The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (8 page)

While the history of the church in the Middle Ages is one view of Catholicism, the history of how Catholics live the Christian life is quite another. Not everyone in the Catholic Church is as corrupt as its leaders. There always was and always will be those who refuse to obey any voice other than the voice of God, no matter how forceful clerical efforts are to silence and condemn them. Among popes, monks, nuns, priests, and laity alike there are always those who continue to live authentic Christian lives, uncorrupted by the hypocrisy and scandal of the institutional church. And nowhere is that glad truth more clear than in the Middle Ages with the rise of mysticism. The mystical tradition rises out of Catholicism’s darkest ages, like a pure divine light that not even the most errant of popes with their most evil Inquisitions could extinguish.

The mystical tradition that became an essential part of priesthood and sisterhood in the Middle Ages is a clear sign of divine intervention. Regardless of what happens in the institutional
church, there’s a priesthood among the people that remains faithful, prayerful, and full of good works. When the voice of God demands something entirely different from, even contrary to, the “infallible” voice of papal authority, there are those called to follow the voice of God in conscience, regardless of the consequences. In the Middle Ages, mysticism appeared to many Christians as a prayerful alternative to the corrupt voices of Church authority. Even though Catholic teaching gives priority to the voice of individual conscience in decision making, the voice of the Holy Spirit within us, we are rarely encouraged to follow that practice. Another doctrine not proclaimed from the pulpit is the “doctrine of receptivity.” In confirming the divine role of personal conscience, the doctrine of receptivity reveals that a church teaching cannot be true if it’s not received as such by the community of believers, meaning all Catholics. While that seems like common sense now, how different Roman Catholicism would be had those two teachings ruled the Middle Ages, or the age we’re in now.

Nowhere in history does the mystical tradition explode with such divine light and life as it does in the Middle Ages. It appeared to cut through the darkness and decadence of the institutional church, to drive many of its monks, nuns, priests, and laity back to their spiritual roots in God alone and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Mysticism as a lifestyle is nowhere near as exclusive or as unattainable as it might appear, nor is it a divine gift given only to the fanatically religious. Quite the contrary. All ancient religions have their mystics and holy ones, including ordinary men, women, even children—like Bernadette of Lourdes and Thérèse of Lisieux, who became saints in their teens. The voice of God speaks in souls who listen, and not just those in the priesthood. Mysticism is a matter of being close to God, something everyone can be.

While the uneducated, medieval mind may be more naturally inclined toward mysticism than ours is, we, too, have access to divine revelation whenever we listen to the voice of God in prayer, see in one another the face of God, and see in our lives the touch of God. The twentieth-century mystic Evelyn Underhill wrote, “No deeply religious person is without mysticism, and no mystic can be anything other than a deeply religious person,”
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which is to say a deeply loving person. We recognize mystics, those touched by God, in the same way Christ tells us we can recognize all Christians, by the way they—and we—love one another. Love is the infallible sign of all touched by God, and compassion is our most divine power.

Knowing what it’s like to be touched by God is something most of us know. Anyone who experiences any part of life as divine knows what that’s like. Anyone who falls in love with a man, a woman, a child, nature, or God knows what it is to be touched that deeply, that mysteriously, and that divinely. Mystics describe the experience of God as life changing, as one in which they undergo a conversion of sorts. Their whole life changes. As a result of being touched by God, everyday priorities shift and personal interests are drawn toward those activities that nourish the inner life: solitude, prayer, creative work, spiritual reading. Having been touched by God, we seek out the company of those also touched by God, those who are drawn toward lives of service, works of mercy, and creative work. All great artists are natural mystics. Emily Dickinson was, as was the poet Rilke and most artists I know. They have to be in order to move the soul of humanity so divinely and so tunelessly. All those touched by God cannot help but be moved to works of love and works of art. Jesus reveals that “the mouth speaks whatever fills the mind,” and if the mind is filled with love and God, life is filled with nothing but divine experiences. The writings of the mystics reveal how sweet that is.

What mystics tend to see more than anything else is the hidden side of life, the invisible movements of God behind everything that happens. Even in the darkest nights of the soul, and the darkest ages of the church, mystics experience the blinding light and love of God, along with the fullness of life for which we were created. All mystics write about how darkness and light are the same. One is not intrinsically evil and the other intrinsically divine. Both reveal divinely the dark and light faces and voices of God. In losing the taste for things this world offers as “divine,” mystics write of experiencing all of life as sublime. All of life comes to the mystic as it did to Jesus Christ, as a daily opportunity to meet God face to face in everything that happens. Heaven on earth.

So powerful is the experience of God for mystics that even amid the decadence of the Middle Ages they speak of their souls being awakened by love, purified by love, enlightened by love, and inspired by love to works of mercy and some of the greatest works of art we’ve seen. Emily Dickinson explains it as “The Inner—paints the Outer—The Brush without the Hand.” Living their lives in the presence of God, mystics hear divine voices and see the hand of God in the events of the day. They see things most of us don’t. They are able to relax their minds and souls in such a meditative way that divine insights and truths come to them quite easily, insights and truths sometimes at variance with church teaching. It’s no wonder then that the institutional church always regarded mysticism with mistrust—especially since women and ordinary Christians played such an important role in its development and since mystics tend to be strong proponents of holy disobedience. That’s the clearest sign I know that mystics are touched by God. Women and ordinary people aren’t excluded, and the only voice they follow is the voice of God, regardless of consequences.

