A Brave Young Man reviews this Testimony

                                      (The author at 13, four years before being recruited in Dublin by a  Legionary seminarian masquerading as an ordained priest -the first of many lies)


I am very indebted to Denver Dave for reading my memoir and taking the time and energy to write a very personal review. I salute him and the other brave men and women who dared to read something "not officially sanctioned" by Legion/Regnum Christi leaders and "spiritual directors", and who had the courage to step outside the compound to get an objective view of these cult-like organizations. In the process they help others see the light and walk through the dark tunnel of mind-control towards freedom, the freedom of the Children of God, in which they can now seek and find their Lord in truth and joy.
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5.0 out of 5 stars AN EXTREMELY POWERFUL TESTIMONY!, August 13, 2010

By 

D. SADLER "Denver Dave" (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: "Our Father" Maciel, who art in bed: A Naive and Sentimental Dubliner in the Legion of Christ (Paperback)

This book contains a very powerful testimony of an amazing man on an amazing journey: before, during and after the Legion of Christ. As someone who has also had similar experiences with the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi movement, which is currently under review and reform, I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to gain knowledge or understanding of these orders inside Catholicism. This insight comes from man who has experienced so much, learned and taught so much and helped so many who have left or tried to leave these orders--as well as their families. He has also sought to bring justice and healing to the masses - despite even being sued by the Legion at one time. I deeply honor and respect the work and testimony of this man who has helped many of us that have suffered though this crisis in many ways. More importantly, I respect his candor, sincerity and openness to discuss these issues even when he knew he would receive a great deal of turmoil, grief and criticism from even high ranked church officials. This man's honor, bravery and sense of decency are only few of the many qualities that I aspire to and hope to one day achieve. With the emancipation and solace I received from this book and the healing ministry of Mr. Lennon - I am that much closer!

Maciel compared to recent Founders to be Canonized

Father Maciel with lover and daughter




Healing of US man key to Italian priest's canonization

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Thanks to the healing of a young man from the United States, who was severely injured in a rollerblading accident, Italian Blessed Louis Guanella will be among three new saints proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI in late October.

William Glisson, now 30 and married, was 21 years old when he and a friend were rollerblading down the Baltimore Pike in Springfield, Pa., near Philadelphia. Glisson was skating backward, without a helmet, hit a hole and fell, hitting his head.

The young man was in a coma for nine days and underwent skull surgery twice, but the doctors' prognosis was still grave.

A family friend, Dr. Noreen M. Yoder, gave Glisson's mother two relics of Blessed Louis Guanella. Dr. Yoder worked at a rehabilitation center in Springfield run by the Opera Don Guanella.

According to the website of the Opera Don Guanella, Glisson was released from the hospital less than a month after the accident and returned to work just seven months later.

Glisson's healing was accepted by the Vatican as the miracle needed for Blessed Guanella's canonization, which is scheduled for Oct. 23.

The Italian priest lived 1842-1915 and founded the Servants of Charity, the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence, and the Confraternity of St. Joseph, whose members pledge to pray for the sick and dying.

Also set for canonization Oct. 23 are: Italian Blessed Guido Maria Conforti, founder of the Xaverian Missionaries, who lived 1865-1931; and Spanish Blessed Bonifacia Rodriguez Castro, 1837-1905, founder of the Servants of St. Joseph, a congregation originally dedicated to educating poor women.

END

Ridding Catholicism of the stench of this Legionary of Christ By Hugh O’Shaughnessy

Ridding Catholicism of the stench of this Legionary of Christ By Hugh O’Shaughnessy

Posted on September 22, 2011 by dialogueireland

Ridding Catholicism of the stench of this Legionary of Christ

The Guardian (UK), September 21, 2011

By Hugh O’Shaughnessy

The late Marcial Maciel Degollado did enormous damage, but finally the Vatican is cleaning up his scandalous mess

At last, the Vatican begins to move in earnest to clean up the scandalous mess of the egregiously wealthy rightwing Legionaries of Christ. Their members are known to some as the “millionaires of Christ” and their stench has been in the nostrils of Catholics for too many decades.

A start was made on 15 July to repair the enormous damage to the church done by the late Marcial Maciel Degollado, who founded the Legion of Christ in 1940. The pushy Mexican priest was the bisexual pederast, drug-addicted lover of several women and father of three who hoodwinked a succession of popes from Pius XII and who was eventually run to ground and disgraced by Benedict XVI in 2006.

At the start of 2011 Richard Gill, for 29 years a US priest of the Legionaries of Christ but who had left the Legion last year, wrote: “It is no exaggeration to say that Marcial Maciel was 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.”

Cardinal Velasio de Paolis, the canon lawyer and head of the Holy See’s economic affairs to whom the pope has given full powers over the organisation, has pushed its vicar-general out of his comfortable office in Rome. Father Luis Garza, a member of one of the fabulously rich Mexican families from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey who as a close colleague of Maciel Degollado helped to run the Legion and its assets of $25bn, has just been bundled off to New York to head its activities in the US and Canada.

The cardinal was appointed papal commissioner more than a year ago and moved so cautiously that those who inherited the Legion and its assets sat back and relaxed, assured, they thought, that the crimes of Maciel Degollado, 87, who died in opprobrium in 2008, would be swept under the carpet. According to authoritative Chiesa website, Garza even gave a press interview on 27 June announcing that he would stay on as vicar of the Legion until 2013 or 2015.

Now he has gone, leaving the startlingly handsome Álvaro Corcuera, the Mexican priest who was the closest collaborator of Maciel Degollado, as the senior cleric to take orders from Cardinal de Paolis. And the cardinal has hinted strongly that other heads will roll and stories bubble up about the man who used to be called blasphemously “Our Father” by his followers. One of these tales concerned the time when Maciel Degollado was found taking a break in a retreat house in Mexico with a lady and her daughter – before it was established that they were one of his wives and one of his children.

