Why Mary wept in Arlignton

The following is an excerpt from a letter to the editor of the June 2005 issue of the New Oxford Review, entitled "Why Mary Wept In the Diocese of Arlington." It was written in response to an article by Michael S. Rose on the plight of Fr. James Haley ("Killing the Messenger" in the March issue of NOR), which ought to be read in full by anyone concerned with the fate of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, long known for its stability and orthodoxy. Rose's article, uncovering a tapestry of philandering, homosexuality, embezzling, and outright strange behavior by priests, "underscores a series of supernatural events," according to the letter, which occurred at a parish (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton) of which he was a member in this same Diocese a dozen years before these scandals were exposed:

From November 1991 until well into 1993, a young Associate Pastor named Fr. James Bruse at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Lake Ridge, just outside the Beltway in northern Virginia, was the center of a series of weeping statues (mostly of the Blessed Mother) that wept openly and profusely in his presence and others. The tears began small and privately. The first event occurred at his parent's home, and then statues in the rectory began to weep until eventually these private tears became full-blown public events.

Fr. Bruse, a shy and timid man by nature, could not have invented a more tortured way to bring attention to himself.... The statues wept profusely during the height of the episodes, warping wooden furniture and sopping carpets.... Fr. Bruse also bore the stigmata on his wrists, side, and feet. The blood that ran down his arms defied gravity and ran up from his wrists to his elbows, just as Christ would have bled while hanging in agony on the Cross.

The author of the letter, which can be read in full (scroll down to "Why Mary Wept in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia"), is Timothy Ehlen, of Petoskey, Michigan. He states that a book on the events has been published, entitled The Seton Miracles . Also see the online account at The Marian Foundation. People are often skeptical and dismissive of such phenomena as traditional Catholic superstition. See for yourself.

Fessio pulls NOR ads from Ignatius Press periodicals

Fr. Joseph Fessio, apparently incensed by the exposure granted by the New Oxford Review to the controversy surrounding Ave Maria College (AMC) in Michigan and the establishment of Ave Maria University (AMU) in Florida. Fessio, who is Provost of the latter institution, funded by Tom Monaghan of Domino Pizza fame, was invited by NOR editor Dale Vree to respond to an article in by Andrew Messaros, a professor at AMC in Michigan, who aired numerous complaints over the handling of the move to establish AMU in Florida by Monaghan, Fessio, and the AMC board of trustees. It is noted that Messaros, who now holds an academic at another respected position, no longer has any personal stake in the ongoing controversy between AMC and AMU. Further, as numerous letters to the editor by students and staff at AMC in the current (June 2005) issue of NOR reveal, the controversy is far from being an isolated case centering on Messaros.

Instead of Fessio, Nicholas J. Healy Jr., President of AMU, responded to Messaros' article by writing a response in NOR. Messaros was then given the chance, per standard form, of replying to the response. Fessio was again contacted by NOR and asked if anyone wanted to reply to the second Messaros article. This time, he did so (in the Jan. 2005) issue, attacking Messaros in very personal terms. Again, Messaros was given the right to respond, and he did so in kind. Fessio insisted that he and AMU should have the last word. NOR editor Vree replied that according to convention, in publications the original author has the right to have the last word. When Vree spoke with Fessio on August 27th, the latter insisting that he could defeat all the arguments of his opponents single-handedly, leading Vree to assume Fessio would write a letter defending himself from the third Messaros article.

Instead, Fessio, who is also founder of Ignatius Press, had five full-page ads reserved for Ignatius Press pulled from the NOR. He also had three remaining NOR list rentals reserved for Ignatius Press pulled. NOR has also been informed that after its currently scheduled run of ads expires in October of this year, it will not be allowed to advertise in The Catholic World Report and Homiletic & Pastoral Review, both of which are owned by Ignatius Press.

The AMC/AMU controversy has nothing to do, of course, with Ignatius Press. Both AMC and AMU were conceived and brought into existence by faithful Catholics concerned with the future and integrity of Catholic education for the younger generations. Ignatius Press was conceived and brought into existence by a faithful Jesuit priest concerned with the future and integrity of Catholic publishing in the years to come. It is a sad commentary on otherwise good and decent Catholics in the modern world that they cannot resolve their problems without going ballistic with one another. (See New Oxford Notes: "Fr. Fessio Goes Ballistic.")

Query re Ratzinger quotation

If any readers can shed light on the following quotation, its authenticity, its context, or the manner in which Cardinal Ratzinger (if he indeed wrote it) intended it, I should be glad for it. A sedevacantist nun who rejects the authority of Vatican II and the Roman hierarchy since the Council has sent me this text, which she claims is a translation from Cardinal Ratzinger's German work, Die Sacramentale Begreundung Christliche Existenz. She obviously intends it as a piece of evidence that the Holy Father's theology is not to be trusted:

Eucharistic devotion such as is noted in the silent visit by the devout in church must not be thought of as a conversation with God. This would assume that God was present there locally and in a confined way. To justify such an assertion shows a lack of understanding of the Christological mysteries of the very concept of God. This is repugnant to the serious thinking of the man who knows about the omnipresence of God. To go to church on the ground that one can visit God who is present there is a senseless act which modern man rightfully rejects.

If the quotation is authentic, my immediate feeling is that it's been lifted out of a context that would shed some indispensable light on how he inteded it to be understood. Obviously, Catholicism has always insisted on the ubiquity and omnipresence of God, which would compel the rejection of any notion that God is present solely in an isolated locale. On the other hand, Catholic teaching has also insisted that God, who is present everywhere, is present uniquely and in an immediately physical way in the Incarnation and in the Blessed Sacrament, just as He was present in Old Testament theophanies, such as His appearance to Moses in the Burning Bush and to the Children of Israel in the Pillars of Fire and Cloud, as well as His appearance in the form of an Angel (Gen. 16:7, 13; 18:19-21; Judges 6:11-24; etc., etc.). Hence, belief in divine omnipotence is obviously not incompatible with belief in the Real Bodily Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. The assertion that one who goes to church the ground that he can visit God who is present there is performing a "senseless act," in any case, would seem troublesome without a further bit of clarifing context. Especially in a year when the Catholics have been called upon to renew their devotion and appreciation of the Holy Eucharist, such sentiments as those expressed in this text (whoever wrote it) would seem to call for clarification.

