Truth and a call to renewal

The post circulating about "exit interviews" for those leaving the church is a practical way to begin to explore some of what is wrong in the Catholic Church today.

Amen!

The calumny of decades leveled against Jason Berry and his colleague, Gerald Renner, has now come back to haunt all those who blindly defended Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Legionnaries of Christ and Regnum Christi. Once again, Lord Acton’s prescient maxim, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” has been given tragically new meaning in this disgusting chapter in the Church’s history. When will we learn?

Just for once, because there is a large lay contingent involved, i.e., RC, can we ask that responsibly, high-integrity laypeople (female and male) be involved in the reorganization of this mess?

Of course, even if there wasn't a large lay organization involved, it would be most appropriate for lay people to be involved -- but that would be TOO much to ask!

Marciel was no worse than some of the superior nuns noted in the book "Lesbian Nuns Breaking Silence." JPII chose to ignore the requests for help from some of the exnuns who had been seduced into homosexual affairs with superior nuns.

AMEN! Thanks, NCR for speaking the truth so courageously and eloquently. The Truth WILL set us free, though perhaps not in the lifetime of this senior.

Reading this editorial on the eve of New Years Eve, gives me a sense that the call for a "True Renewal" is LONG OVERDUE!
It is my prayer that our Pope will reflect on this article along with many others with similar themes and see that it is not enough to do as he states and accept this humiliation as an exhortation to truth and a call to renewal. Not taking the necessary measures to follow through with this call is unexceptableW. WHERE IS THE ACTION? The time for talk is over. It is not enough to just appoint someone to begin to loo into and fix the Legion. The very fact that he has not taken steps to disband them shows that he is not ready to really act. I am well aware that the Church is on Church time, but this is not true reflection. There has been plenty of time for that over the last 10 years. Meanwhile everyday the Catholic Church's loss of credibility is at stake. Do they not see the souls that can be lost while they let this go on? I can only pray for the faith of those souls and hope that in my lifetime, I will see true leadership that answers Jesus call to action to care for his flock.

I await the new year with anticipation. I am heartened that there is the requisite talent at NCR and those directly affiliated to afford a forum for respectful dialogue and perhaps the 'birthing' of a tender new plant. Protected and nurtured by the Master Gardener, close to the garden gate we'll grow and it will be evident for all to see, what God alone can do with the simple disposition of willingness. His tender hearted Son said it best didn't he? 'Thy will be done...'
Be well...the Bridegroom is on His way
The fullness of His love alone will wipe away every tear... and...
Every poor little child that was crucified on the cross of Roman Catholic clerical abuse and torture will be HEALED.REDEEMED. 'The former things will pass away...
Are you getting excited?
Iam.The 'voice'. Crying in the wilderness...

Thank you for not holding back and telling it like it is. Beautifully done.

Pride and insincere love are at the root of the deep and long-hidden wound that the Mystical Body of Christ has been suffering because of sexual abuse. Our Magisterium has been unable or unwilling to speak to us about human sexuality with honesty and clarity. Rather than using what we have discovered and learned about our human bodies and how our individual personalities are formed and develop, our hierarchy insists on an almost literal interpretation of words written over two thousand years ago by individuals who were just beginning to understand God’s creation and the beings created in the divine image. Pride has not only canonized those words, it has petrified them and made them almost lifeless.
Celibacy is a virtue only when it is willingly chosen, not when it is imposed or required. Vocations are from God and not gender-specific. When we read that God said it is not good for man to be alone, it is specifically about the first man and the first woman God created somewhere some time ago. We now understand that this is a human explanation of a phenomenon only God can understand or cause.
Love that is true admits its weakness and seeks to understand and be open to the living Word of God seen and heard in the divine images of our present day and time. It admits it is not infallible. It admits its sinfulness. It asks for forgiveness. And it does this whether it is hatless, wears a biretta, a miter or even a Tiara.
Father, forgive us for what we have done and for what we have failed to do.
Paz y Bien, Rolando.

It would be great to have the gift of hindsight regarding the eventual outcome of reforming the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi. Everything in me says the tiger can't change its stripes, the cheetah its spots, the skunk its stink, the crocodile its charism for devouring the improvident and wreckless. I am reminded of a song I learned in the first grade at Most Holy Name of Jesus School in New Orleans:

He winked his eye as she waved them all goodbye
With a happy smile on her face.
"You see," said she, "he's as tame as he can be,"
As she floated down the Nile;
But at the end of the ride
The lady was inside,
And the smile on the crocodile.

