BAD MUENSTEREIFEL, Germany (dpa) – A conservative order of priests, the Legion of Christ, is making advances within the Catholic Church that contrast markedly with the steady decline of longtime orders such as the Jesuits.
The Legion was founded in Mexico six decades ago, and is still led by its founder, Marcial Maciel, 81. It has spread through much of the world thanks to its success in recruiting young men willing to train for the priesthood.Church analysts say the Legion has achieved sufficient size to compete for the ear of the pope with classical men’s orders such as the Franciscans or the conservative Spanish-based movement Opus Dei.In style, much about the Legionaries, as they call themselves, recalls the church in the era before the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-1965 conference that reformed Catholicism. Members wear long black soutanes and spend long hours hearing confessions.Legionaries are especially devoted to Christ and his mother Mary, and cultivate respect for the pope and bishops, but as a German-based member stresses, they do not pray to the saints as is widespread in Latin America.Maciel, who said he decided at age 14 on the priesthood, founded the movement in the basement of a friend’s home in Mexico City in 1941. At that time he had just 13 youths assisting him.Today this congregation under pontifical law says it runs 145 schools, 9 universities and other houses of formations in 20 nations. It also says it has been accredited as a non-government organization by the United Nations.In publicity material, the Legion of Christ says it numbers nearly 480 priests.Ordinary Catholics who want to support the Legion join an auxiliary lay organization, Regnum Christi, which counts some 50,000 members. Its name means Kingdom of Christ.Regnum Christi boasts a recommendation from no less than John Paul II, who called it a sign of the new dawn of evangelization.Unlike most other religious orders, the Legion boasts a strong flow of new members, with its novitiates, or basic training institutions for future priests, currently training 2,500 young men for the priesthood, predominantly in Latin America.The Legion is a fierce opponent of the theology of liberation, a Latin American theological movement that highlights social injustice and says the Gospel compels Christians to taken an “option for the poor”.Conservative theological attitudes are taught in the congregation’s intellectual centres, particularly the Regina Apostolorum papal university in Rome, the movement’s principal institute of learning.Many bishops have chosen to educate young diocesan priests in the Legion’s seminaries. The Legion’s own trainees generally start studies for the priesthood at a younger age than regular priests do.Sponsorship of its educational institutions by donors is a major source of the Legion’s earnings, according to a member at Bad Muenstereifel near Bonn, where the Legion has run a novitiate since 1991.“We rely largely on the generosity of people who are convinced that our era needs a supply of new, well-trained priests,” he said.Christian Weisner, a Catholic activist who leads a German ginger group called “We are the Church” in Germany, calls it a “rather odd and quite a well-oiled” system of fund-raising.He argues that it creates additional pressure on seminarians to go through with ordination. Instead of examining their sense of religious vocation, they might feel bound to join the priesthood to repay the generosity of the sponsors, Weisner said.Regnum Christi is just establishing itself in Germany, where there are 30 Legion priests at work, a spokesman said. The first major venture in German-speaking Europe was to accept operating responsibility for a Vienna school, he explained.The Legion has attracted controversy in the United States and critics in Germany have suggested that Legionaries cultivate a “martial” style and a fixation on authority.“Their missionary zeal relies on the susceptibility and motivation of young people who are often not aware that they are getting lodged in an authority structure rather like that of a sect, from which they can only escape later with great difficulty,” Weisner said.That, asserts Weisner, is not consistent with Roman Catholic teaching that there are many ways to God.