Legionaries and Fr. Maciel revisited

One cannot help feeling terrible ambivalence about the questions being raised about Fr. Maciel, the founder and Director of the Legionaries (see my post of June 1, 2005: "Why orthodox Catholics are angry with the Legion of Christ"). The Legionaries themselves are recruited from the ranks of the most robustly devout Catholic families one could expect to find. I personally know a number of them. They are remarkably transparent, devout Catholic men. They are true believers. A woman whose apostolate with the Legion's seminary in Thornwood, NY, for the past 10 years has allowed her to observe these seminarians up close concurs. Much of their food, she said, is donated. During the winter months, they live in 40 degree temperatures to help conserve fuel costs. They are holy, straight, zealous young men with radiant smiles and cold hands, but their hearts are on fire with the love of Christ.

Meanwhile, it is hard to read, in Vows of Silence, that Fr. Maciel "courted influential figures in the Curia at lavish dinners" with "fine china, crystal, and a cart of cocktails," and would have them chauffeured to and from their residences in his Mercedes. I have no way of personally verifying whether these claims, or the sexual accusations against Fr. Maciel, are true, although the accumulating charges are troubling. On the one hand, one wants to think best of those who profess to be one's friends and allies in the Faith, and there is certainly virtue in giving one's professed friends the benefit-of-a-doubt under fire. A reputation is a fragile thing, and one is obliged to protect the good name of one's true friends. On the other hand, given the recent climate of scandalous sex abuses by predatory priests in the Church, one recoils from the prospect of sheltering and coddling those who may be guilty. One prays for discernment.

One of the benefits of having Cardinal Ratzinger as our current Pontiff is that he knows more about the clerical sex scandlas than any other cardinal, since the cases have landed on his desk when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and he personally attended to them. He knows -- as far as it is possible for a Church leader to know -- what is going on. In his Good Friday sermon in 2005, he said, "How much filth there is in the Church, even among those ... in the priesthood ...." In this regard, it is highly significant, as New Oxford Review editor Dale Vree has recently observed, that Cardinal Ratzinger himself has reopened the case of sexual abuse against Fr. Maciel. "It's a full-sale inquiry," he said, in an editorial (NOR, June 2005, p. 5). Further, Fr. Maciel is reported to have resigned as General Director of the Legionaries on January 23rd, citing his age. This has led to speculations whether he did so in order to avoid further scruitiny by Cardinal Ratzinger. If so, it clearly hasn't worked. The case is going forward. Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, the Promoter of Justice at the CDF, traveled to Mexico in late March of this year to "interview more than 20 people, among them several men who maintain that Father Maciel sodomized them when they were boys..." (The New York Times, April 23). And in early April, "a Vatican investigator began taking sworn statements" in New York from alleged victims (abcnews.go.com, April 21).

The Ligionaries' publicity offices have long maintained that there is no official Vatican investigation. One waits and prays, imploring the Lord for His mercy, as well as His truth and justice.

Commonweal in bed with the Legionaries?

In an article entitled "Rahabilitating Paul Shanley," New Oxford Review (April, 2005), Dale Vree writes:

In a New Oxford Note last month (p. 16-18), we told you how Commonweal has attempted to rehabilitate Archbishop Weakland (a homosexual), andhow the National Catholic Register, owned by the Legionaries of Christ, has tried to rehabilitate Deal Hudson (an adulterer).

In the June issue of the NOR, Vree adds:

In that New Oxford Note "last month" (March, p. 18), we noted that Weakland and Hudson are back in business as if nothing ever happened, adding: "You'd think Weakland and Hudson wouldn't want to show their faces for a decade or so. Now, that would garner our respect."

Vree notes the marked contrast of Bill Bennett, "who has had the decency to remove himself from the limelight after his gambling habit came to light."

"Christian" now a slur

"Christian" has long been a term used as much for its connotative value as for its denotative value. In contrast to its denotative value as an adjective specifying a commitment to Christ or adherence to a certain body of beliefs, "Christian" has often been used for its courtesy connotations. To be a "good Christian" meant being an upright citizen of regular habits in good standing in the community. In this respect it served, much like "gentleman," as a term used for its courtesy value, rather than its original etymological denotation as a member of the land-owning gentry class. Today, however, the term "Christian" is used, in many circles, for its connotative value as a slur. To call a person a "Christian," for some folks, is to deride the person as a provincial ignoramus, a knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing antedeluvian troglodyte.

Thus Howard Dean said in San Francisco this week that Republicans "all behave the same, and all look the same. ... It's pretty much a white Christian party." (Source: SFGate.com Wednesday, June 8, 2005)

Never mind that more American blacks voted Republican in the last election than ever before in US history. Never mind that the majority of Americans in American history, whatever their color or ethnicity, have been Christian. Just as the term "Fundamentalist," which at one time referred to those who subscribed to a Presbyterian statement of key tenets of the Christian Faith (The Fundamentals, 1909), has now come to be used pejoratively against practically anyone who resists the "march of progress" toward a completely secularized and de-Christianized society based on Western bourgeois consumerist values and relativism, so now with the term "Christian." To call a person a "Christian" in this way is like calling a person a "nigger."

No wonder C.S. Lewis, after his inaugural address at Cambridge, in which he had referred to himself as a member of a dying species he called "old western man," joined with his students in referring to themselves as "dinos" -- that is "dinosaurs," who no longer find themselves at home in the contemporary world. But of course that was some sixty or seventy years ago.

One thinks, too, in this connection of Herman Hesse's description of a similar figure in his novel, Steppenwolf:

These horrors [of the Middle Ages] were really nonexistent. A man of the Middle Ages would detest the whole mode of our present-day life as something far more than horrible, far more than barbarous. Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical Age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilization. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence. Naturally, everyone does not feel this equally strongly. A nature such as Nietzsche's had to suffer our present ills more than a generation in advance. What he had to go through alone and misunderstood, thousands suffer today.

Harold Berman, former Professor at Harvard Law School, used to describe the problem as one of "post-westernism." The term sounds like a confusion of temporal and geographical categories until one understands his conviction that Catholic Christendom lies at the heart of the Western identity. The "West" in "Western Civilization" is not primarily a geographical term, but a cultural one. A text in Western civilization may begin with the Mesopotamians or Egyptians and include the Greeks, Romans, as well as a passing reference to the Hebrews. But none of those people identified itself as "Western." That designation awaited the medieval synthesis of Catholic Europe. Forgetfulness of this is forgetfulness of our Western identity. Which brings us to where we are today: oblivion.

