my head: How could we have been so duped? How could the facts of Maciel’s depravities been concealed from us for so long? What was God doing? How could God let this happen to us? How could he let it happen—to me?
Before going any further, I am compelled to say a few things about the current situation of the Legionaries, and of so many persons who have been hurt in the wake of the whole Maciel affair, and about those who remain both in the Legion and in Regnum Christi.
My intention here, in sharing my story, is not to denigrate the Legionaries or Regnum Christi members who, as a religious family, continue their journey of discernment of God’s will now, nearly a decade into the aftermath of the crisis that occasioned my own discernment and decision to part ways.
I write with the awareness that my story—although uniquely my own in so many respects—is only one of many personal stories that could and should be told, of hundreds of laymen and women whose lives were negatively impacted by their experience with the Legionaries and with the Regnum Christi movement.
I think of the hundred or more former confreres of mine and brother priests in the Legionaries, who, like me, since 2009 discerned that they should continue to follow Christ on a new path. My story, compared with theirs, has no particular drama attached to it meriting special attention. While we have all suffered significantly in our own ways, I am aware of some who have suffered much more and for a longer time than I have.
Stories could also be told of hundreds of other lay Catholics whose experience was different, who are convinced their spiritual lives were definitively enriched by the Legion and Regnum Christi, consecrated men and women, lay members of Regnum Christi and hundreds of Legionary priests whose lives, like my own, were catapulted into the storm, but who discerned a very different path—a call to remain part of the process of renewal and reform which the Church would require of them, who also suffered grievously, but who continue today in their commitments.
Admittedly, in the first years that followed my departure, which coincided with the Legion’s mandatory process of internal reform, I published a few articles in Catholic periodicals that were highly critical of the Legion, of the role of the superiors during the time of crisis, and of the dysfunctional internal culture of the congregation.8 I also raised difficult questions about the existence and validity of a putative institutional religious charism, and I wondered whether it would not be best—for all those implicated and for the good of the Church—if the Holy See were to suppress the congregation, essentially to shut it down.
No doubt, some things I wrote might have offended some Legionaries and their supporters. I can imagine that my departure from the congregation instilled a sense of abandonment and hurt in some of my former comrades. All of this was ultimately inevitable. I stand by what I wrote at the time, knowing that my intention was not malicious. Much of what I wrote needed to be said. I was playing a role that few of us could uniquely play—offering candid and very public criticism of the Legionaries from someone with knowledge of the internal life of the congregation who could help sustain the external pressure that was necessary to rupture the web of deceptions in which so many of the members remained engulfed, and help them face certain realities in ways that might allow for a genuine reform of the congregation.
I am grateful today that over time I have been able to renew contact with some of my former confreres for whom I continue to feel great affection. By God’s grace, and notwithstanding the dysfunctionality in which we lived, I have no doubt that we truly were blessed to participate in and make a very real contribution to the New Evangelization. Jesus accepted and blessed our sacrifice and gift of self in the Legion. I pray for those who have continued in the congregation, not without continued concern for their well-being, and acutely aware that a full accounting for the sordid history of Maciel has never been given, nor adequately investigated.9
Finally, always present in my mind and heart while writing this book have been the victims of Maciel’s sexual abuse. I think especially of the courageous nine men who came forward publicly in 1997 after previous efforts over a period of decades to inform the Holy See had been of no avail. By their perseverance, they have done an incalculable and lasting good to the Church, inciting all those involved to heed the demands of justice, particularly the call to transparency and accountability. While much of the entire Maciel affair still remains to be accounted for, and the Legionaries must continue to uncover, correct, and be transparent with regard to any other unsavory elements of their history, these men were catalysts in a cathartic process of liberating minds and hearts from a web of darkness and deception in the Church.
I have been saddened and ashamed that I did not believe their stories sooner. I ask their forgiveness for the ways, as a Legionary, I contributed to denigrating their good names by perpetuating hearsay and gossip about their supposedly twisted intentions. And, to all, I ask forgiveness for the ways in which, in my ignorance, I myself contributed to propagating the cult of personality surrounding Maciel, and to perpetuating the web of deceptions in which we were all trapped.
I had a lot of emotions to deal with as the crisis unfolded in February 2009. I worked through moments of repugnance, horror, anger, and rage. I couldn’t get it out of my head that twenty-three years of my life—what seemed to me to have been the best years of my life!—had apparently been dedicated to a fiction. The sense of having been utterly betrayed was nearly overwhelming, and it fueled my rage.
Another emotion I grappled with was shame—shame at having been duped! Sure, I could say to myself as some people attempted to console me at the time: “Hey, don’t feel bad; you’re in good company. Maciel duped thousands of people—including Blessed Paul VI and St. John Paul II.” But that did little to temper my sense of shame, embarrassment, or the gut-wrenching sense of loss and sense of indignation at having been had, at having been manipulated—for over two decades of my life. I had been violated in my intellect and in my spirit. I had been sucked into an elaborate web, a labyrinth of deception. Once in, it was nearly impossible to see my way out, until finally the walls of the labyrinth began to crumble. Over time, I have recognized this as one of my deepest wounds: the sense of personal violation.
As the initial strong emotions eventually subsided, there loomed the fairly urgent task of discerning what God was directing me to do next in my life, since it was becoming overwhelmingly clear that remaining in the Legion was simply not an option.
This required me to look back, carefully, prayerfully, and objectively over the steps that had presumably led me to the Legionaries more than two decades earlier. While in many ways I felt afloat in a sea of uncertainty, I cannot say I felt in the dark. On the contrary, with the admission of the truth on the part of the superiors, it was as if my life was suddenly inundated by light that allowed me to see myself, my relationship with Jesus, my reality with an objectivity I had frankly been largely deprived of since I entered the Legionaries.
As I looked back on my life, trying to discern the immediate future, what remained pristinely clear in my heart was that I was first called to the priesthood well before I supposedly discerned a vocation to religious consecration with the Legionaries. I had been ordained a priest in 2000—but had lived the first nearly ten years of priesthood in growing tensions with my superiors. I was becoming more and more aware of problems with the internal culture of our congregation. Aspects of community life became almost unbearable. We were not what we presented ourselves to be. The congregation—not Christ and his Church—was treated as the be-all and end-all. For years I lived in frequent need of shoring up my faith in the “work of God,” constantly seeking to validate, justify, and offer explanations for the Legion, for her apostolic works, her approach to
