Maciel can no longer be considered a Christian model

Father Maciel can no longer be considered a model of Christian life, the Legionaries of Christ have said about their founder.

In a statement published by the Legion’s leaders yesterday, they said:

For his own mysterious reasons, God chose Fr Maciel as an instrument to found the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi, and we thank God for the good he did. At the same time, we accept and regret that, given the gravity of his faults, we cannot take his person as a model of Christian or priestly life.

Christ condemns the sin but seeks to save the sinner. We take him as our model, convinced of the meaning and beauty of forgiveness, and we entrust our founder to God’s merciful love.

The Legion’s leaders said they were grateful for the Apostolic Visitation which Pope Benedict launched into the order last year, apologised again for their founder’s misconduct and acknowleded the facts.
The Apostolic Visitation of the beleagured Legion of Christ drew to a close in the middle of this month as the Catholic News Service reports here. Five bishops were given the task of looking into the order’s workings, its founder Marcial Maciel’s sexual misconduct, whether the founder’s charism was too tied up with the order and so on. They submitted their report on March 15.

The Legionaries statement also said:

It’s Dowd what done it…

Maureen Dowd — the red-haired doyenne of liberal journalism — whose New York Times columns provoke mirth and wrath, has united both liberal and conservative American Catholics with her latest column, which deals with the Apostolic Visitation of Women Religious currently taking place in the US.

It is a rare occasion that finds Fr John Zuhlsdorf of What does the Prayer Really Say on the same side as Michael Sean Winters, a journalist who writes for the Jesuit America Magazine — but it’s Dowd what done it.

Both men have censured her, even if the reasons they give are somewhat different.

MSW ended his post on the America with this: “It is not that she is wrong, it is that she is so contentedly wrong, so confident in her ignorance, so comprehensively prejudiced against the Church. Why doesn’t she just become a Protestant and have done with it? If you heard her rant on the street, you would give her a dollar and hope she doesn’t spend it on booze. Reading her rant in the Times, you can just flip the page.”

Now the Grey Lady has published the letters in response to the flame-haired lady’s column.