2 Legionary Priests to Madison Diocese, Wisc

Father Cliff Ermatinger had always wanted to be a Catholic priest, but he'd begun to doubt the path he'd taken, through the order known as the Legionaries of Christ.

Then, last year, Legion leaders and the Vatican all but confirmed what had been rumored for decades: that the Legion's late founder had lived a double life as a philandering husband and notorious pedophile.

Ermatinger knew then it was time to go.

"As soon as I knew the truth, I knew what I had to do," said Ermatinger, who took over this week as pastor at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church on Milwaukee's south side. "It was like a light went on, and I just started preparing myself."

Ermatinger, 46, is one of two Legionaries who have asked to shift their affiliation to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. Father Robert Weighner, 47, starts his new post at St. Anne's Parish in Pleasant Prairie on Monday.

The men, both of whom are in a three-year discernment process required to leave an order, are thought to be the first Legionaries to work in the archdiocese.

"They're coming at the invitation . . . of Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki," archdiocese spokeswoman Julie Wolf said in an e-mail. "He knows them both and feels like they would be an asset to the archdiocese."

The Legionaries of Christ, one of the wealthiest and most influential orders in the Catholic Church, has been rocked in recent years by revelations that its founder, the late Marcial Maciel Degollado, had fathered several children by at least two women and molested young seminarians over decades.

Maciel, who died in 2008, was banned from public ministry in 2006, but it wasn't until this year that the Vatican fully acknowledged his sins, issuing a statement saying he had committed "true crimes" and condemning him as immoral and devoid of scruples and "authentic religious feeling."

Dozens of Legion priests have moved to leave the order in the year since the Vatican launched a sweeping investigation of Maciel and the Legion, said Jack Keogh, a former priest who recounts 20 years in the order in his memoir, "Driving Straight on Crooked Lines."

"Many, especially younger American recruits, resent the fact that the Vatican and their superiors hid the truth about Maciel from the rank and file for so long," he said.

Weighner and Ermatinger, both of whom spent two decades in the Legion in posts around the world, said the revelations affected their decisions to leave. However, both said they'd been contemplating diocesan life for some time.

Founded by Maciel in Mexico 1941, the conservative Legion had drawn a worldwide following with as many as 800 priests, 2,500 seminarians, and 70,000 in its lay organization, Regnum Christi, according to some estimates. Its assets have been estimated at more than $33 billion.

Allegations of abuse had dogged Maciel for years, but he avoided Vatican scrutiny, according to some news accounts, by plying key cardinals with gifts and money.

Derided by some as a cult, the order has been described as strict and secretive. It's been banned from some U.S. dioceses and barred from working with minors in at least one other because of its persuasive methods of attracting young recruits.

Both Ermatinger and Weighner joined the Legion as young men in their 20s.

"I was drawn by the mission and formation, the stress on spiritual growth and study," said Ermatinger, a Chicago native who was a student of Listecki's when he taught at Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary.

Ermatinger, who speaks six languages and has authored books on spirituality, hesitated when asked whether he considered the order cultlike.

"I didn't know any other religious life," he said. "I knew there were orders with very strict rules. . . . It's not like it's a shock."

Ermatinger spent the past year at a Chicago parish and sought out Milwaukee, he said, because he has family here. Weighner spent a year in the Diocese of La Crosse, where Listecki was bishop before coming to Milwaukee in January.

Ermatinger said he has no regrets about joining the Legion, or leaving it.

"There are a lot of good people there, they love our lord and they really want to serve him," he said.

"But vocation is such an intimate question. At the end of the day, it comes down to the question: What is your will for me?

"And that's something nobody can answer for you. It's something each one of us has to figure out on our own."

 JSOnline 
Link

LC priests continue to leave: Madison and Milwaukee diocese receiving Exiting Legion Priests

"I heard through the grapevine"
from a trustworthy source
Not a joke or a criticism
just info

It seems Priests Continue to Leave
Even after take over by Vatican Delegate, Cardinal De Paolis, and promises and plans to reform the Legion.

Some of these fathers say they are leaving because of Maciel's betrayal -a sinful founder

or is it because, as this blogger has posited before,
they despair of or are impatient with the Reform Method and Process, 
a major gaff being not to have moved quickly to remove the leadership cadre but instead giving it time to re group

Song of the Exiting Legionary

BABYLON HAS FALLEN


"There must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief
"There's too much confusion", I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.

"No reason to get excited", the thief he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late".

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.


listen and overcome you legion inhibitions!

[From Wikipedia]

Several reviewers have pointed out that the lyrics in "All Along the Watchtower" echo lines in the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5-9:

Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield./For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth./And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed./...And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.^[11][12]

  

For the Exiting and Exited LC and RC

a bard that was prohibited, that you would never listen to in the Movement, forbitten, verboten, prohibido...because he has taboo, he was liberal, he was....

But now when we see the Legion Regnum's decay and all the aberrations, injustices, sins that were committed in the name of the False Prophet by the false disciples... listen to this and let your pain out, your anger out, your indignation -holy indignation for the abuses- let it out; continue on your path of healing and whoeness, shake that filthy sand from your sandles and walk on the white sands of truth and justice, an forgiveness, and mercy beginning with your self, for your self...

Ring Them Bells

Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
’Cross the valleys and streams
For they’re deep and they’re wide
And the world’s on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride

Ring them bells St. Peter
Where the four winds blow
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know
Oh it’s rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow

Ring them bells Sweet Martha
For the poor man’s son
Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one
Oh the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled
With lost sheep

Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf
Ring them bells for all of us who are left
Ring them bells for the chosen few
Who will judge the many when the game is through
Ring them bells, for the time that flies
For the child that cries
When innocence dies

Ring them bells St. Catherine
From the top of the room
Ring them from the fortress
For the lilies that bloom
Oh the lines are long
And the fighting is strong
And they’re breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong

Copyright © 1989 by Special Rider Music