The Self-Destruction of a Cult of Personality

Home • Hogar 6/09 5/09 4/09 11/08 7-8/08 Alternatives • Alternativas CLC El legionario debe ser • The legionary must be "Las cosas que la legión no es..." • "Things the Legion is not..." Prayer to St. Joseph • Oración a San José The Double Life of Marcial Maciel



The Self-Destruction of a Cult of Personality

April 2009

Something's astir in the land of the Legion. In late January, Fr. Alvaro Corcuera, superior general of the Legion of Christ, issued a letter to Legionary priests and seminarians, and to members of Regnum Christi (the Legion's lay affiliate), in which he alluded to "things that have hurt and surprised us" regarding Legion of Christ founder, the late Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado. What are these "things"? Fr. Corcuera did not elaborate in his letter, but darkly declared, "We are living a time of pain and suffering."

Shortly thereafter, in early February, Tom Hoopes, editor of the National Catholic Register, a Legion-owned publication, posted the following comment on Amy Welborn's Internet blog: "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 seek repentance and forgiveness, and I leave it at that." That's a heavy, heartfelt apology -- though in a fairly obscure venue for something so momentous from a man who edits a widely read newspaper. But, like Fr. Corcuera, Hoopes didn't disclose why he's sorry for defending Maciel, which is part and parcel of being affiliated with the Legion, or what the victims suffered the first time.

Then, in a mid-February issue of the Register, publisher Fr. Owen Kearns admitted to being "saddened and humbled" by "the news about Father Marcial Maciel." Fr. Kearns did not divulge the "news," but said obliquely that it's "hard to reconcile all of this with the gratitude I still feel for my founder." Fr. Kearns wrote rather elliptically, "We know that ‘for those who love God, all things work together for good.' All things, including these things." Like Hoopes and Fr. Corcuera, Fr. Kearns didn't delineate "these things," but asked that we "pray for those who have been hurt and for the Church we all love and serve."

Around the same time, Jay Dunlap, former communications director for the Legion, wrote on his blog, "It is now clear that Father Maciel did in fact abuse his power and abuse young people in his charge. I personally apologize to his victims and to anyone who was misinformed by statements I made." Well, now we're getting somewhere.

We had to turn to Fr. Thomas Berg, founder and senior fellow at the Legion's Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person in New York, to get a clear, unequivocal statement of fact from a Legionary representative: "Last Thursday evening I was informed that, after an internal investigation of the charges lodged against him, it had been discovered that my religious con­gregation's founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado fathered a child, who is now in her early 20s." What a bombshell! Now we know why these Legionary types, always so reticent with the truth when it comes to Maciel, have been fumbling around with awkward, clipped apologies.

In a stunning twist, Fr. Maciel, whom Legion and Regnum Christi members looked upon as a living saint, kept a mistress with whom he fathered a daughter. Evidence suggests that his mistress was only fifteen years old when she gave birth, which would make Fr. Maciel a statutory rapist.

Jim Fair, spokesman for the Legion, told The New York Times (Feb. 4), "We have learned some things about our founder's life that are surprising and difficult for us to understand. We can confirm that there are some aspects of his life that were not appropriate for a Catholic priest."

Fr. Corcuera had been making the rounds, quietly informing U.S. congregations and affiliates that, according to the Times, "their founder led a double life." Longtime Legion-watcher Jason Berry wrote in the National Catholic Reporter (Feb. 3) that his Legion sources informed him that Fr. Maciel's sexual misconduct was not a "one-time slipup" but a "pattern that stretched over years."

Fr. Maciel founded the Legion of Christ in 1941. It grew into a formidable force in the Church, and currently claims over 800 priests, 2,500 seminarians, and 65,000 lay Regnum Christi members in 30 countries around the world. And it has a $650 million budget (according to the Wall Street Journal) that supports universities, prep schools, and various business ventures world­wide. It is with reason that in Mexico the order is referred to derisively as los Millonarios de Cristo ("Millionaires of Christ").

