The “Super Catholic” Syndrome

The media spotlight has moved back onto the scandal-wracked Legion of Christ, and the themes of secrecy, servile obedience, financial irregularities, and spiritual abuse are again casting long shadows. For those who were hoping that the humbling of the order (a result of the fall of Legion founder Fr. Marcial Maciel) was having a cleansing effect, two recent events will likely bring them crashing back to earth.

First, six editors of the online Catholic news agency Zenit resigned after Legion brass ousted Jesús Colina, Zenit’s founding editor and director. Colina started Zenit in 1997 during the nascent stages of the worldwide web, and saw it grow into an international news source available in seven languages with some 450,000 daily e-mail subscribers. He said he was forced out because he resisted pressures to identify Zenit more closely with the Legion, which has been funding the agency’s operations since its inception. He also cited a lack of mutual trust and transparency in the agency’s relationship with the order. The six foreign-language editors who followed Colina out the door apparently did so in solidarity with him. “The initial vision of Zenit was never to make it a service of a particular congregation, but rather of the universal Church,” they said in a statement. “This has been the spirit with which we have worked throughout the years, and the spirit we could not betray.” Despite the years of collaboration, the editors disagreed with the order’s decision to “underline the institutional dependence of the agency on the Legion.” For the past fourteen years, they said, the agency has worked independently of the religious order. The Legionaries acted as spiritual advisers “to ensure fidelity to the magisterium,” and to this day control the board that oversees the agency.

A spokesman for the Legion, Fr. Andreas Schoggl, countered with a confusing statement of his own. Fr. Schoggl said the order has “always been involved with Zenit” in making strategic decisions, yet at the same time he claimed that Zenit’s journalists operate with “editorial independence.” Fr. Schoggl said the decision to ask for Colina’s resignation was not part of a policy change or a change in Zenit’s editorial direction, but was necessary in order to offer a more transparent explanation about the involvement of the Legion with Zenit: “We see a need to do so, because the stress on journalistic independence (which is still the case) might have induced people to think that Zenit was just a private initiative of Catholic journalists.”

For an order that’s come under fire for duplicity and heavy-handedness to make a contradictory, ambiguous non-statement, and to claim that the ousting of Zenit’s founder — and six more editors to boot — is not part of a policy change, is to invite suspicion. What could be worth risking Zenit’s reputation and fourteen years of growth? Something doesn’t add up. In the current climate of profound mistrust of Catholic leaders, laden with a “fool me twice, shame on me” attitude on the part of wary Catholics increasingly prone to risking everything and ditching the Church altogether, the stakes are too high for repeat upon repeat scandals.

The second Legion-related item is part of the long, drawn-out saga of the Vatican’s investigation of the order and its lay branch, Regnum Christi. As we reported last year (New Oxford Note, “Power, Money & Mind Control,” Nov. 2010), Regnum Christi boasts some 700,000 members in more than thirty countries around the globe. At the movement’s peak, some 900 members were “consecrated” — almost all of them women. These consecrated lay women give their lives over to the order, making promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience, in addition to the order’s notorious fourth promise never to speak ill of the Legion, its founder, or their superiors — and to “voluntarily renounce the use of their capacity for decision-making.”

Last fall, an Associated Press report (Sept. 26, 2010) exposed the “emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse” some of the consecrated women suffered at the hands of their superiors. Their strict supervision and restricted communication with family members — including screened mail and e-mail, and disciplinary procedures that included manipulation and public humiliation — were recounted by women who spoke on condition of anonymity “for fear of retaliation from the Legion.” By giving away their “decision-making capacity” they opened the way for manipulative superiors to permanently mislead and harm them. The “cult-like conditions” that characterized the experience of these consecrated women “so alarmed Pope Benedict XVI,” reported the AP, that he ordered an investigation of Regnum Christi on top of the Legionaries’ visitation (all in the wake of the drawn-out investigation of Fr. Maciel who, it turned out, was leading a bizarre double life as a pedophile priest and deadbeat dad).

