Just saw this letter posted on the website of life-after-RC, subtitled Making sense of the Church after experiencing the Regnum Christi Movement, the lay arm of the religious order, the Legionaries of Christ. The letter outlines changes underway in the embattled religious order.
Pursuing the truth about the late Fr. Marcial Maciel, the order's founder who was finally disciplined by Pope Benedict XVI after years of accusations that the priest had sexually abused his own young seminarians, was a long and tedious ordeal. It was made even more difficult because the late Pope John Paul II ignored the accusations and lionized Maciel and gave special honors to his order.
Sadly, it was only when it was proven that Maciel had also fathered a child that the church and the order got serious about investigating the depth of the deception and dysfunction of the Maciel enterprise.
The recent letter is a welcome sign that the order has begun confronting some of the ugly truths about Maciel and what those truths mean to the order, which was so bound to his personality. The illusion of a saintly Maciel was revered by Legionaries who now must deal with the reality of his double life.
However, if the process of the investigation and the introspection the order must be going through at the moment are thorough and honest, the order may in the end glean some valuable insights for the entire church.
