From a comment on this blog. With slight edits:
To any RC/LC members reading this...
I, too, was once a member and served God above my own fears and small world that I came from.
I, too was confused for a long time over balancing the good I received in life (the passionate dream that I followed while in the Legion and the good virtue and focus in my life for following that ideal) from the Legion with the undeniable evil that went on within it. I feel your pain, your confusion. I would like to offer a couple of thoughts that have cleared the air in my own head and heart, so that maybe you can take from it what you want - buffet style.
1. All the good of the world, even what good was brought about in me while in the LC seminary is property of God. It doesn't prove any man or group of men to be saintly, nor a source of sanctity. Only God is that source, and He is everywhere.
All I am saying is that the good in life you have experienced while in the LC/RC is not fruit of Maciel nor Alvaro nor any other person. It is the fruit of God acting in your life, and your searching for Him whole-hearted in response. That can happen within and beyond the 'borders' of the Legion just alike.The good you have experienced is real. The good men and women you have encountered is real. That is separate from the institution where it all happened. Good people met each other in communist Russia as well as in the Vatican. Neither place created or caused the good people.
2. It is now undeniable that the LC/RC foundation block (Maciel) was mentally and spiritually off target.
3. The true 'Spirit of the Legion' is either the gospels or it is not. If it is the same as the Gospel, then of course it is untainted by Maciel's private life.
If it is different, then it is wrong. Either way, the LC/RC is unnecessary for your living a life for God and the souls. If instead you feel it necessary, then that is a bad thing. It means that your 'spiritual life' is founded on very weak ground instead of on Christ the solid rock.
You might want to re-think that position. You might want to consider the possibility that the 'spirituality' you have received is authentically based, yet tainted deeply with the sick soul of the one who established this way of life. Maybe that sick person connected himself, and the power of the movement to the eternal Word of God in a twisted, unhealthy way. And if so, he passed that on to generations of souls like yourself who experience God within the movement, but are not free because by that experience, but instead it is tied to, and indeed rests upon, a foundation that is human, weak, and now openly known as deeply flawed.
3. Comparing the good and evil balance within the LC/RC to that balance within the Church is not accurate.
In the church, we received an untainted gift of salvation from an untainted source, Christ. The individual church leaders may fail, but they carry in their 'earthen vessels' a pure truth that was given, received, and recorded within integrity and purity. It is the message and the very Spirit of God who gives life and eternity to the Christian life throughout the generations. For that reason it cannot be overcome. Even when we, as church members are 'jars of clay' our message is still good and alive.
4. Maciel did taint the movement with at least one aspect of his sickness... the private vows and the spirit of the private vows. These have now been condemned by the Pope. How then was it presented to me, as a member years ago as central part of the 'untainted' spirit of the Legion. It is now known to be wrong. In other words Maciel can be wrong in understanding and passing on the 'spirit of the Legion' to us. There's a whole lot of Maciel mixed into that spirituality. That's not a spirituality I would wish on anyone.
5. Consider this, my last point, which sums up and sews together the previous pieces that I have written: If you have received from anyone a spirit other than the one the apostles gave to us all, then it is wrong. If the spirit you have received is the same as the one the apostles gave to us all, then it is the True and Universal Spirit.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
This is just a load of sanctimonious hot air! Those of us who believed in the LC/RC while we were members do not need pious platitudes. Let's give the LC a chance to gather their facts and publish their promised statement. I respectfully suggest that those who are not followers of this blog and Regain are not likely to come here in search of solace. Some wounds need time and serenity to heal. I take good graces from my LC experience and I know that through me the Lord did good things for others. That's enough for me. So the Founder was a fraud? Yes, but despite him the Lord did and does good things. Give us time to deal with this.
18 days and you have nothing even coherent to say, other than the same pious platitudes and vague apologies for people suffering in the world? There is still no official comment to the Church.
If they were going to give us facts they would have done so by now. At this point they are just tweaking their story so it sounds presentable.
The bottom line is the people who are going to leave most likely already left. And those who are going to stay are the ones Fr. Alvaro can urinate anything into their ears and they will believe him. The "loyalists" will never deny good ole MM.
Anonymous-
Trying to help you is like cuddling with a porquipine.
I meant those words from the bottom of my heart. Sorry they offend you and put you on the defensive.
Tattoo
Could LC/RC be considered a Catholic Ponse Scheme?
By definition:
A Ponzi Scheme is a fruadulent investment operation that promises to pay abnormally high returns to investors from the monies paid by previous investors, rather than from revenues by any real business. Similar to a Pyramid Scheme but the types of fraud are different.
The high returns in this case were not monitary-rather the members were to be considered among the elite of the church, closer to the Pope than the regular local parishioners-as would be their children who by association through their schools would be considered "better Catholics" deemed so by their elite training.
The only "business" RC/LC members did was to grow notions of their "separateness" as a higher class within the context of their local church and diocesan connection. They drew clientel away from local diocesan churches-as well as their funds. In return, the members paid out funds as well as gave uncountable hours of service to grow the notion of an elite membership-closer to the Pope. No one turned back to see the damage that was being done to the young, to the members themselves or to the local churches that experienced loss as a result of their demands, because somehow a new generation of "priests" began to grow. No one thought about the millions of dollars collected that disappeared into the funds of a sellect few. No one reviewed the methods and means used to achieve their "elite" status. No one in authority had eyes to see the real business done by the legion was totally unethical and aggregious in terms of the true mission of the church and gospel norms.
So in the end, with the training these members have received and with the perspectives of "Church" grown in the minds of LC/RC priests through their "rigorous" and "indoctrinated training", what exactly do they have to offer the "faithful" non-elite that sit and watched this story unfold.
Post a Comment