Saturday, May 19, 2012

LEGION OF CHRIST: The story...






Now let me tell you about the LEGION OF CHRIST and what the big hubbub is all about.

You may not have heard much about the whole affair because the Vatican has gone to great lengths to keep it under wraps and I think that will be the most damaging aspect of this sordid situation but we can never forget the many innocent children and adults that have been damaged by the people involved, people that were people of God and therefore trusted and admired by the laity around them.

The Catholic group of priests and seminarians was founded in 1941 in Mexico by Marcial Maciel who presided over the group till 2006; he died in 2008. The group was committed to education, youth and family ministry and runs schools and other institutions in many countries around the world.

Popes supported the group through the decades and especially Pope John Paul II who held up the founder as a model to be emulated even though reports were surfacing about Marciel raping and molesting young seminarians and fathering children with a number of women as well as the fact that he was a drug addict and pedophile.

An interesting side note is that an original vow taken by people joining the group was to never criticize their superiors…interesting don’t you think?

Anyway, it has fallen to Benedict XVI to do something about the Legion and he has decided to reform the Legion instead of banning it into oblivion as many have recommended. Recently more reports of priests molesting children have surfaced throwing doubt into his reform efforts.

The reason reports of abuse are coming out into the public domain is due to groups of victims who are banding together to demand justice; the Vatican can no longer silence these groups or even buy their silence.

And speaking about money, the group was rich and Marciel was known to dispense money very freely to hierarchs in Rome which some say allowed Marciel to continuing to do what he did without any interference from the Vatican.

The fact that the Legion has vigorously denied any wrong doing for decades and their denials were supported by the Vatican make their current condemnation of all the evil that transpired at the Legion basically vacuous.

The Vatican now claims that there was a “mechanism of defense” around Maciel that made him basically “untouchable” and all I can say is BULLSHIT! The Vatican even had the gall to acknowledge the “hardships” faced by Maciel’s accusers throughout the years, who were ostracized and ridiculed by the Legion and the Vatican.

I don’t know if many Catholics recognize the enormity of this situation. The Vatican is spinning this situation to get itself absolved of any guilt and it will succeed if allowed to just like it has done for centuries…do you watch the BORGIAS on HBO or is it STARZ?

I will admit that many U.S. bishops have banned the Legion from operating in their areas since the Vatican was not officially dissolving the Legion or banning it outright.

Throughout the history of the Catholic Church, times of extreme corruption and abuse among the clergy especially the leadership, were met with some sort of reformation movement that cleaned things up until things got too dirty again; I don’t see that movement on the horizon, I only see cover-ups and media spinning campaigns.

Reformation has usually come from within the Church and it usually is started by people with power and that means clergy and not the sheepish laity…let us see if anyone has the balls to step up to the plate with a bat in hand…















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