Category: Fr. Peter Cronin

Why did I join such a mysterious organization at all? The answer is probably more complicated that I know. As a Catholic in the 1950s, when I was a teenager, a “vocation� to be a priest was considered a gift from God, and not to be taken lightly. Like countless other Irish youth, I too was concerned with the “black babies� in Africa. Who would feed them and baptize them? The thought of being a missionary in Africa always appealed to me. In hindsight I have to wonder how aware I was of the demands that go along with being a priest [and religious]. How much can you understand of poverty, chastity and obedience when you are fifteen and living with your parents? Anyway, my parents, both devout Catholics, always nurtured the idea of a “vocation�. My mother later told me that she “offered me up to God� shortly after I was born. I was never really sure, deep down, if she wanted or expected to be taken up on the offer. My father was more sophisticated in his approach and understood that a vocation, in order to be deemed valid, had to be sanctioned by the bishop who “called� one to the service of God on behalf of the Church. A pamphlet which an ardent recruiter thrust on me summed it all up. It said “better to have tried and failed than sadly salute the one I might have been�.

The recruiter for the Legion in Legion was an impressive Mexican by the name of Santiago Coindreau. He dressed dashingly by Irish standards in a well-pressed, double-breasted black suit with Roman collar. Allegedly he had turned down a scholarship to the military academy at West Point. The Irish immediately associated his name with the respected Cointreau orange-based liquor. That maybe gave him credibility or a sense of affinity. He still wasn’t a priest but that did not seem to deter him from being called “Father�. He drove a sparkling black Volkswagen beetle. And he drove it fast. He had little respect for the mundane traffic laws, personified by the gardaí on their bicycles or the odd Triumph 250 motorcycle.

Until I got my very first ticket for speeding at age 45 this reality of the law applying to me, just like everyone else, hadn’t fully hit home. However, that “semi-superman� mentality is probably what allowed me to talk my way out of numerous sticky situations with unsophisticated police officers. Their laws didn’t really apply to someone who was working directly for God. Santiago Coindreau had no doubt whatsoever in his mind that he was a legend and that God wanted me in the Legion. This was the newest order in the Church and, although I never realized it at the time, there were only about ten ordained priests (in the order). The rest were “Brothers�, seminarians on the road to ordination. I had skipped second grade in elementary school and consequently had finished high school at seventeen. I figured I could spare a year or two to let God appreciate my generosity and then let me know that he didn’t really want me in the Legion.

The Legion vocation pitch in 1962 Ireland

Father Santiago was very different from your average Irish clergyman, for whom he did not have too much respect and was, consequently, that more appealing to those of us who thought that priests, in some ill-defined way, should be enthusiastic beyond compare. The sort of guy you would want to have in your foxhole if you were under attack. He had, literally, erupted into our senior class room at “Synge Street�, a well respected all boys’ school run by the Irish Christian Brothers. In the final year, as we prepared for taking the “Leaving Certificate� examination, it was customary for four or five recruiters from secular clergy and from religious orders, selected on a rotating basis, to come and make a recruiting pitch. Having heard them, there was little question in my mind that I wanted to be a priest. Apart from knowing that I wanted to be a missionary priest, I found it very hard to decide among the competing orders. Father Santiago Coindreau made that decision a little easier. His energy and enthusiasm were contagious. No question that he knew how to relate to young people. He introduced himself to the class and as he was doing so, he started to throw copies of Communist magazines to anyone who cared to catch one. “The question is simple�, he said. “Do you want to save Latin America from Communism? It’s not complicated. Latin America is already Catholic. There are millions of Catholics there. Do you want to help keep them, or go charging off to other places to convert people for the first time?� Although I was more inclined to Africa myself, this seemed to make sense. “Mexico is the leader of Latin America. What it does, the rest of Latin America will imitate. I represent a brand new order. The founder is only fifty seven years old. He wants to develop a group of highly trained, committed, professional priests to reclaim Mexico. The Mexican clergy, right now, is not up to the challenge. They are not as sophisticated, as smart or as educated as their opposition. Will you help us change this?� This was different! The Legion of Christ, was the order was known, was not obviously for Holy Joes. First the Communist magazines, then a great pitch and, now, we’ll all standing on our feet saying a “Hail Mary� in Spanish, for the success of the Legion of Christ. This order was exactly what the Holy Father needed in Latin America! And, the Holy Father was clearly a friend of the Legion. “Fill out this form and, if you check the ‘interested’ box, we’ll arrange for you to come visit our new novitiate in Ireland, at Hazelbrook House, Malahide (County Dublin)�. This Father Santiago was so enthusiastic that you knew, if you said “yes�, that he and the Legion would be all over you. I signed on the dotted line.

