The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (19 page)

One divine sign of sisterhood to come appeared in the spring of 1970, at the height of the Nun Exodus from religious life. While hundreds of thousands of women left the convent because they didn’t want to be nuns anymore, not all felt that way. Many sisters who left their orders (or were asked to leave) really didn’t want to leave religious life at all; they just wanted to live it differently. Many treasured still the vows that bound them as sisters, but envisioned new ways of living poverty, celibacy, and obedience. Hundreds of sisters who felt that way, from many different communities, came together in the spring of 1970 under the inspired leadership of Sr. Audrey Kopp, well-known sociologist and anthropologist, and called themselves Sisters for Christian Community. Out of the 300,000 who left the convent, a handful
continued to live as sisters anyhow, only differently. Out of all the bleeding from the nuns who left, a new kind of sisterhood was already born, almost immediately.

Very much in the Holy Spirit of the Beguine sisterhood, these new sisters, by divine communal intent, became a noncanonical Christian community, meaning that they are self-governing and not subject to the Canon Laws that rule all religious order (thus not “real nuns”). In 1970, these Sisters for Christian Community (SFCCs) envisioned a self-governing sisterhood as necessary for the survival of religious life into the twenty-first century and defined their community life accordingly. The founding of this new community was built solely on the holy beliefs of its sisters in full equality and self-governance. If sisterhood is to survive, independence and self-governance appear as its most amazing and saving grace, its heart and soul.

Just like the Beguines, the SFCCs have no motherhouse, no superiors, no subordinates, and hold nothing in common other than their beliefs. All are self-supporting, tax paying, and self-governing. Living alone or with others, communities form intentionally, gather regularly, and keep in touch just as loving families do—through personal contact, monthly meetings, bimonthly community newsletters, and annual international assemblies. Like the Beguinages throughout Europe, small SFCC communities can be found in Canada, Mexico, Central and Latin America, Western Europe, the British Isles, Africa, Guam, the Philippines, Australia, and the United States. Just as in the good old days, these new sisters are also like God; they, too, are everywhere, but they don’t look different. They don’t look anything like nuns at all.

The sisterhood we see today is unlike any we’ve seen before. Even the Beguines wore habits. The manner of SFCC sisterhood is so ordinary that we can’t see the difference between them and
us, at least not until we get up close and personal. That’s when we can tell that these women are sisters by the way they love and care for one another, and the way they love and care for everyone who crosses their path. That’s the only difference that matters. It’s the single-hearted way that sisters love and work that sets them apart, and therein lies all the difference in the world.

Pure and simple, loving one another and building Christian communities is the mission of the SFCCs. In whatever work a sister does, be it religion or retail, her real job is to promote and witness Christian community, to encourage ways that are loving and just. As sisters we spent every day building community with the best and worst of women. As community builders, you’d think we’d be experts. Sisterhood is the greatest grace we receive as nuns, and community building its greatest gift, the divine link to sisterhood in the twenty-first century. Community building is the work of a church in crisis. The work is the sisterly art of bringing people together, lifting spirits higher, treasuring differences as holy, and accepting as divine everything that happens. The Gospel is the rule of life in the SFCCs, and building Christian community our apostolic mission, just as it was in the early church, in the beginning of sisterhood.

I do believe, along with every poet who ever wrote it, that “in the end is our beginning.” What looks like the end of sisterhood, is without a doubt the end of something we knew as “nun,” a dying image we’ll likely always treasure for all that it was (and wasn’t). And when we look at sisterhood today, it’s easy to see only the endangered species destined for extinction. All we can see is the end to what we’ve always known. But powerful forces of transformation are at work in everything that ends. Something else is beginning that we can’t see yet because its manner is too ordinary, its vision not yet clear, and its meaning not at all literal. While the sisterhood has just begun to speak, something
else is also happening. There is a sisterhood emerging in the church (and in the world) unlike anything we’ve seen. All kinds of sleeping women are waking, and all kinds of silences are being spoken. All kinds of sisterhood are being born, and this is just the beginning. Women worldwide have either had enough, or are beginning to. When it comes to the sisterhood of all women, we’ve only begun. What feels like the strong winds of a Second Pentecost are just beginning to move us in ways we’ve never known before.

PART THREE

The Second Pentecost

Introduction

B
EFORE WE LOOK AT THE
Second Pentecost, it’s important to understand what happened in the first one. Pentecost is the Christian feast of the Holy Spirit’s descent upon the apostles, celebrated fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, ten days after Jesus’ ascension into heaven. What happens in Pentecost is the fulfillment of Easter, the coming true of Jesus’ promise never to leave us alone after his death, but to remain with us always. Pentecost becomes the birthday of the Christian Church, because that’s the day on which Jesus’ Holy Spirit was “poured out on all humankind” (Acts 2:17). And what we celebrate on the Feast of Pentecost is the gift of the Holy Spirit intended for absolutely everyone. It’s a powerful experience of God for those who receive it, so much so that the lives of those who do become transformed in ways they cannot comprehend. That’s how profoundly transforming the Holy Spirit can be—all of a sudden we become capable of doing things we’ve never done before.