Oh Holy Mother, dearest Church Lady, you are negotiating treacherous waters in a most precarious position. Don't let the crocodile bite you -- again! Exercise a modicum of judgment and prudence this time. You are not recovered from the crocodile's first bite. How many more bites of the crocodile do you think you could survive. One more bite could be fatal.
And Jesus wept.

Peter Meyers
Jackson MS

Images of Pope John Paul II embracing Marcial Maciel Degollado in various encounters that are recorded are disturbing when one thinks of the evidence that is emerging of Maciel's behavior. Even the defenders of Maciel such as George Weigel can no longer offer arguments and support in light of what has emerged. It is to Pope Benedict's credit that he put a stop to the Maciel myth by "retiring" him into repentance. On the other hand, he faces the difficulty of separating the founder from the order and movement he established. An important question in all of this is why the leadership of the Church lacked the spiritual discernment and willingness to pursue the mounting evidence pointing to what has now emerged. Did it have something to do with influence, fame, and money? Another important question is why John Paul II supported this man and whether the explanation has to do with his view of authority that identified leadership as of such central importance as to constitute the basis of the sanctity of the group or movement? Was this the case and a troubling blind spot and limitation of the former Pope? Perhaps as much human limitation as mysterium iniquitatis?

Benedict is not going to be investigating himself (clerical and hierarchical culture) anytime soon.

Maciel's Legion is her to stay. Why?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

ABSOLUTELY RIGHT to lay part of the fault for Maciel's rise to corrupt power in the church to popes and curial officials, but also to prominent lay leaders like Weigel, Hudson and Neuhaus who followed blindly anyone selling themselves as orthodox and traditionalist (especially if they seem to have papal favor).

However, like the guilt of ordinary Germans who supported Hitler, there were many other average lay Catholics who fell for Maciel's cultic influence even when many more objective Catholics were asking serious questions.

Any group becomes vulnerable to evil leadership if they don't listen to reasonable critics. That is the value of criticism in any society or group.

It is so very rewarding to read articles that are direct and to the point. Thank you for facing the hard truth head on! For so very long, the victims of Marciel tried to have their story told. But the arrogant hierarchy and the Roman Curia crowd were blinded by their own hubris. The truth will set us free.

To those who think that the Pope was ill-served, maybe they should consider that too many popes serve long past their ability to function due to decline from age and disease. Further, the pope as a supervisor has too many dioceses to effectively oversee. Maybe the popes should retire at 80 and delegate more authority to the national conferences.

I am an abuse victim. The point made here is obvious but there are even deeper things to consider relative to the need for a vast and sweeping worldwide Catholic Reformation. The abuse problem is one symptom of a larger disease within the church and that disease is fatal.

The RC Church could not have fallen so far from its moral height without the tacit consent of parish vestries, Catholic parents and Catholic donor/parishioners and others involved in the daily running of church machinery. That includes the Catholic press, instruments like the National Catholic Reporter, the National Catholic Register and the local diocesen newspapers throughout the world.

In short, ever since the Council of Trent and the Counter Reformation backlash that brought us the Jesuits, reactionary Catholicism across a number of issues including papal infallibility later on in the 19th Century in Vatcian I, Catholicism has been at war with itself. Ultimately this Trentine paradigm was seen as counter-productive in the writings of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s but it was too late. The die had been cast. There was no going back.

People like Ratzinger were mesmerized and seduced by the power that the Council of Trent handed to the clergy and they were not going to give that power up easily. They were enamored with the fact that the clergy were now given the power of judge, jury and executioner over any Catholic issue that came forward after the Reformation. The laity was simply around to have babies and conform. The Holy Spirit within the People of God was incarcerated.

Angelo Roncalli, in his basic peasant southern Italian wisdom understood that nothing less than a complete paradigm shift would save the church and keep it central to Western thinking and Western mores and values. It was dying before his eyes and so he called a Council.

