Many thanks to those who have commented on previous posts, especially the former LC/RC members. Several of the comments provide lengthy and disturbing examples of attempts to impose a “false conscience” in a group situation, in blatant violation of Christian morality and canon law, and with the apparent intent to mislead “outsiders”, even the hierarchy.

As I have been proposing in this series, these types of uncanonical practices are, alas, hardly exclusive to the Legionaries or Regnum Christi. They flourish in other movements as well and carry the same potential for serious abuse. Even when the abuse does not reach the extreme of covering sexual crimes, the damage done to individual Christians—to their faith, conscience, and trust in the goodness of God—can be severe. The fact that the patterns of abuse can go on for years, without ecclesial intervention (whether because of ignorance, or indecision, or turning a blind eye because “so much good is being done”), extends the damage to the whole Church.

The crux of the problem of the creation of “false conscience” in abusive movements is the attempt to impose a model of religious obedience that in any given situation trumps all other considerations, including the Church’s own standards for operating set down in canon law,  obligations due legitimate authority “outside” the movement, whether ecclesial or secular, and even Church teachings and the plain meaning of the Gospel. In a manner reminiscent of war criminals excusing their behavior with the “I was just obeying orders”, abusive spiritual leaders will often misappropriate and exaggerate concepts of religious obedience for their own ends—e.g., by taking literally the Ignatian dictum that one should “be a corpse in the hands of his superiors.” In so doing, abusive organizations put their members in the absurd and spiritually damaging situation of being made to feel guilty for doing good or for refusing to do evil; for following one’s conscience, even when one’s conscience is in accord with the teachings of Christ and the Church. Like Cardinal Newman, who in spite of all his learning and wisdom was troubled by the deeply ingrained “false conscience” that the pope was the Antichrist—this, for years after he knew on every rational and theological level that it was nonsense—it may take years for the victim of an abusive organization to free himself emotionally and spiritually from the truly evil notion that one can do no evil as long as it is commanded by a superior and is intended for the furtherance of an organization which aims to “save souls”.

As a reminder that the Legionaries are far from being the only group accused of this kind of warped and warping formation, I’d like to share a friend’s story told me some years ago, which occured in a different movement.

A well-educated cradle Catholic who had undergone an intense “reversion” experience, my young friend joined a Catholic lay organization with canonical status and an evangelistic mission. Eventually he took a paid position at the organization’s headquarters. This involved uprooting his young family to another state; but though initially excited to be given the privilege of earning a living, however modest, while working “for the Church”, the young man quickly discovered, however, that in this new ecclesial movement, twelve and fourteen hour work days, six and even seven days a week were the norm. The young man’s work was largely oriented towards recruitment and fundraising activities, and the long hours were intersperse with lengthy chapel prayers and retreats, led by the group’s Founder, whose primary purpose at the pulpit seemed to be to stir his followers to increasing levels of commitment and obedience to “the charism of the Founder”. At all times, what “was good for the organization” was equated with what was good for the Church.

Whatever the Founder’s “charism”, however, far from inducing a joyous or prayerful Christian atmosphere in the organization, the Founder’s temperament, even at the lectern, was so angry, negative and paranoid in tone that work became a living Purgatory—this, while the Founder waxed thoughtful, meditative, pious, and self-deprecating among visiting prelates or long-distance members on retreat. According to my young friend, the “cognitive dissonance” he experienced on a daily basis was acute.

Moreover, as the young man (and others who worked at the center) soon learned, the Founder’s strict Catholic faith did not prevent him from”playing hard ball”, as he liked to put it, both within the organization, in his treatment of underlings, and in business dealings with members or vendors in the local and wider Catholic community. This “hard ball” was excused by comments like, “even the saints had faults”, or “if you think this is tough, try the Legionaries or Opus Dei”, or by a constant name-dropping of all the ecclesial higher-ups who supported the organization’s mission, but who (of course) had no idea how things were run on the ground. (Visiting clergy and hierarchy were kept busy doing promotional video shoots and steered clear of potential contacts with lower-rung members who could not be trusted to be discreet.)

According to the young man, the Founder once claimed that “24 hours of a member’s day belong to the organization”. He made the message stick by putting  families “under obedience” to send their children to certain schools, or to live in the neighborhood of his choice. The primary role of spouses and families, according to the Founder, was to “free up the member for his vocation”, primarily by not complaining when wife and children never saw their husband/father. Single or married, all members were admonished never to discuss group issues with “outsiders”, even their parish priests in the confessional.

Eventually, the Founder began choosing members’ “spiritual advisors” for them, and often this person, usually a layman, was also the member’s work supervisor. As may be imagined, our young man began to feel as if a noose were tightening around his neck, and that of his entire family, and began to question whether the organization was as much “of the Holy Spirit” as he had originally thought. When the young man discovered, much to his Founder’s chagrin, what was in the code of canon law about how ecclesial movements should be run, or how the volunteers under his supervision should be treated, he began to see the handwriting on the wall. In this troubled state of mind he prayed for guidance, for some “sign” as to what he should do, especially since he had learned to be afraid, given the Founder’s tendency to make public Judases out of anyone who crossed him, of what would happen if he tried to leave. In desperation, the young man began a nine-day novena to the Divine Mercy.

