Vile. Legion. Tactics.

I want all interested parties to understand how the Legion operates. A particular priest of the congregation has posted a threat on this American Papist discussion thread. (The main post is irrelevant because it just mentions the timing of a forthcoming statement.) Father Jose Anton, LC writes:

Dear Glenn in Christ,  
 
Please, accept a warm greeting from Rome.  You are asking the full disclosure of Fr. Maciel's wrongdoings.  Why?  It is Christian charity and human justice not to publicly parade other's sins, which means committing the sin of detraction (cf. Code of Canon Law, 220; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2477, 2488-89). There is also a point worth making about detraction and its gravity. Detraction not only destroys the good name of another, but it also damages still others if they are led into complicity in that defamation and thus further the scandal.  It’s therefore a triple sin.  The first damage is already very grave, but the second and third are also very serious.  “Detraction in a general sense is a mortal sin, as being a violation of the virtue not only of charity but also of justice”, unless “the subject-matter of the accusation may be so inconspicuous or, everything considered, so little capable of doing serious hurt” (New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia).  “Never look upon the sin of detraction as a venial one, or think it has not power to kill the soul.” (St. Thomas Aquinas, The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost).  So, what you are asking is to commit a mortal sin.  
 
Should we disclose publicly the reasons why you were invited to leave the Congregation?  Why so much bitterness with us?  We treated you in a very human and Christian way.  
 
God bless! Please keep us in your prayers.

Where to begin with the audacity of this threat?

• The Legion is quick to point out the sin of detraction against others, but has called the original accusers names for years, undermining their credibility, their character and their motivations. Even with the "revelation" that MM was no saint, there has been no apology to these men;
• This priest is neither Glenn's confessor nor spiritual director, so he should not be privy to any of his private conversations nor his moral struggles;
• Even if he had conversations with Glenn on these topics, he would never be able to discuss them with anyone -- especially not using innuendo on a public discussion board;
• Glenn's personal life, faith journey, etc. has absolutely no bearing on the current discussion about whether a paedophile should be allowed to form priests or whether a person with narcissistic personality disorder is a capable instrument to pass on a legitimate charism in the Catholic Church;
• Father Jose has given a classic example of what makes an ad hominem attack, which is to attempt to indict the person rather than respond to his arguments;
• Furthermore, the LC/RC readers who witnessed this attack supported him afterwards, because they interpreted his words as an act of charity: admonishing a sinner.

Can people please open their eyes enough to see the nature of this methodology and what it brings its adherents to do? Can anyone distinguish between the cries of victims asking the world to stop honouring a dishonourable man and the people who say that calling attention to his sins is sinful?

My head is beginning to spin with the realisation of how the best and the brightest have been so malformed as to call black white and white black. Father Jose has just shown himself to be a priest so compromised that he will betray the sacraments and the commandments in order to protect a man who has defrauded the very Church he claimed to serve.

Thankfully, Nathaniel Peters gets it:

Concern for the Church, her sacraments, and Maciel’s victims demands a forthright, full disclosure of whether or not these accusations are true—a disclosure as vigorous as the defenses of Maciel once were. The Legion needs it, the Church needs it, and, most of all, Maciel’s accusers need it. Offerings of prayers and support, while good, are not enough. As Diogenes concludes, “If you were a victim of Maciel, and had been denounced as a slanderer for accusing him, and that denunciation had never been unsaid, would you feel spiritually buoyed by the promise of prayers offered on your behalf?”

So does Archbishop O'Brien of Baltimore:

“It seems to me and many others that this was a man with an entrepreneurial genius who, by systematic deception and duplicity, used our faith to manipulate others for his own selfish ends,” Archbishop O’Brien told The Catholic Review in a telephone interview following his Feb. 20 Rome meeting with Father Alvaro Corcuera, director general of the Legion.

Saying that the Legion’s founder “leaves many victims in his wake,” the archbishop called for the “full disclosure of his activities and those who are complicit in them or knew of them and of those who are still refusing to offer disclosure.”

