The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (6 page)

Given that house churches remained a powerful unifying element for the early Christians, we can be certain that the involvement and participation of women remained equally powerful. By both religious and civil law, the home is woman’s domain, and in all male-dominated worlds home is the only place woman belongs. By law we know that women must have played a decisive role in founding and sustaining house churches, and in building Christian communities. And without a doubt, women played just as central a role in preparing for the Eucharistic meal, buying and cooking the food, preparing the table, welcoming the guests, serving and presiding over the meal, and cleaning up after. Given the strict traditional roles for men and women in biblical times, we can assume that if the community was gathering for worship in a woman’s home, she would be in charge of everything. And at the table of Christ, the leader, the one who presides, is always the one who serves, most likely women.

I see every good reason to believe that women shared equally in all ministries of the early church, including what we think of as priesthood. In his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul commends most highly “our sister Phoebe who is a deaconess” (16:1) and “Junia…outstanding among the apostles and in Christ even
before I was” (16:7). As co-workers and associates in ministry, men and women both preached the Gospel, founded house churches, and built Christian communities in every town they visited. Christians in the early church were committed to partnership in doing the work of the Gospel. The whole Christian community became an apostolic church in the beginning—one, holy, and apostolic—as the Catholic creed professes. Even with the persecution of Christians that went on simultaneously with all the missionary work, this was, indeed, the divine birth of the People of God, with a new heaven and a new earth, a new vision of church and priesthood unlike any this world has seen.

Not only did the early Church develop strongly as a “discipleship of equals,” but we also know that within the Christian community, most in its priesthood were married. The Twelve were all married men and remained so, as did the early priests and bishops for centuries. Contrary to popular Catholic belief, in the beginning of the church there were always married priests. Virginity became advocated so fervently by Saint Paul (and many others) because in those days many believed literally that Jesus was returning soon. The end was near. And there was so much work to be done and so little time, especially for marriage and a family. Even so, everyone in the early church lived, as Paul recommended, “the life assigned to them by God.” Everyone in the early church, married or not, shared in the priesthood of Christ. Quite clearly the priesthood of Christ has nothing to do with marital status, sex, or gender. In the beginning of the priesthood, all really were “one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 4:28).

If you begin to think that this was heaven on earth and pure joy to the world, think again. Those who lived in Christ suffered everything gladly and did find a peace on earth that surpassed
ordinary understanding. Everyone knew they were disciples of Christ by the way they loved one another, and in that regard it was heaven on earth. And they did bring joy to the world. But the early Christians still lived in the same world that crucified Christ and hated the Jesus Movement. The world was no less male dominated after the resurrection, and the only ones whose minds and lives were changed profoundly were those of the disciples, those in the Movement. If anything, the religious tensions that existed before Christ’s death only intensified after: Christians continued to be persecuted and killed by religious and civil leaders all over for their revolutionary beliefs.

Some of the tensions that arose with the rapid growth of Christianity are those that come with every strong countercultural movement, especially if the movement is counter to male domination all over the world and counter to male gods everywhere. Equality and inclusiveness, the heart and soul of the Jesus Movement, are not only banned by divine law in patriarchy, but they’ve also condemned as evil by their God. After the resurrection, it became increasingly difficult for the Christian community to maintain its divine laws of equality and inclusiveness. And given that there’s so little support for either today, you can imagine how forbidden both were, two thousand years ago all over the Middle East.

By the first century, patriarchy was already established as divine law and Christianity was experiencing the male-only pressure more and more profoundly. Open conflicts erupted over the role and participation of women at the Eucharistic meal. One fear was that the Jesus Movement, with its female-run house churches, was turning into a Feminist Movement, overpopulated as it was with wealthy, newly liberated women. There is nothing more destructive to patriarchy than the equality of women. And if anyone within the Christian community had visions of the
Jesus Movement becoming a “real church,” as I’m sure there must have been, they would have been pressuring the community from within to move toward becoming a “real priesthood,” a priesthood that looked and acted like every other priesthood in those days: exclusively male and increasingly celibate, a “discipleship of equals” no more.

By the year 110
A.C.E.
(after the common era), the division between clergy and laity had taken place, as did the beginnings of a hierarchy of authority, previously unheard of in the Jesus Movement. The beginnings of Catholicism appear. The office of bishop was established as superior in divine authority to priests, who were superior in divine authority to the rest of us. Not only was the divine law of equality rendered null and void with the exclusion of women from priestly ministry, but so, too, was the divine law of inclusiveness. By the end of the first century, the “priesthood of the people” was well on its way to becoming the male-only priesthood of the elect; and with the male-only priesthood of the elect went all divine power and authority.

As Christianity grew to be a powerful spiritual force in the world, it experienced the pressures and desires to become a powerful political force, the most powerful church in the world. In a patriarchal world,
most powerful
can mean only one thing: an exclusively male priesthood that eliminates equality, and a hierarchy of authority and privilege to eliminate inclusiveness. The subordination of the individual to the church as an institution had begun. Conflicts over authority that had been brewing in the early church reached a turning point so momentous that by the fourth century Christianity became not only an official church but also the only recognized State Religion, and the Catholic Church became the only recognized State Church, now proclaimed the one and only true church—one, holy, now Catholic, and apostolic. In proclaiming itself the one true church,
every other religion became heresy, anathema. Officially, all were no longer one.

