Marcial Maciel: A devil in priest's clothing

All I want to say is, I'm sorry.

I want to say it here, because I defended Fr. Maciel here, and I need to be on the record regarding that defense:

I'm sorry, to the victims, who were victims twice, the second time by calumny. I'm sorry, to the Church, which has been damaged. I'm sorry, to those I've misled.

I did it unwittingly, but this isn't a time for excuses.

The Church gave me great, great good in Regnum Christi.

The Church did bring justice, and did penalize this man.

Thank God for the Church.

I seek repentance and forgiveness, and I leave it at that.

Patrick Madrid, the orthodox Catholic blogger, says that now is not the time to pretend that this catastrophe is not exactly that: a catastrophe. He warns that enemies of the Church will try to use this case to smear Pope John Paul II. Well, maybe, but given the magnitude of this scandal, and given John Paul's clear record of trying to avoid dealing with the ugly truth of these scandals -- see, for example, how hard Vienna's Cardinal Schoenborn had to fight to get Pope JP2 to act against the pederast Cardinal Groer -- a searching examination of why Maciel's victims had to fight so hard to get a hearing from Church officials, including the Pope, ought to be undertaken.

These victims, and others who suffered spiritual abuse from the LC and RC (see the ReGain site), were viciously attacked by those faithful to Maciel and his lies. Those who set upon victims of Maciel and his followers deserve a full and public apology.

One more thing at this point. The brave and tireless Jason Berry and the late Gerald Renner did more than any other journalists to hold Maciel to account. This, from a much-remarked-upon 2002 article by a well-known Catholic, is what they got for their trouble:

Having said that, I expect that most readers, and especially those who, with good reason, admire the Legionaries, instinctively recoil from the story about Fr. Maciel, finding it both repugnant and implausible. There is something to be said for consigning it to the trash bin and forgetting about it. Nobody should feel obliged to read on, for the subject is decidedly distasteful. At the same time, the story is out there, and--as Berry and Renner and the complicit publications surely intended--it has no doubt done some damage. Forty and fifty years after the alleged misdeeds, there is no question of criminal action. Even were there any merit to the charges, which I am convinced there is not, the statute of limitations has long since run out. And what can you do to an eighty-two-year-old priest who has been so successful in building a movement of renewal and is strongly supported and repeatedly praised by, among many others, Pope John Paul II? What you can try to do is to filch from him his good name. And by destroying the reputation of the order's founder you can try to discredit what Catholics call the founding "charism" of the movement, thus undermining support for the Legionaries of Christ.

Berry and Renner do not even try to hide their hostility to the Legion. Their story introduces the movement as "a wealthy religious order known for its theological conservatism and loyalty to the Pope." In the world of Berry, Renner, the National Catholic Reporter, and the Courant (at least when Renner was writing for it), that is another way of saying that the Legion is the enemy. Nobody would dispute that Legionaries are theologically orthodox and loyal to the Pope. Some of us take the perhaps eccentric view that that is a virtue.

Further:

I am not neutral about the Legionaries. I have spent time with Fr. Maciel, and he impresses me as a man who combines uncomplicated faith, gentle kindness, military self-discipline, and a relentless determination to do what he believes God has called him to do. They are the qualities one would expect of someone who at age twenty-one in Mexico vowed to do something great for Christ and his Church, and has been allowed to do it. In the language of the tradition, they are qualities associated with holiness; in his case a virile holiness of tenacious resolve that has been refined in the fires of frequent opposition and misunderstanding.

More:

In any course so demanding, it is inevitable that many do not make it. Others, having become priests, fall by the wayside or are found wanting. The result--and this is true of any community that does not fudge the distinction between success and failure--is that there are some who are disappointed, disgruntled, aggrieved, and bitter. And that brings us to the Berry/Renner story about Fr. Maciel. You don't want to know the specifics of the charges, although Berry/Renner go into salacious detail about rude things allegedly done with young men, things that have become all too familiar from sex abuse stories of recent decades. Nine now elderly men who were once part of the Legion--two Spaniards and seven Mexicans--claim that in the 1950s Fr. Maciel more or less regularly abused them, and that this was a pattern pervasive throughout the order. Berry/Renner acknowledge that one of the accusers has recanted his story under oath, testifying that he was put up to telling tales by ringleaders who had for many years been trying to get other disaffected Legionaries to join in "showing up" Fr. Maciel. The fact that he has recanted his original charges does not prevent Berry/Renner from repeating them with what appears to be prurient relish. It is not the kind of stuff you would find in any mainstream media, but then Berry and Renner are not practitioners of what is ordinarily meant by responsible journalism. Berry's business is Catholic scandal and sensationalism. That is what he does. Renner's tour at the Courant was marked by an animus against things Catholic, an animus by no means limited to the Legion.

In other words, people who complain are only bitter because they weren't good enough for the Legion, so they turned to the enemies of the Catholic Church to air their grievances. More:

Nonetheless, because I care about the Legion and because I was outraged by what I suspected was a gross injustice, I decided to go through endless pages of testimony, counter-testimony, legal documents, and other materials related to the Berry/Renner attack on Fr. Maciel. It was not an edifying experience. For Berry/Renner, it is worth noting, the case of Fr. Maciel is not all that important in itself, but it serves another purpose. "To many," they write in the recent NCR article, "the case against Maciel is important because it tests the Vatican's resolve to pursue charges related to sexual misconduct at the highest levels of the Church." The "many" includes, first of all, Berry and Renner. That is clearly the reason for the latest re-raking of the muck of their 1997 article. They report nothing substantively new in the allegations themselves; the only new thing is that the Vatican has again considered the charges and found them without merit. A cardinal in whom I have unbounded confidence and who has been involved in the case tells me that the charges are "pure invention, without the slightest foundation."

For Berry/Renner, however, the Vatican is a sinister and oppressive institution. Its stated concerns for confidentiality and fairness are, in their view, code language for secretiveness and evasion. Statements of church officials are never to be taken at face value, and certainly never to be given the benefit of the doubt. Let it be said that there have been instances in which church authorities have been less than straightforward, to put it gently. But for Berry/Renner, systematic mendacity is assumed. That the Pope consistently and strongly supports Fr. Maciel and the Legion is only evidence that he has been duped--or, the reader is invited to infer, that he is party to a cover-up. Nothing will satisfy them but that the Church comply with their prescribed procedures of investigation and, not incidentally, vindicate their sensationalist reporting. So much for the prejudices and purposes of Berry and Renner. In sum, they are in the scandal business.

So what is a person who does not share their prejudices and purposes to believe? I can only say why, after a scrupulous examination of the claims and counterclaims, I have arrived at moral certainty [emphasis in the original -- RD] that the charges are false and malicious. I cannot know with cognitive certainty what did or did not happen forty, fifty, or sixty years ago. No means are available to reach legal certainty (beyond a reasonable doubt). Moral certainty, on the other hand, is achieved by considering the evidence in light of the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." On that basis, I believe the charges against Fr. Maciel and the Legion are false and malicious and should be given no credence whatsoever.

This, as we are now learning, was arrant bullshit. I like to think that its author, Father Richard John Neuhaus, would apologize for it were he still with us. When the full statement is made by the Legion, I look forward to an upcoming issue of First Things, in which Jason Berry, a fine and courageous man who served his Church and his God well by his reporting, receives what he has coming to him from Father Neuhaus's successors.

UPDATE: A reader posts the text of something Neuhaus wrote about this in 2006. I'd forgotten about that, and I appreciate his including it. Still, it is deeply regrettable that Fr. Neuhaus didn't apologize to Berry and Renner, whose names and reputations he harshly abused in defending a man who was guilty.