I’m not suggesting right-wing Catholics are nutjobs, nor soliciting opinions on whether orthodox Catholicism is good or bad.
Just a simple question for those who are (or have been) in that world.
A Catholic friend has expressed interest in the Regnum Christi movement.
I’m a bit nervous.
It’s not so much that the order’s founder is under investigation for alleged sexual misconduct (though that certainly isn’t inspiring). Every group of clergy has had that problem crop up, people used to have some wrongheaded notions about how to “cure” such tendencies, I don’t stereotype priests as across-the-board homosexual predators, and no one’s proven the allegations, yet, against this guy. I suppose you could also say that even flawed vessels can be instruments of grace, etc., etc.
Even more . . . worrisome is the friend’s description of the people in the order, and the way it does business. It’s fairly secretive – I’ve always been skeptical of fraternity-like secret societies. Yes, I know the Church as a whole has never claimed to be fully transparent, and there are legitimate (religiously, at least) authority-based/hierarchical reasons for falling short of transparency, especially for an upstart order that emerged under government persecution in Mexico. Still, as someone who found Dan Brown’s broad-brush breathless allegations about secret orders kind of cartoonishly insulting, Regnum Christi sounds a little unnervingly like the sort of European-style Machiavellian secret society Brown describes.
Second, while I am willing to suspend judgment on whether the founder is a perv, even if he weren’t, the awed tones in which my friend and his acquaintances within the lay body of RC speak of him give me a bit of cult-of-personality willies.
Third, the emphasis on “charisms” (at least as far as I can tell) and other “manifestations of the gifts” sound a little to much (IMHO) like appeals to emotionalism (though the friend claims to be attracted by the “intellectualism” of the order).
Anyhow, I’ve no idea if any of you have first-hand exposure to this or similar groups, but thought I’d toss this out there. I Googled around and found a few dissident sites (http://www.regainnetwork.org/ being one), but wondered if anyone could point me to additional information/thoughts so I can decide (presumptuous, aren’t I?) whether my friend needs an intervention, or at least a cautionary chat. I realize the answer will likely come in shades of grey, as for each dubious feature of such a group, there is a mirror-image way of looking at it as a holiness-inducing positive from the in-group perspective . . . .