Leaving home and Novitiate

Leaving home had to be the hardest thing I ever did in my life. The thought of not seeing very much of my family again was horrendous. When you are doing the Lord’s work you can’t let human emotion like that get in the way. I’ll never forget the actual moment of leaving my parents and brother and stepping into the cold, inhospitable world of religious life in the Legion. Seventeen other individuals, each for his own reasons, had come to the same place. Brian … because he wanted to save the prostitutes of the world. Michael… because he wanted to pray for people that he felt no one else would pray for, like Marilyn Munroe. I didn’t feel like I had a lot in common with the others although, in general, the Dubliners seemed to understand each other better. David… told me about his girl friend and I told him about mine. That created an instant, deep, unholy bond. He still had her lipstick with him. We decided that was a profanation in such an angelical environment. In our solemn little ceremony he cast it out the dorm window with me as a witness. That was a formal goodbye to the world as we knew it.

Life was hard, tedious and, in hindsight, not very unlike the atmosphere in a concentration camp. That, I know, sounds harsh. But not necessarily untrue. We slept in a converted cowshed on cots borrowed from the Irish Army. The walls were covered in cardboard which Fr. Coindreau had scrounged from some nearly factory. That cold and damp of the Irish climate was exacerbated by the relative silence we observed during the day and the absolute silence imposed at nighttime. Relative silence meant that you could only say what was necessary. Extraverts like myself had views on how much silence was necessary and as a consequence found ourselves continually having to ask for “penances� for breaking relative silence and similar transgressions. All the carefully chosen bed linen, towels and other necessities so loving purchased by our mothers, became communal property. The reality of this manifestation of our life of poverty hit me when my full length sheets never came back from the laundry. The two stained, oversized handkerchiefs that were returned in their place made me feel miserable. The misery was compounded when we were told that we also would not be having a visit from our families at Christmas.

Cilice and flagellum

One day, after the first few weeks, while changing into my shorts, preparing for a game of soccer, with my bare foot I stepped on some sharp object beside my bed. Further examination revealed that the object was what seemed to be a piece of chicken wire about six inches long. The wire mesh was bent into myriad sharp little points and there was a brown shoe lace attached to one end. It obviously belonged to the guy who slept in the next bed. Brian M., all six-foot-four of him, seemed like a nice fellow –but now I realized he was mad. This was some form of penitential instrument in the twentieth century in Ireland you had to be out of your mind to use it. Off I ran with the evidence to the Director of Novices. Visions in my head of poor Brian being hauled off toe Grange Gorman, the local mental asylum. I couldn’t believe it when the Director of Novices, Fr. William (Izquierdo), a totally bald native of the Canary Islands, didn’t share my shock and concern for Brian’s mental health. My disbelief registered and caused Fr. William to ask if I didn’t really understand what it was all about. As it turns out, Legionaries used two penitential instruments. The one which I have referred to was affectionately referred to by some as “the chicken choker�, and was worn tightly around the upper thigh from after the morning shower, through first prayers, medication (one hour), Mass and breakfast. It caused most of use to walk with a mild limp on the Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays that we wore it. If perchance while serving breakfast, you bumped your leg against a table, you saw stars. And then there was the flagellum, a neat little whip, crafted by loving nuns in Avila, Spain. Fifteen strokes to the thigh on alternate days were supposed to keep our carnal instincts in check. A misdirected stroke could indeed have a distinct effect on the exterior embodiment of one’s carnal instinct. I stopped using these instruments, without the requisite permission, after several years because, quite frankly, it didn’t seem like a healthy thing to be doing and, in a peculiar way could serve to arouse the very same urges they were designed to control. So, as it turned out, Brian M. was no more mad than the rest of us.

Two years of intense prayer, stud of exclusively spiritual subjects –with the exception of Spanish (language) – nocturnal adoration, silence and no contact with the outside world have an affect on you. You become immersed in your immediate world. External norms are forgotten. Things that seemed strange and harsh now seem natural. Doubts become translated into a lack of generosity. The Will of God becomes very clear. Reinforced by weekly confession and by-weekly spiritual direction with the Director of Novices there is no doubt that God is really calling you to be a Legionary and you ought to be very, very happy and faithful. So, when you write the one page monthly letter to your family you them how happy you are and how fulfilled you feel. If your happiness isn’t apparent enough the Director, Fr. William, who reads all your letters before they are sent –and any mail that comes to you- lets you know that you might find a better turn of phrase.

