The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (27 page)

In and out of the pews are millions of Catholic parents struggling alone and together to raise children in a Christian family, with the Catholic prayers, traditions, and rituals they hold sacred. Out of necessity, there is a rebirth of Catholicism among parents who will not entrust their children to the Catholic Church now, maybe never again. Those parents who share similar views and concerns about Catholicism are also returning to the beginning, returning to the only law that matters according
to Jesus Christ: teaching children to love one another and to not be mean. And never to stare because it makes people feel uncomfortable. Parents, too, are taking religion back into their hands, into their homes, and into their families, where religion began and belongs.

The rebirth of Catholicism I see happening outside parish life has all the divine signs of a Second Pentecost, including the rise of a world religion like that of the first Pentecost, a divine message that “every nation under heaven” can understand. In bringing back the original vision of Catholicism in a new form, the universal message of loving our enemies is one the whole world can understand as divine. While some dismembered Catholics move toward religions (like Episcopalian or Lutheran) more in keeping with their beliefs, most seem in search of a spirituality that treasures as sacred the truths we hold in common, and not those teachings that divide us and set us apart. If teachings divide and set us apart, I don’t know how in God’s name they can be true. Absence of hatred and privilege, and a commitment to nonviolence and equality, characterize the priestly people; a religion in which, for the second time in two thousand years, the mission is that “all may be one,” that there be no such thing as enemies.

Holocaust victim Etty Hillesum writes about the kind of belief I find in small communities of Catholics, even among those who share the anger and disgust over the clerical corruption and deceit they find inside the church:

The absence of hatred in no way implies the absence of moral indignation…. I know that those who hate have every reason to do so. But why should we always have to choose the cheapest and easiest way? It has been brought home forcibly to me here, how every atom of hatred added to the world makes it an even more inhospitable place…. It’s not right for a human being to take the easy way out.
⁹

In the Catholicism I see reborn, inside and outside of the Catholic Church, there is no hating, excluding, condemning, silencing, abusing, or killing anyone in the name of God. In and out of the pew, I hear Catholics speaking in languages everyone can understand and being understood by everyone who listens. The universal Christian language of love and understanding has that priestly power.

We have only just begun to see, both in and out of the church, what Catholicism will look like when Catholics return to the beginning and become moved to take religion back into their own priestly hands and homes. Our eyes have not seen and our ears have not heard the miraculous things that will happen when we listen to the voice of God speaking in one another and let ourselves be led by that Holy Spirit. “Just as the sun shines forth in redoubled beauty after the rain, or as a forest grows more freshly green from charred ruins after a fire, so too the new era appears all the more glorious with the misery of the old.”
¹⁰
That’s the rebirth I see happening in Catholicism, as one by one, the silence we’ve been bound to keep begins to speak. In one no longer silent voice, we’re now coming together as Catholics in ways we never have. Regardless of what happens to the Catholic priesthood in the months and years to come, the sacred hope as Catholics, both in and out of the pew, lies in how well loved and cared for Holy Mother Church was, is, and always will be in the priestly hands of the People of God. We need not let our Catholic hearts be troubled or afraid no matter what comes to light in the future. After two thousand years of miraculous survival, we have every good reason to believe that all manner of things will be well.

AFTERWORD

O
NE QUESTION REMAINS
that begs to be asked. Because it tends to be a conversation stopper, I find it fitting to ask the ultimate question here: Has the time come for the American Catholic Church to be independent of Rome? Those who see all roads of clerical corruption leading to Rome ask seriously if that time is coming. And those who believe as the Sicilians do that “fish smells from the head down,” also find the question begging. Given two thousand years of clerical resistance to reform is enough to make anyone wonder if we have any choice for church survival but to separate and be self-governing. As events continue to reveal the truth, it’s likely that a growing number of Catholics will be asking that question. I did. In ending this book I found that question begging to be asked. Has the time come for the American Catholic Church to secede from the Roman Catholic Union?

All I can do in the end is ask the question because I have no idea what the answer is. The question alone is so far beyond where we are that the answer lies there as well. We are not at that point yet where we can understand the question or its answer. At least I’m not. Nor is anyone I asked. Some stared at me in stunned silence as though I had spoken heresy. I felt as if I were asking if someone should get divorced after two thousand years of Holy Matrimony. How dare I? In the minds of many, that will never happen. We Catholics survived the Dark Ages once, we’ll do it again, and this time the Reformation will work.
Many believe that things will change and we will survive. And regardless of what happens, the American Catholic Church will never secede from the Roman Catholic Union. That is beyond question. End of book.