There was no way that the egalatarian pronouncements of the Second Vatican Council were going to be allowed to find the light of day with these reactionaries growing more and more powerful with every year after Roncalli's death. Paul VI, John Paul I and and John Paul II must have realized how impossible it was going to be to institute any real changes at the depth that Angelo Roncalli meant them to take hold, so John XXIII and his reforms were relegated to the level of quaint legend.

Once Ratzinger was elevated to the papacy any hope of reform within Catholicism that would allow the Holy Spirit out of prison was killed. The pre-Trentine church would be back in force and Ratzinger would see to it. Dogma was now the trump card over witness to Christ in all areas of church life. If kids were sexually abused, we would have pronouncements from the Vatican every week showing the popes horror at this hidden "filth". It was pure PR and not very good PR at that.

Take a look at what papal organizational cowardice over a sixty year period has brought us...children raped by non-believing priests and nuns and lay brothers and some bishops and cardinals. It has brought us rumors of Satanic worship within the Vatican itself at the hands of Cardinals. It has brought us a confused and divided Catholic laity that moves between defending a dying church with an antiquated paradigm and a desire to chuck it all out the window and start all over again.

The Eucharist is seen as a quaint pre-medieval cultic nicety by people with bigger problems than ancient theology on their minds every day and ultimately the Catholic position on almost anything is seen by the world at large as clueless, out of touch and so completely devoid of basic common sense that it cannot be accepted by any reasonable person as workable or pragmatic in a cruel and devestating world. Worst of all our clergy do not accept Christ as real, central or even vital to anything whatsoever.

There is strong academic evidence that Jesus of Nazareth could be a literary contruct and in fact, may have never actually lived. Christianity may very well be a modern incarnation of the fringe element Gnostic incarnation of Judaism prevelant in Alexandria, Egypt during Second Temple Judaism. Cults like the Essenes, the Nazarenes and the Ebonites seem to be proto-Christian groups preceeding the time that Christ was supposed to have lived. They had baptism, a eucharistic meal and more or less, a Christian theology. They would have been recognized by people in the Jesus Movement at the time of Paul as brothers in Christ.

It is all very confusing.

The Church must die so that the Faith may live. That much is obvious now.

There needs to be a call to renewal in our Church, (perhaps even a reformation), as it is crumbling, with all these horrible revelations. Come Holy Spirit!

When the eyes are bad, the whole body is in darkness. This is what is most disconcerting about the whole spectrum of sin/crime nurtured and held in oppressive silence in the infrastructure of, "The Mystical Body of Christ.".
The founder of The Legion, and now The Legion itself and the so-called, "Kingdom of Christ" (Regnum Christi), is the poster child for this. The Legionaires of Christ are not by any means the whole of it just the most glaring example that the eyes charged with discerning, who made it into Heaven
whom we may ask to intercede for us, are the same eyes of the Holy See, who held,the founder of the Legion, in place, to be revered as a living saint, a holy man,from 1941 past his death to 2008. Thus did these EYEs shred many decent human beings reputations and disintegrate families. Now these poor sinners of docile obedience are simply also victims and their families are shredded. Pray tenderness and gratitude on the courageous ones who continue to bring this darkness into the light.

Pope John Paul was mistaken about Maciel. Paul VI may have been mistaken about birth control. John XXIII was mistaken about the dangers of pedophilia. They were all right in teaching that neither the Gospel nor Vatican II can be interpreted as promoting fornication, sodomy and abortion, as NCR commentators regularly do. There is a difference between making mistakes, as we all do, and distorting the truth to serve one's perversions.

I am not a psychologist but, based on everything I've read and heard, the Legion, in all its parts, is a cult. I hope someone is planted within this organization to save these misguided and well-intentioned souls from the horror of a Jamestown murder/suicide pact (there have been others) rather than give up control (by the leaders) and unquestioned belief and obedience (from the followers).

Also, for the Lord's sake, investigate the other prelatures that sprang up under JPII. What about Opus Dei and Divine Mercy, for example? They seem like secretive, personality cults too - and they were again further advanced under the reign of JPII. If there's an issue, let's find it NOW.

I wrote a letter like this once, and a horrified woman replied "But Opus Dei and Divine Mercy were founded by saints!" I would like to remind you that if this scandal with the Legion had been kept under wraps, Fr. Maciel would be on the road to sainthood by now also.

