Vatican Scandals – Cult, Cult, Cult – Cash, Cash, Cash – Salvation? Marcial Maciel - Legion of Christ

An excellent article by Jason Berry regarding some info in leaked documents coming out of the Vatican regarding “Pedophile King Marcial Maciel” of the successful financial cult Legion of Christ, fully supported in its day and now currently being recycled in its assets, within the arms and definitions of the Roman Catholic church now under control of Benedict the German, pope.

It would seem that rather than clean up the cesspool cult and it brainwashing pedophile tendencies, Ratzinger and Bertone are too busy looting the wealth of Maciel’s religious empire before any reforms are likely to happen.

In a way, the RCC these days are merely a collection of very powerful financial cults that have nothing to do with religion or faith but raise nothing but money, money, money.

The phrase Berry uses in quotations haunted me when I read it because it reminded about the new Neocon usurped Catholic Church under John Paul II and Benedict XVI with their obsession of Cash over traditional Faith and or moral right and wrong. The phrase “elitism, a prison of status” reminds me not only of the corruption now being viewed in the current Vatileaks scandal in Rome but how corrupt the American electoral process has become similarly obsessed with cash, cash, cash over needs of balanced management in the governing of the American nation.

Marcial Maciel

Maciel is the grand-nephew of a Mexican saint canonized in 2007, Rafael Guízar Valencia, who also was an integral part of the founding of the Legion of Christ. There has been speculation that conduct by Maciel contributed to the death of this great uncle. 

According to an investigative report: The day before Bishop Guizar died, he had been heard shouting angrily at Marcial Maciel. He was giving his eighteen-year-old nephew a dressing down after two women had come to the bishop's house to complain about Maciel, who was their neighbor. Father Orozco, who was among the original group of boys to found the Legion of Christ in 1941, said he heard the women had complained about the "noise" Maciel was making with children he had brought into his home to teach religion. He said that the seminary officials blamed Maciel for his uncle's heart attack. 

Through the Legion of Christ and the Regnum Christi, Maciel started many schools, a network of Universities and a large number of charitable institutes. In January 2006 he stepped down as head of the Legion of Christ…

The Legion of Christ and the Vatican meltdown

Dr. Michael Langone, executive director of the International Cultic Studies Association sees classic signs of a cult at work in the Legion. A counseling psychologist and scholar with a long background in the field, he told NCR about his visit to Legion headquarters in Cheshire in 2003. He wanted a representative to appear at a conference for an open forum with critics of the order. "Fr. Owen Kearns [former U.S. spokesman for the order] told me that Maciel had a charism. I said, 'Well, suppose these allegations are true. That would not necessarily negate the good the Legion has done, or make all these young priests bad people.' His response was, 'It would mean I have been following a false charism.' Later I recalled C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, seeing that position as one of spiritual pride. We see this in cult environments all the time: elitism, a prison of status," Langone said…. 

Radio, TV and Internet were banned in the rooms of Legion and Regnum Christi lay celibates who lived in consecrated communities. Superiors read their mail, had to approve newspapers and books, and restricted their access to websites. 

The cult of personality that shielded Maciel's pathological sex life had another agenda: raising money. The Legion was Maciel's company. Prep school tuitions of $15,000 to $35,000, depending on the country and location, generated profit to support operations in Rome. Regnum Christi members kept school costs down by working without pay, while appealing to parents to give and give again. 

Raised in a well-to-do Mexico City family, Legion general director Corcuera advanced through an early Regnum Christi youth group. Fr. Luis Garza, the Legion vicar general -- in effect, the chief financial officer -- graduated from a Legion prep school in Monterrey, Mexico, one of eight siblings in the family of one Mexico's wealthiest industrialists. 

Garza oversees Integer, an internal mechanism Maciel created to keep certain assets off the Legion books, according to sources familiar with the finances. As Maciel siphoned off Legion funds -- which had been donated to a religious charity -- for support of his two women and four children, Integer was a means to control and shield accountability from church authorities. The former Regnum Christi insider explains: "If someone sues the Legion, they have no assets. If the pope says, 'Show me your assets,' well, we have no money."

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