From the
archives - Published from 1982-96, Fidelity magazine was the predecessor of Culture Wars.
The
Kidnapping of Sister Mary Cecilia
by E. Michael Jones
From the March 1989 issue of Fidelity magazine
No man ought to sever
himself from the unity of the Church before the time of the final separation of
the just and the unjust merely because of the admixture of evil men in the
Church. – St. Augustine, On Baptism
Sue Greve is 46 years old, the mother of five
children ranging in age from 17 to 24, all of whom – four boys and one girl -
had been born and raised, as she was, in Cincinnati. On June 26, 1988, Sue was
sitting in a borrowed blue van by the side of the road in the Catskills not far
from Cairo, New York, alternately smoking cigarettes, saying one rosary after
another and waiting for her husband and three sons to return from a visit to an
ultra-traditional convent in the area. The convent, which was not recognized as
Roman Catholic by the archdiocese of Albany, had been the home of Sue's
daughter Marisue, now known as Sister Mary Cecilia, for the past 22 months. As
time progressed Mr. and Mrs. Greve had become more and more dissatisfied with
the convent and the effect it was having on their daughter. After one visit,
Mr. Greve returned claiming that the convent was "nothing but a damn
Moonie cult." In April of 1988, Mrs. Greve brought her daughter
back to Cincinnati only to have one of the "nuns" follow them home
and pressure Sister Mary Cecilia into returning to the convent.
Now they decided things had gone on long enough.
They had come to persuade their daughter to leave. And, in the event that
persuasion didn't work, they were prepared to use physical force to get her
out. So if Sue seemed nervous to the man on the tractor in the field by the
road, she had every reason to be. She knew that what they were doing could
and-given the attitude of the man running the cult-probably would be described
as kidnapping. Given what she had learned about mind control, she could also
not be sure that her daughter wouldn't construe it as the same sort of thing.
If their daughter did not come around to their way of seeing things, the Greve
family was in big trouble. After an hour or so of this sort of waiting, the
rented car containing the male Greves returned to the clearing where Mrs. Greve
was waiting in the van. Things had not gone as planned that day. First of all
the Greves' first rental car was not available when they arrived at the agency,
forcing them to take an unexpected two hour detour to the Albany airport to get
another car. This meant that they arrived at St. Joseph's novitiate two hours
later than they expected. Mr. Greve and his sons had seen Marisue's white veil
appear briefly as she emerged from chapel, but that had been all. Now they were
back in the clearing wondering what to do.
ULTRA-TRADITIONAL SECT
Sue, who knew her daughter's schedule, knew that she
would have to go back to the chapel for vespers. There was no alternative but
to go back and wait for her next appearance, drive onto the property and try to
persuade her to get into the car, hoping that Fr. Kelly, the head of the
novitiate and ultra-traditional sect that ran it would not be on the grounds. By
this time, however, Sue was also becoming worried by the farmer who was
becoming, she felt, more and more suspicious. It was decided that they would
have to change the drop off point from where they were to a scenic Hudson
Valley overlook 4.5 miles away. There were more people there, which meant more
potential witnesses - with cameras too. This was a drawback, of course, but the
fact that so many people stopped for the view would itself give Sue and the van
a modicum of cover. It was now getting toward late afternoon, and so
there was nothing else to do but send Jim, her husband, and her sons back to
the novitiate for another try.
Sue was to say later that their nerves were shot at
this point. Nothing was going the way it was supposed to. In the first place
the rental car wasn't there when it was supposed to be, forcing them to get to
the novitiate when the nuns were inside. Beyond that the family was not in the
practice of breaking the law. "If I get a traffic ticket, my legs turn to
rubber," she was to say later. "We never do things that aren't
conventional." Beyond that this particular Sunday was their last chance,
and the day was drawing rapidly to a close. Next weekend a veiling was to take
place, which meant that 1) their
daughter would be harder to pick out of a crowd and 2) that she would feel an
even deeper commitment to an organization that her parents were now convinced
was a cult. Sue hadn't come to the conclusion overnight. In fact being where
she was now involved an odyssey of 10 years which began by reacting to the
liberalism in liturgy and education in the archdiocese of Cincinnati under
Archbishops Bernardin and Pilarczyk and ended with the realization on a cold
windy day in Lent of 1988 that she had jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
In the process of escaping from the liberals she had fallen into the hands of
what she now was convinced was a cult.
MARRIED IN 1962
Sue Greve was married in 1962. The changes which
followed the Second Vatican Council - things like the altar being turned around
- didn't bother her - not until, that is, they began to have an impact on her
children. She remembers her sister-in-law getting into an argument with the
priest who baptized the Greves' son John because the priest failed to talk
about renouncing the devil. She also noticed when her oldest child entered
first grade that the Baltimore Catechism was no longer in use. However, it
wasn't until 1972 when that same son was in third grade that she began to have
serious misgivings about what was going on in the schools. In the '72-'73
school year she began meeting with like-minded parents throughout the city and
was instrumental in forming a group to combat the way things were going. The
group was also formed as a result of the recent Supreme Court decision
legalizing abortion.
However, in spite of the activism, the situation in
the schools and the liturgy continued to worsen. She remembers the Blessed
Mother being crowned with a toilet seat at a school play at the time. She
remembers the director of religious education at the time, Rev. Robert Apking,
being in the audience and thinking the whole thing cute. Rev. Apking is now
dying of AIDS.
In 1974 Greve and some of
her friends got an hour and a half meeting with then Archbishop Bernardin to
discuss the situation. She now feels the meeting was a waste of time. From her
perspective the highlight of the meeting occurred when one activist criticized
Karl Rahner, prompting Archbishop Bernardin to reply, "Karl Rahner is a
fine theologian. I'm a Karl Rahner man." The group soon gained control of
the diocesan PTA organization and transformed it from what Greve characterized
as a "coffee and doughnuts" organization into pressure group that
brought in conservative speakers who would talk "about the problems in the
Church and the schools," but as soon as Greve and her friends gained
control over the group, the archdiocesan educational establishment
disenfranchised them. They had gained control over an organization that the
archdiocese was no longer interested in listening to. It was a pyrrhic victory
not unfamiliar to many parents of the time.
However, at this time at least the group's
complaints did not extend to encompass the mass. "It was strictly the Wanderer line. The mass was never an
issue with these people or with myself, other than the abuses. We just kept
trying to get better books in the schools, but eventually all the good books
were put down."
Eventually as the situation worsened in the schools,
Mrs. Greve was to become disillusioned with what she called "the Wanderer line." "I felt
that Jim Likoudis [one of the speakers the group brought in] was not realistic.
But how can I fault him. All you do for years is talk about all the garbage in
the religion books and all the garbage that comes out of the diocese. You can't
do anything. So to me the CUF/Wanderer [approach] was a dead end."
