The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (23 page)

These priests remain among us, many of them still called to serve. Thousands of married and unmarried priests are part of the Second Pentecost, standing side by side with the priesthood of the people. Organized into groups such as Corpus and Rent-a-Priest, or unorganized but ministering wherever they are called to serve, the men who left the priesthood in good conscience can be found wherever and whenever priestly people come together. They, too, are part of the Second Pentecost, acclaimed and ordained by the priesthood of the people to help bring about the rebirth of Catholicism.

Most important among those joining the priesthood of the people are the faithful people themselves, Catholics in and out of the pew. It’s ordinary Catholic families who have always held together Holy Mother Church, and it’s those faithful ones who hold her together now. The new priesthood is all the people of the church who are rising up and demanding a full and truthful account of criminal abuses and who will never be silenced again. It’s priestly people who are taking the Catholic Church to court in order to make them serve the same justice they command the rest of the world to serve. The signs of the times all point to the stirring resurrection of the priesthood of the people, people taking religion back into their own sacred hands and homes where it belongs, and where it was given to us in baptism. The greatest changes we’ve seen in this crisis have happened within the
priesthood of the people, none of whom will be entrusting their souls, their children, or their money to the Catholic Church in the same way again. A rapidly growing number of Catholics, in and out of the pew, are blindly obedient no more. Catholics have changed more in the past few years than we have in the past two thousand. What else can that be but divine intervention? A Second Pentecost.

The heart and soul of religion lies far more in the community of believers than it does in its priesthood, and never has that been clearer. Christianity began with a handful of believers and that’s all it takes to keep alive the Holy Spirit of Christ. Just two or three to gather together in that way does it. And there are far more Catholics than that coming together now in unprecedented ways, good sisters and priests among them, organizing locally and nationally, moving the church to change, preparing the way for its rebirth. We have every reason to believe that what we have seen and heard thus far of the crimes and sins of the fathers is only the tip of an iceberg as old and hardened as the church itself. And for as awful as it’s going to get, these are the excruciatingly painful but blessed changes that have been dying to happen for centuries. The power of the Holy Spirit moving right now through the heart and soul of every Catholic could hardly be more forceful, and has all the makings of a Second Pentecost. Only this time, the priesthood of the people is much smarter, silent no more, and strengthened still by the sisterhood of women, just as it was in the beginning.

8
The Sisterhood of All Women

T
HE CALL TO SISTERHOOD
is not a voice that only nuns hear. From what I see, the call to sisterhood lies secretly buried within the soul of all women, longing and waiting to be heard. What I find most enchanting about the call to sisterhood is how important, even holy, it regards a woman’s need to get together with other women; and though most women do not seek to live sisterhood in religious life, getting together regularly with one another somehow answers that call. So sacred is such getting together among women that it becomes a heartfelt ritual for many of us, a mysterious rite of sisterhood to be nourished and protected for generations of women to come.

Years before I noticed the sisterhood of nuns, I loved my mother’s monthly “Girls Night Out” with eleven other women who called themselves the Chères Amies, the Dear Friends. With the exception of December, when the Chères Amies had their Christmas get-together with husbands for an evening of dinner and dance, they always took turns meeting at one another’s houses for a night of food, drink, and cards—usually pinochle or bunko. Prizes were valued at a whopping $3.00, $2.00, and $1.50. They paid monthly dues (with which they sometimes went out to lunch), picked the gardenia as the club flower, “Doodlee-Do” as the club song, and planned a big lakeside picnic each summer for the Chères Amies families.

I still remember my sisters and I sneaking as close as we could without being seen, straining to hear what they talked about at
the monthly meetings that provoked such hearty laughter into the night. I remember that laughter more than anything else and still envy whatever it was that made those dear friends laugh so hard and so long, as though they held it in and waited all month to release it. Between club meetings these dear friends talked on the phone frequently filling each other in on the details of their daily lives. And those who lived near one another—my mother, Shirley, and her best friend, Estelle Nowosinski—often got together for a cigarette-and-coffee talk after getting all their children off to school (each had five, three girls first, then two boys). They also called each other
dollka
, a Polish term of endearment between girlfriends, and referred to us as
little dollkas.
We were all dollkas then, and still are whenever we see one another.

Not only did the Chères Amies celebrate births, weddings, and successes of each other’s family members, they also came to offer one another comfort, support, and meals-on-wheels in the event of sickness and death. Such was the sisterhood among the Chères Amies, and such was the friendship among these women that they became family in all the ways that matter most. Out of the Chères Amies mysteriously grew this whole other kind of family, drawn and held together by the lifeblood of sisterhood, the kind of sisterhood I imagined I’d find in religious life. And I did.

Three Chères Amies survive today, my mother (but not her best friend) among them. All three keep in touch and meet on occasion, though the monthly get-togethers are long gone. So divine and indestructible is the sisterly bond among these women that I cannot help but see their friendship as one of the earliest seeds of sisterhood sown in my soul. The first divine call I heard to sisterhood was that of my mother and her Chères Amies sisters. Every time I think of them, I’m reminded of an Emily Dickinson poem, “The Soul Selects Her Own Society.” The Chères Amies were that kind of society.

