{"id":3293,"date":"2005-08-27T09:16:37","date_gmt":"2005-08-27T09:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/legion-in-atlanta.html"},"modified":"2005-08-27T09:16:37","modified_gmt":"2005-08-27T09:16:37","slug":"legion-in-atlanta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/legion-in-atlanta.html","title":{"rendered":"Legion in Atlanta"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two paths, two views:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Andrew Dalton and Edward Fink started similar spiritual journeys. Affluent uber-Catholics in metro Atlanta, they frequently attended Mass and practiced traditional church teachings. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, they joined the Legionaries of Christ, the orthodox religious order that aggressively recruits young men for the priesthood. <\/p>\n

Their odysseys mirror the controversial group: a journey of deep devotion or cultlike practices. <\/p>\n

Five years ago, the group emerged at the vortex of a nasty fight when several parents discovered that the Legion shaped the curriculum and spiritual direction of the Donnellan School, a Catholic institution in Sandy Springs. One-third of the 430 students withdrew from the school. Three administrators and two teachers were dismissed and escorted from the grounds. About a third of the school’s teachers quit between September to October 2000. <\/p>\n

The school survived and is now thriving, known as Holy Spirit Preparatory. It operates independently of the archdiocese and maintains its Legion chaplains. Throughout Atlanta, the Legionaries have grown into a substantial presence with 10 priests in the region and a new headquarters in Dunwoody. <\/p>\n

As for the young metro Atlantans, Dalton is training to be a priest in Rome, while Fink became an agnostic and only recently is circling back toward Christianity<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Fink’s accusations center on a sort of control exerted on him when he was a teen in the LC minor seminary – that when he started to have doubts about a vocation, matter he had revealed in spiritual direction was used against him to convince him to stay – that he could never atone for his past sins outside the Legion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two paths, two views: Andrew Dalton and Edward Fink started similar spiritual journeys. Affluent uber-Catholics in metro Atlanta, they frequently attended Mass and practiced traditional church teachings. Ultimately, they joined the Legionaries of Christ, the orthodox religious order that aggressively recruits young men for the priesthood. Their odysseys mirror the controversial group: a journey of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLegion in Atlanta - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/legion-in-atlanta.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Legion in Atlanta - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Two paths, two views: Andrew Dalton and Edward Fink started similar spiritual journeys. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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