The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (20 page)

In order to understand exactly what we’re asking for when we pray for the Holy Spirit to come again, it’s important to realize what
spirit
is and what a Holy Spirit can do to our hearts and souls. In the second story of creation, the Book of Genesis reveals that God blew into our nostrils the breath of life, and so we became living beings (Gen. 2:7). In blowing the breath of life into us, we are given the Holy Spirit of God. We become full of holy spirits. That’s what brings us to life, and that’s how dramatically our lives change when we are guided by our holy spirits. As long as the breath of life is in our body, we are all, as the nuns taught us, Temples of the Holy Ghost, Temples of Sacred Fire. Male and female, believer and unbeliever, Muslim, Jew, and Christian, we all bear the Spirit of God within us. We are all born of One Holy Spirit. We are all born with the divine power to love. All faces are the faces of God.

In revealing God’s image and likeness as the breath of life, we see that the Holy Spirit is just as essential to our daily life as is breathing. Without it we feel dead, lifeless, and meaningless. When we refuse to recognize the Holy Spirit in ourselves and in one another, when we refuse to see in one another the face of God, that’s when our lives begin to go wrong. That’s when we become abusive, mean-spirited, corrupt, and destructive of all
that is holy. That’s when our hearts turn to stone and we turn to everything that serves to harden the hearts of others. We become incapable of understanding those who are not like us, and incapable of experiencing any of life as divine, especially love, the Holiest Spirit of all. That’s how essential Pentecost and the Holy Spirit are in our life, the life of the church, and in all humankind. There can be no such thing as Holy Communion without it. There can be no such thing as church.

How the Spirit of God comes to us today is just as divine a mystery as it was then. Throughout Scripture, one of the ways God communicates with us is in the form of fire, a fire often associated with breath or wind. It’s no wonder then that the author of the Acts of the Apostles would use the images of wind and fire to explain what happened to them. In Pentecost, the Holy Spirit appears first as a “strong driving wind,” followed by “tongues of fire.” Divine mystery surrounds the apostles in the form of wind, and divine revelation follows in the form of fire, “tongues of fire” that come to rest upon them. The Holy Spirit appears as that over which the apostles have no control, and that which suddenly transforms their lives. They were just as dumbfounded over the instant ability to speak different languages as were those who understood them clearly. Arabs and Christians understood one another perfectly. That’s how surprising and personally transforming the Holy Spirit can be in those upon whom its divine power rests. Not even they knew what came over them. It was a miracle.

Far more than a miraculous Bible story, the account of Pentecost is an attempt to explain all the unexplainable events that can happen when our lives are moved by holy spirits. Transformed from the inside out, we, too, become capable of extraordinary and miraculous works. Even without expecting anything special, and even without any preparation, the apostles’ lives and personalities
become suddenly and totally changed. With all the unpredictable suddenness of wind and fire they are rendered capable of communicating in a new and more powerful way.

In the first Pentecost we see that simply being chosen as apostles is not enough. No amount of ritual anointing or ordaining can make us priestly people. Nor can the sacrament of Holy Orders make a bad man a good priest. While the church teaches that immoral and criminal priests can still deliver good sacraments, the Holy Spirit (and all humankind) begs to differ. A more penetrating action of the Holy Spirit becomes absolutely necessary, without which we can do nothing in the name of God and everything contrary and destructive to the works of the Holy Spirit: peace, patience, joy, love, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23a)—all of which have become an endangered species. Without the loving power of those holy spirits, we are literally good for nothing but no good at all. If we were ever in need of a Second Pentecost to be poured out on all humankind, I’d say that time is right now. ASAP.

The Holy Spirit who transformed completely the lives of the apostles (and the three thousand who joined them that day) is none other than that of the power of love, the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ remaining with them. Accompanying them wherever they go and guiding everything they do, the Holy Spirit becomes a powerful source of inspiration and strength for the apostles. Everything in their life changes, especially the way they see and the way they understand. Their literal-thinking ways become transformed by the Pentecost Spirit and the whole world looks different. The apostles became ministers of a new covenant, a new kind of law, and a new kind of religious experience. The old way of understanding God’s laws literally gives way to a new kind of understanding, one in which we are guided by the spirit of love.

It’s the letter of the law and understanding God’s word literally that kills the love and understanding in which divine laws are given, and kills the Holy Spirit in the souls of those who receive and understand the laws of God literally. Such fundamentalism, so rampant in organized religions (Catholicism included), mostly serves to sanctify ignorance, mandate mediocrity, and justify every personal reason we have to judge and exclude, even hate and kill one another in the name of our God. Scripture reveals that the letter of the law and its literal interpretation are not what Jesus Christ had in mind. Only the spirit of love gives life to the laws of God, the Holy Spirit in which they were given. Anything but love serves to kill the real intent of God. So dead and void of love are many of the church’s teachings (especially with regard to women and sex) that few continue to follow them, the priesthood included.

The Holy Spirit who gives new life to the laws of the church and its makers is none other than what the Gospel of Saint John calls the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit of truth. All biblical revelations of truth are founded on the experience of a profound encounter with God (like that of a Pentecost), which is to say that the Holy Spirit within gives each of us knowledge of God and insight into the hidden truth (or will of God) behind everything that happens. It’s the Holy Spirit who enables us to see what’s really going on and enables us to say truthfully what we see. Like the apostles at the first Pentecost, those possessed by the Spirit are led to “make bold proclamations as the spirit prompts them…about the marvels God has accomplished.” Only those led by holy spirits receive divine revelations and have access to divine truths. The literal-minded remain soulfully blind. They are the blind who lead the blind because only the blind follow them.