This was how Greve felt in 1977. By 1981 when
Archbishop Pilarczyk became ordinary, she was for all practical purposes out of
the Church. The bridge from activism to de facto schism was the Tridentine
mass. By 1978, she was, she would say later, "fed up" in general, and
with the schools and communion in the hand in particular. During that same year
Fr. Francis Fenton, founder of the "Orthodox Roman Catholic
Movement," started showing up in and around Cincinnati saying the
Tridentine mass and giving talks in which the troubles in the Church and
society were laid at the feet of the "new mass," which was
characterized as sacrilegious. The papacy was faulted as the source of the
"new mass." She remembers attending one of Fenton's talks in 1978 and
being troubled by it.
"MY GUT REACTION"
"If I had followed my immediate impression and
gut reaction I would have never ended up in the mess that I ended up in. [My]
question had nothing to do with the mass. The question had to do with the
papacy. If you believe that this novus ordo mass is invalid or a
sacrilege, where does this put the question of the infallibility of the pope?
How could a pope ever allow this to happen? There's a contradiction
there."
According to Greve, Fenton became so agitated at the
question that he never got around to answering it.
"And there never has been an answer. The whole
traditional movement is fuzzy on this area. That's where two plus two does not
equal four. And it never did, but you excuse it because you can't go to Rome
and talk to the pope about the particular problems in your diocese."
So Greve remained unconvinced by the
traditionalists' arguments but drawn nonetheless to their illicit liturgies and
as a result drawn into their sphere of influence and the religious no-man's
land that Michael Davies would later characterize as "Disneyland
theology." She went to her confessor and asked if it would be a sin if she
took her 81-year-old grandmother to the Tridentine mass in the area. When the
priest said "no" she went.
THE HOWARD JOHNSON'S MASS
Thu began her introduction to the shadow-world
clergy of the far right - celebrators of the Howard Johnson's mass. First there
was Fr. Fenton, whom she remembers as a member of the John Birch Society. Then
there was Father, later "Bishop" McKenna, originally a Dominican but
then consecrated in the Thuc line and as a result ipso facto
excommunicated. Then came a Fr. Mroz. Then the ORCM started coming once a week
in the person of Fr. Louis Vezelis, who started out a Franciscan and is also
now a "bishop" in the Thuc line as well.
"He came in and I thought he was so nice. We
liked Fr. Louis. Now we call him Screwy Louie. I would take Grandma once a
month."
Greve's regular attendance at the Tridentine mass
corresponded with the introduction of communion in the hand. "That was a
big turning point for me. I have such an aversion to communion in the hand that
I have to close my eyes if I see it. I would say that that was the emotional
control factor that sent me to the Tridentine mass. Because of my training in
grade school I could not emotionally handle communion in the hand. I still
can't. If I go to a mass and my relatives take communion in the hand it's like sticking
knives in my heart."
So by 1978 Sue Greve, to use her own words, was
"really hooked" on the Tridentine mass. "I thought this was
really great going to this beautiful mass of my childhood without any of the
monkey business." By 1983 the group's activism to change the Catholic
schools had been "dissipated. We had all gone our separate ways. By that
time we weren't fighting anymore. Our activism lasted from 1972 until when the
federation disbanded" about 10 years later.
It would be more accurate to say that the Greves
weren't fighting the diocese anymore. The fighting, however, continued on
another front. Once the traditionalists separated from the Church, they started
fighting almost immediately among themselves. A Fr. Gorecki came from
Connecticut but failed to last more than a few months because people felt he
was an "infiltrator."
"What you have to a great extent in the
traditional movement is terrible paranoia," Greve said. "Paranoia is
the main feature of the traditional movement when it comes to the actual nitty
gritty of running a parish."
After Gorecki was labeled an infiltrator, Fr.
Vezelis came with the ORCM movement. However, that movement was doomed almost
from the start because of internal power struggles. Fr. Vezelis was saying mass
at a local Holiday Inn. For a while all was well, but then, "all of a
sudden - this was around 1980 - he starts saying crazy things from the pulpit.
He would knock off Fr. Dolan [another traditionalist priest in the area] and
say that he was a jerk. Now, Fr. Dolan may be a jerk. At this point in my life
I might say the same thing, but that's not something you do at mass. I said I
can't have my kids listening to this. So I started going to St.
Gertrude's."
ST. GERTRUDE THE GREAT
St. Gertrude the Great Church belonged to the
Society of Pius X in 1980. The Lefebvre organization had bought the former
protestant church with the help of a local benefactor. Fr. Dolan, the object of
Fr. Vezelis's ire, was a Lefebvre priest at St. Gertrude's. The ire probably
had to do more with competition for a controlling share in the traditionalist
market in Cincinnati than anything else. The battle on the horizon, however,
wasn't much of a contest. By 1978, or roughly one year after its arrival in
town, the ORCM was out of business in Cincinnati, leaving the traditionalists
with only one place to go, St. Gertrude's, run by the Society of Pius X.
But if that battle was over, another one was just
about to begin. Once schismatics break with the Church, they have this
irresistible urge to break with each other. So in 1983, nine priests of the
Society of Pius X split with Archbishop Lefebvre. The doctrinal issues were, to
all but the initiated, miniscule, but the jurisdictional battle was for real.
The rebel priests under Fr. Clarence Kelly, then District Superior for the
Society in the United States, wanted control over the entire society in this
country. The dispute would lead to a legal battle that would continue for
years.
From Sue Greve's perspective, however, it was just
one more battle in a religious movement where this sort of warfare had become
the rule rather than the exception. Greve was only dimly aware of the
theological issues involved and not really concerned as long as she could
attend her beloved Tridentine mass. She and others feel that this was the
attitude of most of the traditionalist rank and file during the split. The
important thing was keeping the mass. Everything else was "politics,"
including the concern somewhere at the back of her mind that Fr. Kelly and Co. were
taking things that didn't belong to them. In retrospect Greve would
characterize her attitude as "selfish"; however, at the time it
didn't strike her that way.
"I WAS SO SELFISH"
"I was so selfish. The only thing I was
interested in was the fact that we had a mass to go to on Sunday. We go to mass
every Sunday even though you know that Fr. Kelly doesn't have any right to that
property. You don't get all shook up about it. That's the only way I can
describe it. I was interested in my children receiving the Catholic faith
unadulterated. And other than an occasional slap at the pope, there was nothing
[wrong]. Their doctrine was pure."
Because of personnel changes that came about as a
result of the split, Sue Greve began teaching at the school associated with St.
