Cover
story Turmoil in Atlanta
By GERALD RENNER
Special to the National Catholic
Reporter Atlanta
In the past, when the controversial
Legion of Christ has taken over Catholic schools, teachers and administrators
who objected have quietly gone elsewhere. Parents who couldnt accept the
new situation transferred their children to other schools.
In Atlanta it was different.
In mid-1999, the Legionaries, a staunchly conservative order of
priests, took control of The Donnellan School, a private, independent Catholic
school in the affluent Sandy Springs suburb of Atlanta. When, a year and a half
later, the new administrators fired four staff members, the staff members went
to court. Parents who felt betrayed yanked their kids out of the 4-year-old
school and started their own. They didnt go quietly. The parents invited
the media to cover their protests and amplified their complaints through a Web
page on the Internet.
The takeover in Atlanta, where consequences have played out in
recent months, is the latest in a string of similar incidents involving the
Legionaries, a self-described militant religious order with a
penchant for secrecy. Founded in Mexico in 1941 and modeled on an army, the
Legionaries have stirred the passions of people all over the country as they
have established a network of institutions. According to the Georgia
Bulletin, the archdiocesan newspaper in Atlanta, they include about 25
private Catholic schools with students up to grade 12.
Tightly disciplined, hierarchical and traditional in its approach
to doctrine and practice, the Legion can appeal to Catholics who yearn for the
ways of the church before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the
1960s.
However, even some traditionalist Catholics have been put off by
the orders tactics in taking over schools.
In Atlanta, the takeover was made possible by sale of The
Donnellan School property to a newly formed non-profit group called The
Donnellan, Inc. Its officers are Fr. Anthony Bannon, the Legions U.S.
director; Fr. John Hopkins, a Legionary priest who was named head chaplain and
vice president of the school, and Msgr. Edward Dillon, an Atlanta pastor and
the schools president.
The Georgia Bulletin reported that the archdiocese sold The
Donnellan School property to the Legion-affiliated organization for $8 million
in June 1999. Disgruntled parents and staff members said they had been unaware
of the consequences of the sale, including the Legions total control,
until at least a year later.
Since mid-September, at least 120 children have been removed from
the school and at least five teachers have resigned. Enrollment last year was
about 400 children in kindergarten through the eighth grade. Many parents,
however, remain satisfied and say they see no changes at the school.
Jay Dunlap, national spokesman for the Legionaries, said that in
contrast to the minority of parents unhappy at Donnellan, most others in the 25
to 30 schools affiliated with the Legion are overwhelmingly
satisfied. The Donnellan School is an exceptional case, he said, because
it is very rare that the Legion gets involved in a school that is already
started. That is why, he said, in the case of Donnellan, the Legion kept
a low profile during the first year.
He said in most other cases, the priests in the order are involved
with parents from the very start to establish a school that incorporates
the Legions educational philosophy. That means a school built on
academic rigor and solid teaching of the Catholic faith, he said.
Enjoys papal favor
Board members of the Donellan School before and after the sale
include Frank Hanna III, a multimillionaire businessman well known in Georgia
for his support of conservative Republican causes, and a member of Regnum
Christi, the Legions organization for laity that stresses loyalty to the
pope and submissiveness to the will of the Legions priests.
While the order does not publicly outline its ambition for a
network of schools, the movement is significant for several reasons. Not least,
it enjoys the favor of Pope John Paul II. The orders standing with the
papacy appears to remain unshaken despite serious allegations of sexual
misconduct leveled against its founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, by former
priests and seminarians. The allegations became public in 1997.
In its literature, the order makes it clear that its structure is
rigidly militaristic and that unity is prized. Wherever the order has put down
roots in the United States, it has introduced into the Catholic parochial
culture a highly authoritarian approach that brooks no challenges from
underlings. The orders U.S. base is in Orange, Conn.
A Legion official in Atlanta would not answer a reporters
questions about problems at the school.
Fr. Owen Kearns, a Legionary priest and publisher of the
National Catholic Register, a weekly newspaper affiliated with the
Legion, said officials in Atlanta had been restrained by lawsuits from talking
to reporters. Naturally they cant discuss this, because its
in legal proceedings, he said.
Critics of the takeover in Atlanta said the Legionaries deceived
parents and sought unquestioned loyalty from administrators. A former Donnellan
principal, Angela Naples, said that two school officials, Hopkins, the
Legionary priest, and Dillon, the schools president, held her against her
will for hours on Sept. 5 trying to persuade her to sign a confidential loyalty
pledge. She described it as a modification of her contract that would have
required her to resign at the end of the school year and to report to school
officials anything negative said by employees or parents against the
Legionaries. According to Diane Stinger, former guidance counselor, Hopkins
ordered her to report on confidential conversations she had with students.
