From La Stampa:
Thomas Williams, the most publicly prominent member of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who left the priesthood after admitting he fathered a child, is getting married the child's mother. The bride is none other than the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, one of Pope Francis' top advisers, The Associated Press reports.
“Glendon, a Harvard University law professor, is one of the highest-ranking women at the Vatican as president of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences. She is also one of five people on Francis' commission to reform the scandal-marred Vatican bank. Her daughter, Elizabeth Lev, is a Rome-based art historian and columnist for the Legion-run Zenit news agency, which Williams published for over a decade while he was in the order.”
“Williams, a moral theologian, author, lecturer and U.S. television personality, admitted last year that he had fathered a child several years earlier. At the time, Williams apologized for "this grave transgression" against his vows of celibacy and said he had stayed on as a priest because he hoped to move beyond "this sin in my past" to do good work for the church. The Legion's retired superior later admitted he had learned about the child in 2005 but allowed Williams to keep teaching and preaching about morality. After taking a year off for reflection, Williams left the priesthood in May to care for his son. According to their wedding registry, he and Lev are due to marry on Saturday in the United States,” The Associated Pressinforms.
After initially denying she had an intimate relationship with Williams, Lev confirmed by email on Thursday that the two planned to marry, saying: "We have no intention of ever discussing our personal life in this forum."
The Associated Press points out that the wedding raises some awkward questions: “Who beyond Williams' superior in the church knew about the child while the couple tried to cover it up? Was Williams already in a relationship with Lev when she was hired at the magazine he published? And did the family ties to Williams influence Glendon in her defence of the Legion and its disgraced founder despite credible reports that the founder was a paedophile?”
After the death of its founder Rev. Marciel Maciel, in 2008, the Legion admitted that he fathered three children and sexually abused his seminarians. The news of the wedding is all the more shocking given that Williams had been a staunch defender of Maciel.
Update: Zenit is owned by Innovative Media Inc. This holding company for the "Legion of Christ" has had its status revoked by the IRS.
3 comments:
The first sentence in this post is unsubstantiated and misleading. The statements made by La Stampa are either true or false and need to be dealt with on the evidence. Your statement about a "progressivist inquisition" is poisoning the well and obscuring the issue. Are you saying that the La Stampa article is part of this "progressivist inquisition" and should be discounted?
The reference is to the persecution of the Franciscans....
It happens unfortunately that priests have affairs and father children. There was a priest in the life of St. Teresa of Avila who did something similar. She writes about it in her autobiography. She was close friends with the priest, bitterly disappointed to find this out about him, and she corrected him. He repented and was able to stay away from his lover while Teresa was in town. But when she left… There is a lovely movie of the life of St. Teresa of Avila in Spanish with English subtitles, and regarding the priest's affair, the movie creators showed the poor priest's look of agony while his former lover, a sultry temptress, gloated because she knew the interfering nun was leaving town, and now she'd be back in control. I don't know if Teresa knew for sure when she left this would take place, or if the movie just portrayed her fear of what would take place when she left town. I'd like to hope he received the grace to remain chaste.
Pope Benedict spoke of these situations in his interview, "Light Of the World." When there are children involved, he said if the bond is not superficial, the Church actually wants the priest to marry the woman and raise the child because THE CHILD'S NEEDS COME FIRST. He said it had to be discerned if the affair created a bond, or was just a one-night stand sort of deal. I though his attitude was very enlightened. And while we can say it's a shame that the affair happened to begin with, once it did they are doing the right thing to marry. They should have received permission and married right after the child was conceived. Very poor discernment on someone's part to wait.
I'm reading a book about atheists and their fathers, (Faith of the Fatherless) and one of the famous atheists of our time was conceived in an affair with a Catholic priest. The man apparently felt so ashamed of his origins that he changed his last name several times trying to create the impression that he was descended from SOMEBODY. The lack of father is a wound that creates the environment for a person to reject God. Atheists are brewed up in fatherless homes. Let's pray for the little family. God bless you. Susan Fox www.christsfaithfulwitness.com
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