This October, Velasio Cardinal De Paolis, the Pope’s delegate who is currently running the Legion, addressed the problems of the consecrated women. Official statistics are unavailable on how many women remain in the movement, but an Associated Press report (Oct. 26) estimates that “upwards of a third of the movement’s 900 consecrated women have left or are taking time away to ponder their future.” In his statement, Cardinal De Paolis said those who remain are happy and provide a valuable service to the Church. “However, the issues regarding personal and community life that have emerged from this same visitation on an institutional level initially appear to be many and challenging,” he wrote. Of particular concern is that the consecrated women have no legal status in the Church. In other words, after years of fundraising, serving as unpaid teachers in Legion-run schools, running youth programs, and recruiting new members, these ladies enjoy none of the legal protections nuns have that make it difficult for their orders to kick them out.

Cardinal De Paolis explained that the consecrated women should have greater autonomy from the Legion, in both their personal and communal lives, and that they need a legal status that corresponds to canon law. They would, however, maintain a “link of participation” with the Legion. De Paolis said the women would have to rewrite their norms, but that for now the general norms that guide their life, which were approved by the Holy See in 2004, remain intact.

Genevieve Kineke, a longtime Regnum Christi member who left the movement in 2000, speaks of the consecrated women as being “in a Catholic no-man’s-land, by which they live the life of nuns while remaining lay, [wherein] they make their first promises as quickly as six weeks into formation” (Rhode Island Catholic, Aug. 13, 2009). Kineke is a bold voice at ReGAIN (Religious Groups Awareness International Network), an organization whose mission is “to outreach, unite and support those touched or adversely affected by the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi Movement.” The ReGAIN website features items debating the true status of the consecrated “third degree females” (or 3gf women, for short). It is stated up front that “the women themselves are sincere and dedicated,” lest anyone think that’s at issue. Reasons are given as to why their “consecrated” status might not be recognized by the Vatican: Instead of taking part in the rite of consecration, the 3gf women make private promises in a closed ceremony administered by a Legionary priest rather than by the local bishop; there are no solemn religious vows made, only “solemn promises”; there is no spiritual bond with the local diocese, only with their own religious movement.

Strangest of all, the 3gf consecration is not necessarily permanent. According to ReGAIN, “It can be undone simply and quickly by either party. At any time, the Reg­num Christi religious movement can suddenly decide that one of their ‘consecrated women’ no longer has a vocation and must leave immediately. The fear of this happening to a person in a vulnerable position (e.g., someone with no assets and few marketable skills), can be intense.” And finally, there is no obligation by the Church or Regnum Christi to provide basic needs for the 3gf women in poor health or old age. They may be terminated without notice or obligation at any stage in their lives and sent away. Period.

On Regnum Christi’s blog the question “Are the Consecrated Women Truly Consecrated in the Eyes of the Church?” is answered in the affirmative, citing the Code of Canon Law and the Regnum Christi statutes. But that Cardinal De Paolis called the consecrated women’s issues “many and challenging” probably doesn’t fill the ladies with confidence in such an easy answer. The ReGAIN writers ask, “If the 3gf women have been deceived into believing they have some special status (i.e. consecrated Brides of Christ) and are advised differently by the Vatican, where does this leave them?”

ReGAIN posted a translated letter from a Spanish woman who is leaving the movement. In her very long, heart-rending letter she says this: “I heard that Cardinal Chaput [he’s actually an archbishop], after visiting the Legion centers in the United States praised the atmosphere of charity and yet clarified, however, that they lacked truth. What did he mean by this?” She goes on to recount how duplicity, back-stabbing, and a guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude pervaded the group, from the top down. Her description of their institutional arrogance should resonate with many: “Nobody in the Church was better than us. Those of us who had the privilege of being part of this great family were already living in the Kingdom of Christ, albeit still on this earth.” The Legionaries have been seen by many as “separatists” who resist collaborating with the local Church, so much so that some dioceses banned them from operating on diocesan property. In 2004 Harry Flynn, archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, was compelled to ask whether “a ‘parallel church’ is being encouraged, one that separates persons from the local parish and archdiocese and creates competing structures.”

Regnum Christi maintains legions of followers in countless cities around the world, yet there is a website visited by tens of thousands that functions as a cult-exiting resource for its former members. What are we to make of this order and movement that manifest abnormal behaviors that one might chalk up to personality defects yet appear to be duplicated time and again the world over? Why does this group seek to wield ever more power, but always without explicitly putting its name on their holdings? What to do with this control-freak institution whose founder had no self-control? (And before you shrug off Maciel’s problems as merely personal, recall our Apr. 2011 New Oxford Note “The Legion of Christ: Operation Rescue,” wherein Fr. Richard Gill, who for 29 years served as a priest of the Legion of Christ and also as longtime director of Regnum Christi, called Maciel “by far the most despicable character in the twentieth century Catholic Church, inflicting more damage on her reputation and evangelizing mission than any other single Church leader.”)

