The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (22 page)

The third striking difference between the priesthood of the people and that of the Church Fathers lies in understanding how divine truth is revealed and what we do with what we hear as the “voice of God.” In a priesthood built on privilege and power and strengthened by secrecy and silence, it’s no wonder the Catholic Church grew into proclaiming itself and its teachings infallible. A big part of privileged priesthood is the unshakable belief in themselves as God on earth, Jesus Christ personified, and therefore the exclusive source of divine revelation. This kind of thinking is far more common among priests than we’d like to believe. I’ve listened to many priests preach at the Eucharist, and far too often the homily goes something like this. The Gospel of the day is read, and in his homily the priest tells a personal story, an
experience he had, comparing what he did with what Jesus did in the Gospel. Fair enough. But it’s always the conclusion the priest draws that’s the most revealing. In comparing himself to Jesus, the priest sees only how much Jesus is like him. Jesus did what the priest did. And he speaks of it in the homily as a stunning insight. He is so like Jesus that Jesus is just like him. (Had he been just like Jesus he would not have been proclaiming his good works from the pulpit.) That’s how the privileged priesthood hears the Word of God and their own—as one and the same, with God’s voice sounding just like theirs. Given such a privileged vision of priesthood, how could they possibly be wrong? That’s what the Church Fathers still can’t understand.

Infallibility means the Catholic Church can do no wrong and is divinely incapable of error. Even Jesus is like them. When it comes to the divine revelation reflected in Catholic teaching, the Church Fathers can’t possibly be wrong, regardless of the millions of Catholics (not to mention the rest of the world) who believe they are, and their own criminal thinking that proves repeatedly that they are. It’s part of the privileged everywhere that their ways of thinking are designed to dominate, but in the Catholic Church the domination becomes packed with all the power of God. Not believing is never simply disagreement, or a matter of respectfully seeing the truth differently, it becomes sin, heresy, cause for excommunication, even death by Inquisition in the Middle Ages. Infallibility and unchanging truths are not the problem here; it’s to whom they belong. That’s the real problem. According to the Catholic doctrine of “receptivity,” a teaching is true to the extent that the faithful accepts it as true; we all know a bit of the truth. In other words, infallibility belongs to the
whole
Catholic Church, not just its teaching fathers.

In the priesthood of the people, infallible truths are safeguarded as sacred, but where they come from and how they’re
revealed appears is entirely different from the priesthood of the elect. First of all, how we think about truth is far more dynamic and subject to further clarification from time to time. As we grow in knowledge, understanding, and consciousness, so, too, does our understanding of what’s true change. A growing understanding of truth is completely unlike that of the Church Fathers whose thinking is fixed, static, and impossible to change, even infallible. The historian Garry Wills explains this new way of thinking as a process of moving from truth to truth. “The truth one leaves behind is not necessarily false, but a less adequate expression of truth that leads to a more adequate one.”
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Our knowledge of everything, including ourselves, grows and changes just as we grow and change in consciousness, in what we experience as true. In the priesthood of the people, change emerges as the most sacred and infallible truth they know. Change is a divine law of nature, a divine law of us, and a divine law of God.

How do we know what’s true if the truth is always changing? In the words of Cardinal John Henry Newman (1859), the only true infallibility comes from “consulting the faithful in matters of doctrine.”
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It’s the consensus of the people that reveals divine truth, the whole church revealing together where it is they see the Holy Spirit leading. Infallible truths (such as how sacred all life is) become clear when everyone begins to reveal what they see and hear when they listen in prayer and discern the movements of their Holy Spirit. While the Church Fathers continue to proclaim that Catholicism is no democracy, the Holy Spirit begs to differ. Why isn’t it? We are all endowed with a soul that bears the divine life and voice of God. In the priesthood of the people infallible truths are found in hearing what the whole church experiences and knows as true. The voice of God is clearest when we listen to what everyone has to say, and not the voices of a self-ordained privileged few.

Change becomes a sacrament within the priesthood of the people because that’s clearly how the Holy Spirit reveals divine truth. The truth doesn’t change. It’s we who change in our ability to understand truths more clearly. The more we refuse to change our thinking, the more resistant we become to the work of the Holy Spirit in ourselves and in one another. Our hearts become hardened and we refuse to listen to anyone (including the sacred voice of science) except our unchanging minds. Infallibility is no less precious or divine in the priesthood of the people, but where it comes from and to whom it belongs is profoundly different from that of the priesthood of privilege. With all the divine power of a Second Pentecost a new vision of divine truth is being revealed, one in which the sacred voice of everyone is heard, including that of “every nation under heaven.” That’s how inclusive the voice of divine truth is in the new priesthood. The more divine voices we hear from the people, the more clear and infallible are its sacred truths. In the coming of a Second Pentecost, the truths we treasure and keep sacred as infallible will be those that reflect the voice of God’s people, and not the will of a privileged, exclusive, secretive few.

