[5] Oh, Sweet Jesus, thank you for Protecting me from Maciel the Pervert!

The author of Our Father who art in bed, Paul Lennon, with parents in Rome, 1966

When I look back on the following episode, described in my memoir,  Our Father who art in bed, excerpted below,
I experience retro-active fear and revulsion:
I, too, was geographically close to him, the predator,
under the same roof, walking the same corridors...
Oh, my God! He sexually abused people on my watch - not that I knew of it at the time, pedophiles are so astute! But Vaca, Jurado and Parga were in the Legion at the same time as me, "prefects" in Salamanca and in Rome. Then, ten years ago, it came as a blow when I learned that one of my close companions in Bundoran and Rome, Michael Caheny, was also a victim.
Oh, Sweet Jesus, thank you for protecting me!
Oh, Holy Mother, how I cry for those that were abused!


My General Confession to Nuestro Padre


I am at Sanborn’s restaurant at the Plaza de las Estrellas

mall in Mexico City’s Anzures district on Saturday, September

10, 2005. Sitting across the table, Dr. Fernando González

interviews me about my experiences with the Legion of Christ

against the background of pedophilia. He is researching Maciel

& Legion abuses, and will later publish Marcial Maciel, the

Legion of Christ: Unpublished Testimonies and Documents. I tell him

honestly I was never sexually abused in the Legion, nor was I

ever approached in an inappropriate way by any member. Two

years after Sanborn’s I still must rack my brain to recall one

unusual incident.

It involved Father R.C., LC. I was already an

ordained priest. During one of my few visits to Rome, we were

strolling along the Via Aurelia Nova close to our Legionary

residence. A woman passed by. I paid only fleeting attention

to her. I can only infer that she was “a lady of the night” from

R.C.’s question: “Ever thought of going off with a prostitute?”

I said nothing but thought to myself: “What could have caused

you to pass a remark like that? Don’t you know I have sisters? I

love and respect women. Of course, I find them attractive. But

I don’t use them! I forgive you because you are a Legionary. One

never knows why Legionaries do things. Maybe you were on a

special mission to spy on me, to look for chinks in my armor.

What would you have said, thought, done if my answer had

been ‘Yes’? Was it just your own morbid curiosity? Yours was

certainly not the kind of question sanctioned by the myriad of

Legion rules, norms, guidelines and instructions.”

Entering the LC at age 17 and 7 months, I admit I was

very immature mentally, emotionally, and spiritually; naïve

and sexually unaware, too. However, as the son of a warm

and structured home, I had strong relationships with my

mother—her only son—and with my father; he and I were

“boon companions.” I did not need Nuestro Padre as a surrogate

father.

I had the “privilege” of going to confession to Nuestro

Padre for the first time before my Religious Profession in

Salamanca, September 1962. I was 18 years and 10 months

old. By then my Spanish was good enough. It was suggested

to me by my spiritual director/superior that I make a general

confession to Nuestro Padre to receive special graces through

the Founder and as the best way of preparing for the religious

life.

During the relatively uneventful and sheltered life I

had lived before entering the Holy Novitiate at age 17, I

had accumulated two “sins against purity” that troubled my

somewhat scrupulous conscience and about which I felt very

ashamed. Before entering the Legion I had unloaded one to

a Carmelite friar at St. Teresa’s Clarendon St., Dublin. In fear

and trembling I unloaded the second to Nuestro Padre, Man of

God. I do not recall any Earth-shattering advice or apocalyptic

revelation. I felt he was kind. At the end, I kissed the end of his

stole as a sign of reverence and gratitude. He may have brushed

my cheek with the tassel in a fatherly way. I experienced a great

sense of relief because I had been able to get rid of that sin. I

don’t remember any advice. Now, I had no sin on my soul, I

was free through the Sacrament of Confession, and I was ready

to take on my vows—although the doubts of faith continued

to torture me.

My interviewer Fernando insists: was there nothing, not

even the slightest sexual innuendo in this encounter with Fr

Maciel? No, nothing. “And you were not aware of any abuse

going on around you as appears from the testimonies of others?”

Not at all.

Taking into account the two dozen testimonies of sexual

abuse from the 40s and 50s, and those beginning to appear

regarding the 60s and 70s, why were so many of us so totally

unaware? Could it be that Father Maciel is a Master of the

Game of secret societies, with their isolated concentric circles

of information and power? Maciel in the middle, surrounded

by a first cadre of “unconditionals” who silently acquiesce to his

power? Only The Master knows everything. The unconditionals

know more than the following circle, and so on. The victims do

not necessarily belong to the inner circle, for it is now clear that

those closest to Maciel are used to bring more sheep into the

shepherd’s fold. They appear within a separate circle, isolated

from the community at large, which in turn is totally oblivious

to what goes on behind the infirmary door or Father Maciel’s

sickbay? Reading the chilling descriptions in John Le Carré’s

A Perfect Spy and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago regarding

secrecy, isolation, and control lead one to such considerations.

I don’t think I can fairly say that Father Maciel was an

indiscriminate sexual predator, thought there is no doubt that

he had a large harem to choose from for years as undisputed

totalitarian leader of the Legion of Christ. Thus there is no

reason to believe that all who came within his “spiritual”

radius or halo were potential victims. That said, could it be

that the “sin” I confessed to Father Maciel in that first general

confession, about being sexually accosted by an Irish Christian

Brother, somehow “immunized” me against abuse? If so, oh

blessed “sin”! Or could it be that my conscience was already

gelling, thus making me impervious to molding according

to this Spiritual Director’s unusual criteria? Had I already

gathered sufficient “ego strength” to avoid enmeshment with

the guru? Or had he simply not found me attractive? Maybe I

wasn’t his type. Or my nose was too big.