Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [108]
The Cardinal grumbled a little about his predecessor in Colombia who had sold a house near the seminary and it would have been wonderful to have the seminarians nearby … The Cardinal told us who had donated the house and how a wealthy gentleman in Colombia had given the old bishop money … The Cardinal continued to tell us how when he was young he was “very tough” and sometimes he now felt sorry and ashamed for things he had done as a bishop.73
Another seminarian reports on Bishop Onésimo Cepeda of Ecatepec, Mexico, saying that calm had come to Chiapas (where Zapatista guerrillas captured three cities in 1994) and Bishop Samuel Ruiz “had ceased his propaganda.” The seminarian sneers at Ruiz as “a supporter of the rights of natives and liberation theology, and fighting against the Legionaries.” Ruiz, who preached nonviolence to Zapatista rebels, was beloved among the poor.74
The seminarians’ sophomoric reports display a sycophancy in seeking favor with superiors. Portraying a bishop allied with the poor as a Legion enemy fits Maciel’s formula: the Legion on the right side, conspiracies on the other.
Glenn Favreau felt regret for the role he played in developing files on North American College seminarians in the early 1990s. Maciel told “specially chosen brothers” to befriend men “who were likely going to be officials in their dioceses one day, or even bishops,” says Favreau. Legionary brothers filled out reports to “the superiors on progress with each seminarian, about the potential we saw in each one. It was a well-organized system of espionage.” One seminarian in the files was a son of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.75
As the 2002 abuse crisis intensified, Maciel exposed fault lines in the Vatican. From his First Things office, Neuhaus reacted to news coverage of the charges against Maciel in the CDF. (José Barba, incensed at four years’ delay, had broken the Vatican-requested silence.)76 Neuhaus denounced “vicious gossip” and praised Maciel for “virile holiness of tenacious resolve that has been refined in the fires of frequent opposition and misunderstanding.” He continued: “A cardinal in whom I have unbounded confidence and who has been involved in the case tells me that the charges are ‘pure invention, without the slightest foundation.’ ” Neuhaus, now deceased, never revealed his source, but the cardinal “involved in the case” was probably Ratzinger, who had confronted nothing like it in his storied career. Neuhaus insulted Maciel’s victims: “After a scrupulous examination of the claims and counter-claims, I have arrived at moral certainty that the charges are false and malicious.”77
As Neuhaus’s defense spread via Legion websites into translations for Spanish and Latin American supporters, Maciel became an albatross for Ratzinger who was, ironically, one of the few cardinals who didn’t take the money. When ABC reporter Brian Ross and a camera crew surprised Ratzinger outside a Vatican doorway and asked about Maciel, the cardinal slapped Ross’s wrist, fuming, “Come to me when the moment is given. Not yet!”78 The footage was indelible.
The Legion disinformation strategy was fraying as more men left the order, connecting via the Internet with Genvieve Kineke, who saw Regnum Christi as a scam, and Paul Lennon, a family therapist in Alexandria, Virginia, who had left the Legion in 1984, not as a sexual victim, but in protest against Maciel’s domineering behavior. Lennon formed ReGAIN Network to post information and probe the cultlike dynamics. Maciel, age