The Last Laugh
Would you send your son or daughter to a school whose formative program was designed by a pedophile?
Would you seek guidance on issues of morality from a sodomizer?
Would you attend marriage counseling offered by a profligate womanizer?
Would you delegate the role of mentorship and character building to a pathological liar and conman?
Would you donate money to a cause founded by a thief whose only moral compass were the demands of his own outrageous lifestyle?
Would you expect the Catholic Church to entrust the formation of its priests to any of the deviants listed above?
If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these preposterous suggestions, then you will be pleased with the way in which the resolution of the scandal that is the
Legion of Christ appears to be approaching its ignominious end.
In roughly 90 days the Legion will hold its General Chapter, the pre-scripted tragicomedy that is supposed to sweep the truth of the embattled congregation under the rug forever and free its weary leadership from future scrutiny, responsibility and, best of all, criticism.
This is not the first General Chapter of the Legion, although its architects are the same as the previous two, held in the early ‘80s and again in 1995 under the controlling gaze of Fr. Maciel. The tone and contents of the first Chapters are an eerie reverse-prophecy of all that will be cosmetically altered come January 2014 as the Legion once again reinvents itself while remaining what it will always essentially be: the legacy of a perverse, devious and recklessly arrogant abuser whose name may no longer be mentioned, but who continues to live and breathe in the fraudulent masterpiece he engineered.
The conclusive documents of the Legion’s General Chapters may be found on the Wikileaks website. Although the translation is fairly poor, enough of the hubris and pathology on which the inner life of the congregation is predicated comes through to offer what will surely be a most interesting contrast with the carefully rendered documents that will be released after the next Chapter as proof of the Legion’s rebirth.
Whatever the outcome, nothing will erase the frustration and disgrace of the inexplicably missed opportunity to truthfully and courageously uproot and atone for one of the worst scandals in the Church’s history.
How did it get this far? When did the Legion become ‘too big to fail’ in the eyes of Church authority? Who’s heads would have rolled and who would have been implicated had the Vatican decided to launch a full and impartial investigation into the history, canonical legitimacy, inner workings and finances of the Legion of Christ?
The Catholic Church doesn’t need – never needed – this scandalous brainchild of Marcial Maciel, but it has gone to unfathomable, self-incriminating lengths to keep it on life support.
If mirth is permitted wherever Fr. Maciel finds himself at present, there is no doubt that he has that leering grin on his face that so many of us recognize well. Everything continues to go according to plan.
Unless Pope Francis still has a surprise or two up his sleeve, which we hope will be the case, Nuestro Padre, when all is said and done, got the last laugh.
Would you send your son or daughter to a school whose formative program was designed by a pedophile?
Would you seek guidance on issues of morality from a sodomizer?
Would you attend marriage counseling offered by a profligate womanizer?
Would you delegate the role of mentorship and character building to a pathological liar and conman?
Would you donate money to a cause founded by a thief whose only moral compass were the demands of his own outrageous lifestyle?
Would you expect the Catholic Church to entrust the formation of its priests to any of the deviants listed above?
If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these preposterous suggestions, then you will be pleased with the way in which the resolution of the scandal that is the
Legion of Christ appears to be approaching its ignominious end.
In roughly 90 days the Legion will hold its General Chapter, the pre-scripted tragicomedy that is supposed to sweep the truth of the embattled congregation under the rug forever and free its weary leadership from future scrutiny, responsibility and, best of all, criticism.
This is not the first General Chapter of the Legion, although its architects are the same as the previous two, held in the early ‘80s and again in 1995 under the controlling gaze of Fr. Maciel. The tone and contents of the first Chapters are an eerie reverse-prophecy of all that will be cosmetically altered come January 2014 as the Legion once again reinvents itself while remaining what it will always essentially be: the legacy of a perverse, devious and recklessly arrogant abuser whose name may no longer be mentioned, but who continues to live and breathe in the fraudulent masterpiece he engineered.
The conclusive documents of the Legion’s General Chapters may be found on the Wikileaks website. Although the translation is fairly poor, enough of the hubris and pathology on which the inner life of the congregation is predicated comes through to offer what will surely be a most interesting contrast with the carefully rendered documents that will be released after the next Chapter as proof of the Legion’s rebirth.
Whatever the outcome, nothing will erase the frustration and disgrace of the inexplicably missed opportunity to truthfully and courageously uproot and atone for one of the worst scandals in the Church’s history.
How did it get this far? When did the Legion become ‘too big to fail’ in the eyes of Church authority? Who’s heads would have rolled and who would have been implicated had the Vatican decided to launch a full and impartial investigation into the history, canonical legitimacy, inner workings and finances of the Legion of Christ?
The Catholic Church doesn’t need – never needed – this scandalous brainchild of Marcial Maciel, but it has gone to unfathomable, self-incriminating lengths to keep it on life support.
If mirth is permitted wherever Fr. Maciel finds himself at present, there is no doubt that he has that leering grin on his face that so many of us recognize well. Everything continues to go according to plan.
Unless Pope Francis still has a surprise or two up his sleeve, which we hope will be the case, Nuestro Padre, when all is said and done, got the last laugh.
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