Fr. Stephen Fichter, a Legionary priest for 14 years and once the order's chief financial officer, told the Times that Fr. Maciel, who found favor with the late Pope John Paul II, "was this mythical hero who was put on a pedestal and had all the answers." (Even Dunlap now admits that adulation of Maciel was the equivalent of "hero worship.") But Fr. Maciel's lifestyle didn't correspond to his alleged virtue: Whenever Maciel traveled abroad, Fr. Fichter says, "I always had to give him $10,000 in cash -- $5,000 in American dollars and $5,000 in the currency of wherever he was going." As for the rest of the order, "we were taught a very strict poverty; if I went out of town and bought a Bic pen and a chocolate bar, I would have to turn in the receipts. And yet for Father Maciel there was never any accounting. It was always cash, never any paper trail. And because he was this incredible hero to us, we never even questioned it for a second."

Aside from unusual spending habits, Fr. Maciel apparently had other proclivities he could not control. In the mid-1990s the Hartford Courant published an exposé on the Legion written by Gerald Renner publicizing allegations that Fr. Maciel had sexually abused nine boys as young as 12 years old in Legionary seminaries in Mexico, Spain, and Italy. The accusers had appealed to Pope John Paul II in 1978 and 1989, but received only silence in response. When the late Pope praised Fr. Maciel as an "efficacious guide to youth" in 1994, they decided to go public. (Berry and Renner's book Vows of Silence, reviewed in the May 2005 NOR, tells the story in sordid detail.) In a letter to the editor of the Courant, Maciel denied the accusations as "defamations and falsities." Nevertheless, after the publication of the Courant's exposés, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), under the leadership of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, opened an investigation into the matter.

After John Paul II went to his reward, Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, broke with his predecessor and took action against Fr. Maciel. In 2006, at the conclusion of the on-again-off-again investigation -- which was reputedly impeded and diverted over the course of nearly a decade by certain curial higher-ups -- the CDF, with Pope Benedict's approval, "invited" Maciel to "relinquish his public ministry" and live out the remainder of his days in a "reserved life of penitence and prayer." Msgr. Charles Scicluna, chief CDF investigator, stated that the number of those who accused Maciel of sexual abuse was "more than 20, but less than 100." To those who wanted a harsher punishment, the CDF explained that, at age 85, Maciel was too old to undergo a canonical trial.

Yet the Legion continued to live in denial, releasing a statement that said in part, "Facing the accusations made against him [Maciel], he declared his innocence and, following the example of Jesus Christ, decided not to defend himself in any way." Fr. Kearns wrote then that the Legion is "not afraid of this cross -- on the contrary, we are honored by it.... Don't pray that this cup be taken away, pray that we be worthy of drinking it to the dregs." Yes, Fr. Kearns actually likened Maciel's "persecution" by the Church to that of Christ's by the Romans and Pharisees. But now the jig is up.

Fr. Maciel passed away at age 87 in 2008 -- and he was no martyr, no Christ-like figure. As Fr. Kearns now admits, "Our founder died in disgrace."

Fr. Berg admits to even more: "It seems evident that some of them [the allegations of sexual abuse] must indeed be true" -- something fairly obvious to those who didn't fall under Maciel's spell, and something at least tacitly acknowledged by the Holy See when it sent Maciel out to pasture. And there may yet be more revelations to come now that the cover has been blown off.

Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien of Baltimore, in an interview in his archdiocesan newspaper The Catholic Review (Feb. 25), described Maciel as "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 expressed his grave concern that the Legion fosters what he calls a "cult of personality": "It's clear that from the first moment a person joins the Legion, efforts seem to be made to program each one and to gain full control of his behavior, of all information he receives, of his thinking and emotions." That's the standard modus operandi of a cult. "It's been said that the founder is alone called nuestro padre (‘our father') and that no one else can have that title. All are bound to identify with him in his spirit, his mind, his mission and his life." That's the standard modus operandi of a cult of personality.

Archbishop O'Brien stressed that those who have left the order suffer "deep psychological distress for dependency and need prolonged counseling akin to depro­gramming." In addition to suggesting that "the very basis of the Legion movement should be reviewed from start to finish," the Archbishop called for "objective scrutiny" of the Legion's financial operations. Fr. Maciel, he said, "leaves many victims in his wake."

The Legion of Christ has long been a source of pride to many orthodox Catholics: the order saw tremendous growth at a time when most other orders were in steep decline. As the Legion's ranks grew, its influence spread and its coffers bulged with enormous sums of money. Celebrity supporters include Placido Domingo, William Bennett, Jeb Bush, Marta Sahagún, wife of Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, and Carlos Slim, one of the richest men in the world. Many high-profile conservative Catholics, including Deal Hudson, George Weigel, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Mary Ann Glendon, and William Donohue, defended Fr. Maciel against his accusers (none of whom sought a monetary settlement). But beginning as early as 2000, the NOR has been sounding the alarm that something isn't right in the Legion of Christ -- an unwelcome warning that prompted a frenzied, hazardous backlash (see our Sept. 2006 editorial "Fr. Maciel Is Disciplined by the Holy See: What Will the Legionaries Do Now?").