He added that the finances of the order should be opened to “objective scrutiny.” 

UPDATE: I am adding Pete Vere's response to Fr Jose's words here, because the original comment is no longer available on the AP site. It is essential to see how the Legionary misrepresented the canon he cited, in addition to using charity in a self-serving and myopic way. 

Fr. Anton wrote (then deleted): "You are asking the full disclosure of Fr. Maciel's wrongdoings.  Why?  It is Christian charity and human justice not to publicly parade other's sins, which means committing the sin of detraction (cf. Code of Canon Law, 220; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2477, 2488-89)."    
     
With all due respect for your priesthood - and please keep in mind that I consider myself a concerned friend of the LC/RC movement - canon 220 is clear: "Can. 220 No one is permitted to harm illegitimately the good reputation which a person possesses nor to injure the right of any person to protect his or her own privacy" (emphasis mine).    
     
The key word here is "illegitimately," meaning that one is harming the reputation of another for no good reason, or violating the privacy of another for no good reason.    
     
Nevertheless, in the current situation several legitimate reasons present themselves to justify harm to the good reputation formerly enjoyed by Fr. Maciel.    
     
The first is justice. By branding his accusers liars when they came forward with serious allegations, Fr. Maciel harmed the good reputation of those who are now believed to be his victims, by asserting falsehood about what now seems more probable to have been the truth. Justice requires that the good name of the victims be restored.    
     
The second concerns the public good. As noted in canon 223, rights are exercised within the context - and in view of - the common good. Many loyal Catholics have entrusted their children and young people to LC/RC apolostolates, schools and seminaries. They have a right to assurance that these apostolates are free from the influences of Fr. Maciel's sins.    
     
Canon 793 clearly establishes parents as primary educators of their children, as both their right and obligation, and canon 795 establishes this education as "physical, moral, and intellectual" as well as social. If Fr. Maciel's sins are systemic to the ecclesiastical structures he built, then parents have a right (and not only a right but an obligation) to inquire, ask questions, and receive pertinent information, in order to assess how best to fulfill their role as primary educators of their children.

So while a full disclosure of Fr. Maciel's wrongdoings may harm his reputation, there are many legitimate reasons for doing so in this context.

UPDATE II: for the sake of full disclosure, Fr Anton later removed the threat and apologised, but must be noted that this is the second time that that exact threat has been tried on Glenn. (The first time was here.) That's why I'm highly skeptical of the sincerity of the apology, which had obviously backfired. One must consider that critics of the Legion (or even those who simply wish to discuss their experiences with the Movement) still hide more often than not behind screen names or psuedonyms, which indicates that the likelihood of retribution for negative remarks is still on people's minds. This threat was therefore retracted, but the fear obviously remains.

Comments

[Mary Ann]

Reparation for sin demands justice to all offended by the sin. Maciel sinned against every member of LC and RC, and against all the Catholic faithful. He deceived and defrauded all of these in a giant con scheme that was both spiritual and financial. Simple justice would require that the extent of the deception be made known to all of those deceived. People cannot forgive what they are unaware of. If Maciel were alive, any Confession he would make would require a public reparation to be valid. He is dead. If the Legion wants to help him in Purgatory, if he is there, the Legion must make the reparation for him. What the Legion is doing is continuing the fraud and deception when it should be making up for it.

[another exLC]

Great statement by the Archbishop - and Fr Jose Maria Anton took down his earlier statement.

[Mike]

Fr. Anton needs to find a competent spiritual director - from outside the LC.

[another exLC]

It is particularly nauseating that he wrote "God bless" and "warmest regards" while threatening this. It makes me think he shares the sociopathy of the founder.

[PW]

The snide comment Fr. Anton writes is aggravating for anyone of honest mind: “Should we disclose publicly the reasons why you were invited to leave the Congregation? Why so much bitterness with us? We treated you in a very human and Christian way.” These three sentences are clearly uncharitable towards you; the attack ad hominem is used (“bitterness,” etc…) to discredit your argument as if it were the fruit of an emotion instead of based on facts; and if your case was anything like mine, I was treated in an amazingly inhuman and uncharitable way when I was dismissed, and never given any reasons, except, that after 15 years of faithful, fruitful religious life, a certain superior was enlightened by God that I didn’t have a vocation any more.