With Catholicism declared as the State Religion, all other religions were removed by force. Pagan cults, goddess worship, and house churches were banned by law, condemned as heresy and as a crime against the state. Their temples were burned and ancient works of art, destroyed. For the first time, Christians began killing other Christians because of the extreme differences in their views. The church that was once so persecuted becomes the church of prosecution, and the priesthood of the poor and outcast becomes the priesthood of the rich and privileged. The crowning moment in the birth of Catholicism came with the appointment of Leo I (440-461) as the first “real” pope of Rome. Now the one religious leader in the known world, he was invested with all spiritual and worldly power. He became God and king in one man. It was then, whether we knew it or not, that the world was given a pope. To this day, every pope is envisioned as pope of the world, a law unto himself and in the name of God.

The betrayal we experience now in the priesthood began then, when being disciples of Christ lost out to becoming kings of the world. Divine power, which remained primarily an inner experience in the Jesus Movement, was not enough. It meant nothing in the real world. The literal-minded within the early church wanted real power, the power of money and privilege, the power to make laws and govern people’s lives, the power other priests in other sects had, the power of patriarchy, the power of becoming divine laws unto themselves. As a result, and in the name of God, equality in the priesthood was subordinated to the divinely intended male-only tradition, and the inclusiveness of the People of God became the exclusiveness of the “priesthood of the elect.” The presence of God was no longer celebrated in the home, but was taken exclusively into churches, by law now the only sacred
places for worship. And even within their own church, the People of God were no longer seated around the communion table. By the fifth century, the priest,
in persona Christi
, stood on the altar alone, with his back turned to the people. Christianity’s discipleship of equals, once recognized by the way they loved one another, became a house so divided within itself that it could not stand. Priesthood no longer came from the people, only from the elect. The Eucharistic table, around which all were welcome to gather, became the altar of sacrifice at which only the priest could stand. The voice of the community was silenced. The Holy Spirit present in the People of God became the exclusive property of the Catholic priesthood and the pope, the disastrous consequences of which become full blown in the Middle Ages. In looking at priesthood in the Middle Ages, we enter into the darkest soul of the Catholic Church.

2
Priesthood in the Middle Ages

I
N ORDER TO UNDERSTAND
what happened to the priesthood in the Middle Ages, we need to know about Saint Augustine (354-430), recognized as one of the greatest theologians in the Catholic Church, certainly its most influential thinker. More than any other Church Father, Augustine’s writings most define Catholicism to this day, especially his teachings on the goodness of violence, the intrinsic evil of sexual pleasure, the seductively subordinate nature of women, and a law of celibacy in the priesthood—all of which contributed significantly to the decadence and depravity of priesthood in the Middle Ages, as well as to the problems we see in the Catholic priesthood today. For better and worse, the Church Fathers are still very much in line with the fifth-century thinking of Augustine.

Violence becomes part of the priesthood in the teachings of Saint Augustine. Among all Church Fathers, Augustine was the first to develop a theological justification of violence in spreading Christianity, the “just war” theory, making it a sacred duty to hate, torture, and kill “in the name of Jesus Christ.” It’s very similar to the concept of Islamic jihad. Forced conversions became standard during the Middle Ages. Holy wars against pagans, heretics, schismatics, and all deviants became glorious and triumphant works of God. The culmination of Augustine’s blessing on violence “in the name of Christ” is revealed in the horror and evil of the Inquisition, as well as in the subsequent papal bans on
dissent, including those we still experience. Hating and killing “in the name of Jesus Christ” becomes the papal blessing on all those who refuse to believe in Catholicism, including fellow Christians. It was a far cry from the priesthood of the Jesus Movement in which disciples were known to be Christian by the way they loved one another, not by the way they hated and killed one another.

The Catholic Church’s obsession with legislating sexual morality also enters the priesthood with the thinking of Augustine. His most famous prayer appears to be the tormented prayer of the Catholic priesthood still: “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.” And while some church historians tend to minimize and even deny Augustine’s obsession with sex, I find that his teachings prove otherwise. One has only to look at Augustine’s writings (especially on original sin and the seductive nature of woman) to see that this is clearly a man who could not, without anguish, stop thinking of sex, and could not stop blaming women for his misery. Augustine fails to see as Jesus did that “the mouth speaks whatever fills the mind” (Matt. 12:34). “What emerges from within us, that and nothing else is what makes us impure” (Mark 7:20). It’s what comes to mind that makes us clean or unclean. It’s the way we think that makes us good or evil, and it’s what comes out of us in what we say and do that makes us a saint or sinner. Action follows thought.

Augustine’s teachings on the evils of sexual pleasure tell us exactly what filled his mind and what has filled the minds of Church Fathers ever since. The cornerstone of current Catholic moral theology on sex and the subordinate nature of woman was laid by Augustine. After more than 1,500 years, the Catholic Church still teaches that all sexual acts (even in marriage) not aimed directly at procreation are immoral, even intrinsically evil.
That kind of sexually preoccupied thinking, deeply rooted in Augustine’s beliefs, became divine law with him and nearly every Church Father thereafter.

In Augustine’s mind, man’s obsession with sex has everything to do with the evil, seductive nature of women. Oddly enough, it has nothing to do with the truth, which is the sinful inability of man to think of women in any other way than as objects for sexual gratification. If that’s not obsession with sex, then what is it? If sex is all that men see when they look at women, even children and total strangers, what else is that but a blind obsession with sex, a blatant refusal to see in others what Jesus saw, the face of God. Augustine’s understanding of celibacy, therefore, is based not on a loving response to a profound experience of God, but on the sinfully sexist notion of woman as an evil to be avoided, a weak-willed, lust-filled seductress. So much for the revelation of Jesus Christ who reminds us repeatedly that it’s what originates in the mind that makes us unclean. Evil lies in the eye of the beholder, and not in what the sinful eye beholds, especially not women and children.