Inwardly torn before Gabon

No wonder then that my brother in Bethesda [twenty years later] was somewhat perplexed by my ambivalent attitude about going to Gabon. Twenty years spent trying to persuade him of the correctness of the Legionary methodology had produced their result. Why, I hadn’t even gone back to Ireland for his wedding! Little did he know who hard I’d fought to be allowed to go to Ireland for the ceremony. Little did he know that a confrere, Eddie Farrelly, a fellow Dubliner and schoolmate, had simple absconded from the Legion when he got the chance, following a brief assignment in New York. I found out later that the Legion thought that perhaps, because he and I got along so well together, I might be part of the same conspiracy, and therefore it didn’t do for me to go to Ireland for the wedding where I might meet Eddie and be tempted to follow in his footsteps. Besides, at that time Legionaries were simply not allowed to go to weddings, period, unless they were the officiating priest. Try explaining that this is the Will of God to your brother whom you haven’t seen for ten years. Now, as I got ready to depart for Gabon, I wasn’t sure of anything anymore and I don’t think my brother and his wife were ready for this. That’s not the way it was supposed to be in the Legion. We were the iron men with all the answers, fully “integrated� into the mind and heart of the Legion. And, what were my parents to think? Faithful Legionaries aren’t supposed to share their doubts. I guess my brother, sister-in-law and I worried about how they might react. Better not to tell them. Don’t upset the apple cart. Write another letter letting them know who wonderful everything was.

Unlike most other moves I made in the Legion, going to Gabon was different, upsetting and not a little scary. Clearly I was going there to make up my mind about my future. I needed some mental space to make the awesome decision as to whether or not I should, or could, continue as a priest in a religious order to which I felt I no longer belonged. I also felt, very strongly, that I could not survive as a secular, diocesan priest. I had never wanted to be a diocesan priest; that is why I joined the Legion in the first place.

AN IDEAL PLACE TO FIND MYSELF

The airport at Libreville, in the early dawn, was pretty much like I expected it to be. Not very different from small city airports, much like Shannon in Ireland or Acapulco in Mexico. Except, that is, for the ubiquitous presence of the troops in full battle dress, complete with automatic weapons. Belligerent looking –even trigger-happy looking- just like you see in the movies. They were very much in control and they knew it. Not many white people and those that were there looked like they felt out of place, pretending to be busy, and anxious to get out of there. I never felt whiter in my life.

The unfamiliar French, laced with what seemed to be large doses of a local language or dialect, made me feel uncomfortable too. French pronunciation always made me feel self-conscious. The atmosphere in the airport, for no reason that was obvious to me, was tense. I found myself thinking that I’d hate to go to jail, perhaps to be shot at dawn, because of some awful mistake due to a mispronunciation of mine. No one was there to meet me and immigration official was decidedly unfriendly. “No�, I didn’t have a work visa or a return ticket. “Yes�, I assured him, in pidgin French, the Bishop of Franceville is expecting me. Somehow that didn’t seem like it should carry a lot of weight. It didn’t. The official didn’t seem at all impressed. A couple of soldiers were called. They took my passport and told me to wait. Blarney and what I thought was a large dose of my native charm wasn’t going to work here.

Like Admiral Stockdale, Ross Perot’s running mate in the US Vice-Presidential debate of 1992, I found myself asking myself “Who am I and what am I doing here?� as I sat on the airport bench with my back to a plate glass window. Father Maciel, the Founder and Superior General of the Legion of Christ, the Roman Catholic order of religious priests to which I belonged, had presented Gabon as an interesting place to make up my mind, for myself, as to whether or not I really wanted to leave the priesthood. “At least you’ll get to see Africa�, was how he put it. “I’m told it is very pretty with lots of rolling hills�. He had even shown me a postcard sent to him by Luis, a fellow Legionary whom I liked and who had actually volunteered to go to Gabon. The countryside, depicted in the postcard, looked more like a giant overgrown broccoli to me. The “rolling hills� must have been buried under the lush tropical rain forest. Yet a stint in Africa seemed to make more sense to my overheated mind as we discussed my future at the Legion’s US headquarters in Cheshire, Connecticut. It certainly beat going back to Rome, despite a promise to let me be the driver of the newly acquired Mercedes Benz bus! “When I was a child I played with the things of children. Now that I’m a man that’s a damn stupid way to try to persuade an educated adult to return to ‘further studies’ to the ‘mother house’ in Rome!� was how I tried to paraphrase St. Paul. Meanwhile I was curious as to what Luis might have done –or to whom he might have done it!- to get himself to a disease-infested country, slap bang on the Equator on the west coast of Africa. There again, I remembered, Luis was always uncomfortably close to a nervous breakdown, and somehow it made sense to me that he should be there. I wasn’t sure it made the same sense for me.