I would love it if they would publicize the reasons why they dismissed me, for they have not given me any reasons whatsoever at any point in time. Yet I fear how they would do that, should they decide to, because the LC time and time again shows that it is not above lying, spinning the facts, to keep up the LC’s good appearance in the public eye no matter what the cost to any person who stands in their way. Such Legionaries are liars.

Concerning Fr. Anton’s text of 2/25, he demonstrates only the will to not see, but the will to deceive. Vere correctly makes the necessary Canon Law distinction (his point about the word “illegitimately”). Yet another distinction has yet to be made. Vere, being a Canon Lawyer, focuses appropriately on the Canon Law part. But a similar flaw of Fr. Anton’s argument arises in his use of the Catechism. In the very passage he quotes from the CCC, 2477, we find, first, that the Catechism does not condemn the damage to someone’s good name, but only the “unjust injury” (and I quote, CCC 2477); second, that one is guilty of detraction only under the condition, again I quote, that he makes the faults known 1. “to persons who did not know them” (the victims do know them), but more importantly, “without objectively valid reason.” And so he states something true (the matter of mortal sin), but his omission of reference to these important qualifiers exposes his sense of manipulation.

It is very frustrating to see this order, once again, use the Church just like it uses endless numbers of people for specious, ideological goals, even to falling to this level of flat-out dishonesty, wherein the documents are cited, but not quoted, because the actual text contradicts the point of he who put them forth.

Most abominably, by speciously accusing of detraction, he truly falls into slander.

In Christ,

Fr. Paul Ward
Associate Pastor
Assumption Grotto Catholic Church, Detroit

(posted with his permission)

[giselle]

On behalf of the lay faithful, Father, thank you for your perseverance with your vocation, despite the Legion's effort to undermine it. I cannot imagine your years of turmoil, but am grateful that Assumption Grotto can benefit by your generosity.

What LC supporters still don't understand is the damage this does to the Church -- not only the scandal, but the broken families and crushed vocations they leave in their wake. So many say afterwards, "I'm doing just fine." Maybe, but your testimony reminds us that even those who are visibly carrying on outside still carry scars from the Legion's methods, which are far from charitable. God bless you!

[TJC]

I was told by another exlc whom I met in NYC for lunch once that he was told by Fr. Alvaro that he didn't have a vocation right before he was to be ordained a deacon. He had been in for about 13 years. They never gave him any warning signs prior to that. They just told him that one day. It wasn't as though there was any discussion about it over the years. They also couldn't explain why. They simply said that they didn't think he had a vocation. He's now a priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, but it was very hard for him to leave the LC and then find a diocese that would take a chance on him.

I recall that in the initial interviews that Jose, Juan at all did (in Spanish) that I saw on videotape had one of the victims (I don't recall his name) who was scheduled to be ordained to the diaconate and was told by Maciel that he didn't have a vocation (or that he wouldn't be ordained at that time) right before he was to be ordained. In fact, I think his parents already had their tickets or were already on their way, and then Maciel sent him to the Canary Islands. I'm not sure if I am recalling correctly or not. While telling that story, he chocked up with tears. After all of those years, it was still that painful for him. It was really moving.

Why it takes so long for the Legion to discover that someone doesn't have a "vocation" is always a mystery. One minute they do, then the next minute they don't. What changed? One would think that such a fact would be discovered sooner. That, and then the LC can't explain why the person doesn't have a vocation other than saying "You don't have a vocation". It really is inhumane. Where is the humanity? Nowhere.

My own personal theory is that Maciel did that because he was kicked out of seminaries. Perhaps it's the way of passing the hurt on and/or just exerting control over someone's life and feeling powerful. Whatever the reason (apart form being a sick b**tard), it's just wrong.

