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The Holy Ghost in the Machine:

Amidst the Legion Crisis, a Sign of Providence

by Dawn Eden 

 

The life of a Catholic convert is filled with awkward moments, as I discovered following my entrance into the Church in 2006. My friends still laugh about the time less than a year later when, after speaking at Manhattan’s Theology on Tap about my book The Thrill of the Chaste, I was met by a receiving line that included both the top-ranking local representative of the Legion of Christ and a staff member from the national office of Opus Dei, each with business card in hand.

Knowing little about either movement at the time, I imagined them as having a monumental rivalry on the order of Coke and Pepsi. As the Legionary and Opus Dei representative, having introduced themselves to me, proceeded to make small talk with each other, I couldn’t help thinking of those Cold War-era Warner Brothers cartoons in which the timeclock-punching wolf and sheepdog chat cordially during break time before the bell rings and they return to one another’s throats.

Although I remain to this day a “mere Catholic,” I was curious enough about Opus Dei and the Legion’s lay movement, Regnum Christi, to read some of their literature. The difference between the literary styles of Opus Dei founder St. Josemaria Escriva and now-notorious Legion founder Father Marcial Maciel proved striking and a tad disconcerting.

Escriva’s cerebral prose could be obtuse and somewhat cold at times, but his spirituality was profound, offering new layers of depth with repeated readings. His words read like those of a saint: “The world admires only spectacular sacrifice, because it does not realize the value of sacrifice that is hidden and silent” (The Way). 

The works of Maciel, by contrast, read like Hallmark greeting cards, or those Our Daily Bread pamphlets that Evangelicals leave behind on city buses: “God’s love ... has given you an easy and fast road to holiness” (Envoy II). Perusing his platitudes – some of which have proven to be plagiarized – I marveled that they could provide enough spiritual fuel to power an international movement of priests and laity. It seemed to me even then, before I knew much about the accusations against its founder, that the Legion was running on fumes.

Maciel’s calculated pretense of piety is on my mind these days as I and everyone else await word of how the Vatican will act upon the conclusions of its apostolic visitation of the Legion. During the years since that Manhattan encounter, my friendships with traumatized ex-members of the Legion and Regnum Christi have made me doubt whether the institution is capable of being reformed. Yet, even for those who are, as Patrick Madrid observed, “clamoring for it simply to be razed, plowed over, and sown with salt,” there remains a strange and paradoxical truth. The manifestly evil Maciel created a system that has brought forth some priests of great holiness – precisely because it was designed to deceive.

As Mark Shea has observed, most (though not all) Legionaries were unwitting cogs of a giant machine programmed by Maciel. The machine was designed to present a front of holiness and purity so that its creator might raise millions from unsuspecting donors while committing his crimes with impunity.

To get his contraption into gear, Maciel needed skilled and clever administrators – “company men” who would ensure that all the cogs were in place. For the machine to perform its main function, however, the cogs had to be über-priestly – pure of heart, loyal to the Magisterium, and wholeheartedly devoted to their vocation. If any of those aspects were absent, there might be scandal – and the one thing the founder couldn’t afford was scandal.

The clerical cogs will no doubt need some additional formation if they are to practice their priestly ministry outside the Legion’s confines. First, some if not all will need to be debriefed, as are former cult members, to regain the proper use of their will. (One friend of mine who had a son in the Legion claims that their seminarians are unable even to order for themselves from a restaurant menu.) Some may need even instruction in prayer; Legionaries praying the rosary reportedly omit its “tail,” jumping right into the mysteries.

The pastoral experience of the order’s priests is notably narrow. Apart from their missions to fund-raise, recruit, and give spiritual direction, they have been so prevented from forming relationships with people in the outside world, that many have rarely, if ever, performed baptisms or celebrated marriages. Likewise, if the reports of former Legionaries are to be believed, their theological education is limited, as they were required to devote far more study to the writings of the founder than the works of the Church Fathers.

Given their being fed such tepid milk instead of strong meat, it is all the more impressive to see how many Legion priests possess the one quality that, as C.S. Lewis noted in his Screwtape Letters, fills the devil with fear: They really believe. Moreover, although some remain in denial about the breadth of Maciel’s misdeeds and the extent to which the order attempted to cover for him (his photo, incredibly, remains on the Legion’s Web site), many of them have reacted to the crisis with horror and priestly penitence.

One wonders if perhaps, in the midst of this enormous crisis caused by Maciel’s deceptions and those who wittingly or unwittingly enabled them, God’s providence has been at work to protect the Church from the far greater evils that threaten it in future. Cardinal Ratzinger foresaw in 1969 that the Church would, in the future, “be small and, to a large extent, will have to start from the beginning. She will no longer be able to fill many of the buildings created in her period of great splendor.” From the start of his papacy, he likewise predicted that the Church would lose members while gaining a stronger identity and deepening its faith, taking on the character of a “creative minority.” More recently, the Pope has said of the Third Secret of Fatima – the vision that has been taken to predict the assassination attempt upon his predecessor – that, “beyond this great vision of the suffering of the Pope, which we can in the first place refer to Pope John Paul II, an indication is given of realities involving the future of the Church, which are gradually taking shape and becoming evident.”

Our Lady of America—that is, Mary as she appeared to an Ohio nun during the 1950s, in a private revelation later approved and promoted by the local bishop—is said to have called for an “army of chaste soldiers, ready to fight to the death to preserve the purity of your souls.” Regardless of whether one accepts this revelation, it is apparent that, given the many threats to the Church from within and without, tomorrow’s priests will have to be prepared for martyrdom. Those Legionaries who survive the current crisis with their faith and dedication intact will be uniquely equipped to endure the coming challenges.

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)