American Papist: Not Your Average Catholic!: Text: Dr. Grisez's Comment on Fr. Berg's letter

An official comment on Fr. Thomas Berg's letter to Regnum Christi, by Dr. Germain Grisez, Flynn Professor of Christian Ethics at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

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Posted at the request of the author, Dr. Grisez, on February 10th, 2009.

In writing his personal note “To my beloved Regnum Christi Family,” Fr. Thomas Berg, LC, did something beautiful. His note manifests pastoral love—genuine charity unconstrained by solidarity with the Superior General of the Legionaries of Christ, who seems to love Maciel too much to put himself, even now, in the place of each of those whom the “Father Founder” betrayed. Everyone touched by Fr. Berg’s love owes him admiration and gratitude for his heroic act.
To appreciate the significance of Fr. Berg’s personal note, one need only compare it with the letter written by Fr. Alvaro Corcuera, the Legionary Superior-General, to the members of Regnum Christi (published by Zenit here). Most of that letter consists of generalities that might have been written to any flock by its pastor during any hard time. The section of Fr. Alvaro’s letter specifically responding to Maciel’s wrongful behavior ignores his injury to his spiritual family. Grateful for the good that God did through the “Father Founder,” Fr. Alvaro slips past the evils Maciel inflicted on his spiritual children, and addresses their suffering and pain as if it were little more than the grief they might have felt on hearing of a saintly founder’s happy death:
In the present case, regarding the person of our Father Founder, I cannot but recognize all the good I received through him. Through the charism he passed on to us, many people have received from God what has given meaning to our lives: love for Christ, the Blessed Virgin, the Church, the Pope and souls. These are our loves. On a personal level, I am grateful to him for being the instrument God used to give my entire life meaning, seeking eternal salvation, the path to God. This is the truth I experienced, and it would be impossible to find enough words to thank him.
It is also true that he was a man, and these things that have hurt and
surprised us—and I don’t believe we can explain with our reason alone—have already been judged by God. It is true that we are going through much suffering and a great deal of pain. As in a family, these pains draw us together and lead us to suffer and rejoice as one body. This circumstance we are living invites us to look at everything with much faith, humility and charity. Thus we place it in the hands of God, who teaches us the way of infinite mercy.
For my part, I ask forgiveness for all this suffering. And I beg God with all my being to help us all to see it from the heart of Christ.
This response—so detached from the horrible reality of Maciel’s wrongful behavior and its effects on his victims—will be welcomed by anyone who hates the Legionaries of Christ. Such a person will use the serene response as evidence that the Legionaries and members of Regnum Christi are brain-washed participants in a cult. However, that unjust judgment cannot stand against Fr. Berg and other good and faithful members of the Legionaries and Regnum Christi, who were complicit neither in Maciel’s wrongdoing nor in its concealment, and who benefited from the good God did through Maciel while not being corrupted by his duplicity.
Of Maciel’s wrongful behavior, Fr. Alvaro says: “I don’t believe we can explain [it] with our reason alone.” I agree. Such duplicity had to be diabolical. It seems that Satan meant to use Maciel to found a cult, so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect. But our Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit outsmarted Satan, and the Founding Father has left behind a truly Christian family burdened with a horrible legacy. Unfortunately, incidental to that legacy are some defective practices that have troubled many good parents and moved some good bishops to exclude Legionaries from their dioceses.
With the grace of God that created and has sustained it, the Christian family Maciel left behind can survive and flourish provided its members completely reject his horrible legacy and make a clean break with the past. To do that, they must not share Fr. Alvaro’s complacency but urgently seek the personal intervention of Pope Benedict XVI, for which George Weigel (in First Things) and I have called (on these pages). Only a special and thorough apostolic visitation can fully and credibly free the Christian family Maciel left behind from his horrible legacy and everything incidental to it.
To the Pope’s personal intervention, the alternative—which Satan surely desires—is that Fr. Alvaro and the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life will go on as if all were now well. In that case, there will be no credible cleansing of the Founding Father’s legacy, and the genuine common good of the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi will decompose, to the spiritual detriment of all the good and faithful members of that Christian family, and with immeasurable loss to the Catholic Church as a whole.