Specifically, she said, she was to provide Hopkins with weekly lists of
meetings with students and tell him what they said.
When educators failed to respond to the Legions demands and
began to alert parents, Legionaries took the next step, claiming that some
educators attempted to undermine the school boards authority. On Sept.
13, at the order of the schools board of directors, the guidance
counselor, the principal of the lower school, the athletic director and a
middle school coordinator were fired and escorted from the building. Police
were called to the scene and school officials warned fired staff members they
would be arrested for trespassing if they tried to reenter the school.
The standoff happened at 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon in view of
stunned parents and crying children. A day later, some 500 parents questioned
board members at an emotional meeting that left many dissatisfied.
You have to understand the magic of our community to
understand what has been lost through the intervention of the Legion, Stinger
said.
Both Stinger and Naples have sued. Stingers suit, filed in
Fulton County, names as defendants The Donnellan School, Inc., Msgr. Dillon and
Fr. Hopkins. The suit alleges breach of contract and defamation, among other
complaints. Plaintiffs in a third suit are Michael and Emily Deubel. Michael
Deubel is the former athletic director at the school. His wife, Emily, was
middle school coordinator.
The defendants, contending plaintiffs have been making false
statements through the press, have asked the court to silence them with an
injunction. The court denied the motion in mid-October.
Matthew S. Coles, lawyer for The Donnellan School and for the
Atlanta archdiocese, described the firings as justifiable because, he said, the
former teachers and administrators had been undermining the authority of the
new owners.
Jay Morgan, father of two children at Donnellan, said he had seen
no difference since the Legionaries became involved in the school. I have
to tell you that the whole issue of the Legion is a ruse and a smokescreen to
divert peoples attention from a very self-centered agenda, driven
by the ambitions of one of the former administrators, he said. Ive
searched high and low for some difference and Ive seen none.
This isnt about the Legion. Its about a group
organizing because they wanted to take over a school, and the Legion has been
bloodied by it. Theyve invented this whole story that the school was
being taken over by a cult. Its created a lot of turmoil and its
sad, but were coming out of it a better school.
The Legions efforts to establish authoritarian control at
The Donnellan School are in keeping with the Legions philosophy, critics
say.
Unity is the supreme good for the movement, inasmuch as the
movement is a body and an army at the service of the Kingdom of Christ,
Legionaries founder Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado has written. The
director represents the authority of Christ the head, and the subject the
redemptive obedience of Christ.
Legion priests take fourth vow
The approach is reinforced from the start by requiring Legion
priests, who pledge total fidelity to the pope, to take a vow in addition to
the traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience taken by other
religious orders. Legion priests, in their fourth vow, swear never to speak ill
of the Legion, its Rome-based founder Maciel, now 80, or of their superiors.
They also promise to inform on anyone who does.
You are not supposed to question authorities or systems. It
is a methodology that is cult-like, said Paul Lennon, who was a Legionary
priest for 23 years.
Archbishop John F. Donoghue has challenged that assessment.
Any suggestion that the Legionaries of Christ are a cult is
to be disregarded as irresponsible and false, he wrote.
Donnellan began as a private Catholic school, with its own board
outside the diocesan system. It was headed by Grey Sr. Dawn Gear, who has been
cited nationally as a superior educator. In a state where public schools are
near the bottom of the list nationally as measured by most criteria, Donnellan
was an immediate success.
Gear attracted to Donnellan highly educated, affluent parents who
wanted an academically solid Christian education for their children.
In January 1999, Gear was asked to step down by the board. That
upset many parents who wondered what was going on. The nun herself will not
speak about it publicly, but people who know her said she objected to the
impending sale to the Legion. She retained a lawyer and made a private
out-of-court settlement on condition she not speak out, said a person in a
position to know.
The firings of the four faculty members galvanized the parents at
Donnellan as nothing else had. Those who pulled their children out enrolled
them in public schools, in parish schools, in other private schools, and in a
hastily conceived new school.
The new school, the Atlanta Academy, was started by parents who
raised, in less than two weeks, a quarter of a million dollars as seed money.
It opened on Oct. 2 and by mid-October had enrolled 45 students.