By now the airport was pretty deserted. As I half expected, all the belligerent-looking commando types had to go home, probably to beat their wives. One of them grunted at me, gave me my passport and quite abruptly walked away. Nobody seemed to care what my next move might be. I guess I wasn’t perceived as a threat to national security. Most unflattering! I got into the last of the small taxis and asked, in more ambitious French, to be taken to an address that had been given to me by Luis. Welcome to Africa!

Three days later, after having taken that long to make contact with Luis, the only person I knew on the whole dark continent -I stayed at a parish house of priests known to Luis-, I got to Franceville, my final destination, courtesy of a one-way air ticket sent to me by Luis. The front seats of the modern jet aircraft were folded down to accommodate crates of animals –mostly chickens- as I recall. The combination of people, animals and stale aircraft air created a whole new olfactory experience during flight. The left-over refreshments were given in a plastic bag to a friend of the stewardess. The dark jungle below, devoid of any man-made light, was sort of spooky for our night-time flight. Later we landed in an equally spooky red-dirt “field�, with no paved runways and no buildings, otherwise known as Franceville airport.

Passengers were met by friends and relatives as they descended the ladder from the plane. I was impressed by the handsome women wrapped in colorful cloth up to the bust, most of them wearing a headdress of the same material. And then there was Luis, the man who was to be my spiritual mentor at a very troubled moment in my life. The holy man who, whether he knew it or not, was going to help me figure out God’s Will for me. Gaunt and sweaty, he greeted me, loaded my bags and baggage into the back of his four-wheel drive Mitsubishi truck and told me that he was “out of Gabon on the next flight!� “!Yo me largo de aquí!�, was how he put it in Spanish.

I couldn’t believe it! Luis was actually hell bent on leaving the next day! We got to the Mission where, somewhat apologetically, he showed me the little outhouse which was to be my room. At least it had a shower stall and a mosquito net. I wondered where I’d have to grope my way to it if I needed to take a leak during the night. Would I return with all my body parts intact? The full cast of characters at the Mission included a Gabonese bishop who looked and acted aloof or, in plain Christian terms, plain mean; a French missionary in his early forties, an older Dutch missionary, and a specially trained bull dog which was supposed to help you avoid snakes if you had to walk outside at night. Apart from the dog, none of them were particularly friendly. The Bishop, the boss, was not expecting me and didn’t seem to know who I was or what I was doing there. Not that I wasn’t wondering myself. Finally, after consultation with Lerma, he seemed to agree that it would be alright for me to stay. After dinner, he settled down with the others to drink Johnny Walker Red Label and to watch “Dynasty� in French on a small black and white TV. At the time I couldn’t imagine anything more incongruous: a bishop watching “dynasty on a mission outpost in former French Equatorial Africa. My main priority was to convince Luis that he couldn’t leave, that he had a moral obligation to me and, if he really did leave, I’d be out of there with him “like a bat out of hell�. Speaking of which, that particular phrase took on a whole new meaning for me: my little outhouse bedroom was infested with the biggest and most raucous bats I’d ever seen. The unrelenting humid tropical heat added to the imagery.

Life began the next morning, literally at the crack of dawn. The details aren’t so important. Luis agreed to stay on for a while longer. The staple diet seemed to consist mostly of fish heads for dinner; no body, no tail; just the head, with the mouth open to show the teeth. “You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!â€� they seemed to sing. The Bishop used to get really upset if you didn’t eat the eyes, and he would circle the table, toothpick in hand, like a dark Don Quixote, ready to spear the unwanted eye, all the while explaining how delicious they were. I soon discovered a massive supply of bananas in the kitchen and I am living proof that you can survive on a banana diet. This diet was supplemented with three quinine anti-malaria pills a day and eight anti-loa disease pills. Loa is also known as river blindness, a disease which does tremendous harm in Gabon. It is transmitted by the bite of a fairly small yellow mosquito. Untreated it becomes incurable, causes paralysis and, I believe, death. The old Dutch missionary suggested that the anti-malaria pills (quinine) would make me blind and that it was actually smarter not to take them. That way, if I got malaria I would be able to see myself shake and then I could threat the malaria with the quinine. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about. This old-timer from Holland had arrived in Franceville –by canoe! – many moons before. He had stopped off along the way to greet Dr. Albert Schweitzer at his hospital at Lambarene, near the mouth of the river. After a long stint in Gabon, the ex-missionary had retired to Holland only to find himself bored out of his mind. Culture shock would be our euphemism for his re-entry. After a few years he had volunteered to return to Franceville. He drove an ancient, impressive Land Rover of which he was very proud. He lived apart from the Mission most of the time in some outpost that I never visited. His hut was illuminated with Christmas tree lights which he connected to the Land Rover. He performed his morning ablutions in his “showerâ€�: a barrel of water perched on his roof which some local kids would help him tilt over.