Corcuera and Garza, far from being left alone, are having to face a cataclysmic situation that Maciel Degollado brought about. The numbers seeking to enter the Legion and its lay section Regnum Christi have tumbled markedly, while rich and powerful allies have split off from the organisation – notably the Oriol family, a rich dynasty which had served to established Maciel Degollado in high society in Spain, helped him to collect money from the rich and had aided him to become acquainted with the dictator Francisco Franco.

Maciel Degollado left a series of dirty marks wherever he passed.

Gill, for instance, wonders why the Vatican department that deals with religious orders gave its approval in 1983 to a new constitution for the Legion, which has proved to be irregular and defective. Cardinal Eduardo Pironio, who headed that department and was one of the few senior Argentine clerics to have come out of his country’s dirty war with credit, clearly committed an error in approving an unsatisfactory constitution. Paradoxically he also happened to be one of the few leaders of the church in Argentina who stood up to the sort of raging conservatives who were attracted to the Legion. Because of this, Pironio received death threats from rightwing extremists in his homeland and had to flee to Rome. Worse, his reputation was gravely damaged.

How did Maciel Degollado fool such a succession of popes?

The literal meaning of his mother’s surname – which in Spanish fashion is inserted after his father’s surname Maciel is fascinating. The literal meaning of “degollado” is “a man whose throat has been ripped out”. How weird!

Sales Up!

Thanks to readers and researchers for buying the 3 versions of my [same!] memoir:

Our Father Maciel who art in bed, hard copy and Kindle [$3.99]
Our Father who art in bed, hard copy

Exiting members continue to remark that the book helps them understand the Legion/Regnum, their experience in it, many readers have "Aha" moments, a freeing up inside, and continued healing.

Parents can also gain insight into their children's plight and how to treat them inside and outside the Legion/Regnum.

Pastors, Psychologists and Pastoral Counselors can understand what the Legion is all about -from the inside- and perhaps understand how it gets such a strong grip on young. idealistic minds.

Sex Abuse Victims of Fr Maciel's Sex Abuse Victims

Dear readers, out of respect for the survivors of Fr.Maciel's sexual abuse of his seminarians, I have written little and with great prudence regarding the possibility that some of Maciel's victims could in turn become abusers (the % of victim/abusers is the subject of study, practically unknown, and believed to be low). The phenomenon is called "identification with the perpetrator" and the Legion has not been free of it.

A senior Legionary priest, recently transferred 'out of harms way' to Rome, who may in the past have been mentioned on www.regainnetwork.org, is one such perpetrator. Another of his victims, an American in his forties, has recently come to the blogger's attention.

I ask all readers to play for this man in recovery; and I ask the Vatican overseers, specifically Cardinal De Paolis, to look into this Sexual Abuse phenmenon in the Legion, not only by Maciel but by some of his victims who in turn became perpetrators.

Archbishop Chaput's response to this man's complaint was, to say the least, lookwarm.

Legionary Sex Abuse in Dublin Novitiate Ends?

At the Entrance to the Legion Salamanca Novitiate it say: Christus Vita Vestra, "Let Christ by your Life"
In Dublin 'Your Life is Hell' was true for some novicies
The legion has just announced the closing of the Dublin Noviciate.
Here is what a man sexually abused there thinks about the reasons given by the legion and the sex abuse therin:

Regarding Dublin - there hasnt been an irish vocation since candidacy 1994. The house is very big - four floors. It has been financially viable for most of the time because of the two Oak schools (one for boys one for girls) which house foreign teenagers (11 - 16 perhaps) to learn english for a semester or a year or a summer program.


These exclusive english academies charge a fortune and in turn provide the up keep of the novitiate - so unless these schools have been hit, there isnt a particularly financial reason (Except of course that the LC would have to pay for the flights for all the foreign LC novices to move to Dublin.).



Originally the boys Oak school was in the same building as the novitiate - so when the boys needed to buy oil for the heating, there was no need for the LCs to buy it too (one single heating system) and when the boys larders were full of food and they were having their dinners and lunches cooked by hired kitchen staff, it was impractical to have a secondary LC kitchen staff and larder. So much of the novitiate expeneses were absorbed by Oak.



Regarding foreign novices in dublin - the majority were always from USA/Mexico. Europe has had a steady decline in vocations since the mid 90s, way before the crisis. I would wager that there is a real european crisis and there are simply not enough foreigners to go around the european novitiates: Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain - and im not sure about france?



I am left empty about this news, I thought I would be pleased. I would be perhaps more affected by the demolition of that building... But it is good that no more novices can be hurt in Ireland.



Maciel abused novices there, Guillermo Izquierdo also, Eoghan Devlin, and one more rector has been accused in recent years.



That is to say there has been abuse in that house in the so called noughties, the 90s, the 80s, the 70s and the 60s - since it was built.



This is an end, I hope, and not a transferral, to a horrible history.

Maciel and Legion Superiors "Masters of Deceit"?

                   Fr. Maciel piously kneels at the feet of the man he has led up the garden path...

            Fr. Maciel warmly embraces his closely cultivated protege, Alvaro Corcuera at the latter's ordination


Dear friends,

some thoughts from an old man..

http://www.johnlecarre.com/news/2011/07/10/john-le-carre-discusses-mi6-trust-nostalgia-and-the-new-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-film


Excerpt from an interview with one of my favorite writers, John Le Carre; i was very impressed by the most autobiographical of his novels, The Perfect Spy, which is how having a father like his prepared him to be a spy. I have always thought of Maciel as "The Master of Deceit"

Many reflections could stem from this reading; i will share just one:
"Did living with Maciel prepare the superiors to also be 'masters of deceit'?