While this was taking place, the young man had been set to work on an advertising insert for the organization, to be placed in a widely circulated Catholic newspaper. Part of a very expensive media campaign, the group’s Founder was very excited about the fundraising possiblities from the insert, and was expecting a large return on the organization’s investment. But in the course of his work, the young man had been warned by the advertising specialist who was printing the insert, and who had much experience with Catholic media campaigns, that such inserts rarely produced enough even to cover expenses. The young man informed the leader of the advertiser’s warning, both in person and in a written memo, and the potential for failure was discussed in meetings with the Founder and several of the administrative staff; but the leader overuled all objections, so convinced was he that God was going to bless the group with a great fundraising success.

The media insert did indeed turn out to be a miserable failure in terms of fundraising, and the organization was suddenly faced with thousands of dollars of debt, some of it owed to the newspaper, some of it to the advertiser who had printed the piece. Rather than accept the consequences of his executive decision, however, the Founder tried to blame the failure on his staff’s lack of faith and negative attitude. Then he ordered my young friend to write a letter, in the young man’s name, not the Founder’s, stating that the advertiser—the very man who had warned them all of the likelihood of failure if fundraising was the objective— had given him “positive assurances” that the organization would at least get back its investment on the project. My young friend, who believed that the Founder was intending the proposed letter as a preliminary to refusing to pay what was owed, and possibly even to setting him up as a “fall guy” if things devolved into legal action, reminded the Founder that not only was what he was suggesting a lie, but that the advertiser was himself a good Catholic and conscientious business man with a young family to support, and shouldn’t be out thousands of dollars because of the organization’s actions.

Notwithstanding, the Founder insisted that the letter he was asking for was all “standard business practice” and that the young man should be able to write the letter in good conscience. (The Founder, by the way, had recently made himself the young man’s “spiritual adviser” as well as his boss.)

This confrontation took place on the last day of our young man’s novena to the Divine Mercy. As dreadful as it was, he was almost relieved to receive so clear a sign as to the nature of his situation, and whether something was terribly wrong in that organization, and he realized he needed to figure out how to get out of there as soon as possible. He refused to write the letter, of course, and told the Founder, who was not pleased, that if he felt that was the truth in his conscience, he would have to write the letter himself. (He never did, as far as my young friend knew, nor did he ever find out what went down with the advertising debt.)

I don’t want to make this episode sound like it was a simple matter of conscience for our young group member, because by his account, it was excruciating, a true dark night of the soul. He was only able to “do the numbers” finally about the organization because a situation had arisen with a (to him) crystal clear moral resolution, whatever his Founder’s insistence that it was an ordinary business matter, or that it was spiritual pride on his part to insist on his own discernment over that of the Founder of an organization that enjoyed so much ecclesial support. But by this time my young friend had already given several years of his (and his family’s) life to the organization, and the pressure subsequently put on him, before he could finally extricate himself, was intense. It included variations on shunning, the back-chatted circulation of calumnies, and even the suggestion on the part of a priest attached to the group that the young man needed an exorcism to dispel a spirit of rebellion. (This same priest, who reported directly to the Founder, had a disturbing tendency to ask my young friend, during their confessions/conferences, whether “we are still in the seal of the confessional”. On at least one occasion my friend heard the Founder repeat something to him that he had only told the priest, and in what he thought had been the context of confession.)

After that, the young man told me, he was in so much spiritual pain that the next time he went to Mass, when he remembered that his Founder (and the too-compliant priest) went to Communion every day,  he could barely summon the will to go to Commuunion himself, and the Body of Christ tasted like ashes on his tongue.

(Some of my readers may recognize part of this from my novel: the young man’s story made such an impression on me that I ended up using it in a fictionalized form. I mean, who could make this stuff up?)

I’m not sure what religion this is, but anyone who thinks that it is in this manner that souls will be led to a salvific encounter with Christ are tragically mistaken. Moreover, movements such as these, however much they tout their spiritual success, tend to display a pattern of revolving-door memberships, a small cadre (“Gideon’s Army”) of no-matter-what devotés, and a trail behind them littered with spiritual and psychological casualties—ex-members who are too battered or frightened to raise the general alarm, and wouldn’t know how to do so even if they had the will for it. The problem is, too many of our young people and laity, even priests, are simply not well formed enough (outside the hothouse environment of the movement itself) to discern the difference between true religious obedience and the abnegation of one’s personal spiritual or moral duty when a “superior” comes between.

I’d like to close with another quote from Cardinal Newman, this from his Idea of a University, in which he argues, among other things, for the importance of education and true intellectual and spiritual formation for Catholic laymen—something which was in short supply in the Church of his day, and is still, if today’s confusion over the Maciel scandal and abusive practices in various Catholic movements is any indication:

It were well if none remained boys all their lives; but what more common than the sight of grown men, talking on political or moral or religious subjects, in that offhand, idle way, which we signify by the word unreal? “That they simply do not know what they are talking about” is the spontaneous silent remark of any man of sense who hears them. Hence such persons have no difficulty in contradicting themselves in successive sentences, without being conscious of it. Hence others, whose defect in intellectual training is more latent, have their most unfortunate crotchets, as they are called, or hobbies, which deprive them of the influence which their estimable qualities would otherwise secure. Hence others can never look straight before them, never see the point, and have no difficulties in the most difficult subjects. Others are hopelessly obstinate and prejudiced, and, after they have been driven from their opinions, return to them the next moment without even an attempt to explain why. Others are so intemperate and intractable that there is no greater calamity for a good cause than that they should get hold of it.