But the scales are finally falling from the eyes of some of Fr. Maciel's most vociferous defenders. Even George Weigel has turned on the news of Maciel's double life. On the First Things website, Weigel demanded that the Legion give a "full, public disclosure of Fr. Maciel's perfidies," and called for a "brutally frank analysis" of its "institutional culture." But such a task, he said, "cannot be conducted by the Legion leadership," which still harbors "those complicit in the Maciel web of deceit." Rather, "it must be mandated by the pope, and it must be conducted by someone responsible to the pope alone." Weigel, quite to the point, described the Legion as a "train-wreck-heading-toward-the-cliff."

These are indeed troubling times for the souls who had their faith exploited and who were swindled out of their money by Maciel and the Legion. And it is a joyless vindication for the survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of Maciel and his Legionary accomplices. We must thank the Lord that the light of truth has begun to shine in the Legion's dark corners.

But the big question is: What becomes of the Legion now? The head has been severed -- does the body die? Can the Legion of Christ, which has virtually no institutional identity apart from its founder, survive Maciel's discrediting?

Apropos, canon-law blogger Edward Peters asks whether a "religious institute that was founded by such a self-delusional and/or duplicitous character can really be sound.... How do priests live the ‘charism' of Maciel? How can a religious order disavow (as the Legion must eventually) its founder but at the same time carry on his work? It's too bizarre to think about." And so, Peters suggests, "Everything that came from Maciel must be chucked. Absolutely everything." But as Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican points out, "There has never been an order in the history of the Church that survived after repudiating its founder."

Can the Legion of Christ survive? Its prospects look dim. This sorry situation ought to put us in mind of a pertinent and poignant passage from Scripture: "Put not your trust in princes: in a son of man, in whom there is no help. When his breath departs he returns to his earth; on that very day his plans perish" (Ps. 146:3-4).

Germain Grisez, Flynn Professor of Christian Ethics at Mt. St. Mary's University in Maryland, in an open letter to the Legionaries and Regnum Christi, writes, "You must be feeling great pain at your spiritual father's betrayal of Jesus, of his Church, and of you and all your good and faithful confreres. You must also be feeling great anxiety at the dimmed prospects for the unfolding of your vocations to the priestly life and service.... Very few new men will join you, many in formation will leave, some professed members will separate, and the collaboration and support of the lay faithful will shrink." And that's the best-case scenario! It's a bitter awakening for those who gave their lives and treasure to a liar such as Maciel.

Moreover, Grisez writes, "Everyone realizes that Father Maciel's double life required the complicity of associates, some of whom surely are still members of the institute, and some of whom probably are functioning as superiors." Grisez calls on the good and faithful Legionaries -- those faithful to Christ and His Church, that is -- to "proceed as quickly as possible to terminate the juridical person, the Legionaries of Christ, and reorganize yourselves into a new institute.... Only the Pope can oversee the termination of the Legionaries of Christ, the salvaging of its faithful members and other assets, and their reconstitution into a new institute." But will there be any Legionaries capable of seeing clearly through their tears who can accomplish this? Is it really necessary when there are already extant in the Church numerous priestly orders founded on the charisms of true canonized saints?

Grisez reminds the Legionary faithful that their "fundamental commitment is to Jesus and his Church" -- i.e., not to Maciel and his Legion. "The question that should be uppermost in your minds is how to continue carrying out that commitment most faithfully and fruitfully."

Meanwhile, for the rest of us, it won't do to stand idly by while the Legion implodes. Rather, let us pray for those who were deceived, that they might find refuge in the Lord and realize that their faith is in Him alone; only in His name can men be saved. Let us pray for the victims of sexual abuse, that their faith in our merciful Lord and His Church not be lost. Let us pray for the health our Church, that her work not be hindered by yet another sexual scandal. Finally, let us pray that we may always pursue the truth, and that when it is revealed we are wise enough to see it for what it is and strong enough to accept it as it is.