That "Christian" is now used as a slur signals the vast distance we have traversed from a medieval Christendom in which theology was the "Queen of the Sciences" to the contemporary world in which theology is hardly recognized as having a rightful place among the liberal arts. To be Western once meant to be Christian. In our contemporary secularized milieu, however, as Wolfhard Pannenberg once observed,

even an elementary knowledge of Christianity -- its history, teachings, sacred texts, and formative figures -- dwindles. It is no longer a matter of rejecting Christian teachings; large numbers of people have not the vaguest knowledge of what those teachings are. This is a remarkable development when one considers how foundational Christianity is to the entire story of Western culture. The more widespread the ignorance of Christianity, the greater the prejudice against Christianity. (Source: First Things, Fall 2001, p. 59)

Infallibility and authority & strength "unfashionable"

Pierre Francois Le Louet wasn't discussing theology. The marketing and style consultant for a French fashion agency was discussing fashion trends. "The masculine ideal is being completely modified. All the traditional male values of authority, infallibility, virility and strength are being completely overturned," he said. "We are watching the birth of a hybrid man. ... Why not put on a pink-flowered shirt and try out a partner-swapping club?" asked Le Louet, stressing that the study had focused on men aged between 20 and 35. (Source: AFP Paris 6/8/05) Makes me think of The Wanting Seed, Anthony Burgess' distopian novel in which the social mind-moulders and government enthusiastically promote homosexuality and opposition to traditional family values for purposes of population management and reduction. But there's no telling what we're in for in the long run. As Ripley always said, reality is stranger than fiction.

The hoodwinking of Catholic Bible scholarship

One of my deep disappointments with Catholic biblical scholarship of the last 50 years is how deeply and uncritically enamored it so quickly became of the whole secularized Liberal Protestant "historical-critical" tradition. Many Catholic Bible scholars since the Second Vatican Council have fancied themselves "liberated" from the "schackles" of an "embarrassingly ill-informed" and insular "rigid scholasticism" and have, for the past few decades, been bending over backwards, as if making up for lost time, to ingratiate themselves with the tyrannical fashion poodles of the secular protestant Bible Game Show. Thus they have rushed precipitously to the circus, hurling themselves over one another to be the first in line to sell their birthright for a mess of bad pottage. How desparate they have been for kudos from their secularized Protestant peers and mentors! How desparate to please their circus trainers and play to the audience at the notoriously agnostic Jesus Seminar (pictured left in New York). -- All together now: "Let's Demythologize & Deconstruct!"

The uncritical and cavalier ebullience with which Catholic Bible scholars (like Dominic Crossan, right) have unwittingly hurled themselves headlong into an abyss is breathtaking in its presumption. I have no quarrel with any Catholic Bible scholar wanting to be "well-informed" or make use of the "best available tools of contemporary research." The problem is the degree to which what counts as "well-informed," and what counts as the "best available tools of contemporary research," has been pervasively coopted by the liberal Protestant establishment and contaminated by assumptions imported from secular naturalism -- assumptions stemming from the Enlightenment as well as post-Enlightenment movements whose pre-theoretical commitments are deeply inimical to the Catholic tradition and Christian worldview. What is most ironical about the eagerness of Catholic biblical scholars to jump on this bandwagon is not merely the fact that the bandwagon's music is brazenly anti-Christian, but that it is such bad music -- the biblical theological equivalent of Anton LaVey lyrics in a setting by Marty Haugen. It doesn't take a sophisticated ear for "the ring of truth" to discern what is wrong here. Anyone acquainted with a little history of philosophy should be able to see that the jig is up.

The degree to which vestiges of a discredited and unsupportable logical-empiricist (positivist) epistemology continue to infect current scholarship can be seen in the continuing recrudescences of fact/value, history/faith dualizations such as appear in the well-schooled discourse of contemporary scholars. When speaking of Jesus, they refer, for example, to "what strict historical veracity suggests," in contrast to images "projected in the Gospels" by means of the New Testatment writers and their "theological imagination." But who and his presuppositionless army is going to justify his presumption that he is conclusively well positioned to tell us what "strict historical veracity suggests"? Who has a point-of-view-from-nowhere? And by what warrant will he presume to demythologize the account of Jesus given in the Gospels?

No less typical are statements such as this: "Reconstructing the Jesus of history by definition never takes us beyond the pre-paschal Jesus." Says who? Oh, I must have forgotten: those tyrannical fashion poodles. But why should one buy what they're selling? What, beside a dogmatic adherence to a residual Humean skepticism about the possibility of anything supernatural occurring in history, should lead anyone to reject the historicity of the post-Paschal Christ of Faith? Nothing. The dichotomizing premises underlying such "scholarship" are supported by nothing but western liberal bourgeois academic prejudice. The emperor of the liberal Bible Game Show wears no clothes. Why would anyone want to be caught dead bowing and scraping before him?

Try thinking outside the "fashion poodle" box, for once. Try reading, for a change, something that challenges your uncritical acceptance of the "Jesus-history-fact" vs. "Christ-faith-myth" bifurcation, like C. Stephen Evans' The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative As History (Oxford U.P., 1996) ... unless such a demolition of your history/faith dualizations would blow your circuits. Then, if you can handle the spadework, dig into Roger A. Johnson's classic, The Origins of Demythologizing (Leiden: Brill, 1974) -- which, unfortunately is currently out-of-print, though surely available through a good library (remember those?).

Additionally recommended reading (much of it online):

• Catholic Church Documents related to Biblical Studies (Prof. Felix Just, S.J. - Loyola Marymount University)
• N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is
• N.T. Wright, Who was Jesus?
• N.T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity?
• Destroying the Bible, by John Young (critique of The New Jerome Biblical Commentary)
• Crisis in Scripture Studies, by William Most (critique of John P. Meier's biblical studies)
• Critiques of the Jesus Seminar (critiques of a movement promoting a liberal, skeptical approach to the Bible)
• How do you respond to the writings of the Jesus Seminar? (James Akin)
• The Problem with Hans Kung (Philip Blosser)
• Cardinal Walter Kasper's attack on Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) (P. Blosser)
• How has the Church responded to the writings of Richard McBrien and his book Catholicism? (National Council of Catholic Bishops's Committee on Doctrine)
• George Weigel, The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored
• Robert P. George, Clash Of Orthodoxies: Law Religion & Morality In Crisis

Jesus our Mother?

Following up on an earlier discussion of God as "Mother," here is brief reprise and critique, based on a quote from St. Anselm of Canterbury about Jesus as "mother," received from my good friend, Edgar Foster.