I opted to consume my daily ration of pills which I got courtesy of the US Government and my physician brother. He had a hard time understanding why I was going to Gabon at all. To say that he was not an ardent supporter of the Legion is something of an understatement. He married right after he graduated from medical school at University College Dublin. With his wife and his two children he lived in the Washington DC metro area and he worked at the NIH. He seemed to love his job where, working in the pulmonary department, and moonlighting –when financial needs dictated- in the emergency room of a local hospital. I remember him saying that the emergency room experience had made him realize the importance of keeping fit and of not letting his kids use skateboards. I saw more of him than at any other time since I joined the Legion. [Ed. The Legion has a house in high scale Potomac, MD]. Although he and hs wife always made me feel welcome and the children always seemed delighted to see their “uncle X.�. . . I always put it down to the fact that I really didn’t have very much experience of family life and had little, if any, contact with them for the first ten years of their married life. I had joined the Legion in 1962, when I was seventeen years old. The Legion was not the sort of organization that would ever epitomize the warmth and togetherness that one associates with family life. Camaraderie, comrades in arms, yes; family, no. Not only did the Legion seem to be very ambivalent about the role of family in the formation of its members, but also contact with the family was not encouraged unless, of course, they had money to donate. That explains why, during my period of twenty years with the Legion, I spent the sum total of twenty days with my family. Psychologists probably salivate at the prospect of getting into Legionary heads to survey the damage.

The [Ed., weaning] process started when, before joining, you couldn’t get a straight answer on how often you’d get to see your family after you joined. As a special privilege for the eighteen of us who joined in the summer of 1962, we were promised a visit at the following Christmas, and one at the end of the two year novitiate. The novitiate is a period devoted to spiritual formation, lasting, in most religious orders, one year. In our case it was a two-year novitiate. No contact with the outside world. No radio, no TV (except to see the news of the Kennedy assassination), no newspapers. Not even the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican publication; that was reserved for when you were studying philosophy and theology and, I suppose, deemed capable of handling such lurid, torrid, yellow journalism. We were housed in a residential property in a place known as “Hazelbrook Houseâ€�, in Malahide, County Dublin. The connection between “hazelâ€� and “nutsâ€�, i.e. “crazy”, did not strike us then, but it might have been an omen.

Greetings! Those hazy, lazy, crazy days of summer are upon us. I hope you all can get away to enjoy a time of rest at the beach or lakeside or some idyllic mountain resort.

Network has connected us; our common experience can and must be expressed and shared. For years we were members of the Legion of Christ, a religious order that has many of the characteristics of a sect. How did it affect us and how does its affect those who are still in the order?

In this issue of Network X tells us of his assignment to the “front of Gabon� prior to his departure from the Legion.

An interesting development: Network has reached a person within the Legion who is delighted to know there is a support group which can help those who are thinking of leaving –but more about that on another occasion! Some possible channels of discussion for future issues of Network:

a) We are planning a reunion for all members of the Network, to be held in the fall somewhere on the East Coast, a get-together for a long week-end. Please let us know what can be a good time for you.
b) What approach should we follow when a young man, feeling a call to the priesthood, shows interest in the Legion of Christ?
c) We know of priests who are unhappy in the Legion, who disagree with many of the policies, practices and abuses of the order. Is it possible to contact them? It would be helpful to let them know there are many alternatives to staying in the Legion. Many of us have found the priesthood in the diocesan life to be happy and fulfilling.

Please pass on Network to others; our membership list is growing gradually, poco a poco. Quisiera tomar esta oportunidad para decir que si alguno prefiere escribir una carta o artículo en español, que lo haga con toda confianza. Todos hablamos, entendemos y leemos la lengua de Cervantes, así que nuestra comunicación puede hacerse, bien e inglés o en español.

With no further ado, over to you, X

Peter Cronin