[MariGold]

+They are worse than "sick bastards," IMHO. This is cruelty by design. The amount of information that our collective noggins have accumulated is so liberating! Someone learned that a LC seminarian is kept for 9 1/2 years, that being the prime dumping time, since after 10 years, canonically, a religious order has to take more responsibility for a man who has been afixed to them. So, after 9 1/2 years of unpaid slave labor, a man is dumped without explanation. I believe that many of these men are worked to the point of breaking mind and body, faith and feelings -- but NOT THE WILL. The LC will is so trained that it will not waver, even in the face of total collapse. Someone else remarked that the Legion seems to model itself on the mafia in these similarities: real "godfathers" are hidden from public view, rigid chain of command, non-questioning obedience when told to do something, and total loyalty. There are also "made men"in the mafia and, we are told, in the Legion -- that is those who are given increasingly dark and criminal deeds to perform until finally, the "made man" has committed murder for the "family." How far does this parallel go in the Legion? I don't know, but have heard of men doing horrible things out of "obedience" and that they later regretted so very much. It is a marvel that any man survives this kind of treatment and lives to have any humanity at all. Glenn has certainly shown more genuine concern, time and again, than the likes of sly Fr. Wormtongue Anton.
O, sackcloth and ashes!

[Pete Vere]

Thank-you, Father Ward, for adding a catechetical correction.

If you will permit me to return to the canonical correction for a moment, and my comments are made with the assumption Fr. Anton was speaking in good faith, here are two points I failed to mention in my initial response.

Both concern a Roman legal principle that has been adopted into canon law long ago, and become part and parcel of the Church's legal patrimony.

The first is "Peccatum non dimittitur, nisi restituatur ablatum." This is translated as "The sin is not forgiven, if what has been taken is not restituted."

Hence the reason the LC/RC must apologize to Fr. Maciel's victims if the movement is to move forward. These victims had their good name unjustly taken from them. Thus forgiveness from the wider Catholic community is dependent upon the LC/RC restoring to these victims their good name.

The second is "Semel malus semper praesumitur esse malus." This translates as "Whoever has been convicted of evil is always presumed to be evil."

Although Fr. Maciel was not officially convicted by the Church - between his forced retirement shortly after Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope, and subsequent revelations Fr. Maciel fathered a daughter who is now in her early 20's (as admitted by several LC/RC sources), suffice to say one is not acting immorally by presuming Fr. Maciel is evil.

Thus the obligation falls upon the LC/RC to assure us Fr. Maciel's evil has been rooted out of the movement.

[MM]

Who the hell is Fr Anton, LC anyway? I can't believe he is criticizing people for trying to find the truth. He's a typical Legionary who only knows how to defend and not apologize. We shouldn't get involved in other peoples sins ok? What about from from a civil or criminal standpoint. Does that mean we shouldn't accuse anyone of a crime because it may infringe on their penance with God??? MM was a child molester who impregnated an underaged girl... Thats ILLEGAL Fr Ahole.. I mean Anton!!! I'm sick of these sweet talking LC's spinning everything.. Why won't they learn how to apologize!! The more they hide the truth the more it makes me believe they all have guilty consciences, which ultimatley makes me wonder if they're all robbing the craddle. I wish Bill O'Reilly would get involved with this whole ordeal.....

[exLC Mexico]

I have the best memories of Fr. Ward. I know Fr. Anton as well and I really appreciate him. Great priests both of them. Both always trying to speak well of others. Meantime, I really hope I will be able to tell my sons with proud that I spent some time in the Legion of Christ while searching God's will for my life. Some of the comments posted here generalize on the vocational experience in the Legion of Christ, which happened to be a joyful one for me and many. I know, obviously, that not for all. It's just a matter of accuracy.

[Mario]

The real sin here which should be so evident is Fr. Anton's and the LC's sin of detraction against Glenn.
Is it not worrisome that this priest is teaching moral theology after such heterodox statements? Regina Abominarum needs to be closed.