Three statements you should roll your eyes at:
1. “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
2. “I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
3. “None of the current superiors had knowledge of the behavior we now know about our founder…”.
That last one is a new quote from a top official in the Catholic religious order the Legionaries of Christ, the founder of which — the late Fr. Marcial Maciel — was a bigamous dope fiend who molested the children he had outside of wedlock, while he was leading the rich, powerful, ultraconservative religious order. Catholic blogger Mark Shea sarcastically observes that you are being asked to believe that Maciel was able to achieve “world historical fraud” all by himself, with no knowledge or help from anybody else in the Legion. About the Legion, Mark says, “The whole thing needs to be taken apart, brick by brick, till there is nothing left.”
Notice that on the official Regnum Christi website, on their historical timeline of their organization, they mention all kinds of events in the life of Maciel … but somehow, neglect to mention the Late Unpleasantness (the founder-priest’s posthumous outing as a drug-addled, child molesting bigamist). Same thing on the Legion of Christ website, in its historical timeline. It’s like the moral catastrophe that caused the Vatican to take over the order never happened. Those are little things, but they’re small signs that make you see why the “taken apart, brick by brick” judgment is solid. The new guy Pope Benedict appointed to clean up the order has quite a job ahead of him.