Organizers of the new school hired the four staff members who were
fired at Donnellan along with a Donnellan teacher who resigned last year. A
music teacher and an art teacher have volunteered their time one day a
week.
Parents who had already paid partial or full tuition -- as much as
$7,400 a year -- have asked Donnellan officials for a refund. Board member
David Hanna, brother of Frank Hanna, told parents that refunds, if granted,
would be based on need.
Parents go public
We will be looking at each family that requests a refund
based on their need, not their wants, Hanna wrote in an e-mail to a
parent who demanded his money back. Our first priority is to ensure that
the school has the operating funds to meet the obligations of the school,
including teacher salaries.
Most of the aggrieved Atlanta parents recognized they could not
win against the small but powerful religious order backed by the pope and, in
Atlanta, by the areas Catholic overseer, Archbishop Donoghue. But they
loved their school before the Legionaries took over and said they werent
going to fade away without a fight. At the very least, they said, bringing the
incident to public attention will serve as a warning to others.
While the Legionaries may emphasize the pursuit of holiness,
critics at Donnellan and elsewhere complain that often piety takes precedence
over learning and that class time is sometimes cut because students are pulled
from class for Masses, retreats and even to picket abortion clinics.
Legionaries have been accused of breaking up families by
persuading boys as young as 12 to enter their apostolic schools in
Centre Harbor, N.H., and Edgerton, Wis., to prepare to become priests.
Psychological pressure on young men to continue through the educational ranks,
from the orders junior college-level seminary in Cheshire, Conn., to its
graduate seminaries in Spain and Rome, is reported to be intense.
Theresa Murray, who enrolled her third-grade daughter at Pinecrest
Academy, another Legionary-affiliated school in the Atlanta suburb of Cumming,
claims that she discovered such an imbalance well into the school year. The
final straw came one day when her daughter, who was 8, came home and said
she wanted to commit suicide so she could see Jesus. Murray
enrolled her child elsewhere.
The Atlanta archbishop, who was unavailable to answer a
reporters questions about the schools, is solidly in the Legions
corner. Kathi Stearns, a diocesan spokeswoman, said Donoghue would have no
comment on the Legion but pointed to a letter he wrote to complaining parents
on Sept. 18, five days after the staff members were dismissed.
In the letter, Donoghue disclaimed any responsibility for what
happened at Donnellan School, noting that the decision to sell was made by
the board of a private, independent school and that it would be
inappropriate for him to interfere.
My sole role at these schools is to be that of a spiritual
father to ensure that their teaching of our Catholic faith remains true to the
Holy Fathers directions, Donoghue wrote. He said he has seen
no evidence that the Catholic faith is not being taught properly at the
school.
Donoghue pointed out in the letter that the Legionaries of Christ
are supported and admired by the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, and that
Donoghue follows John Pauls example in accepting the valuable
contribution this congregation has made and continues to make to the work of
our holy church.
Dunlap, the Legions national spokesman, said if people
generally are not aware of what the order is doing, that is because we
are a young and relatively new organization. We dont grow by blowing our
horns from rooftops. We grow by meeting people one on one, growing with the
help of people who have the desire and inspiration to help grow the
church.
What the Legion is doing, Dunlap said, is a beautiful, lived
reality of what the Vatican Council asked of its laity and the church. It
brings laity and clergy together in our mutual call to love Christ and love his
church.
Karen Flynn, spokeswoman for the dissenting parents, sees it
differently. We have been receiving phone calls from around the country
from parents and other Catholics stating that they feel the Legionaries of
Christ are a cult and to keep our children away from them, she said.
Flynn pulled her child out of Donnellan in September.
I just want my child in a safe, high academic, Catholic
environment. That is not what Donnellan is right now, Flynn said.
The Legion left public comment to Donoghue and to Coles, attorney
for both the school and the archdiocese.
In papers filed in response to lawsuits brought by former faculty
members, Coles said the dismissals were justifiable. He argued that the faculty
members violated their contracts by refusing to carry out and undermining board
policies. The dismissals were justified, he added, because the former faculty
members had mobilized teachers and parents against the board. In an interview,
Coles declined to discuss why the dismissals took place in such a dramatic
fashion.
Trouble last summer
Trouble began brewing in Atlanta this past summer, a year after
the sale, when it became evident to some parents that the Legion had assumed
control of The Donnellan School.
Melissa Cook, one of the parents, believes she was deceived when
she went to enroll her children at Donnellan last year. She inquired about
reports that the schools new chaplain was a Legionary priest, she said,
and received assurances from the schools staff that the school was not
run by the Legion. It turns out, Cook said, that was simply not true. Members
of the staff claimed in interviews that they were also misled at the time.