Schaeffer & the Christian way of life

The Christian Faith as a Way of Life:
The Legacy of Francis Schaeffer

By Eduardo J. Echeverria

April - May 2005

Like countless other people in the fifty year history of L'Abri Fellowship, I arrived at the doorstep of Chalet les Melezes at L'Abri in Huemoz sur Ollon, Switzerland. Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), along with his wife Edith (1918-), a prolific author in her own right, founded L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland a half century ago. He, in particular, was a Christian intellectual, cultural critic, practical theologian, author, noted speaker, and evangelist, whose ministry in the last half of the twentieth century incited worldwide study and discipleship centers. It was at L'Abri some thirty-five years ago next summer that I first committed my life to Christ as Lord and Savior, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6). It was at L'Abri that I began to understand the Christian faith as a way of life rooted in the truth about reality, about the meaning of life, and communion with God. It was also at L'Abri that I began to understand that living under the Lordship of Jesus Christ entailed the sanctification of the whole of life, including the life of culture, particularly the intellectual life.

There have been many changes in my life since 1970-not the least of which is returning to the Catholic Church in 1992-but throughout them I have always regarded L'Abri Fellowship, especially Francis Schaeffer's understanding of true Christian spirituality, as a point of reference in my walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. Some evangelical Protestants may find this a surprising claim for an evangelical and orthodox Catholic like myself to make. (On this claim, see my "Living Truth for a Post-Christian World: The Message of Francis Schaeffer and Karol Wojtyla," Religion & Liberty, Vol. 12, No. 6, November/December 2002).

Of course my appreciation is not uncritical-there exist philosophical and theological differences between us, but this is neither the place nor time to air them. Rather, in this personal tribute to Francis Schaeffer on the fiftieth anniversary of L'Abri Fellowship, I believe that the most appropriate way to show my continuing appreciation for him is by expressing my personal understanding of his legacy. This legacy is, I think, Schaeffer's understanding of the Christian faith as a way of life and the first principles informing that understanding.

In what follows, then, I will first say a few words about five core principles that are, as I see it, at the root of Schaeffer's understanding of the Christian faith. Then I will go on to set out his vision of true Christian spirituality.

Schaeffer's Five Principles

(1) Realism about Truth. Schaeffer holds that Christians must affirm a realist notion of truth and its applicability to Christian beliefs. The Christian faith is true to reality. In other words, Christian belief is true if and only if objective reality is the way the belief says it is; otherwise, the belief is false. These beliefs are either true or false, and objective reality is what makes them either true or false. Schaeffer cautions us that once the distinction between truth and falsehood is set aside, as it is in contemporary culture, one renounces the truth of the Christian faith.

(2) Christian faith is rational. Schaeffer holds that there are good and sufficient reasons to affirm the truth of Christian beliefs. Thus, to say that Christianity is rational is to say both that it is not contrary to reason as well as that there are positive reasons for believing it to be true. Indeed, faith, so taken, involves believing some propositions to be true, because faith is a cognitive activity. "True Christian faith rests on [objective] content." Nevertheless, as Schaeffer rightly sees it, faith demands more than believing the truth of some propositions. Hence, faith isn't merely a cognitive activity, because it involves the "whole man" ("his thoughts, his will, and his emotions are all involved as a unit") who trusts in, and is committed to, the promises of the God who is there.

(3) Rational, not Rationalistic Humanism. Although the Christian faith is rational, the Christian believer is not rationalistic. The key difference here is quite basic. It is one thing to say that the Christian faith measures up to the legitimate aspirations of reason, that is, "there are good, adequate and sufficient reasons to know that the Christian answers are truth." It is an entirely different matter to say that man's reason is the measure of all things, including truth. This is Rationalistic Humanism, as Schaeffer also calls this view. It makes human reason the source and basis of all our beliefs. "A rationalist is someone who thinks man can begin with himself and his reason plus what he observes, without information from any other source, and come to final answers in regard to truth, ethics and reality." We must reject rationalism, urges Schaeffer, because "man cannot generate final answers from himself." Rather, divine revelation, God's written Word revelation, is the ultimate cognitive source of what is known-propositional revelation-truths about God, man and the world. Yet, divine revelation is not merely a communication of truths, but also God revealing Himself in "a living person-to-person communication" with man, a relationship in which man is to find his salvation, indeed, his meaning.

(4) Worldview Thinking. Schaeffer stressed the importance of worldview thinking and thus the necessity of Christians thinking of the Christian faith as a total world-and-life view. "Life-orienting beliefs" about God, man's meaning and destiny, reality, morality, and knowledge make up a worldview, giving overall direction and guidance to an individual's thoughts and actions. These beliefs are not necessarily held consciously, and hence they are described as presuppositions, meaning thereby that they function as the perspective from which an individual sees and interprets all of life. Significantly, both Christians and their adversaries think in terms of a total world-and-life-view. Indeed, there exists a conflict of worldviews in contemporary culture, especially between the Christian worldview and Secularism in all its varied thought-forms. Thus, the Christian has a responsibility to work out the implications of this totality-view by articulating, communicating, defending, and justifying it to a given generation.

(5) The Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is Lord over all areas of life. "True spirituality cannot be abstracted from truth at one end, nor from the whole man and the whole culture at the other. If there is a true spirituality, it must encompass all." Christians should be engaged in the project of transforming the whole world, including culture, for Christ. Schaeffer breaks with any hint of dualism, or bifurcation, between faith and life in its totality. "Christ is Lord of all--over every aspect of life." Yes, even the intellectual life is in service of Christ the King. As Schaeffer puts it, "It is no use saying He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the Lord of all things, if He is not the Lord of my whole unified intellectual life." "I am false or confused," adds Schaeffer, "if I sing about Christ's lordship and contrive to retain areas of my own life that are autonomous. This is true if it is my sexual life that is autonomous, but it is at least equally true if it is my intellectual life that is autonomous."

Christian Faith as a Way of Life

Undoubtedly, the enduring legacy of L'Abri Fellowship is found in Schaeffer's vision of true Christian spirituality, that is, the Christian faith as a way of life. Among the few autobiographical remarks Schaeffer makes about his own spiritual journey the one regarding the spiritual crisis in his own life that took place in 1951 clearly stands out. The immediate cause of this crisis is the "problem of reality," as Schaeffer calls it. That is to say, around that time Schaeffer's growing awareness that something was wrong brought him to the point of realization that there is very little reality to the Christian faith of orthodox believers, namely, this faith is not bearing much fruit in their present lives and, in turn, in the total culture. Schaeffer also experienced this lack of reality in his own Christian life and so he felt the need "to go back and rethink his whole position" as a Christian. He adds: "I searched through what the Bible said concerning reality as a Christian. Gradually I saw that the problem [of reality] was that with all the teaching I had received after I was a Christian, I had heard little about what the Bible says about the meaning of the finished work of Christ for our present lives" (italics added). True spirituality is not just about knowing that I am justified in Christ before God and that, on this basis, I am heavenward bound. This view would seem to leave our present life bereft of the possibility of living in "newness of life . . . right now, between the new birth [in Christ] and our death, or the second coming of Jesus." "Even in justification," Schaeffer adds, "many Christian who are perfectly orthodox in doctrine look back upon their justification as though it were the end of all, at least until death comes. It is not. Birth is essential to life, but the parent is not glad only for the birth of his child. He is thankful for the living child that grows up . . . So it is with becoming a Christian."