Gertrude's for - when she got paid - $50 a week. A little later her daughter
Marisue started teaching there too even though she had not yet completed her
college degree. While teaching there, Marisue met a "nun" associated
with a convent founded by the breakaway group. Then in 1986 Marisue left
Cincinnati to join the "convent" herself, to see if she had a
vocation. She was 20 years old at the time. It was at this point that Sue
Greve's misgivings about the ultratraditional sect began for real. She began
having arguments with the priests, including Fr. Kelly. She began thinking that
starting a school was one thing but starting a convent something else again.
Could such a thing be started without the permission of Rome? The fact that her
daughter had been drawn into this "convent" against the wishes of her
parents forced Sue Greve to face up to the relationship the sect had with Rome.
It was, she now began to say, a "quicksand institution."
THE GREVES' LUCK CHANGES
By the time Jim Greve and his three sons arrived
back at the novitiate in their rented car that Sunday afternoon their luck had
changed. Not only was Marisue not in the novitiate building, she wasn't on
novitiate property either. She and two other nuns were walking down Heart's
Content Lane, the public thoroughfare in front of the property - something she
only did once a week. Had they driven onto the property to get her they could
have been prosecuted for assault or trespassing - all at the discretion of Fr.
Kelly. They also, as Greve related later, might have ended up with a few nuns
as hood ornaments. As luck would have it, they didn't have to go onto novitiate
property at all.
Perhaps because of the surprise, or because of the speed
at which they were traveling or both, the car went right past Marisue and had
to turn around. Then Marisue's eldest brother Dave, a Cincinnati fireman and
former wrestler, got out of the car and approached his sister.
"Hi, Marisue," he said, "Dad wants to
talk to you." The car was standing next to both of them with its back door
open and motor running.
Marisue reacted mechanically as they feared she
would.
"I am not allowed visitations," she said.
"I am a Daughter of Mary and have to follow the rules and regulations of
the Daughters of Mary. I am not allowed visitation rights until July 2nd."
The Greves were later to claim that her mechanical
response was an indication of the novitiate's control over her mind.
Then as if interested in some sort of compromise
between the convent and her family, Marisue suggested,
"We can go back to the convent and ask Fr.
Kelly."
Dave Greve, however, was insistent.
"C'mon," he said, "Dad wants to talk
to you."
"I am not allowed to talk," she replied.
"I can't until July 2nd."
"Will you ride back with us?" Dave asked.
At this point seeing that further discussion was
pointless, Dave Greve grabbed his sister, threw her into the back seat of the
rental car and flopped on top of her. The car then sped off with the fireman's
and nun's legs hanging out its back door. After stopping for a moment to get
everyone safely inside, the car continued its getaway at speeds of 60 mph away
from the novitiate and back to where Mrs. Greve was waiting. The whole thing
happened in a matter of moments but not before an off-duty policeman saw what
was happening and a following car got close enough to get the rental car's
license plate number. By the time the Greve's got to the outlook though, no one
was following them.
From Sue Greve's perspective, her husband and sons
had no sooner left than they were back again with Marisue in the car.
"LIKE A TOTAL ZOMBIE"
"I mean within 10 or 15 minutes they came
flying back to the overlook. And there is Marisue in the car looking like a total
zombie. Everybody was in position by the time I saw them. There were people all
over the place [at the overlook]. It was just like being in a movie. Like you
were in a crime. It's like you can't believe that you're doing this. And then
she came out of that first vehicle completely unassisted. They never put a hand
on her. She walked from one car to the next. These people could have taken
pictures of this, but it happened so fast."
The Greves had chosen the van as the getaway car
because of its tinted windows. They knew that a nun in a full habit would have
been conspicuous and an easy mark for the police, but because of the
psychological dynamics of the deprogramming process didn't want to force
Marisue to remove her habit. That, they and the deprogrammer agreed, would have
to be something she did of her own free will in her own time. At this point,
the entire operation reached a critical phase. If Marisue struggled, it would
not only cause a scene attracting the attention of the tourists at the overlook,
it could also be used against them in any subsequent legal proceedings. Marisue
walked to the van of her own free will, but once she was inside her mother was
not reassured.
"She was not fighting at all," Mrs. Greve
recalled later, but she looked like "a total zombie." Mrs. Greve's
eyes widened in describing the look, "the thousand mile stare, the moonie
stare."
"Dear God," Mrs. Greve said, "She's
drugged."
Given the abruptness with which her life had
changed, the look on Marisue's face could have indicated shock just as well,
but drugs had been on Mrs. Greve's mind ever since her last visit to the
convent. Marisue had been given a prescription for Librax, a tranquilizer, as
an antidote to a chronic case of colitis she had developed at the novitiate. Mrs.
Greve took this as a bad sign for two reasons. First of all, she felt that the
colitis was the result of bad nerves, in turn resulting from stress, which
convinced her that the convent was not where her daughter belonged, and
secondly seeing the tranquilizers confirmed her suspicions of mind control.
Marisue, however, unbeknownst to her mother, had stopped taking the
tranquilizers months before. It was of course impossible for her to know that
then though.
And it was impossible to spend too much time thinking
about it. The group had to split up now. John, the youngest son, was given the
job of driving the rental car back to Albany. The rest of the family was to
proceed to a rented cabin in Milford, Pennsylvania, where they were to meet up
with the deprogrammer the next day. By this time everyone in the Greve family
was aware that where they were going to spend the next 20 years of their
lives-whether happily at home or in prison charged with kidnapping-depended
completely on the reaction of the zombie-like nun sitting in the van in their
midst. The Greve family had bet the ranch on the hope that Marisue would react
favorably to their efforts. If she didn't they were all aware that they were
going to be in big trouble.
Mrs. Greve began by trying to explain their
situation to her daughter.
"Marisue, sweetheart," she began, "we
had to do this. It's a bad situation. It's wrong. God doesn't want this for us.
You have to trust us. We love you. Honey, if the police pick us up, you won't
turn us in. You have to say it's all right, that you're with us."
Marisue's reaction, however, was not reassuring. She
stared straight ahead, and the first thing she said was, "I must obey the
rules and regulations of the Daughters of Mary. I am not allowed visitation
until July 2nd."
According to Sue Greve's account later, that was all
she said. "And I was completely freaked out," the mother added.
Auspicious beginning or not, it was time to split up. John headed off for the
airport in Albany, and the rest of the Greves for Pennsylvania, knowing that
once they crossed the state line the FBI could become involved in their
case.
FROM THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE
Becoming involved in the kidnapping of their own
daughter was a strange denouement to leaving the Church ten years earlier, but
the strangest thing about it was the fact that the Greve family seemed so
unaware of what they were doing. They had started out by just wanting to avoid
what they rightly saw as liberal abuses of doctrine and practice. They started
out by wanting to remain Catholic in the face of incessant change and ended up
belonging to a sect which believed that there was "an objective
doubt" whether Pope John Paul II was the real pope and whether the
900,000,000 or so Catholics who followed him were real Catholics. They ended up
in other words belonging to a group which claimed to be the real Catholic
faithful preserving Catholic truth from the depredations of an imposter pope,
imposter bishops, and 900,000,000 imposter Catholics. It was quite a feat,
actually, getting people to believe that, and no one, least of all the people
themselves involved, can come up with an explanation of how it happened.