Every woman I know tells similar stories of sisterhoods to which their mothers belonged, and every woman I know tells stories of similar groups to which they belong. They all speak of groups, large and small, which cultivate true loyalty and enduring bonds of love and support, as well as the best and most hilarious of times. In retrospect, I understand this call to sisterhood as a kind of primal instinct among women, a heartfelt call to friendship in which a level of divine comfort is found, as is the affinity of soul mates. Such “soul societies” always form out of some shared experience, at some turning point or difficult time in life. For example, the Chères Amies came together during World War Two, when part of each meeting was spent putting together packages and writing letters to their soldier husbands; an extraordinary source of sisterly support for women left alone during the war, most raising young children. My sister Debbie gets together with three other women monthly to play Scrabble. Calling themselves Scrabblettes, they came together originally because no one at home wanted to play with them. Like the Chères Amies, their children went to school together, and the Scrabblettes helped raise them all. As an honorary Scrabblette, who attends a few meetings a year, I can tell you that far more talking, eating, drinking, and laughing goes on than does finishing even one game of Scrabble. True soul food is served to our soul societies, and the Scrabblettes dish out the best.

Such are the ordinary mysterious ties that continue to bind women together in sisterhood, and such is the sisterhood by which I still love being bound. My life is full of sisterhoods and always has been. One of the most extraordinary was called The Secret Order of Judith—closet revolutionaries who saved the world over dinner and Manhattans. A table community of ten colleagues, the Judys consisted of eight women and two men (Judes). At least once a month we cooked up some enchanted
evening, an evening of Judyism—a potluck gourmet meal, a cause to celebrate, a moon ritual, and the divine pleasure of one another’s company. That was one powerful sisterhood that still is. The Secret Order of Judith is scattered over the country now, but the Judys keep in touch and so Judyism lives. Keeping in touch is a divine power in sisterhood, both in and out of religious life. The sisterhood of all women comes from the same divine call. The call to a sisterhood in which women are treated by one another as equal, and every woman’s voice, life, and laughter is treasured as divine. No wonder the Catholic sisterhood regards as holy the need for women to get together with one another. Their lives become nourished in divine ways only sisters know.

A similar kind of sisterhood is emerging among women in the Catholic Church, with all the signs that look like a Second Pentecost. Nothing angers, wakens, and moves the soul of most women like the abuse of children, and even more profound is the awakening and enlightenment that happens when it’s done by priests in the name of God. Even the most faithful and obedient Catholic women (good sisters included) are now counted among the church’s faithful dissenters, many speaking their minds for the first time. Slowly but surely, one by one, Catholic women are waking to all the ways in which they have been used and abused by the priesthood. Bound by submission and subordination, but silent no more, a sisterhood is rising in the Catholic Church, the likes of which we’ve never seen. When we sleeping beauties awaken to the whole truth, that’s when we’ll see how quickly the mountains of clerical deceit can be moved. Women have always been the backbone and caretakers of Holy Mother Church, as well as the keepers of its silence. If women and their children stayed home one Sunday, the whole world would see how empty
and nonexistent the Catholic Church is without them. That’s how silently powerful the presence of women is in the church. That’s also how powerful their faith is. There is no church without it.

We have not yet heard the voices of women who’ve been tormented by the church’s teachings against them, nor have we heard from women who have been abused in relationships with priests, including a significant number of sisters. Wait until those women waken fully and begin to speak. When that day comes we will see how divinely powerful the sisterhood of women can be. When that day comes we’ll also see how divinely powerful the priesthood of women can be. While we’ve just begun to understand the ways in which we’ve been victimized and betrayed by the Church Fathers, enlightenment will grow as the new priesthood and the new sisterhood waken fully, come together, and move forward. While our hearts may be troubled and afraid over all that’s coming to light, we have God’s word and promise that the Holy Spirit of truth will be with us in the hearts of the faithful. Catholics all over the world have been shaken and wakened soulfully by the sins of the fathers. A divine power so like that of a Second Pentecost is beginning to drive its wind and fire through the submissive and silent soul of Catholic women. The best of what women have to offer the Catholic Church is yet to come. When it comes to the divine power of sisterhood, in the church and in the world, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

What I see happening to women in the Catholic Church today is exactly what happens whenever women begin to hear and respond to their soul’s call to sisterhood. Many women in the church are waking up to the experience of what it’s like to be treated by one another as equals. When women begin to hear the call of one another to sisterhood, their soul wakens, enlightened and strengthened in ways the Church Fathers discourage. Acting
because of and with friends is a powerful sustaining force. A sacred solidarity rises among women from their best friendships, enabling even the quietist women to break the silence and reveal the truth. By the divine power present in sisterhood, women become blessed with a mysterious strength and a Pentecostal energy that has all the feeling of wind beneath wings. Once women experience the divine power of sisterhood, we find we can no longer live without it.

What happens when women are called together in friendship, solidarity, and community is sisterhood’s most powerful mystery. And there is no mystery more powerful in sisterhood than that which rises when women discover together the divine call to holy disobedience. Most who grew up Catholic did so believing that obedience and compliance with church authority was essentially good, right, and holy, while noncompliance or disobedience was clearly evil, wrong, and sinful. But now, after thousands of years of willing submission and unquestioning obedience, women in the church are shaken and wakened by the priestly abuse of children. Catholic women are both shaken and wakened to the soulful dilemma of what to do when the voice of God demands something different from the “divine authority” of the Catholic Church. When women begin to reconnect with the voice of God within their own lives and allow themselves to be moved by that Holy Spirit, they find that they can never become blindly obedient and soulfully submissive again, no matter how vehemently the Church Fathers exhort them to do so.