Thus, the Christian life is not just about God's forgiving our sins on the basis of Christ's finished work, but also His effecting within us, in the Spirit's power, and in the present life, an ongoing interior transformation that makes us alive in Christ, and in which Christ brings "forth fruit in the Christian, just as the sap of the vine brings forth the fruit in the branch," as a benefit of our communion with him.

Schaeffer's vision of true spirituality, of the life-affirming reality of the Christian's being united with Christ and sharing in his life and benefits, requires an understanding, however briefly in this context, of the following matters. Of course faith in Christ is at the heart of true spirituality, or the Christian way of life, but what is this faith and what exactly is its role within the Christian life? Furthermore, what is the Christian faith's distinctive vision of the truth about God, man, and the world?

What does it mean to have faith in Christ? Schaeffer rightly holds faith to be a certain kind of knowing that is (1) relational, (2) experiential, and (3) propositional or cognitive in nature. Regarding (3), faith, although more than believing, that is, more than being intellectually committed to the truth of some proposition, is not less than believing, because authentic Christian faith necessarily involves believing that certain propositions are true-such as those propositions contained in the Nicene Creed. In this sense, faith is about the objective content of truth (fides quae creditur) that is historic Christianity. Regarding (2), faith is a personal act, that is, the subjective act of trusting God (fides qua creditur), of committing my whole life to God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Closely connected to this aspect of faith is (3), where faith is also something relational, a mystical union between Christ and the individual believer. Says Schaeffer, "Christian mysticism is communion with Christ." And in this union with Christ I share in his life and benefits-such as the moral guilt of my sin is gone, my sins are forgiven, sin's power over my life is broken, sanctifying grace, hope, and eternal life-here and now, in the present life, Schaeffer tirelessly reiterates. Furthermore, in this mystical communion, "I am immediately in a new and living relationship with each of the three persons of Trinity," participating in the inner love-life of the whole Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. "First," Schaeffer adds, "God the Father becomes my father. Theologically, this is spoken of as adoption . . . When I receive Christ, on the basis of his finished work I become a child of God . . . Second, when I accept Christ as my Savior, I immediately come into a new relationship with God the Son. In theology, this is spoken of as our mystical union with Christ . . . Finally, the Bible says we also enter into a new relationship with the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. When we are justified, we are also and immediately indwelt by the Holy Spirit." Thus, faith is about Trinitarian communion and, consequently, the ongoing transformation of my whole existence in communion with the whole Trinity. Let us consider a little further what this means.

How then does the reality of faith function within the Christian life? The brief answer to this question here must be that Christ's finished work of salvation-his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension-encompasses the life of faith in its totality: justification, sanctification, and glorification. Justification deals with our true moral guilt, sanctification deals with the power of sin, and glorification deals with the substantial healing of human existence, here and now, a foretaste of the future complete redemption of the whole man, indeed the whole creation. Says Schaeffer: "Salvation is not just justification and then a blank until death; God never meant it to be so. Salvation is a unity, a flowing stream, from justification through sanctification to glorification." "Sanctification is," adds Schaeffer, "the most important consideration for the Christian now, because that is the point where we are. It is the present portion of salvation, and in this sense it is the most important consideration of the Christian now."

We can easily appreciate Schaeffer's excitement in discovering what was needed for properly understanding the meaning of Christ's saving work for our present lives is the biblical teaching that "salvation is a unity." Of course this is not just the conceptual unity of a doctrinal truth. It is, fundamentally, the indivisible unity of the objective realities of creation, fall and redemption through Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit. That is, Schaeffer understands sin to be radical, influencing the whole of creation, the whole spectrum of life, including the life of culture, but the meaning of Jesus Christ's redemptive work is, accordingly, equally radical because the whole fallen creation is reconciled in and through that work and, hence, is opened to the re-creating, i.e., restoring and renewing power, of God's Spirit.

What is the Christian faith's distinctive vision of the truth about God, man, and the world? First, God created the world good. Indeed, the creation, especially man who is its crown, actually manifests God's goodness. This manifestation of goodness is God's thesis, His affirmation, His Yes to the creation (Genesis 1:31).

Second, all creation is fallen through original sin. Human nature as a whole has lost its original harmony, and man is wounded at the very root of his being, estranged from God, from himself, and from his fellow humans. His humanity exhibits the marks of being sinful, prone to sin, with sin being a violation of God's will and purpose. This sinfulness denies God's thesis and has its beginnings in Genesis 3. God's response to man's sin is Yes, but also No. Yes, because God, full of love, mercy and grace, does not abandon the fallen creation. Indeed, Genesis 3:15 contains the first proclamation of the Messiah, the proto-evangelium. But also No, because God, judging man in the light of His perfect justice and holiness is the author of the antithesis, of the sign of contradiction between good and evil, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.

Third, the Redemption accomplished through Christ's finished work-His passion, death, resurrection, and ascension-abrogates the antithesis between sin and creation. God's original thesis is reasserted and reestablished, but also enriched, fulfilled, and perfected. This Redemption restores the very heart of human nature, causing the rebirth of the human self in Christ (Colossians 2:13; 2 Corinthians 5:17). This rebirth manifests itself in the integral redemption of the whole man in Christ through the fellowship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and with one another in them, which has been given to us in grace (Romans 5:5). Indeed, this redemption in Christ becomes a vision of cosmic redemption for the whole creation, including society and culture, God's grace in Christ restoring all life to its fullness in accordance with His will and purpose.

Against this background, Schaeffer rightly contends that: "We must allow [Jesus Christ] to bear his fruit through us. [O]ur calling is . . . to exhibit God and his character, by his grace, in this generation . . . in the whole spectrum of life and in the whole culture." Now, man's fall into sin affects the whole of human life, namely, first and foremost, man's relationship to God, and from there, his relationship to himself, to other men, to nature, indeed to every aspect of human life. The finished work of Jesus Christ should bring "substantial healing" to each of these areas of life: "healing which will be perfect in every aspect when Christ comes again in history in the future."