Listening to the people talk, however, one comes up with a number of
explanations involving things like pride, greed, envy, and just plain old
stupidity-all of it revolving around an attitude that one would characterize as
quintessentially schismatic.
After her experiences with "Screwy Louie,"
and the various kooky priests coming into Cincinatti to say the Tridentine
mass, Sue Greve found a certain amount of stability in the Society of Pius X.
The stability of course was short lived, as it always is in schismatic groups.
After a few years of very expensive litigation the Society of Pius X became the
Society of Pius V, and the schismatic thinking continued apace. Sue Greve
absorbed it by intellectual osmosis by simply being part of the milieu. Even
now after all her bad experiences, the after effects of schism are still with
her in the doubts she harbors about the sacraments.
Recounting a recent experience at a local church,
Greve described how "this priest gave this sermon that was so terrible
that it was debatable whether you could go to communion or not. If you go to mass
and you don't believe that the priest is consecrating the body and blood of Christ then
it's hard to go to communion. I don't think I could ever go up here to St.
James for mass and communion. All the people use birth control. They're
sterilized. They all go to mass and communion. Nobody ever goes to confession.
They teach heresy in their schools. I can't be a part of that. That would
offend my conscience to be part of that abuse of the Catholic Church. I can't
help it. Now I'm open to change
if I'm wrong. I'd be very humble about that."
DONATISM REVISITED
Well, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Greve is wrong. But
she, with the help of the Society of Pius V and X has stumbled across a very
venerable error. It goes by the name of Donatism and is the quintessentially
schismatic attitude. During the early centuries of the Church, the Donatists
wanted to rebaptize all those who had offered incense to the emperor during
imperial Rome's persecutions of the Church. The Donatists, we read in an
introduction to St. Augustine's writings on them (The Works of St. Augustine, ed. Rev. Marcus Dods, M.A,
Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1872), "gained strength through the
profession that they made of extreme purity in the discipline which they
maintained." The consequence of their thinking was a clear devaluation of
the sacraments. The efficacy of the sacraments, according to the Donatists,
depended on the moral state of the minister and not on the merits of Jesus
Christ: "The guilt or heresy of any minister would invalidate the whole of
his ministerial acts." The result was a corrosive sort of uncertainty that
undermined the unity and catholicity of the Church. "Since,"
Augustine wrote in one of his treatises against the Donatists, "it is very
often a matter of uncertainty what kind of man the baptizer is, the hope ... of
the baptized [is] of uncertain origin" (op. cit. p. 236). As a result,
"the hope of the baptized may prove to be vain and ungrounded" (p.
236). Since the efficacy of the sacraments depended on the purity of the
minister, and since this purity was threatened by association with the impure,
separation became a moral imperative. If separation from the impure did not
occur, the validity of the sacraments was threatened. So Donatism is the
classic expression of schism. In fact the two attitudes are virtually
inseparable.
SACRAMENTAL INSECURITY
Kelly and Co. fostered just this sort of insecurity
in their followers. In a handout ironically beginning with the word
"Welcome," Fr. Dolan, pastor of St. Gertrude's, the Greves' former
church in Cincinnati, tells newcomers that "some baptisms performed after
the changes [of Vatican II, I presume] are of doubtful validity .... If
you have any reason to question the validity of a Baptism (your own or a
child's) please bring this to Father's attention before receiving Holy
Communion." He then gives some indication of what one must do in order to
be a member in good standing of that congregation: "Should you be a
Catholic who decides no longer to attend the 'New Mass,' but rather to assist
regulary [sic] at the traditional Mass, you are welcome to receive Holy
Communion here." Fr. Dolan, being possessed of such remarkable spiritual
discernment, was not slow in using it in peering into the souls of his
congregants and weeding out the unworthy. In a letter dated April 20, 1988,
David Greve complains that Father Dolan has refused to give communion to his
91-year-old great grandmother. "Supposedly this stems," Greve writes,
"from some concern that she receives a host from a Novus Ordo [sic]
priest. If in fact my grandmother does, I still do not believe it is grounds
for denying her the graces she needs near the end of her life. Grandma has been
a staunch Catholic for over 90 years and has been instrumental in guiding my
family towards the true Faith. Also in the last five years her Alzheimer's
dicease [sic] has progressed rapidly to the point where she has no idea
where she is, what she is doing or to whom she is speaking for longer than one
minute. When a priest comes to her to offer the Body of her Saviour, do you
think she has the faculties to distinguish between a traditional priest and a
Novus Ordo [sic] one?"
The fact that David Greve feels obliged to apologize
for the fact that his great grandmother receives communion from a bona fide
Roman Catholic priest is just one indication of the hold that the Kelly sect
had over him. Their prohibitions are, of course, consistent with the belief of
the Kellyite priests that the "New Mass" is a sacrilege. As every
good Catholic knows no one should receive communion after having committed a
sacrilege. Their views on the sacraments also put the Society of Pius V, all
100 or so of them, in the interesting position of being the One True Church,
outside of which there is no salvation. Fr. Kelly, the leader of this sect,
said pretty much the same thing in a bulletin he issued in August of 1988.
According to Kelly, "the Conciliar Church [i.e., the Roman Catholic
Church under Pope John Paul II] is a false religion." It is, he says a
little further on, "a modernist sect." The claim reminds one of the
charge of St. Augustine against those "who refuse Communion with the party
of Prirnianus, contending that in their body there remains greater sincerity of
Donatism just in proportion to the paucity of their numbers" (p. 10).
FIRST AS TRAGEDY, THEN AS FARCE
Someone once said that history repeats itself: first
as tragedy, then as farce. The anathemas and the blustering of the Kelly sect
certainly seem to bear this out. It is Donatism played as farce. In defending
his point of view on the Donahue show. Fr. Kelly stated. "We belong to
different religions. The bishop of Albany and I do not profess the same
faith." The implication of the statement was clear enough, but I wanted to
know for sure who wasn't the Catholic any more.
"Do you mean the bishop of Albany is not a
Catholic?" I asked in a phone conversation with Kelly.
"That's exactly what I mean. That's
right."
"What about Pope John Paul II. Do you belong to
a different religion from him?"
"I think so. Because in his seminaries they
preach outright and blatant heresy. I cannot see how he could be the vicar of
Christ and allow widespread and pernicious heresy in virtually all of these
seminaries and universities. I can't see Peter, for example, standing by and
allowing professors of theology to deny the virgin birth. I can't see Peter
failing to appoint bishops who would uphold the Catholic faith."
