March 22, 2004
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The Hairy Palm Academy
The previous two entries were prompted by a picture in the Washington Post of Spain’s Interior Minister, a member of the secular arm of the Legion of Christ.
Both entries mentioned a school run by the Legion of Christ, the Royal Palm Academy. As the following excerpt from my March 20 entry indicates, a different sort of palm might also be honored by the Legion — the hairy palm.
“Los Legionarios de Cristo… es una organización fundada en 1941 en Méjico por el padre Marcel [Marcial] Maciel (rehabilitado por el Vaticano en 1958 tras ser acusado de ayudarse en sus visiones con ampollas de morfina; también fue acusado de pederastia, le gustaba masturbar a jovencitos y que ellos le masturbaran a él).”
Related readings from The New York Review of Books, issue dated April 8, 2004:
God in the Hands of Angry Sinners, by Garry Wills, on the Legion of Christ and on Mel Gibson flogging his God,
and a related article, a review of
Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation.
It seems the founder of the Legion of Christ, like many other Catholic priests, may have regarded masturbation as a group sport rather than solitary recreation.
For further details, see an ABC News 20/20 story dated April 26, 2002:
When approached by ABC News’s Brian Ross in Rome with questions of allegations against Father Marcial Maciel, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became visibly upset and actually slapped Ross’s
hand. – ABCNEWS.com
