The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal Read Online Free PDF

disciples found inspiration and strength, daily bread and soul food.
    Disciples felt divine power in repeating the words of Jesus, and they experienced divine power in repeating his works. The words and works of Christ are what define his priesthood. The table community is the real church of Jesus Christ, and all those gathered around the table are the people of God. In the Gospels, the priesthood of Jesus never gets more complicated than that. It’s always a matter of doing God’s work and being thankful for one another around the table at the end of the day. In the priesthood of Jesus, when that happens, God is with us.
    Throughout the Gospels it seems clear that Jesus does not proclaim the founding of a “church” or “priesthood,” certainly not another exclusively male priesthood. To the very end of his life, Jesus remained a faithful Jew who reveals no intention to destroy or overthrow Judaism. The synagogue remained the church of choice by Jesus, as well as the disciples, both before and after the resurrection. Jesus’ priesthood does not come to destroy any religion, only to fulfill its divine promise. He envisions living our lives in an entirely different way, by the spirit of its laws, not the letter. The spirit of the law is God’s voice. Theletter of the law is our voice, our interpretation of what we hear God say, and too often what we want God to say. God sent Jesus into this world to return to all laws their holy spirit. And the life of Christ is what the fulfillment of all God’s laws put together looks like. The one law governing the priesthood of Christ is love. Pure and simple, Jesus reveals that the only law of any true God is love. Compassion. Love is the priestliest power we have. That’s God’s message to the universe as revealed in Christianity according to Christ. And Buddha before him.

    One of the most profoundly misunderstood “priestly” gestures of Jesus is the appointment of twelve men as apostles and what that means about priesthood. By the end of the first century, the Church Fathers were proclaiming themselves direct descendants of the twelve apostles, and creating the teaching of “apostolic succession.” The men in the church claimed the most powerful call of Jesus as theirs exclusively. Priesthood, they said, was intended, clearly and divinely, For Men Only. The Church Fathers found God’s most divine blessing bestowed in particular on men, and mysteriously not as much on women. If Jesus found women equally as divine, they reasoned, he surely would have chosen them also as apostles. He didn’t even choose his own mother.
    Not only did Jesus choose men exclusively as apostles, but he chose just twelve. The literal-minded believe that means Jesus had no divine intention of inviting everyone to be an apostle. While Jesus may call many to discipleship, only a few special ones, “The Twelve,” were chosen to be his “apostolic successors,” his priests. As a result, the literal-minded also believe the “chosen” to be holier than the rest of us, closer to God, divinely privileged, even anatomically made in God’s male image and likeness. Understood literally, that’s how the division between priest andpeople took shape and became divinely ordained. That’s how the subordination of women became divinely ordained. And that’s when women were declared divinely unworthy of priesthood. As we now see, so clearly and so painfully only evil and abuse rise from that kind of thinking because it kills the spirit of God. Jesus reveals over and over that is not what God intended. Divine spirits never speak literally. No one would understand if they did. We see that, too.
    The symbolic ways in which Jesus reveals the love of God are intentionally those everyone in the universe can understand: stories, parables, miracles, works of mercy, and those divine gestures that are meant specifically to fulfill the law of God and the prophets. The baptism of Jesus by John is one of those