"Okay," I said wanting to pursue this
train of thought to its logical conclusion, "what about Paul VI?
"Well," Kelly replied. "I don’t think
there's any doubt that when he was elected he was pope, but it is my personal
opinion that somewhere along the line he ceased to be pope."
Fr. Kelly denies being a sedevacantist because he
puts forth his view that Pope John Paul II isn't the real pope as a
"personal opinion" and not "an article of faith.
Given this massive loss of faith, there is only one
course of action to pursue-separate from these antichrists and preserve the One
True Catholic Faith with the hundred or so other people who happen to agree
with you. Separation from the unity of the Church becomes, like everything else
in the topsy-turvy world of the schismatic, not a grievous sin but an act of
highest virtue.
"Let us say that the bishop of your diocese
called Fr. Matthew Fox in to say mass in your parish," Fr. Kelly
continued. "Would you receive communion from him? My point is that Fr. Fox
is not even a protestant. He is a pagan and a tool of the devil. He is an enemy
of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. He has faculties to preach; he has
faculties to hear confession and he can say public mass. Now if you're a member
of that diocese where the bishop is and you're in good standing with the
bishop, don't you think that that puts you in communion with this pagan? I'm
saying that if you are in communion with heretics or schismatics then you are a
heretic or a schismatic. If you are in liturgical communion with someone who is
a heretic then you must answer to God for being in communion with that heretic."
900,000,000?
"So how many people are we talking about
then?" I asked. "900,000,000 imposter Catholics?"
"Well, I know we are talking about something
which in the practical order is an unbelievable thing."
"I know it sounds extreme," he added later
on in our conversation.
Extreme or not, Fr. Kelly did get part of what he
was saying right. Being in communion with a schismatic (assuming full
knowledge) makes one a schismatic, but that is because of the nature of schism.
A schismatic is one who breaks the bond of unity with the Church. Anyone who
chooses to follow someone who breaks the bond is also breaking the bond. The
same thing does not apply to those who choose not to break the bond of unity
because the Church happens to have members who are heretics or sinners. The
crucial question in both Augustine's time and now is "whether while
abiding in unity in the communion of the same sacraments the wicked pollute the
good by their society." To Kelly and Donatus the answer is
"yes," to St. Augustine and the Catholic Church the answer is
"no." According to Augustine, the Donatist position is
self-contradictory:
Answer me,
wherefore have ye separated yourselves? I suppose that ye might not perish by
communion with wicked men. How then was it that Cyprian [whose position was the
same as the Donatists on Baptism] and so many of his colleagues did not perish?
For though they believed that heretics and schismatics did not possess baptism,
yet they chose to hold communion with them.... If, therefore, by such communion
with the wicked the just cannot but perish, the Church had already perished in
the time of Cyprian. Whence then sprang the origin of Donatus? Where was he
taught? Where was he baptized? Where was he ordained, since the Church had
already been destroyed by the contagion of communion with the wicked. But if
the Church still existed, the wicked could do no harm to the good in communion.
Wherefore did ye separate yourselves?
UNANSWERABLE ALTERNATIVES
The alternatives are as unanswerable now as they were
when St. Augustine first posed them. They get to the heart of the schismatic
mentality. If communion with the wicked could destroy the church, then it would
have been long gone before the time of Paul VI, or Pius X, or Pius V, in which
case Fr. Kelly would have no tradition to bind himself to. He would not be a
priest, and in fact would not even be a Christian since his baptism would have
been invalid. If, on the other hand, communion with the wicked does not destroy
the Church or its sacraments, then there is no reason to separate from it.
"All of these," writes St. Augustine,
referring to sinners, no matter how notorious, and heretics,
Catholic
unity embraces in her motherly breast, bearing each other's burdens by turns
and endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, till God
should reveal to one or other of them any error in their views.... If there was
contamination, the Church even then ceased to exist; answer me therefore,
whence came ye forth hither? But if the Church remained, the good are in no
wise contaminated by the bad in such communion; answer me therefore, why did ye
break the bond?
Augustine's conclusion is clear: it is "a
manifest rule that one ought in no wise by the establishment of a separate
communion, to secede from the Catholic communion, that is, from the body of
Christians throughout the world, even on the admission of evil and sacrilegious
men. ... If the communion of wicked men destroyed the Church in the time of
Cyprian, they have no source from which they can derive their own communion;
and if the Church was not destroyed, they have no excuse for their separation
from it." The sacraments of Christ do not cease to have their effect
because they are administered by heretics or any other kind of wicked an impious
person. "Nor," Augustine continues,
is the water
"profane and adulterous" over which the name of God is invoked even
though it be invoked by profane and adulterous persons .... [T]he baptism of
Christ, consecrated by the words of the gospel, is necessarily holy, however
polluted and unclean its ministers may be; because its inherent sanctity cannot
be polluted and the divine excellence abides in its sacrament, whether to the
salvation of those who use it aright or to the destruction of those who use it
wrong. Would you indeed maintain that while the light of the sun or of a
candle, diffused through unclean places, contracts no foulness in itself
therefrom, yet the baptism of Christ can be defiled by the sins of any man,
whatsoever he may be?
SACRAMENTAL REALISM
At another point, St. Augustine proposes the formula
that has become the heart of the sacramental realism that is the essentially
Catholic position: "in the question of baptism we have to consider not who
gives but what he gives; not who receives but what he receives; not who has but
what he has."
It is not hard to understand the attraction of the
Donatist position from the minister's point of view. Cut off from sacraments
which operate ex
opere operato,
schismatic
Catholics are completely dependent on the ministers who claim to have the
purity necessary to confect the sacraments. And as one might expect, these
ministers, these wolves in sheep's clothing, as Augustine calls them, have no
qualms about lording this over their pathetic and misguided congregations. The
effect of Donatism is absolutely essential in understanding the necessarily
cult-like nature of these schismatic groups. However ludicrous their claims to
be the "true" Catholic Church, the effects on those who come under
the spell of these people is anything but funny.
MORE "VOWS"
Shortly after she arrived home, Marisue received a
letter from one woman who actually took "vows" in another
traditionalist "convent" and the torment she suffered afterward at
the hands of her family, who felt that she had broken her vows by leaving. The
family suffered too. One uncle went to "Bishop" McKenna's chapel in
Covington, Kentucky only to find out that the good "bishop"
"would not hear the confessions of the people at this chapel, because they
had caused so much trouble and did not deserve the sacrament." That same
uncle died that week without benefit of the sacraments. "He had been
denied," the woman wrote, "by a so-called traditional priest, the
saving graces open to Catholics."