Almost always, the silence we keep is nothing other than the Holy Spirit of truth, some truth we will not tell, for some reason
cannot tell, or feel bound completely from telling. In banning and punishing dissent from church teaching as divisive and evil (heresy), the Church Fathers also, in effect, condemn as divisive and evil the Holy Spirit of truth. Because we can only be made holy in the truth (John 17:1), it’s only the truth that can set us free from the silence that threatens to kill the Holy Spirit in the people once and for all. And it’s only the truth now that can restore the Catholic Church to the holiness it knew in the beginning, the good old holy days when those who led the Christian Church were themselves led by the Holy Spirit, led only by their love of God and one another, and empowered by the miraculous ability to understand and be understood. The silence we keep about the truth behind the corruption we see in the Catholic Church is part and parcel of the letter of the law that kills the spirit of truth. Behind every kept silence lies a divine truth bound to be set free by the Holy Spirit. And by the power of a Second Pentecost, we are bound to transform and restore to full Holy Communion this church torn apart and scattered by the crimes and sins of its fathers. By the power of the Holy Spirit, that’s bound to happen.

What is truth? We know truth when we hear it because it strikes a heartfelt chord in our souls. It makes divine sense to us. It moves us in such a profound way that we are led to follow wherever the truth takes us, even through fear, misery, and suffering. Truth is a language understood by those possessed by the Holy Spirit, regardless of race, gender, or religion. The Gospel of Saint John reveals, “You know Christ and recognize him because he dwells within you” (John 14:17). Accordingly, it’s the Holy Spirit within us all who moves our hearts and souls to recognize the truth when we hear it and see it. And it’s the spirit of evil
within us who refuses to see the truth and does all in its power to bind everyone in silence in order to protect and keep hidden its evil ways. As free spirits, we are fully capable of being both good and evil. We are capable of being guided by holy spirits, as well as choosing to silence them by doing all in our power to suppress truth and paralyze its works. In that way we become devil’s advocates, so to speak, those who feed the faithful with lies instead of truth in the name of God, those who appear no longer capable, as one Catholic described, of even recognizing the truth, “even if it came up and bit them in their clerical arse.”

It makes sense that those who believe in God become inhabited by the Holy Spirit of the God in whom they believe. As Christians, the world knows us by the way we love one another, by our inclusiveness, and by our ability to understand and be understood. So, too, with those who believe in the power of privilege, secrecy, silence, lies, and the infallible letter of their laws, they are inhabited by the unholy spirits in which they believe. We know a tree by its fruit, and given the fruit of the Catholic priesthood we see, only a Second Pentecost can save us. At least that’s how it appears to me. Only an inner transformation as profound as that of the first Pentecost is capable of bringing to new life all the dry dead bones and clerical hearts of stone. And only an outpouring of a Holy Spirit on all humankind can ever save the whole world from the total destruction we are so hell-bent on pursuing in the name of our Gods. A Second Pentecost is what the whole world needs now, and signs of its second coming are beginning to appear, at least among the dissenting faithful People of God, evermore the heart and soul of the Catholic Church.

While the Holy Spirit may appear silent and inactive, the truth of the matter is that far more is going on than meets the eye. Behind the scenes, we see the Holy Spirit moving the faithful to connect with one another, support one another, and speak the
truth to one another. Extraordinary and unprecedented movements among Catholics demanding the whole truth and nothing but the truth are clear signs of a Second Pentecost. Holy silent and blindly obedient no more, so many are being moved, even compelled, to speak the truth. A new Pentecost in the Catholic Church has begun. The community of the faithful is leading the way, with and without the support of the Church Fathers. We in the Catholic Church are experiencing all the divine signs of a Second Pentecost, and it’s only a matter of time before the fullness of its transforming effects is realized.

A priesthood of the people is emerging with all the power of a Second Pentecost, just as the Christian community did in the beginning. And by the power of the same Second Pentecost, a sisterhood of all women is slowly waking and beginning to move the mountains of clerical deceit and betrayal heaped upon them by the Church Fathers. Silent and submissive no more, the Holy Spirit appears to be working overtime in us, urging truths to be spoken, and moving the Catholic Church to be transformed just as it was at the first Pentecost. A Second Pentecost is already driving its winds through the Catholic Church, and pouring itself out on all humankind. The rebirth of Catholicism has begun—a rebirth led now, as it was in the beginning, by the priesthood of the people and the sisterhood of all women.

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The Priesthood of the People

I
N EVERY RELIGION, PRIESTS
are simply those responsible for their church, and in the Catholic Church, all those baptized share priestly responsibility. In baptism we are all called to priesthood; all of us are ordained to do something divine with our life, whether we choose to do so or not. While those who exercise priesthood in an ordained capacity have specific sacramental responsibilities, it’s the whole community of believers who make up any church. Without the Christian community (in and out of the pew), ordained priesthood has little meaning and no priestly function. Vatican II could not have been any more clear in its divine message that the People of God are the church just as much as its priests are. Without a community of believers gathered around the table, there can be no communion, no church, and virtually no priesthood. The most essential element of any priesthood is the priesthood of the People of God.