Cook, who describes herself as an ultra-orthodox
Catholic, said she had grown suspicious of the Legion in the summer of
1999 when she met two Legionaries and invited them into her home to learn more
about the order. After that they returned repeatedly, often unannounced.
Cook said they wanted her and her husband to go on separate
retreats. The couple refused. However, they said, they might consider going on
a retreat for couples. The Legionaries at one point talked about the way they
counseled children without having the parents involved, she said.
It was so completely divisive, Cook said. Cooks
mother, who taught in parochial schools for more than 30 years and who sat in
on some of the sessions with the Legionaries, warned her daughter, Be
real careful of these guys.
When the Legionaries finally realized that they could not involve
the family, Cook said, They called my husband and asked him for a list of
wealthy and influential people. He refused to provide any names.
At the meeting of 500 parents on Sept. 14, Cook challenged
Hopkins, the Legionaries chaplain who turned out to be one of two top
bosses at the school. She asked him to explain what she described as the
Legions divisive ways.
According to the minutes of the emotional meeting, Hopkins
answered that he had directed the Legionaries to Cooks family. A
representative of the Donnellan Parents Association recorded the minutes.
We have lots of seminarians. We need to raise money to feed
and educate them, Hopkins is reported to have said. Our philosophy
is to have personalized attention to the children. I have never heard that we
should try to cut out the parents. We never try to cut out the parents. We
dont want the kids to feel uncomfortable.
The dissenting parents say they were caught off guard by the
Legions role when it became obvious this year. Dunlap, the Legions
spokesman, said he doesnt know why some parents wre surprised. They had
been informed of the Legions involvement through the Georgia
Bulletin and in a letter from the archbishop, he said. Absolutely
everything has been in full view at Donnellan, he said.
The order thought it would be wrong to come in and start changing
things immediately, Dunlap said. For that reason, he said, the Legion
came in gently and gradually. Over time we bring in all the resources we
can.
Former Donnellan parents are not the only ones uncomfortable with
the Legion. Parents at schools around the country have other stories to tell.
Even traditionalist Catholics have been disturbed.
Disillusioned traditionalist Catholics in Cincinnati complain that
three years ago the Legion took control of the private school traditionalist
parents had set up. Regarding parochial schools as too liberal, they wanted the
old-fashioned kind of education for their children that they had experienced,
anchored in the lessons of the Baltimore Catechism and where sex education is
left to the parents.
The parents said they accepted the help of the Legion to teach
religion because the Legion seemed sympathetic to their cause.
Before long, members of Regnum Christi dominated their board and
voted to give the Legion total control. Parents, they said, no longer had any
control, and they had to accept the top-down rule of the Legionaries.
They slurp up money
They have pictures of the Holy Father all over the place,
and its hard to tell people what is wrong with [the Legionaries],
said Colleen Kunnuth. Her husband, Dr. Art Kunnuth, had been president of the
traditionalist school board before the takeover. Legionaries continue to
slurp up money and recruit kids all over the place, she
said.
One of the first Legionaries schools, The Highlands in Irving,
Tex., began as a homeschooling program with a half-dozen youngsters in the
1980s. In the early 1990s, Legion priests got involved teaching religion and
took control. The school has since grown to 460 students on a 35-acre wooded
campus adjoining the University of Dallas, an institution of the Dallas
diocese.
But it has had a bumpy existence.
We had a massacre here at The Highlands, the same thing as
is happening in Atlanta, said a former top administrator of the school,
one of three former officials who spoke on condition they not be identified
because they fear it would jeopardize their positions as educators.
Another said, The soul of their order is Mexican, and they
want to model their schools on the Mexican ones [where] you have a class system
and among lay people you have a docility. They dont understand the
American system of education with its collegiality.
A third complained, The Legionaries are not known as
educators. Legionaries are known for recruitments into seminary. He left
the Highland School, he said, because I was fed up with their
ethics.
In some places, such as the Milwaukee archdiocese, the
Legions priests have been barred, but Regnum Christi members have
established an independent school in Milwaukee that lies beyond the
jurisdiction of Archbishop Rembert Weakland. It was originally named Pinecrest,
the same as a school in Atlanta, but has been renamed Aquinas.
The chancellor of the Milwaukee archdiocese, Barbara Anne Cusack,
said Bannon, the Legions national director, had promised archdiocesan
officials in 1993 that Legion priests wouldnt visit the school anymore.
