Benedict, John Paul II, And Child Abuse
June 16, 2008

If you want to know how the current Pope handled very credible, very well-documented and overwhelming evidence that a very powerful associate had long been a child-abuser, check this [film] out. The abuse-case that caused the Pope to lose his temper - to the point of a prissy smack - was Father Marcial Maciel. Until his death earlier this year, Maciel ran a large, far-right Catholic cult called the Legionaries of Christ. The Legionaries and their lay counterpart, Regnum Christi, are very powerful entities in the new Catholicism, given special protection by Pope John Paul II and much favor under his successor. And at the core of the Legionaries, like many religious cults, was a sexual abuse ring designed to please the founder. Secrecy was maintained by indoctrinating many members at a young age, and enforcing vows of silence on all topics related to Maciel. This cult-like stricture is still causing grief and suspicion in many parts of the Catholic world, most recently in the Baltimore archdiocese.
The reason I bring this up today is because journalist Jason Berry, of the Hartford Courant, has a new and gripping documentary on Maciel and the abusive cult-like practices he pioneered. It's called "Vows Of Silence"; and it carefully exposes the appalling facts of the enmeshment of the last two Popes in covering up sexual abuse and protecting a serial predator. Maciel was a sadly twisted gay man, who committed many acts of abuse, pederasty and pedophilia against other men and boys under his control. He is also a hero to the theoconservative movement, the leaders of which have yet to come to terms with his appalling record. Much of this the Vatican eventually conceded - but never held Maciel fully accountable for, part from asking him in his final years to recede from public view. More to the point: Maciel's abuse was known to Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI for years, and they did nothing about it. The Maciel case is important because it reveals the current and former Pope to be knowing, conscious protectors of a child abuser and shows how the sick sexual dysfunction at the heart of the Catholic hierarchy was abetted and fomented at the very, very top.
I watched the film the other night and even after following this issue for years, was shocked at the gravity and specificity of the charges. The theocons still deny Maciel's guilt, of course. But many of them have long stopped valuing truth over power. --Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, at theatlantic.com

Documentary on Maciel lifts curtain on Legion, Vatican judicial system
April 28, 2008 (excerpts)

The case of Fr. Marciel Maciel Degollado, founder of the controversial order of priests known as the Legionaries of Christ, occupies a sadly distinctive place in the long history of clergy sex abuse in the Catholic church. A new documentary by Jason Berry, Vows of Silence, details the arduous path victims faced in bringing Maciel's abuse to the Vatican's attention. If many were surprised by Pope Benedict XVI's emphasis on the sex abuse crisis during his recent visit to the United States, the action he took against Maciel early in his papal tenure signaled that he viewed the crisis as a more serious matter than his predecessor, and that he intended to confront it more directly. Maciel was ultimately disciplined by Benedict in 2006, two years before Maciel's death. A cardinal on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who refused to be identified, told NCR at the time that the material accumulated in the investigation left little doubt about the validity of charges brought, in another official's description, by more than 20 but fewer than 100 accusers. Berry's pioneering investigative reporting helped break the sex abuse story nationally in 1984 and his reporting on Maciel and the Legion, much of it appearing in NCR, arguably pushed the Vatican to reopen its investigation of Maciel. In the documentary, he takes the disparate strands of a story that has been told over years as it developed and weaves them together into a coherent whole. The documentary exposes a papacy that paid little attention to the warning signs of the scope of the scandal and a church judicial system at times more interested in obscuring or ignoring the truth than pursuing it. [The documentary] details the lengthy stop-and-go investigation by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which ultimately took testimony from scores of witnesses from Europe, Latin America and the United States.
Former priests and seminarians, some of whom joined the Legionaries when they were as young as 10 years old, tell of the secrecy the order fosters, and the indoctrination they underwent in the belief that Maciel was a living saint. Former members describe the private vow, repeatedly emphasized, that prohibited members from uttering anything negative about nuestro padre, our father, as Maciel was referred to. Mail was screened, contact with families was limited and access to the Internet in recent years was so severely restricted that a magna cum laude graduate of Marquette University who was a member of the Legion said he only learned of the charges against Maciel years after he joined the order when he was sent to Rome, where he had access to the Internet. Even then, he was forbidden by the private vow, which since has been banned by Pope Benedict XVI, from telling other members of the order about the charges.
The documentary was shot in Mexico, Italy and various cities in the United States and includes the little-covered biography of Maciel who, as a young man, was twice expelled from seminaries for reasons not disclosed. He was eventually ordained by an uncle, who was a bishop, and his entire life as a priest was spent building his order and raising funds.
[Tom Roberts is news director and editor-at-large for NCR.] --Tom Roberts, The National Catholic Reporter

Some think of the church scandals as a cluster of passing episodes. But the deeper and continuing scandal is less a matter of sex than of power — the power over human lives that fosters, protects and covers up clerical arrogance. That is the important and lasting story Jason Berry tells in this shocking film.