God bless the good people who were duped by this sanctimonious fraud.

No "renewal" will contain any "truth" unless it includes a lot of removal. That removal must be from the top down, and any replacements from this time forward must return to an inclusion of the participation of "The People of God" in all choices from local parish formation and clergy to diocesan bishops. The only way of true renewal is the dismantling of the royal papacy. Regular church councils should be held after local and regional councils have met. The bishop of Rome may be considered to hold an ancient and honorable seat, but that bishop should not be considered to be even "the first among equals," but one among many. Yes, the church desperately needs to embrace democracy.

During Vatican II, Brazilian Cardinal Camara suggested that all bishops sell their jeweled rings and chalices and donate the proceeds to the poor. The Vatican can be turned into the real museum that it is, the library and actual museum opened for scholarly use. Any proceeds beyond what are needed for maintenance should be used, as the saintly Cardinal Camara suggested, for support of the poor. Isn't that what Jesus was all about, "the least of my brethren?"

Anyone who believes that all Catholics, even the most devout, no matter what they ritually recite from rote or readings, actually hold common beliefs is blind to reality. It is not only not so, it is impossible. Creeds, from the so-called ancient Apostles Creed to Pius XII's declared doctrine of the Assumption, have caused more havoc and hypocrisy in the church of Jesus than any other matters. The murders and innumerable evils that have resulted from attempts to impose creeds, any doctrines, are a shameful abomination in the reputation of Jesus and Christianity. Let individuals formulate their individual creeds, and those creeds should be expected to change as believers mature and change. Naturally, it would be inappropriate to even attempt common recitation since beliefs are not common. They never have been common.

Above all, the church must become honest and the church must become democratic. That will only happen when all the People of God participate fully in their churches as they did in the first decades after Jesus--even though they were not considered or called churches at the time. They must participate in both doctrine and governance, and both should be free and democratic. That full participation of all the People of God is the only way to actuate the urging of Jesus in the first Holy Communion, "Do this in remembrance of me." "Love one another."

I am no admirer of John Paul II, but his most common exhortation, "Do not be afraid," needs to be lived by all followers of Jesus, not just proclaimed. We can only live without fear when there is freedom, freedom from creeds, freedom from doctrines, when there is the true freedom to truly "Love one another" in all our differences. Instead, we are dangerously repeating all the non-Jesus faults of Arius and Athanasius, those bitter, one-letter, un-Jesus-like enemies who dragged his story, his suggestions, through the first mud of "Christian" history--with the help of a politician named Constantine, of course.

This is an outstanding editorial. The National Catholic Reporter, not to be confused with the Legion's propaganda arm National Catholic Register, is the best Catholic newspaper. It speaks the truth that the RCC needs to hear even when some of its "leaders" do not want to hear it.

Surrounding yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear is a very human trait. This is why "Yes Men" are often so successful in organizations.
Sometimes however, the most loyal subordinate is the one who tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, the unvarnished truth. It is better to hear the truth early, from a trusted subordinate, even if that truth is unpleasant, than to be jolted by the truth from outsiders and suffer public humiliation, such as the Church is now going through.

I think that Pope Benedict gets it. Much better than JP II did. Many of us would simply disband LC/RC, which he is apparently not doing, but I doubt that he will ignore unpleasant facts like JP II did. It may be too little, too late, but I do think that Pope Benedict understands the gravity of the situation and will not yield to the apologists of LC/RC with their "imperfect vessel" nonsense.

It is time for some brutal honesty in the Church, much like the US military had right after Vietnam. No more business as usual, it is time to take a critical look at things and do what needs to be done, no matter how painful or embarssing.

Martin Scorsese might want to write a screenplay about Maciel and bring it to screen. So that the truth be told.

AW

By uprooting the true essence, past, present and future, of our Church in Liberation Theology and the hard eschatalogical pilgrim path towards realizing the just aspirations of the poor for peace, justice and the Reign of God, and by supporting without question hollow wealthy contributors like Marcial, Wojtyla effectively reduced the once almighty and Universal Roman Catholic Church to a Ponzi schemed house of cards which comes now crashing down about the aged ears of his hatchet man Ratzinger.

Come to the desert.
To the Spanish Mass.