When the days of Pentecost came it found them gathered in one place. Suddenly from up in the sky came a noise like a strong, driving wind which was heard all through the house where they were seated. Tongues as of fire appeared, which parted and came to rest on each of them. All were filled with the Holy Spirit. They began to express themselves in foreign languages and made bold proclamations as the spirit prompted them. (Acts 2:1-4)

A double miracle happens at Pentecost, two astounding experiences in one. Not only do the apostles begin to speak in foreign languages, but everyone listening to them “from every nation under heaven” understood what they were saying. Scripture tells us that everyone who gathered around the apostles became “very much confused because each one heard them speaking their own language” (Acts 2:6). Even Arabs understood what the apostles were saying about the “marvels God has accomplished” (Acts 2:11) and all were moved deeply by what they had heard. The apostles suddenly understood how to move the hearts and souls of those “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5) and miracle of miracles, they were understood by everyone as well. In the first Pentecost, we see how understanding and being understood is a divine sign, a holy spirit, a loving signal that God is with us.

Scripture reveals that everyone gathered was “dumbfounded and could make nothing at all of what had happened” (Acts 2:12). Many even thought the apostles were drunk or on drugs. The experience of God can have that effect. It can literally transform lives in ways no one can explain, least of all those touched powerfully by the Holy Spirit. The miracle of the whole world hearing and understanding these “tongues” is a divine sign of the universal call of the church, the inclusive gift of Christianity poured out on all humankind. Even Arabs, pagans, and Cretans understood the message. That’s how powerful the Holy Spirit can be when spoken in truth. We begin to understand one another and begin to be understood, the main ingredient of world peace (and a world religion). Understanding and being understood emerges as a primary priestly power in the first Pentecost.

What happens in Pentecost is a sign of things to come whenever followers of Christ become moved by the Holy Spirit. Diverse religions from all over the world come together and find themselves united, find themselves understanding one another like never before. Seen as the “Pentecost of the pagans,” some three thousand joined the Jesus Movement that day all of whom “devoted themselves to the apostle’s instruction and the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). In the first Pentecost all are united as one in the Holy Spirit of Christ. No one is excluded. The impossible dream of worldwide unity became reality. The double miracle of speaking and understanding one another’s language emphasizes the fact that the first Christian community was extended to include all people, a Holy Spirit given to be borne to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit of excluding no one becomes another priestly power given in Pentecost. In excluding no one, Jesus becomes one with everyone, and in that way becomes divine. His Holy Spirit is poured out on all humankind in Pentecost so that “All may be one” (John 17:20).

In giving birth to the Christian church, Pentecost is an intense religious experience loaded with meaning about what kind of “church” Jesus had in mind. In the first Pentecost, we see the gift of new life given to the Christian community, a new law of God, a whole new creation. Pentecost is all about getting new hearts and having a new spirit rise within us, bringing us new ways of thinking, feeling, living, and loving. It’s about the inner power of the Holy Spirit and all the recreation (and recreation) that happens naturally in our lives as a result. In the fullness of time, which is now just as much as it was then, the Holy Spirit descends into everyone, “poured out on
all
humankind.” In that miraculous outpouring of love, Jesus completes his work on earth. The rest is up to us. The mission to renew the life of the
church is ours, all of ours. And never, it seems, have we been more in need of a power like that of a Second Pentecost than right now. Both in the Catholic Church and in the world, all we seem to know is the power of divisiveness and violence in the name of God. We are void of the Holy Spirit to understand and be understood. And we are void of the Holy Spirit that excludes no one. All that seems to move us is the power of a spirit that appears to be everything else but holy.

Perhaps now more than ever, Pentecost presents itself to us as a divine mystery we are desperately in need of entering once again. An outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all humankind is the only movement capable of transforming the hearts of stone that have defiled and betrayed the Catholic Church. An outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the only movement that can fulfill Ezekiel’s “dry bones” prophecy of bringing the dispersed, scattered, broken, and nearly dead church back together again, back to divine life.

Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord God to these bones: “See! I will bring spirit into you, that you may come to life. I will put muscle upon you, make flesh grow over you, cover you with skin nd put spirit in you that you may come to life.” Even as I was prophesying … I heard a noise, it was a rattling as the bones came together, bone joining bone … I saw the muscle and flesh come upon them and the skin cover them…. Then from the four winds a spirit came into them; they came alive and stood upright, a vast army. (Ezek. 37:1-10)

Having had the name of God profaned by the highest priests of the Catholic Church, nothing but a Holy Spirit can bring us back to divine life again, no matter how much the Church
Fathers try to force us back to the way we were, blindly obedient and saintly submissive. What happened at the first Pentecost, we need desperately to happen again. The Catholic Church and all humankind have never been in need of spiritual union as we are now, and never has a Second Pentecost become a more heartfelt prayer. “Veni Sancte Spiritu” is the church’s prayer on the Feast of Pentecost, just as it’s become a daily prayer now. Come, Holy Spirit, come.