The family then went to Fr. Vezelis's chapel where
they also experienced "many difficulties. He had himself consecrated as a
bishop and commanded total obedience from us all .... When the 'bishop' heard
that my husband had asked some unfavorable questions about him, my husband was
kicked out of the church .... For nearly two years the 'bishop' forbid [sic]
my family to see us and they obeyed."
Then in 1985 the woman's mother began to object to
the propaganda put out by "Bishop" Vezelis, causing her father, whom
she characterizes as "totally under the 'bishop's' spell," to divorce
her mother. "My father says my mother and my brothers and sisters and I
are going to hell because we do not attend the 'bishop's' mass. Dad has about
36 grandchildren, many who do not even know him, these children he too
condemns."
Finally, the family ended up at St. Gertrude's,
which convinced her that
these places are not showered with the blessings of God. Everywhere we went,
Our Blessed Lord was giving us signs, opening doors for us, and we just could
not see it. Although I still believe the Old Mass to be the most beautiful, I
have also come to realize that only by believing in the promise of our savior
will the Catholic Church remain strong. Jesus promised to the popes that he
would be with them until the end of time. For all our good intentions, we
seemed to forget his promise. Only in obedience to true authority can we save
our souls. Each traditional church we went to was [in] a state of chaos and
anarchy. We had no head; we had no protector.
SECULAR PUBLICITY
The publicity surrounding the Greve case dealt with
it from a secular point of view, according to which all religions are created
equal, and therefore, which gets called a cult remains a purely subjective
judgment something by the way which Kelly capitalized on in his public
appearances. From the Catholic point of view, however, things look different.
The Catholic faith can make certain claims on people's lives only because it is
the Catholic faith and because of the safeguards programmed into it -
Augustine's view of sacramental realism being one of the most prominent. When
these claims are made outside of the Church, however, they become automatically
and ipso facto tyrannical. This is especially true of the Donatists' redaction
of the Christian faith. Any sect which is that dependent on the good will of a
minister is naturally going to become a cult. The Greves were a long way from
understanding this on that Sunday afternoon in June. They had more pressing
things in mind - things like getting out of New York before they were stopped
by the police.
THE THOUSAND MILE STARE
Once the switch had been made and John Greve sent
off to the Albany airport with the rental car, Sue had a chance to look at her
daughter more closely. What she saw did not inspire confidence. What she saw
was the "thousand mile stare." She was convinced that Marisue was
drugged. Leaning forward to her son. Dave, she said, "You have to start now."
Dave was to begin the deprogramming. He did so by focusing on the curious
history of Fr. Kelly based partly on information from priests who knew him and
partly on legal documents resulting from lawsuits Kelly was waging against the
Society of Pius X.
Clarence Kelly was born in Brooklyn and attended
Immaculate Heart Seminary on Long Island, Catholic University, and finally
Lefebvre's seminary in Econe in the early '70s. He only stayed a year there
though and returned to the U.S. to write a book for the John Birch Society, of
which he was a member at the time. The book, Conspiracy Against God and Man, is a derivative book on
Freemasonry which is dedicated to, among others, Robert Welch, then head of the
Birch society, Archbishop Lefebvre, and Father Francis Fenton, another priest
who was a member of the Birch Society. Written in 1974 the book’s dedication
says a great deal about the fault lines in Fr. Kelly's loyalties and where they
would split when the pressure was applied. Watching Fr. Kelly on the Donahue
show, one is struck by the contradictions in his philosophy. Here we have
Kelly, who split with Lefebvre, the man who thought that Dignitatis Humanae,
Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Liberty, betrayed the Catholic
position on the proper relation between Church and State, demagogically
declaiming: "I say in the United States of America, parents do not have
the right to do that to a 22 year old woman," to the applause of the
Donahue audience. When Mrs. Greve objected that he had no right to found a
Catholic convent, Kelly countered by saying, "Who are you to decide
that?" Which prompted Fr. James LeBar - a "legit priest," as
Donahue called him - from the New York archdiocese, to say, "I guess we
could ask the same question too. Who are you to decide that this is a convent
if the Church law says it's up to the bishop to decide."
“This is America," Kelly replied. "In the
U.S.A. we have a right ...."
"We're talking about the Catholic Church,"
LeBar said, "Not American law."
AMERICANISM VS. TRADITIONALISM
The tension in Kelly between Americanism and
Traditionalism simmered for 10 years. As one priest ordained by Archbishop
Lefebvre said, "the strange thing about Kelly and Sanborn is that they
claim to be traditional Catholics when they are really just another side of the
old Americanist heresy. The Americans know best what should happen to the
Catholic Church in America." The same priest saw them as "weirdly
traditional in that the only church that matters to them is the church that
goes back to the 1950s in America."
Howard Walsh, president of Keep the Faith, Inc., a
group which produces Catholic video and audio tapes, sees Kelly as "a
young guy from New York City, full of zeal, but off the track. I think they
bent him out of shape in the seminary. Between that and the John Birch Society,
he thinks the world is falling apart. Then on top of that he finds out that the
Church is falling apart. He goes over to Lefebvre, and they tell him there is
no pope. So the world's falling apart, and the Church is falling apart, and
it's up to me to save everything, and the only thing that's true is tradition.
So they hold on to tradition."
Fr. Guenther Richter, a priest ordained by Lefebvre
and recently kicked out of a Pius V mission in Florida by Fr. Kelly, had a simpler
view of the whole thing: "Fr. Kelly," he said, "wants to be his
own pope."
LEFEBVRE VS. THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY
Kelly, and perhaps this is prophetic, never returned
to Econe after writing his book for the Birch Society. According Fr. Urban
Snyder, a priest associated with Lefebvre at the time, Kelly's brother
organized a letter writing campaign to the archbishop, claiming that Kelly had
enough education already and that he should ordain him as is. Eventually
Lefebvre agreed. It was a decision he would later regret, for Kelly was never
really under his control in spite of the fact that he was Lefebvre's main man
in the United States. In the transcript of a conversation between Lefebvre and
Kelly held in 1980, Kelly is quoted as saying, "I absolutely do not wish
to cause trouble," to which Lefebvre responded, "Understood. You show
loyalty to the John Birch Society. Let us show the same loyalty towards the
Pope."
By 1983, however, Kelly was willing to cause the
archbishop plenty of trouble. He and eight other priests - they were after that
known as "the nine" or, in a name that reminds one of a heavy metal
rock group, "the Oyster Bay Cult" - issued a series of demands
concerning the pope, the missal being used in the society and annulments. Point
number seven of their manifesto demanded "That Rev. Clarence Kelly and
Rev. Anthony Cekada be and are hereby granted full power of attorney by any
U.S. corporation in which the Fraternity may have an interest to draw up and
execute for and on behalf of said corporations any legal documents ...."
