These news come after he was disciplined by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, because the Pope gave credibility to the allegations of seminarians who claimed they had been abused by Fr. Marcial. Fr. Marcial was removed in the same year from active ministry. Any person with any common sense would see that the actions of Fr. Marcial have been deplorable and one also has to think about the many victims that he has left behind. One of the sad parts of this story is the campaign of denial that most of the Legionaries have undertaken throughout the years to protect their founder and present him as a model of virtue and holiness. But the image has been crumbling down for years, and now it seems like the image is about to fall.

Sadly I have also noticed how the media rejoices in this type of news, and they almost gloat with the crisis that the Legionaries are facing, many of them hope the Legionaries will disappear from the face of the earth. I believe that this rejoicing on the part of the media is not so much due to a real sense of justice or morality, but more along the lines of using any opportunity available to tarnish the image of the Church as a whole.

Many of them are predicting the destruction and the falling apart of the Legionaries and that may well happen. But people forget also that although Fr. Marcial is the founder of the Legionaries, there are also hundreds of wonderful and great priests that are part of the Legionaries. Today they have close to 800 priests and over 1300 seminarians. The Legionaries have also founded a lay movement called Regnum Christ which has over 70000 members. They own and direct several schools and Universities located in different parts of the world, they also run radio and TV stations, and own several magazines and newspapers as well. It is a solid network, that has done a tremendous service and good to the Church, especially in the times in which we live. Sometimes we forget that God writes straight with crooked lines, and even if it is true that Fr. Marcial committed all those acts that are imputed to him, there is also the reality that God works through wounded instruments and brings good even through defective vessels. Is not that our story as well? And proof of that is the fact that God has done marvelous things through the Legion. It is also true that the Legion has enjoyed many blessings from God and the Church has been blessed in turn by the Legion. It is very easy to point the finger and discredit everything that the Legionaries have done without acknowledging all the real good they have done.

I personally do not like the formation program of the Legion and some attitudes of the Legion in general, but I still can recognize that there are many wonderful things they are carrying out. I personally considered the Legion at one point while discerning my own vocation but based on what I had heard from ex-seminarians and other priests I chose not even to visit them. In my mind they appeared to be too rigid, too much of a military mentality for me, they tended to be somewhat isolated, perhaps cliquish. Sometimes they are perceived as aloof, and they have a reputation for revering their superiors, basically there is no room for constructive criticism. This structure probably has favored the lack of accountability of the superiors of the Legion, and especially the founder, who was almost idolized within the community.

Yet, at the same time I have high admiration for the Legion, for their mission, their zeal, their dedication, their orthodoxy, and for the many positive fruits the Legion has produced throughout the years. I do not think it is fair to identify the whole Legion with the sinful actions of their founder. I do not think is fair either to demonize the Legion and their apostolates based solely on the actions of the founder. One must retain what is good and reject that which is unhealthy within the organization. I think this could be an opportunity for purification within the Legion and for restructuring. I have heard some comments from other priests in some of their blogs that seem also to rejoice at the recent news of Fr. Marcial. I hope that we as Catholics will be very merciful towards the Legionaries and not jump the wagon of rejoicing at the pain of others.

The Legion will certainly enter into a crisis, no doubt about it, but a crisis can also be an opportunity to grow. It is reported in some of these blogs that there are already groups within the Legion that seem to want do distance themselves from their founder, whereas others want to maintain the connection with Fr. Marcial regardless of his failings, perhaps divisions within the Legion loom in the horizon. Perhaps some of the priests will eventually face the reality of their founder and eventually grow disenchanted with the Legion and may choose to leave. We do not know at this point. I hope however that this will be a time for purification and renewal within the Legion, a time of redefinition, a time for the Legionaries to grow in humility and accept their own mistakes and even cover ups. I hope it will be a time to do what Fr. Marcial inspired them to do, without imitating his actions.

US Economy

I read in another column the following stats:

By the end of last month, Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had engineered loans, pledges and guarantees of more than $7.4 trillion to the financial elite that was responsible for creating the economic crisis in which we find ourselves today:
March 11: $200 billion in loans to financial institutions
March 16: $29 billion in loans to J.P. Morgan Chase
July 30: $300 billion housing bill
Sept. 7: $200 billion for the U.S. Treasury to assume Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's debt
Sept. 16: $85 billion to AIG and $70 billion injected into the financial system
Sept. 19: $50 billion pledged to support Money Market funds
Sept. 29: $150 billion made available to U.S. banks and $330 billion made available to foreign banks
Oct. 3: $700 billion in Paulson's bailout package
Oct. 7: $1.3 trillion in purchase debt from companies
Oct. 8: $38 billion in additional loans to AIG
Oct. 14: $1.4 trillion in FDIC guarantees of interbank loans
Nov. 24: $20 billion loaned to Citigroup with the Treasury Department assuming responsibility for 90 percent of Citigroup's $306 billion in debt
Nov. 25: $600 billion in loans for mortgage-backed assets and $200 billion in loans for consumer-backed assets

There's likely a lot more of this on the way.
Is any of it working? Is the economy better off today than it was before this spending spree?

This is amazing, and yet we still want to think that everything is going to be O.K. It is simply a matter of allocating more government money somewhere else and things will eventually fall into place. The new elect president is calling for even more money packages.

The Pope has however given us the way out of this financial crisis that would eventually lead us to hope. His formula is simple, three ingredients: justice, sobriety/simplicity, and solidarity. If we really want to address the financial crisis then we must address these three issues. Justice is needed so that greedy people will not take advantage of those who are most vulnerable, people should try to avoid by the Golden rule and we would avoid so many headaches. A sense of simplicity is needed, we have too many things and most of them are superfluous, we live in a materialistic society that incites us to consumerism and to believe that the more we have the happier we will be, and we have bought into this lie. What people need to realize is that money is not everything, that perhaps God and family are the greatest treasures they have and they must learn to live simply and with a spirit of solidarity that considers the needs of those who are truly suffering and living in need. Our self-centered mentality is closed to the reality that in many countries people are starving and dying because of lack of basic vital resources, we simply lack sensibility and a sense of compassion. Even within our own borders we have many people that need our hand and support but we are too concerned with our own desires and whims that we have not time to go beyond ourselves and reach out to those who are in need and especially those who suffer. I think the Pope has give us a great formula to solve the crisis, it is a formula that implies the transformation of the hearts and minds of the people and not simply the pouring of more millions of dollars here and there, especially when most of that money will actually go to those same greedy people that got us into this mess to begin with.