I cannot in this context do justice to the rich description and analysis Schaeffer offers of the separations in human existence brought about by sin. There are, however, a few of these about which I must say something. For example, man is separated from God and hence from himself because of a guilty conscience. Through the Holy Spirit's indwelling in man, his heart is renewed and transformed so as to love and obey God, but man still struggles with the frailty and weakness of human nature, and hence sin reenters his life. Says Schaeffer, "Now just as in the conscious area of sanctification as a whole, so here in restoration: everything rests upon the reality of the fact that the blood of Christ has meaning in our present life, and restoration takes place as we, in faith, act upon that fact in specific cases of sin." Thus, in Christ, who continues to call us to conversion, we are freed, in his mercy, from the true moral guilt of sin before a holy God.

Schaeffer contends that the whole of human nature is wounded by original sin and needs to be redeemed, made holy, sanctified. We have therefore another example of a separation that flows from man's revolt against God, namely, the knowing powers of human reason, which Schaeffer thinks, like Aquinas, suffers the wound of ignorance and is deprived of its direction toward truth. This fallen state leaves the proper ordering of our intellectual powers to the truth in a precarious, confused, and disordered state. True spirituality therefore frees the mind of the human person from its vanity, which is a darkened understanding, leading the person to turn away from the truth about God, the world, and ourselves. St. Paul writes, "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. That you put on the new man, created to be like God in righteousness and holiness of truth" (Ephesians 4:23-24). "This is not just an emotional holiness but holiness in relationship to [objective] content," adds Schaeffer, "holiness in relationship to thought and a set of things that can be stated as true, in contrast to that which is false. What is being dealt with here is the problem of internal ignorance in the sense of rebellion, turning from those things that are truth." Schaeffer's gloss on these verses is consistent with his emphasis that "The battle for man is centrally in the world of thought . . . [that is] either his believing God on the basis of the content of the gospel or his calling God a liar."

This last point brings me to the conclusion of my reflections on Schaeffer's legacy. A consistent theme throughout Schaeffer's writings is the claim that "biblical Christianity has an adequate and reasonable explanation for the source and meaning of human personality. Its source is sufficient-the personal God on the high order of Trinity." "Without such a source," adds Schaeffer, "men are left with personality coming from the impersonal (plus time, plus chance)." In arguing this point, Schaeffer stood firmly against the claim that Christianity and reason were permanently opposed to each other, that is, that the truth claims of Christianity had been overtaken by the progress of human reason. In this context, he especially criticized the claims of the naturalist-nature is all there is, there is no God, and man is just a part of nature-whose view of reality reflects a materialist understanding of man in which he is merely the chance product of matter in motion. In short, man lives in an impersonal universe, according to the materialist.

Schaeffer presents the materialist with the following disjunctive syllogism: "Either there is a personal beginning to everything, or one has what the impersonal throws up by chance out of the time sequence." The question is whether reality, especially human beings, finds its origin in the impersonal, plus time, plus chance? If so, doesn't that mean that "then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and are thus meaningless, [i.e., irrational] [?]" Schaeffer thinks so-that is, he thinks this conclusion is logically inescapable, namely, "you cannot find any deeper despair than this for a sensitive person. This [materialism] is not an optimistic, happy, reasonable or brilliant answer. It is darkness and death." This conclusion leaves man with the practical fear of the impersonal (the universe is ultimately silent), of nonbeing (of not knowing who I am and whether I have a valid, meaningful existence), and of death (with our hope being only in this life, it is doubtful whether life has any objective meaning or purpose at all).

In contrast, the Christian affirms the truth that there is a personal beginning to everything-the personal-infinite God who is there. As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger recently wrote, "The principle that represents the fundamental conviction of Christian faith and of its philosophy remains true: 'In principio erat Verbum'-at the beginning of all things stands the creative power of reason. Now as then, Christian faith represents the choice in favor of the priority of reason and of rationality . . . Even today, by reason of its choosing to assert the primacy of reason, Christianity remains 'enlightened', and I think," adds Ratzinger, "that any enlightenment that cancels this choice [see disjunctive syllogism above] must, contrary to all appearances, mean, not an evolution, but an involution, a shrinking, of enlightenment."

Schaeffer thought he had found the Achilles heal of materialism-Cardinal Ratzinger agrees, and so do I. He was persuaded that, not only did the serious Christian have nothing to fear intellectually from materialistic critics, but also that the Christian answer to the source and meaning of human personality "should make us overwhelmingly excited." "But more than this," Schaeffer adds, "we are returned to a personal relationship with the God who is there." Thus, he writes in a paragraph that summarize his most basic convictions: "If we are unexcited Christians, we should go back and see what is wrong [with our thinking]. We are surrounded by a generation that can find 'no one home' in the universe. If anything marks our generation, it is this. In contrast to this, as a Christian I know who I am; and I know the personal God who is there. I speak, and he hears. I am not surrounded by mere mass, or only energy particles, but he is there [and he is not silent]. And if I have accepted Christ as my Savior, then though it will not be perfect in this life, yet moment-by-moment, on the basis of the finished work of Christ, this person-to person relationship with the God who is there can have reality to me."

This is the fundamental truth of Christian faith. I learned it from Francis Schaeffer almost thirty-five years ago, and that is his very precious legacy to me.

[Dr. Eduardo J. Echeverria is a professor at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan. Originally published by Break Point (April-May 2005). Reprinted by permission of the author.]

Recommended reading:

• Escape from Reason
• The God Who Is There
• He is there and He is not silent
• The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century: Including the Church Before the Watching World
• How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture
• A Christian Manifesto
• The Great Evangelical Disaster
• Mark of the Christian
• The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy: The 3 Essential Books in 1 Volume/the God Who Is There/Escape from Reason/He Is There and He Is Not Silent
• The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer (5 Vol. Set)

Episcopalianism now "effete high church unitarianism"

Al Kimel, the widely-respected author of the Pontifications blog, who recently swam the Tiber, has been offering his observations, commentary, and critique of the ECUSA, the ecclesial community with which he was formerly affiliated, for some time now. Fourteen years ago he and five other Episcopal priests issued a summons to the Episcopal Church to return to biblical orthodoxy--The Baltimore Declaration. It goes without saying that things have heated up in the ECUSA considerably since that time. Last November, Kimel sounded the Gandalfian alarm to his fellow Episcopalians, "Fly, you fools!" And now, after having himself fled the madhouse, he offers some telling observations in a post entitled "Fleeing the Madhouse." Among his more salient observations: "The Episcopal Church has become an effete high church unitarianism." Read more ...

Why orthodox Catholics are angry with the Legion of Christ

Michael S. Rose
Vows of Silence. By Jason Berry and Gerald Renner. Free Press. 356 pages. $26.