Some observers felt that the theological issues were simply the pretext for
point number seven, which would have effectively granted Kelly full control of
the Society of Pius X in the United States. One of those people is Conde
McGinley, a Philadelphia-area businessman who stayed with Lefebvre after the
split occurred. McGinley claims that Kelly and his group planned the takeover
for years in advance by putting their own names on the deeds of the chapels
they were starting for the Society of Pius X. Part of the court record includes
a letter from Fr. Cekada to the Rev. Denis Roch explaining that he planned to
make the "necessary revisions" in the deeds, but was waiting
"until all the legal work is completed for all the chapels." The
changes were never made.
EXTREMISM
At any rate in 1983, Kelly and Co. remained adamant,
and Lefebvre kicked them out of the Society of Pius X for espousing
"extremism." One of the ironies of the case is that now Archbishop
Lefebvre and those around him are making theological noises which sound very
similar to Kellyism. In his letter denouncing the nine in 1983,Lefebvre said of
the Kellyites, "They think and behave as if there is no pope .... This
radicalism is not the attitude of the Society," yet he begins a letter to
then Father, now "Bishop" Williamson, dated August 29, 1987:
"The see of Peter and the posts of authority in Rome being occupied by
anti-Christs ..." leading one to believe that schism has a trajectory all
its own, and that one gets pulled along in one direction willy nilly.
Father John Emerson, a 40-year-old priest from
California who was ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1981 but who has now gone
over to the Society of St. Peter formed under the motu proprio, Ecclesia
Dei, feels now that the same extremism that led to Kelly's break in 1983
had been in the Society of Pius X all along but held in check by the
archbishop's influence. Now he feels that the archbishop is moving - "in a
far more sophisticated and elegant way" - in Kelly's direction.
"It's not yet entirely public," Emerson
stated, "but we know that there are professors at the seminary in France,
at Flavigny, who openly say there is no pope." Fr. Emerson feels that the
sedevacantism was always a part of the Society of Pius X "in a hidden way,
but since the consecration they're willing to be more explicit about it. The
archbishop hinted in his famous sermon of Easter 1985 that in fact maybe the
pope wasn't the pope, but there was such a violent reaction against it in the society
that he backed down. But he's been so successful in preparing his priests for
the consecration that I think he's going to try again. Fr. Besing, who is the
head of the Society of St. Peter and was right at the top of the Society of
Pius X, said to us that he believes that in his heart the archbishop believes
that the pope is not the pope and hasn't been for the past three, four, or five
years. But he just hasn't made it clear."
There is a certain irony here that was not lost on
Fr. Emerson. Lefebvre expels Kelly for "extremism" and then ends up
espousing virtually the same views. The irony was not lost on the Society of
Pius V either, which sent a representative to the consecrations of
"Bishops" Williamson et al. From the point of view of schism and Archbishop
Lefebvre, Kelly was ahead of his time. The extremism that got Kelly and Co.
kicked out of the society in 1983 was starting to look like the middle of the
road position in the Society of Pius X by 1988.
CONFIDENCE ABUSED
In 1985, however, the judge hearing Kelly's lawsuit
decided in favor of the Society of Pius X, granting St. Cyprian's Chapel in
Eddystone, Pennsylvania to them. He concluded that Fr. Cedaka and Fr. Kelly had
positions of trust in the society, and that Fr. Cekada "abused a confidential
relationship." Almost immediately after the case was decided against them,
the Kelly faction stopped the chapel's mortgage payments. Around the same time,
the chapel was stripped of anything not nailed down, including doorknobs.
Eventually under the threat of a contempt of court citation the mortgage
payments were brought up to date. But the Pius X group never got back the
missing furnishings. Conde McGinely consulted his lawyer and decided it would
be cheaper to buy new furnishings than to pursue the matter legally.
ROADBLOCKS IN NEW YORK
Dave Greve had gone through the legal documents and
was covering the bickering and the conniving in blow by blow descriptions as
the van made its way over the next three hours back to Pennsylvania. Marisue listened
in a trance-like fashion. Marisue said little more than "Where are
we?" and "When can we stop. I have to go to the bathroom." Soon
they began to notice that roadblocks were being set up with disturbing
regularity, yet as luck or providence would have it always in such a way that
would allow them to get by. Avoiding the roadblocks, however, caused them to
get lost, and after being lost for a while they realized that they would be
soon out of gas. Stopping for gas and going to the rest rooms would be another
crucial point for Marisue. First of all, she would certainly be visible as a
nun, and for all they knew Kelly might have sent her picture to the police. For
all they knew, it might be being shown on television now. But the second and
more crucial issue was not knowing how Marisue would react. Would she bolt?
Would she want to use the phone? When Sue had picked up her daughter in April
and brought her back home to Cincinnati, she had made the mistake of letting
Marisue call Fr. Kelly, who immediately dispatched another nun, Sister Mary
Cabrini, to meet her at the airport when they arrived in Cincinnati. Once she
found Marisue. Cabrini would not leave her side on orders from Kelly, and the
Greves were faced with either getting physical with her or letting her come
along. Since they would not touch her because of her habit, the outcome was a
foregone conclusion. Marisue eventually succumbed to the pressure of Sister
Cabrini, who eventually brought her back to the novitiate, where the control
over he was increased. Mrs. Greve received a letter shortly after Marisues
return in April informing her that she would not be allowed to write to her
daughter.
KELLY AND THE MOONIES
When Marisue called Fr. Kelly the first time in April
of '88, she remembers hearing him scream at her mother and then ask her over
the phone if someone was "desensitizing" her. Kelly apparently knew
what deprogramming was and was afraid that it was going to be used on the
people at his convent. When Marisue got back to the convent in April, Kelly
called her in and explained to her that there were "agencies out there
that you can hire to change people's religious beliefs." Later Kelly would
send Marisue affidavits of people who had been deprogrammed out of the Moonies
only to return. Both Marisue and her mother wondered where he got this
material, suspecting some contact with the Moonies or similar organizations.
When I spoke with Fr. Kelly on the phone, he acknowledged sending the
affidavits. When I asked him where he got them, he said, "I don't
remember."
In the April incident, Marisue was taken aback when
he threatened to call the police on her mother.
"It's just my mom," she told an upset
Kelly over the phone in April. "I'm with my mother." "It wasn't,"
she said later, "like I was with some stranger."
Kelly intended to be prepared the second time. He
had a file ready with Marisue's picture and alleged quotes from the mother. If
the people at the gas station had seen any pictures though, they didn't react
when Marisue got out of the van and went to the ladies room. Wasting no time,
the van was refueled and they were on the road again. Eventually they eluded
all the roadblocks and made it back to the cabin in Pennsylvania before dark.