But for the Pope, the Curia and the Hierarchy to actually REFORM their clerical culture, they would first have to look at it with a dispassionate, uninvolved, objective view. It means that they will have to ADMIT TO THEMSELVES THAT POSSIBLY EVERYTHING THEY HAVE DONE AS LEADERS FOR DECADES HAS BEEN WRONG, because its roots were flawed and sinful.

But as long as they continue to think that because SOME OF ITS FRUITS were OK (lots of new obedient clergy to fill their diminishing ranks, $millions in donations from duped and unthinking followers), then the entire culture of clericalism must be ok -- THAT is their hangup.
I don't think that any of them have the psychological humility or honesty to do so... it is mind and soul searing and they don't seem to want to make the time for it!!
Too busy presiding over all those Latin operas in cappa magnsa and hynotized by the Gregorian chants!!! But they are behaving like most hardcore addicts when high -- why go through so much trouble to get clean and sober, when I'm currently feeling so good???

John Paul II was rejected for priestly studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. The Gregorian is a Jesuit institution and they rejected him because he was thought to be rather dull of mind. The net result was his shunning of the Jesuits and his exultation of the Legionnaires. Alas, we are all so human. The Legionnaire approach appeals to the dull of mind who cannot tolerate the paradoxes of life. They offer the false certitude of pietistic practices and blind obedience. The real world in which God is incarnate--the Word was made flesh and dwells among us--offers complexity and paradox, not certitude of uni.formity

Here is a truth so straight-forward and simple only those who willfully choose to can deny it. I, as a practicing Catholic have heard many times,"A man has a right to his good reputation.". These same men (priests) have attempted to annihilate the reputations of men and women survivors and members of survivors families and anyone who has tried to assist them. A case in point is an organization called,"REGAIN". REGAIN assists people in exiting The Legion and Regnum Christi. It has been this way and is yet thus in every diocese around the world. And now documented, those members still active with LC/RC are claiming to be victims themselves on par with victims who in Fact were abused. What a crock. The members of LC/RC themselves and we yet practicing in the church are still told to ignore these charges as, "attacks on The Church.". No. Sorry. By their actions, we know them. Trying to maintain enthusiasm of our youth through this organization, The Legionaires of Christ and their lay arm Regnum Christi is more than an attack on The Church, it is another attack on decency and goodness from inside the highest reaches of Our Fathers House.

Truth and Renewal? Seems to me that NCR has a bit of it's own truth to publicize and as for renewal, after watching this commentary from Vortex on NCR found here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfMxQTQ8tKs&feature=uploademail

...I doubt if I'll be renewing any faith in NCR...

The sexual abuse crisis of the Spirit of Vatican II era was not able to bring down the sensuum fideii about JP the Great. The people can see when the abusers operated, and which bisops protected them (Weakland and Mahoney come to mind)

JP II and BXVI both moved against the Legion, and somehow you progressives are hoping against hope that somehow that will be seen as an indictment against them?

By all means let the LC and Popes be put under scrutiny. But renewal is a two way, equal opportunity event. If we can paint with broad brushes those who we probably would have disagreed with even had they not been pedophiles, are we ready to be painted in return for our moral blindspots? If so, where's the evidence of this today?

How often do major organizations and leaders of the various "sides" seek to debate much less just include the other sides' leaders in their meetings?

How often do we apply the standards we use against the Pope or Legionaries for "not knowing, not doing..." to ourselves? How many of us believed Bill Clinton when he looked us in the eye and swore he never had sex with "that woman" and then went on to defend him and his administration against our conservative friends or relatives?

How often did we laugh at our conservative friends when they claimed pulling out of Vietnam would result in a bloodbath..... only to spend the rest of our lives ignoring that well, yeah, it did happen and we were wrong?

It just seems to me that pride before the fall is a universal for both or "all" sides and condemning JPII or all legionnaires for rc members for things they probably didn't know and couldn't be expected to accept as likely given the times and evidence is to commit our own injustice.

Surely we're better than that.

The sad thing is that the Legionares are still recruting young boys. They have a seminary in Westchester and do not allow the kids to see their parents. They came to a Catholic high school I worked at a couple of years ago. The representative was discusting and the priest who brought him was later found guity of sexual abuse of young boys.