CNS reporter gushes over Maciel's legacy in Mexico

Catholic News Service has finally published something regarding the Maciel scandal: a glowing report of Maciel's legacy in his hometown of Cojita, Mexico.

And when I mean glowing, I do mean glowing. Only two paragraphs talk at all about what Maciel did, the second and the last. Here's one paragraph:

So when allegations of sexual abuse of young men surfaced against the priest and, more recently, the acknowledgment by the Legionaries of Christ that their founder fathered a child, many in Cotija failed to allow the news to negatively color their views of the late Father Marcial Maciel Degollado.

Let's be clear: these are "allegations" of sexual abuse of young men only in the sense that we do not know which ones are true. Some of them are true.

There are 49 words in the above paragraph. The other ~800 are devoted to praise.

The article ends this way:

"I think that God should be the final judge," said Rosa Maria Rangel, who runs a cheese store. She added that few in Cotija held negative opinions of Father Maciel, prompting one young employee to object. When asked why she held a negative opinion, Leobardo Medina, 26, responded, "For what he did."

Again, we need to be clear: no one is claiming to know definitively the final state of Maciel's soul. We are only, in fact, just learning the full extent of his grave earthly sins. It shouldn't be surprising that a man as powerful as Maciel, who was synonymous with the Church to the people who knew him, and about whom these allegations only recently were admitted to as being true in any form ... should end up having "few negative opinions" among the general populace at this point.

Finally, Leobardo (why the masculine word ending if she is a woman?) has it right: one can hold a negative opinion about Maciel "For what he did." We can have negative opinions about people known to have gravely sinned against and injured their fellow men and women.

Let's review what Maciel did:

• Broke his priestly vows in having a sexual relationship with a woman, whom he conceived a child with
• Evidently misused Legionary funds - monies given to him in trust by the Church
• Sexually abused young boys in his charge, over an extended period of time
• Betrayed his fellow Legionary brothers and consecrated lay women through his actions
• Deceived the members of the movement whenever he did any of the above things

Any man who does these sorts of things, and dies without ever publicly repenting or seeing to the good of the order he left behind, would give me cause to form a negative opinion about him.

(Oh, and by the by - the story's author, David Agren, has written for Regnum Christi. I mean, you'd think that factoid would be worth a disclosure, would you not?)