Marisue spent her first night away from the convent reading court transcripts,
letters that had never been delivered to her, and I Am With You Always, a
pamphlet on the indefectibility of the Catholic Church written by Michael
Davies. Davies played a crucial role in convincing Mrs. Greve that Kelly was
not what he claimed he was.
The Greve family had accomplished what it set out to
do. Now they were safe-with one exception. John who should have been there to
greet them because of the time it took avoiding the roadblocks was still not
back. In fact, he would never make it back to the cabin. He had been
apprehended by the police when he showed up at the Albany airport with the
rental car. Eventually he was flown back to Cincinnati the following day, but
Sue Greve did not know this and had to live with the fear for some time that
she had gained back one child only to lose another. Sue remembers going to bed
that night - Marisue still in her habit - hearing voices coming from somewhere
in the cabin but being unable to trace them. The voices continued for the
second night of their stay as well.
THE DEPROGRAMMING
The next day the deprogramming entered its crucial
phase with the arrival of Mary, a Catholic deprogrammer who had been involved
herself with a cult. Sue Greve was adamant about finding someone who would
respect the Catholic faith. Mary arrived at the cabin at around 4:00 PM on
Monday. According to Mrs. Greve's account, "within a half an hour Marisue
was completely comfortable with Mary." This was accomplished by showing videotapes
and discussions, but also by allowing Marisue to review her own experiences at
the convent. Marisue had been programmed to believe that she was special and
that no one on the outside would understand convent life. In addition she had
been counseled by Fr. Kelly to a spiritual life that was so far beyond her that
she found it in retrospect laughable.
"I would go in and talk to Fr. Kelly on the
average of once a week, and he told me that if I continued the way I was I
could be in the dark night of the soul in a year. Last week I was talking to
Debbie [a parishioner at St. Gertrude's] and we were rolling on the floor
laughing. I said, 'Father, no way.' But he was serious. He said, 'You should be
on the second level, which is the illuminative way by the time of your final
profession.' And he'd talk about how when you get infused contemplation it's
the greatest thing in the world."
"Implying that he has it?" I asked.
"It would imply that," Marisue replied.
Part of the stress at the convent came from the
disparity between the exalted spirituality that was urged on the girls and the
pettiness and bickering of actual life there. On her way to the dark night of
the soul, Marisue was given a public penance – which according to the
constitution of the order was to be administered only in the case of grave and
public sin – for slipping inside a van and thanking one of the convent's women
benefactors for dropping off some meatballs for the nuns.
It was Mary's explanation of the disparity between theory
and practice that began to unlock Kelly's control over Marisue.
"Mary," said Mrs. Greve, "would point
out the pride. She would point out the disobedience in the way they handle
people. Why did they build up this wall between you and your parents. That is
not what God would want. That is a violation of the fourth commandment. They
should try to heal the wound between you and your parents, not make it bigger.
There was no kind of sensitivity training involved. Any of us could have done
it."
Then that evening the deprogrammer focused on the
crucial role Sister Mary Cabrini played in the whole drama. According to
Marisue's later testimony, Sister Cabrini had become involved in the losing end
of a power struggle with Sister Virginia Marie, who later replaced her as
superior of the order. Cabrini was acting on Kelly's orders when she followed
Marisue home in April and refused to leave her side, but there seemed to be
more than that than met the eye. It was as if she were clinging to the only
person who understood her in a convent where she was becoming more and more
isolated. At the convent Marisue saw herself as Cabrini's only confidante. Once
Marisue was taken away from her Cabrini "reacted with a hatred, an inner
violence." At least this is how Marisue saw it later. The reaction was
understandable, I suppose. It explains Cabrini's desperation in April, where
Marisue was literally being pulled in two opposite directions by the desperate
nun and her distraught mother.
CHARITY
"This isn't Catholic," was the verdict of
Mary, the exit counselor. At first Marisue would protest, saying "You
don't know convent life," but Mary remained firm.
"Marisue, I have a friend who is a nun and I
know that convent life isn't like this. This isn't Catholic."
It is fitting that the lack of charity at the
convent became the turning point for Marisue, because lack of charity is what
schism is all about. St. Thomas Aquinas defines it as a sin against charity. In
this he agrees with St. Augustine, who has something similar to say about the
Donatists. "None," he tells us, "would create schisms, if they
were not blinded by hatred of their brethren. ... Can it be that schism does
not involve hatred of one's brethren? Who will maintain this, when both the
origin of and perseverance in schism consists in nothing else save hatred of
the brethren?"
"By Monday night,"
said Mrs. Greve, "Marisue knew that the relationship between Cabrini and
Kelly was unchristian. That is what unlocked the door to Marisue's
deprogramming. That and all the information Dave gave her."
The next day Marisue took off her habit and mailed
it back to the Kellyite convent. Later Kelly would claim that Marisue had lost
her religious beliefs, but not before she would counter by saying that she had
simply lost her faith in him.
"I'll just never think that I'm better than
other people," said Marisue after it was all over sitting in the family
room of her parents' Ohio home. She sounded a little bit like Dorothy after her
return from Oz. "I'm thankful that I have my true faith and thankful that
it's a part of my life. I will never think I should do something against the
authority of the Church or do anything with someone outside the Church or make
up some cloudy rationalization of why we should go there."
Both Mrs. Greve and her daughter have resolved their
differences with the Catholic Church but attend the local Maronite rite
congregation because of its liturgy. Both of them have an aversion to the
vernacular liturgy. It is precisely to these people that the pope expressed his
concern in the motu
proprio, Ecclesia Dei:
To all those Catholic faithful who feel attached to
some previous liturgical and disciplinary forms of the Latin tradition I wish
to manifest my will to facilitate their ecclesial communion by means of the
necessary measures to guarantee respect for their rightful aspirations. In this
matter I ask for the support of the bishops and of all those engaged in the
pastoral ministry in the Church.
So it would seem, in spite of the schism of Archbishop
Lefebvre, that the moment may have arrived for the traditionalists to be
reconciled with the Church. Sue Greve, at any rate, is in a conciliatory mood
after her experience with schism.
"I abjure," she said, "any taint of
errors I had. I do not go to St. James up the street because I have never gone
to that parish. I would feel as if I were walking into a completely strange
place because they redid it, and it's not very Catholic looking. So we're
talking about taste. I believe that the novus ordo mass is a valid mass.
I believe that I have many prejudices toward the mass that I may never
overcome. I don't know. But I am completely attached to Rome. I am completely
attached to the pope. But you can't heal all wounds at once. I will do what the
Church says, and I will never set myself up as an authority over the
magisterium of the Church. The things that I still have hang-ups about are
matters of taste."
Now both Marisue and her mother can say with St.
Augustine that there is no salvation without the Church, "and therefore
whatever men have that belongs to the Church, it profits them nothing toward
salvation outside the Church."
E. Michael Jones is the editor of Culture Wars.
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