Even though I couldn’t agree more, the question remains. As a Catholic woman, I also feel as though I’m asking if someone should seek a divorce after two thousand years of abuse. After ages of sexism and the refusal to change, what are the odds that the Church Fathers will reform now? They don’t even admit to the problem. As a Catholic woman in the sisterhood, returning to the Jesus Movement of the early church looks mighty appealing. A discipleship of equals. Table communities. House churches. Leaders who serve. Believers in the divinity of women and children. I’m there already. Who wouldn’t trade in religious abuse for such divine life? And in a country where democracy is treasured by law as sacred, what more fitting place and time than here and now to become a holy democratic Catholic Church? In witnessing the downfall of the priesthood, many find in the destruction a divine sign that the time has come to return to the Jesus Movement and begin again. That’s the only saving grace for Holy Mother Church. The answer is to secede from union with Rome and return to the beginning. End of book.

Like the unprecedented changes already happening in the Catholic Church, this is another question we’ll answer without knowing we’ve done it, and we will have been given the inner strength to accept it. That’s already happening. We are being given the strength we need to get through these Dark Ages. We are being led through this dark night of our Catholic souls and guided in the rebirth. No one needs to know the answer, nor should we lend credence to those who say they have it. The answer will be given to all of us. The answer lies in the whole church and will come from the new priesthood, the new sisterhood, and the newly
reborn Catholic Church. The best we can do right now is let it be. Some questions are best left in the lap of the gods, and this feels like one of them.

No matter how we look at it, the question remains, the kind of question gods ask. Seceding from any union is the holiest of decisions, and asking the question begs for divine intervention, especially after a holy union more than two thousand years old. We Catholics are in the midst of a powerful transformation, a divine intervention unlike any we’ve experienced. As the silences break and the truths reveal themselves, the answer will come. The answer always comes from the heart of the problem. If we revere as holy the questions we ask, we can be sure the answers given will be divine. And we can find evermore comfort, no less divine, in this heartfelt plea from the poet Rilke and me:

I would like to beg you, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love
the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.
Live
the questions now, perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
¹

I couldn’t agree more completely. Question answered. End of book. “Vitality begun.” Blessed be.

NOTES

The following abbreviations are used in scriptural references for books of the Old and New Testaments:

Part One

Introduction

1.
Bill Smith, “Nuns as Sexual Victims Get Little Notice,”
Saint Louis Post Dispatch
, January 5, 2003, A1.

2.
Mary Nevens Peterson, “Nun Sex-Abuse Report Does Not Surprise Sisters,”
Telegraph Herald
(Dubuque, Iowa), January 18, 2003, A1.

3.
Garry Wills,
Papal Sin: Structured of Deceit
, New York: Doubleday, 2000, p. 186.

4.
Elizabeth Abbott,
A History of Celibacy
, New York: Scribner’s, 2000, p. 110.

5.
Ibid., p. 103.

1. Priesthood in the Beginning

1.
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza,
In Memory of Her
, New York: Crossroad, 1992, p. 176.

2.
Elizabeth Abbott,
A History of Celibacy
, New York: Scribner’s, 2000, p. 318.

3.
Garry Wills,
Papal Sin: Structured of Deceit
, New York: Doubleday, 2000, p. 156.

4.
Ibid., p. 155.

5.
Women & Christian Origins
, edited by Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo, “Reconstructing ‘Real’ Women from Gospel Literature: The Case of Mary Magdalene,” by Mary Rose D’Angelo. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 105.

2. Priesthood in the Middle Ages

1.
Elizabeth Abbott,
A History of Celibacy
, New York: Scribner’s, 2000, p. 101.

2.
Jo Ann Kay McNamara,
Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia
, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 238.

3.
E. R. Chamberlain,
The Bad Popes
, New York: Dorset Press, 1986, p.
A3.

4.
Ibid., p. 60.

5.
Evelyn Underhill,
Mysticism
, New York: Dutton, 1961, p. 70.

6.
The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus
, volume II, translated by E. Allison Peers. “Interior Castle,” p. 187; “Conceptions of the Love of God,” p. 357.

3. Priesthood Now

1.
Richard Johnson, Page Six: “Just Asking,”
New York Post
, May 16, 2002, p. 10.

2.
A. W. Richard Sipe,
A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy
, New York: Brunner-Routledge, 1990.

3.
Laurie Goodstein, “Trail of Pain in Church Crisis Leads to Every Diocese,”
New York Times
, January 12, 2003, pp. A20-21.

4.
Arthur Jones, “Discontent and Disaffection Grow as L.A. Archdiocese Dismantles Ministries,”
National Catholic Reporter
, October 11, 2002, p. 6.

5.
Ibid.

Part Two

Introduction

1.
Jo Ann Kay McNamara,
Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia
, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 357.

4. Sisterhood in the Beginning

1.
Jo Ann Kay McNamara,
Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia
, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 2.

2.
Elizabeth Abbott,
A History of Celibacy
, New York: Scribner’s, 2000, p. 39.

5. Sisterhood in the Middle Ages