Some of the most inspiring mystical writings are those of the women mystics. Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century Spanish
mystic, is a personal favorite. In addition to composing volumes of inspired writings on the inner life, Teresa worked with her colleague and soul mate, John of the Cross, to reform monastic life in their communities of cloistered Carmelites. So rich is Teresa’s inner life that she envisions the soul as an “interior castle” and speaks of her life as a union with God in a “spiritual marriage.”
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In understanding “marriage to God” literally, most nuns then wore wedding gowns on the day of their final profession of vows, and most envisioned themselves married to Jesus Christ. While I did not, many did, and I suspect some nuns still do.

I was told the story of a group of contemplative nuns who years ago understood the notion of being married to Jesus literally, in the sense that “Jesus” was the man whom nuns slept with at night. At their solemn vow ceremony, rather than lying prostrate in front of the altar during the Litany of the Saints (we knelt), they lay on their backs so that they could be impregnated by the Holy Spirit. It was a wise bishop who put an end to that practice in the abbey. Even so, while the image of spiritual marriage may sound like the revelation of a perverted sexuality, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s purely a matter of a loving soul and the fulfillment of life that follows. All mystics speak with symbolic and poetic language, just as Christ did. Symbol, image, music, art, and poetry are all the language of the mystic, and are never intended to be understood literally. The visions and voices that mystics see and hear present themselves to us in timeless ways everyone can understand, except the literal-minded.

The fourteenth-century English mystic Julian of Norwich is another personal favorite. In her “Revelations of Divine Love” Julian envisions God as Mother and explains with pure delight how “Sin is no blame, but worship” in the way it can waken the soul to be touched by God. But sin as worship? No wonder the Inquisition harassed, tortured, and condemned mystics for
heresy and women mystics for witchcraft, even burning at the stake women who heard “voices from God,” like Joan of Arc. Anyone who hears and obeys exclusively the voice of God is asking for trouble in the Catholic Church. These are lives not dedicated in holy obedience to the voice of the Church Fathers, but dedicated in holy obedience to the voice of God heard in prayer and in one another, a divine voice we’ve been taught to mistrust and keep silent.

While crime and corruption entered the priesthood in the Middle Ages, so, too, did mysticism. Obedient to the voice and vision of God alone, mystics have always been a powerful influence in the Catholic Church. The soul of religion was kept sacred in their hands. It’s the lives of those touched by God that saved the soul of Catholicism in the Middle Ages. And it’s the lives of those touched by God through this scandal that continue to save the soul of Catholicism. The Catholic Church always was and always will be the whole people of God, faithful Catholics in and out of the pew who hold firm to what they know in faith and prayer to be true.

Even as the priesthood of scandalous clerics continues to self-destruct as it did in the Middle Ages, the priesthood of the people—good priests and sisters among them—will continue to be drawn by the voice of God in the Gospels, in prayer, and in one another, the Christian community. The darkness we know in Catholicism today bears all the divine power of a rebirth in mysticism, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Middle Ages. Taking religion back into our own holy hands is the first step. Moving closer to God in our hearts, our homes, and our families is all it takes for a rebirth of mysticism. Priestly people have always saved the soul of Holy Mother Church. That’s another unbroken tradition revealed throughout the history of the Catholic Church, and never more clearly than when we look at what’s happening in the priesthood now.

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Priesthood Now

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IVEN ALL THAT HAPPENED
in the Middle Ages (and not just what made it into history books), the fact that there still is a Catholic priesthood is proof in my mind of the hidden presence of God in the church and the survival of the Jesus Movement. It’s a miracle. And we are watching it all fold and unfold right before our eyes. Something so painfully right appears to be emerging in the Catholic Church from all of its old infallible wrongs. Only a loving God could write so straight with such intrinsically crooked lines. What we’re seeing today in the priesthood are those wheels of the gods that grind exceedingly slow, but exceedingly fine, giving us a new hope that the end of the wrong is in sight. This appears to me to be the end of Catholic priesthood as we’ve known it. All around us the high and the mighty of business and industry are being brought down by their own deadly sins, and Church Fathers appear to be lined up closely behind them.

For as much as we’d like to cling to divine comfort in knowing that priesthood today is nowhere as bad as it was in the Middle Ages, I’m not sure that’s true. I felt I was in the Dark Ages when I read on the gossip page of the
New York Post
,

WHICH American cardinal recently disclosed to insiders a confidential letter he received from a bishop urging the cardinal to resign for the good of the church? The cardinal is being urged to quit before his much-gossiped-about homosexual indiscretions are uncovered by the media….WHICH ranking priest of a major diocese predicted over a boozy dinner the other night that if the media outs this particular cardinal, “then the dominoes will really start to fall?”
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Even though gossip is not always true, reading gossip about the Church Fathers in the
New York Post
is reminiscent of the darkest ages of Catholicism. But this is Holy Mother Church they’re talking about “over a boozy dinner,” not some clerical sex scandal from the tenth century. This is the twenty-first century. Do I know who they’re talking about? No. But do the media, the priesthood, and the Vatican? I think they do. Apparently there are quite a few Vatican-appointed “dominoes” lined up and ready to fall.

The first truth we see when we look at the Catholic priesthood today is the way in which Church Fathers are making the daily news. That’s the Catholic priesthood the whole world sees and knows. More hidden crimes and scandals being revealed, with more incriminating evidence that the buck does stop at the Vatican. All we see in response is the Catholic Church’s attempt at whitewashing the issue. Repeatedly we are encouraged by the priesthood to believe that “this too shall pass.” And it will—but not before revealing its darkest and most painful truths.