Vows of Silence should be one of the most important books in better than a decade for conservative Catholics in the U.S. and beyond. Alas, it will not be. Jason Berry and Gerald Renner, conscientious and seasoned journalists, undermine their own effort with their openly stated liberal Catholic agenda. Moreover, the subtitle of the book, The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II gives a pretty good indication of the authors' bias. But John Paul II is given scant attention. This is not even a book about the papacy or Vatican politics. The book is about Fr. Thomas Doyle, who for two decades has heroically stood up for the victims of priestly sex abuse, and about Fr. Marcial Maciel [pictured left], who has been accused numerous times of sex abuse, and about his Legion of Christ and its lay affiliate Regnum Christi. The connection of John Paul to the Legion is just this: The Pope has put his weight behind the Legion in the past, which the Legion is quick to point out, repeatedly.

The Legion and its supporters have exploited the authors' bias in order to dismiss their thorough research. The people who ought to read Vows of Silence, mainly conservative Catholics who would likely be attracted to the manifest signs of Legion orthodoxy, are given a good reason not to take Barry and Renner's research seriously. Nonetheless, despite their liberal proclivities, the facts they assemble are very much worth examining.

When some of the book's material regarding sexual abuse allegations against Fr. Maciel were first published in the Hartford Courant, the neoconservative, hight-tax-bracket Catholics were quick to defend Maciel. With little or no first-hand knowledge of the situations being written about, prominent neocon Catholics such as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus or First Things, William Donohue of The Catholic League, Harvard professor Mary Ann Glendon, and Deal Hudson of Crisis magazine all denounced the Courant's series. Yet none of these neocons met with Maciel's accusers. The Legion and the neocons, both reputed to be interested in money and power, are allies. It's "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." But these neocons may come to regret their hasty judgments.

Vows of Silence deals with well-substantiated sexual abuse allegations from nine former Legionaries against Fr. Maciel, including--significantly-men who were high-ranking members of the order before bailing out. Over the past five or so years, the Legion has been denying the allegations, categorizing them as conspiracy, and publicly assassinating the character ofthese men without substantial proof--every one a well-respected professional, none of whom is seeking financial compensation.

One of the Legion's greatest skills seems to be character assassination without substantial evidence. When former Legionary Juan Vaca came forward with sex abuse allegations against Fr. Maciel, the Publisher and Editor in Chief of the Legion-owned National Catholic Register, Fr. Owen Kearns, derided Vaca as "a proud status-conscious man angered and disappointed at his professional failures," a man who wanted "greater power in the Legion." Juan Vaca was Director of the Legionaries in the U.S. when he resigned from the Legion. I have spoken with people who personally know Vaca. They say that Fr. Kearn's characterization of him couldn't be further from the truth. Berry and Renner paint the same picture: a mild-mannered, humble man.

The defense of Maciel by the Legion is essential because both Regnum Christi and the Legionaries of Christ are built around a cult of personality, that of Fr. Marcial Maciel. He is called Nuestro Padre (Our Father) and is regarded as a "living saint." From several accounts, Maciel appears to be a megalomaniac with a penchant for making theatrical appearances with spectacular arrivals, such as flying in on a personal helicopter into a crowd of squealing teens, perhaps in imitation of a rock star.

It is instructive to note here, as an aside, that during the past few years Maciel has canceled his spectacular appearances at the annual family day festivals in the U.S. In 2003 Maciel was scheduled to address the thousands gathered in Chcago. When he failed to arrive and event organizers played a video-taped address from the Legion founder, a reporter speculated in the Chicago Tribune that Fr. Maciel had failed to appear in Chicago because he feared American abuse-victims groups would protest his presence. The Tribune also pointed out that if Maciel were a priest operating in a U.S. diocese, the nine credible alligations of sex abuse would have caused him to be relieved of his priestly duties.

When I spoke to Jay Dunlap, the Legionaries' Communications Director, the following week about another topic, I asked him if there was any truth to the Tribune's report. "No," responded Dunlap. He dismissed the entire article as the immature work of a summer intern from Stanford University. I was expected to believe that this journalist from Stanford was all wet.

Why then did Fr. Maciel fail to appear in Chicago as scheduled? It's a long story, explained Dunlap. The official Legion PR line was this: Maciel had been on some important pastoral visit to South America. From there, he was scheduled to fly to Chicago. However, said Dunlapl, Maciel was diverted by a sudden request from some unnamed cardinal to return to Rome on some urgent business. "When a Vatican cardinal makes a request," said Dunlap, "Fr. Maciel can't exactly ignore it."

Thus, according to the official party line, Fr. Maciel did not appear in Chicago because he was called to Rome by a Vatican cardinal. This explanation would only sound plausible to someone who knows little to nothing about Church hierarchy. Heads of religious orders do not report or take quotidian orders from "Vatican cardinals." What urgent business?, I asked Dunlap. Dunno, he said.

Is the public really expected to believe that Maciel's "urgent business" in Rome couldn't wait one day--until after he addressed one of the largest gatherings of his lay movement? given that Berry and Renner report that Maciel has thrown lavish dinners in Rome for prominent Vatican cardinals, perhaps a better explanation would be that Maciel has to come running, Johnny-on-the-spot, to any and all "Vatican cardinals" so as to help guarantee that the cardinals in the Curia will protect him from sexual allegations swilling about him. Don't be so naive as to think that cardinals don't do that--remember Cardinal Law (now a Vatican cardinal)?

What about Maciel's scheduled appearance at the Family Gathering in 2002 in Baltimore; why did Maciel also cancel his appearance there? Dunlap was ready with his response: "You'll remember that was the week before the Pope was scheduled to visit Mexico City."

Yes, I told him, I remember.

"Well, Fr. Maciel was called to Mexico City to help the city prepare for the Pope's arrival."

This explanation was even more far-fetched than the Chicago excuse. Was I supposed to believe that Fr. Maciel "was called" to Mexico in order to hang tinsel a whole week before the Pope's arrival? And who called him to Mexico City?

The primary reason I called Dunlap in the first place was that Sophia Institute Press (which published two of my books: Ugly as Sin and Priest) had recently published Christ Is My Life by Fr. Maciel, a 304-page book that purported to be a candid interview with Jesus Colina, a Catholic journalist with the Rome-based Zenit News Agency, owned by the Legionaries. The book was being criticized as a propaganda tract used for recruiting new prospects into the movement. The fact that the Legion purchased 16,000 copies of the book jsut prior to the Chicago festival lends some credence to that claim.

