Saturday, May 16, 2009

Timeline additions

Thanks to those of you who have commented on and added to the Legionary timeline, exlcblogger publicly. Let’s all keep adding. As one of you said, a “timeline is a good way to view MM's life in its entirety, to avoid considering the mistress and daughter as mere evidence of a one time lapse, but rather as a lapse among many lapses that spanned a lifetime and was really part of a lifestyle.”

I have added the death of Servant of God, Maura Degollado Guizar, “Mama Maurita,” Father Marcial Maciel’s mother, on Christmas Day 1977. Can any of you confirm that Father Maciel was away for a number of days at the time and missed her funeral? Father Maciel seemingly missed the canonization of his great uncle, Rafael Guízar Valencia, perhaps for ill health, on 15 October 2006.

Another friend writes about the color film documentary made of Father Maciel’s ordination in 1944, how extraordinary the arrangements must have been to pull off a color film in Mexico at the time, and how he saw the film several times in his years in the Legion. “The camera man keeps panning up above Maciel, where there is the actual, original image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and a strong light, I think it's sunlight through a window. When I saw it, I always thought the camera man thought he saw some sort of miraculous sign going on with the strong light and was trying to capture the miracle on film, sort of like Fatima or something. Also creepy about the version we were shown in Novitiate, is that they used Maciel's voice narrating how the ordination took place. There is slow, sort of new age/mystical type music in the background while Maciel's slow, relaxed voice explains what happened that day.”

To those who task me with disrespecting luminaries Mary Ann Glendon and George Weigel by casting their words back at them: I understand how much good they have done and how anyone can make a mistake, but do they understand the spiritual agony they inflicted from their privileged places when they imputed unorthodoxy to those who found it perfectly obvious that the Legionaries, their well-sounding words to the contrary, were manipulative and corrupt?

1 comment:

  1. "do they understand the spiritual agony they inflicted from their privileged places when they imputed unorthodoxy"

    I don't see that in the Weigel quote in the timeline. Are you referring to some other quote? Unless he joined in the attack I'd say his belated realization that the Legion's leadership is manipulative to the core and strong statements to that effect are enough.

    (First Things still has to address Fr. Neuhaus's role)

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