Legion goes on doing what Maciel built it to do

A friend of mine, who did computery stuff, once remarked that systems designed by humans don’t do what you want them to do. They do what they are designed to do. The Legion of Christ was designed and built–by a monster who happened to be an organizational genius–to facilitate and cover up that monster’s crimes and to acquire as much wealth and control as possible in order to continue doing that for as long as possible. He designed it so well that it continues, like a headless robot, reeling on doing that down to this day.

Now there are many good Legionaries who had no idea what Maciel was. But the system he designed tends to try to compel them to go on cooperating with his will. Happily, we have free wills anyway. So now that the jig is up on Maciel some of the free moral agents in the organization are no longer willing to cooperate with the machine he built. Latest sign of healthy refusal to cooperate with the Robot: the six editors of Zenit who unanimously refused the attempt by the Legion to force it to cooperate with the Borg Collective. Good for them: taking a principled stand against the overweening power grab and resigning in this economy was an act of bravery.

Such resistance is testimony to the goodness of the people who belong to the Legionaries. On the other hand, the fact that the Legion constitutes a standing source of pressure *against* the good will of its member is prima facie evidence that the Legion should be razed to the ground and not one organizational stone should be left standing on another. It will always go on trying to force its good and decent members to do what Maciel built it to do, not what God wants them to do.