I was asked to review the book for a national newspaper--not the NOR [New Oxford Review]. After reading Christ Is My Life--filled mainly with pious platitudes with little spiritual or theological depth-I discovered that former Legion seminarians and priests were denouncing the book, which was ostensibly autobiographical, as a string of fabrications--a concocted self-hagriography. Given the fact that the "interviewer" was a Regnum Christi member and Legion employee rather than an independent journalist, and that so many former Legion members disputed the historical facts, I felt like I had little to offer by way of a review. Moreover, I was not encouraged by the fact that the Leigion's website was promoting the book as "the fastest-selling Catholic book on the market today." That the Legion of Christ itself bought up 16,000 books upon publication for free distribution was what made Christ Is My Life a so-called bestseller--a marketing technique that smaks of duplicity.

A booklet on the life and times of Fr. Maciel written by Fr. J. Alberto Villasana, a Legion priest, paints Nuestro Padre [pictured left] as a veritable hero of the Cristero Revolt in Mexico. As a teenager, for example, he is said to have calmed the crowds in a near-riot, to have tended to wounded Cristeros, to have led anti-government protests, and to have miraculously escaped the bullets of a Communist assassin, all the while as a pious seminarian he chose to sleep on newspapers instead of a mattress and use a towel instead of a blanket. (For at least the past decade he's been chauffeured around in a Mercedes, has paid $9,000 a ticket to fly the supersonic Concorde across the Atlantic, and rents helicopters to keep crtain of his appointments in Mexico, Columbia, and the U.S.) Those who knew him at the time, however, inclujding Fr. Rogelio Orozco (one of the original group of boys to form the Legion in 1941) paint a portrait of a self-absorbed, spoiled, and sissified man, who was kicked out of seminary after seminary, and who literally made his teachers "recoil." Berry and Renner write that Maciel has crafted his own persona: "a heroic, saintly mask to cover his worldly genius at pulling money from the rich while hiding sex with boys in the closet...." The Legion counters by claiming that expulsion after expulsion--at one seminary he was given only half an hour to vacate--was caused by "misunderstandings."

Berry and Renner are in top form when debunking the string of alleged fabrications put forth in Maciel's autobiography. They have done their homework, digging into the source material and often finding dead ends: sources that don't exist, sources that turn out to be nothing more than verbal recountings of incidents from the mouth of Nuestro Padre to some Legion priest-chronicler. Sometimes the authors are even able to identify fault lines in Maciel's self-hagiography, especially when exact dates are given. For example, Fr. Maciel claimed that in June of 1946 he circumnavigated curial gatekeepers to gain access to Pope Pius XII. According to one of his hagiographic booklets, Nuestro Padre waited while the Holy Father "celebrated a solemn Mass of beatification" and when the ceremony was finished he got into the greeting line and allegedly said: "Holy Father, I am a Mexican priest and I have something important to tell you, but I don't have anyone to recommend me to you." First, Maciel had two uncles who were bishops. Second, Berry and Renner discovered that pius XII never beatified anyone in June of 1946.

Maciel's exaggerations apparently weren't limited to his autobiography. According to Federico Dominguez (not one of the accusers), a former Legionary and the secretary to whom Nuestro Padre dictated his letters for years, Fr. Maciel also liked to "exaggerate" in his correspondence with his rich patrons in Mexico: "he woul say we had three hundred students but there were only one hundred.... I began to have my doubts about him."

But exaggeration, invention, and lying weren't Fr. Maciel's only problems, attested Dominguez. One evening he went to Fr. Maciel's bedroom and found him there already in bed--in the dark with an adolescent boy, Juan Vaca.

Chapter after chapter of Vows of Silence is filled with horror stories from former Legion priests, seminarians, and Regnum Christi members. The pages are crammed with charges of brainwashing, manipulation, pederast seduction rituals, character assassination, bribes, drug abuse, gulag-type threats--you name it. The most interesting aspect of this expose is that even though the authors are avowedly liberal, a good number of the sources quoted are those who are self-defined orthodox Catholics. After all, the Legion consciously cultivates conservative Catholics, using a facade of pious traditionalism to draw them in. It should come as no surprise then that the harshest critics of the Legion are not liberal Catholics, but those who are staunchly conservative in their views of the Church. They are typically family-oriented, faithful Catholics who look to the Holy Father for direction, and embrace the teachings of the Catholic Church without reserve, and often attend Mass daily. Something is making these people very, very angry, and it's not the Legion's alleged fidelity to the Pope. Rather, it is the Legion's manipulative techniques used to lure them and their money into the movement. In short, their problem is with the Leigion's use of "orthodoxy" to manipulate faithful Catholics in order to build an empire, a "parallel church" (as one bishop expressed it).

According to the well-documented and well-researched material presented in Vows of Silence--and my own research over the past five years on Maciel and his order that confirms the facts in the book--the Legion has broken up families, destroyed schools, and pulled the wool over the eyes of many orthodox Catholics. That's part of the reason the order and its lay affiliate have been banned from certain dioceses, and are unwelcome on many Catholic campuses, including some notable conservative Catholic campuses (though only in an unwritten and informal way, I am told, so they won't risk losing any big doners).

One of the main problem is that there's been a rigorously observed media blackout among neo-conservative Catholic publications on the serious problems posed by the Legion of Christ, Regnum Christy, and Nuestro Padre. This is perhaps a story in itself.

The Legion's tentacles are far-reaching, as many staunchly conservative Catholics who have been burned by the Legion or Regnum Christi are afraid to speak out, for fear of retribution.

But thankfully, many talked on the record with Jason Berry and Gerald Renner. My advice is: Read the book and then make up your own mind.

[Michael S. Rose is author of several books including Goodbye, Good Men, on the homosexual cliques in many of our seminaries. He is a Contributing Editor of the NOR. This article was originally published as a Guest Column in NEW OXFORD REVIEW (May 2005), pp. 40-43. Reprinted with permission from NEW OXFORD REVIEW, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley CA 94706, U.S.A.]

Phytoestrogens in beer ...

Yesterday, Cornell University scientists released the results of a recent analysis that revealed the presence of female hormones in beer. Men should take a concerned look at their beer consumption. The theory is that beer contains female hormones (hops contains phytoestrogens) and that by drinking enough beer, men turn into women. To test the theory, 100 men were fed 8 pints of beer each within a 1 hour period. It was then observed that 100% of the test subjects: 1. Gained weight. 2. Talked excessively without making sense. 3. Became overly emotional. 4. Couldn't drive. 5. Failed to think rationally. 6. Argued over nothing. 7. Had to sit down while urinating. 8. Refused to apologize when obviously wrong. No further testing was considered necessary to validate this theory.