I wrote earlier about the urgent need for Catholic priests and religious willing to provide pastoral care to those suffering in the wake of recent revelations about the Legion of Christ's founder, Father Marcial Maciel.
Since the crisis broke, ReGain, the support network for former members of the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi, has provided a list of pastoral-care resources on the front page of its Web site. One diocesan priest who permitted his name to be included on the site wrote me today saying that the responses he received convinced him that there is a real need for such help.
The point was also driven home to me yesterday when a friend who is an RC member told me about an informal get-together of a few longtime nonconsecrated members of the movement that took place following the news about Maciel's having a daughter. Believing Maciel was innocent of wrongdoing, the members, who are highly educated, discussed how he could possibly have fathered the girl. Some of them wished to believe that Maciel, during one of many hospital visits that he made during a period of time for an unspecified condition, fell victim to someone who took semen from him while he was unaware and used it to impregnate the girl's mother.
The friend who shared this information with me did so out of dismay that intelligent, well-educated RC members could be so in denial as to invent such a preposterous story.
If you are a priest or religious, please consider allowing your contact information to be included on ReGain's site so that current or former LC/RC members who need pastoral care may contact you directly. Write ReGain via the contact form on its Web site, or write me and I will forward your information to the organization. ReGain's list of resources includes a disclaimer stating that inclusion on the list does not constitute an endorsement of its entire Web site.
For the latest news on the LC/RC crisis, see the continuing coverage in American Papist.
Comments closed. Please pray for the Holy Father and for the healing of Christ's Mystical Body.