Nevertheless, she said, the school makes reference to its ties to the Legion in
some of its materials.
[Bannon] is saying in 1993 that Legionaries are not involved
in that school, but I heard as late as last week that they were, Cusack
said in a telephone interview last month.
Alfred Szewz, who was a cofounder of the school in 1992, said that
Legion priests stopped visiting the school because we were trying to be
obedient to the archbishop.
Szewz was a pro bono principal of the school for
several years. A retired Marquette University professor of electrical
engineering, he is no longer active in the school. He is not a Regnum Christi
member but said others in key positions are.
Another person who was close to the administration of Aquinas
School said it was micromanaged by priests from Edgerton, Wis., in
the Madison diocese, where the Legion has an apostolic school,
mainly for boys from Latin America.
The Legion will be
back
When Weakland goes, the Legion will be back in there like a
shot, the source said. Weakland will reach the churchs mandatory
retirement age for bishops in 2002.
For the Legionaries in Atlanta, however, theres no waiting.
The archbishops welcome mat is out, and some parents say things are going
well.
Kitty Moots, mother of two boys who attend Donnellan, said many
parents are very satisfied with the Legionaries presence at the school. I
dont know where all this negative publicity is coming from except lack of
knowledge of holy orders in general, she said. We havent seen
anything but positive things since Fr. Hopkins has been there.
Moots said Hopkins had helped one of her sons deal with a problem
he was having with a classmate. The Legionaries have had a focus in
education and seem to be comfortable dealing with children. Further,
Moots said, her children seem to be enjoying their faith so much
more because of Hopkins influence. Thats a real
positive for us.
Donnellan families got together for a barbecue recently to foster
a spirit of lets have fun, lets move on with it, she
said. These are parents who just want to give their kids a good Catholic
education.
What both sides in the school dispute appear to agree on is that
the ouster of the faculty members at The Donnellan School was the culmination
of months of differences between the faculty members and many of the parents on
one side and the seven-member board on the other.
I have never see a termination handled in a more botched
manner, said Arch Stokes, a specialist in labor law who has been retained
to represent the terminated faculty members.
Stokes said involving police in the firings was unnecessary.
These are gentle people, he said. The dismissed faculty members
said the board made unjustifiable demands on them while trying to impose the
will of the Legion.
The Donnellan School, named for the late Atlanta Archbishop Thomas
A. Donnellan, opened in April 1996. Archbishop was dropped from the name
of the school when it affiliated with the Legion.
Stripping archbishop from the name was in line with the
Legions practice of using neutral, secular terms for most of its
affiliated schools -- such as The Highlands in Irving, Texas, Woodmont in
Woodstock, Md., Everest in Detroit, Royalmont in Cincinnati, Cedarcrest in
Plymouth, Minn., Gateway in St. Louis, Blue Mountain in Lewiston, Idaho, and so
on.
Maciel has explained to Regnum Christi members that the Legion
does not want the schools name to be a possible deterrent to potential
students or contributors who could be put off by religious affiliations.
Theres no denying that the Legions methods, however
controversial, are working. In contrast to most religious orders, which are
shrinking, Legionaries have attracted a growing number of candidates to the
priesthood and to their organization of consecrated women who
recruit students at schools and youth groups they run. The order reports it has
400 priests and 2,500 seminarians in 20 countries, more than double the number
of a decade ago.
The untold part of the story, critics said, is the number of
priests that eventually leave the order.
The new Atlanta Academy is at capacity with 45 students in three
rented rooms in St. Philips Episcopal Cathedral in the Tony Buckhead
section of Atlanta. Twenty-seven more are on a waiting list, and parents of
another 88 children said they will enroll when the school finds a permanent
place, said Flynn, the parents spokeswoman.
Flynn said she knows many parents who are sticking to Donnellan
through the end of the academic year but who said they will seriously consider
switching to the Atlanta Academy next year.
Ian Lloyd-Jones, one of the organizing parents and president of a
firm that owns and manages a string of hotels, including the historically
famous Algonquin Hotel in New York City, said he is confident that the Atlanta
Academy will soon move into a roomier place and expand rapidly.
The new school is nondenominational and
Christ-centered and will emphasize the best in academic standards,
Christian charity and tolerance, Lloyd-Jones said.
Web sites: Donnellan School Parents Information:
www.angelfire.com/ga3/donnellan
Legionaries of Christ:
www.Legionofchrist.org/eng/connections.htm
National Catholic Reporter, November 3,
2000
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