Oddly enough, the saga of a group called Miles Jesu is quite similar to that of the Legion. It involves a militantly orthodox Catholic religious group with a controversial and authoritative Spanish founder who was later denounced as a bad example, and whose behavior was described by a Vatican appointee as “totally unacceptable” and an “inappropriate exercise of authority” (Catholic Herald, July 29, 2010). Miles Jesu has reportedly been accused of coercive recruiting, violations of spiritual practices involving the sacrament of confession and spiritual direction, and questions regarding financial practices. The group has been accused of designing constitutions that assure maximum rights to the institute and barely any to individual members, and of keeping its lay members in a state of poverty without adequate health insurance while expecting them to recruit money from wealthy benefactors.

In 2009 a Vatican official was appointed to take control of and re-found Miles Jesu and was invested with full authority to do so. His mandate was to write a new constitution that defines the charism, spirituality, and apostolic nature of the institute; to develop adequate discernment and formation policies; to review the financial policies; and to completely revise all its practices and customs. An unfortunately slow, murky process ensued, which sparked public comment from an original whistle­blower within Miles Jesu, Fr. Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan was a member of Miles Jesu for twenty-eight years, a priest for seven of those years, and its general secretary for four. The order’s investigation by the Vatican resulted from his exposing the dysfunctional internal dynamics of the community, regardless of its orthodox appearance, and from a subsequent urgent appeal for help from twelve other Miles Jesu leaders.

While praising a “parting of the curtains” to let the truth out about Miles Jesu, Sullivan, in a public letter dated December 28, 2010, described “escaping members” as suffering from a post-traumatic condition characteristic of ex-cult survivors. He called “the experiment of Miles Jesu” an utter failure, and laid out its “lessons that may benefit history.” What he has to say bears hearing: In the case of Miles Jesu, “imitation of the founder produced personal paths of destruction” and suggests “that Church policy not artificially prop up any institution of consecrated life that lacks a truly exemplary founder.” Sullivan points out that the order’s “remaining members represent broken men and women in need of psychological and spiritual healing.” He urges more be done “than to hit the institutional restart button. Perhaps it would be best to help the remaining members to discover healing in already healthy environments, instead of trying to build a healthy environment with broken people.” He proposes that the Church establish means to more effectively monitor institutions that fly below the radar of scrutiny. “The law that allows for new experimental forms of consecrated life, i.e. canon 605, should include provisions that protect innocent vocations from possible abuse by unqualified new founders,” he writes. These words, born of suffering and experience, cannot be dismissed out of hand. While the circumstances and scale of Miles Jesu’s problems differ from those of the Legion of Christ, Fr. Sullivan’s reasonable approach contains wisdom. Perhaps it is relevant for the “3gf women” of Regnum Christi.

How is it that decades can pass as Church institutions fumble about and fail to muster even basic levels of accountability? New orders rise partly in response to corruption in the local Churches, but the movements that grow “parallel” to parishes and dioceses are clearly not immune to vast and rapid corruption themselves. By now we can all agree that any Church institution that even hints of secrecy, impropriety, or abuse does harm to the faith. Any Church leader who comes across as above the law or even delusional — yes, they’re out there — does harm to the faith.

Unfortunately, the Catholic world, let alone all other religions, includes more than a few groups that exhibit cultish tendencies. The term “Super Catholics” has been coined to describe members of apostolates who inadvertently establish a “Church within the Church,” where a kind of elitism is encouraged. And this polarized, us-vs.-them mentality, where a group’s members surround themselves only with their like kind, can be found in both the “conservative” and “liberal” wings of the Church. But those who are strong in faith have a special obligation to the weak and the poor, not an obligation to separate themselves and become a super-Christian community. If the members of the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi have the strength and humility to overcome the pitfalls of secrecy and elitism, and to practice transparency within the traditional structures of parishes and dioceses, then perhaps this group that has stirred so much controversy can go back to simply doing God’s work.