The call to service, inclusiveness, and change is what appears to guide the priesthood of the people. Who are the people of this new priesthood? Where do they come from? They are everyone coming together because of the lies, the betrayal, and the devastation the church is suffering at the hands of its fathers. Bound by silence no more, the priesthood of the people are all those coming forward to say, “Enough!” By the power of the Holy Spirit, even judges, the courts, and the law of the land have had enough of these privileged fathers, their crimes, and their lies. Catholic and non-Catholic alike have become part of the priesthood of the
people. All humankind is horrified over what’s happening in the Catholic priesthood today.

Just as in the first Pentecost, so, too, are those of every belief coming together to cleanse the Catholic Church of its criminal thinking and bring her back to divine life. Even the law of the land appears to be driven by the same holy winds of change that are blowing through the deepest and darkest corners of the Catholic Church, forcing its priesthood to submit to laws higher than themselves. The priesthood of the people is strengthened by the divine laws of the land as well as the divine laws of God. Even those who aren’t Catholic are driven and compelled to work to eliminate its criminal priestly abuses. That’s how powerful the Second Pentecost already is, and it’s just begun to pour out on all humankind.

Included in the priesthood of the people are the good priests who never staked their claim to privilege, exclusiveness, or infallibility, all the good priests who stand in the midst of the people as those who serve. No longer bound by silence, a handful of priests are joining their voices with those of the people. On November 17, 2002, the
Boston Herald
printed an article by Dominican priest and canon lawyer Fr. Thomas P. Doyle, in which he writes about the exceptions in the priesthood to all those involved in its lies, crimes, cover-ups, and silence:

Notable among them is a parish priest from East Long-meadow, Mass., Father James Scahill, whose parish is withholding the 6% diocesan tax that goes to the bishop’s office weekly and is used at his discretion. Scahill and his parishioners have made it clear that they will continue to withhold this tax until Father Richard Lavigne is laicized and no longer receives
any
compensation from the Diocese of Springfield.

Father Lavigne pleaded guilty to child molestation in 1992. Later in 1992, the diocese settled a suit brought by 17 additional victims for $1.3 million. More than 10 years after his conviction, and in the face of additional lawsuits, Lavigne is still a priest, gets paid a salary by the diocese, and has fully paid medical insurance.

As a canon lawyer I can state clearly that Bishop Thomas Dupre could have, and most importantly should have sought the forced laicization of Lavigne during the last 10 years; yet he has chosen to do nothing…. Bishop Dupre has been quoted as saying that the process is too “cumbersome” and that even if he chooses to seek Lavigne’s laicization, he will continue to pay him because canon law would force him to do so, and it is the charitable thing to do.

There is nothing in canon law that forces him to do any such thing…. The reality is that almost without exception, laicized former priests, including John Geoghan, receive nothing from their dioceses precisely because of canon law. When are my fellow priests going to realize that there is something seriously wrong with this picture? When are they going to get out from behind the pulpit and let their communities know these actions and inactions are unconscionable?
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Among the priesthood of the people are the good church fathers like Tom Doyle who can no longer keep the silence that binds priests of privilege, regardless of the clerical price they are likely to pay. In 1986, Father Doyle, a prophet way ahead of his time, stood before his canon lawyer brethren and named priestly pedophilia as the greatest problem that we in the church have faced in centuries. Shortly after, he was removed from his
position at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C. (the road to becoming bishop), and lost his teaching position in canon law at Catholic University. That’s the price priests can expect to pay for breaking the silence, and that’s why so few are willing to do so. Father Doyle is currently serving as an air force chaplain in Germany and is still speaking out against the sinful silence of his brothers.

Sad but true, the loss of priestly privilege is too high for many, which reveals where the essence of their priesthood lies. Nevertheless, so strong is the power of the Holy Spirit that even the silence and secrecy of the brotherhood is finally being broken by a blessed few, and all because the moral and spiritual cost of not speaking out is far more devastating. A Second Pentecost is driving its most powerful and penetrating winds though some of the truly ordained Church Fathers as well. They are standing side by side with the priesthood of the people as those called by Christ to serve.

Included with the good holy fathers are the ordained men who left the priesthood to marry and whose priesthood is welcomed warmly by the priesthood of the people. These are the priests who left the privilege attached to priesthood and could not in good conscience profess celibacy and maintain a relationship in secret. Unlike the majority of their sexually active brothers in the priesthood, these are the ordained men who could no longer live that lie. Among the priestly men of conscience is the ex-Jesuit priest Charles J. O’Byrne, who presided at John Kennedy Jr.’s wedding and funeral and who left the priesthood recently because of how hypocritical it is about sex. A column in New York’s
Dally News
reports him saying:

Seminary life was hypocritical, but I tried to live with it and called it ambiguity. I became aware that there was sex all around me. For awhile I was angry. After all, I had enjoyed sex before I entered religious life and had determined to renounce it. Now people who have never had a sexual experience were having them—with the equivalent of churchly blessings. For me, the contradictions proved too much, and I decided to leave the active ministry.
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