here
YOU TUBE link
WHY I WROTE THE BOOK
8/29/08
I want to thank everyone for their generous praise and encouragement re the book. Some of the feedback prompted me to write the following tonight:
I wanted the story to be readable, straightforward to some degreee, but to have different themes and facets: me, vocation, Legion, its training system and methodology, the superiors' inadequacy, Maciel, Ireland, Mexico, conflict, suffering, recovery... Although the story is my story and written for myself and my own wellbeing/catharsis , some of its importance comes from Paul being one of the very first Irish-born cofounding legionaries, of being a contemporary of the founder, of interacting with him and finding him to be an absolute scoundrel. I believe that the critique of Maciel must go way beyond his pedophilia to his total sickness as a human being and his lack of moral, ethical, spiritual and religious values; and, of course, to his being the creator of one very sick and destructive 'formation' system and an order equivalent to a cult within the confines of the official Catholic Church.
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THE COVER: Fr. Maciel and me
portrays me as a very young seminarian receiving a 'holy picture' from Fr. Marcial Maciel [deceased Jan 2008] in the Novitiate in Salamanca, Spain, circa 1962. He was the founder of this new [1941] Mexican religious order and I was one of the first Irish recruits. It turns out that -unbeknown to me during my Legion tenure- Fr M was also a rampant pedophile. What I did personally experience was his Narcissism and despotism as a superior/leader/ guru. I found him totally lacking in human compassion and therefore could never buy into him being a "saint" no matter how much the whole atmosphere fed into this. So i tell my story against that backdrop and centering the book on my critique of this organization as a cult. The latter paradigm I owe to Michael Langone and others at ICSA; it helped me to understand my overall experience in the group -big picture and context.
TITLE: "Our Father who art in bed"
Fr Maciel had himself called "Our Father" by the members and followers -although in Spanish it does not have the same blasphemous connotation it has for English speaking Christians, being as it is the first phrase of The Lord's Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven...; it is, nevertheless, a lofty name to give oneself -in this he is guru-like-. Besides being a pedophile, Maciel was was a hypochondriac and did spend a lot of time "ill" and in bed where he had to be tended to hand and foot -mixing my metaphors? So he was not a father in heaven, or a loving father as fathers should be -and as my own father was!- but a selfish, loathsome and abusive father who does not deserve the name of such.
See YouTube**
I haven't read your book yet, but can you tell us if you stitched together old talks you gave in Spiritual Exercises, or if you are just telling old stories of your boyhood years in the ECYD in Michigan? Are you a sometimes commentator/blogger for a major news outlet because of who your daddy is?
ReplyDeleteAre you pulling my leg?
ReplyDeleteAre you mistaking me for some other good looking and bird brained LC who appears on Fox?
of with Fr Williams who got his doctorate from the Legion itself instead of adventuring outside? There is nothing incestuous in my story, if you exclude Fr Maciel pedhophilia attacks on his own seminarians [sons].
I invite you to buy and read
Just got your book. Thanks for finally doing this. It really helps to see how my life in te LC also had many similarities. It has reallyhelped me also to be able to finally be able to discuss with others what happened to me in there.
ReplyDeleteNo need to explain yourself, the book says all you need to say. We can take it or leave it, like we would do with a book on any other topic.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the title should be:
ReplyDeleteOUR FATHER MACIEL, WHO ART IN BED
last poster, as you can see, I took your advice and published the same book with another title; it was not my intention to alienate nice Catholic people and I did not mean to say that all Padres, or priests, were pedophiles. I was one myself and would not like to be tarred with that stick. Thing is Fr Maciel was called "Nuestro Padre", Our Father, by his subjects.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see some more people coming around to the book after all the 'scandals'; you will see I only told my truth
ReplyDeleteHope to have Our Father Maciel on Kindle soon
God Bless,