The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal by Karol Jackowski Read Free Book Online Page A

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 theJesus 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