CATHOLICS COME HOME

By now you have probably seen the television ads produced and funded by a lay organization called Catholics Come Home. The group claims that “the television message shows the beauty, spirituality, and history of the Church.” What the ads never mentions, however, is why many fallen away Roman Catholics walked away from the Church in the first place: The child sexual abuse scandal that has 15,736 know victims and 6000 priests accused of such heinous acts; the Catholic communities distrust in the leadership of the Church; the Church policies which lack relevancy to today’s issues; and the Church’s subjugation of women for over 1500 years.
A little contrition and enlightenment from the Pope and the Bishops of the world would do much more than all the television ads to fill the empty pews we see in our churches today!

Nobel Peace Prize

Three courageous, visionary women are about to receive the Nobel Peace Prize … do you think the Catholic Church now believes that women are qualified to be priests?

Benedict XVI

Benedict XVI seems more comfortable reaching out to a breakaway traditional Catholic group that is opposed to the decades-long outreach to Jews and other faiths than supporting the enlightened views of Vatican II.  Benedict’s outreach to the Society of Pius X is one of many initiatives he has taken in favor of conservative and traditionalist Catholics, while he has punished progressive clerics and silenced debate about priestly celibacy and women priests.
The Society of Pius X is opposed to the liberalizing reforms of Vatican II, which promoted inter-religious and ecumenical outreach. When Benedict chooses to reach out to a group that denounces Jews and other faiths while at the same time closing debate on women priests, he perpetuates prejudices which have existed in the church for thousands of years.
Benedict may well reconcile the church’s differences with the Society of Pius X but, in turn, the church will continue to lose respect as well as many followers!

Ripples of Hope (7)

The Priestess and the Pope is now available on Kindle in its Kindle Store. A few days ago, I was greeted with this note from Kindle: “Congratulations, you’ve been published. The book you recently submitted to Kindle has been published and is available for readers to purchase. You can download The Priestess and the Pope at the touch of a finger on your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android devices, PC, and Mac. The link to the book in the Kindle Store is The Priestess and the Pope.”

The Priestess and the Pope is a historical novel about women leaders in the early church and the scandal of their subordination in the rise of Christianity. Across eras, readers learn of the fate of rebellious churches and women priests as they move through the life and death of Jesus, the fall of Rome, and the Vatican’s systematic purging of history.

For centuries the Vatican relied on the pretext of a lack of precedent to exclude women from the priesthood and obliterated all documentation to the contrary. Although church politics is still mostly reserved for Vatican insiders  -  pay attention people  - Catholics world-wide are speaking in opposition to the church’s prejudice against women. Recent revelations and scandals have left church followers with a crisis of faith so profound that it undermines the Vatican’s credibility.

Knowing about our roots can help reclaim the egalitarianism of the early Christians. It is critical to acknowledge, at long last, that women were and can be church leaders. Hopefully, The Priestess and the Pope will reach thousands of readers through Kindle and the Internet sending forth ripples of hope helping to restore the leadership of women in the church.

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“The memory of the past is fruitful only if it becomes an occasion to draw nourishment from deep roots, and to look into the future with hope.”
Karen Jo Torjesen the author of “When Women Were Priests” reflects the sense of those words in the quote: “Understanding why and how women, once leaders in the Jesus movement and in the early church, were marginalized and scapegoated as Christianity became the state religion is crucial if women are to reclaim their rightful, equal place in the church today. Jesus’ message and practice were radically egalitarian in their day and constituted a social revolution that likely provoked his crucifixion. It is high time the church, which claims to embody his good news to the world, stop betraying its own essential heritage of absolute equality.”
Sounds to me that both speakers are in agreement as to what has to be done. The first speaker, by the way, is Pope Benedict XVI.

I know Karen Jo Torjesen was sending forth a ripple of hope … would it be too much to hope that the pope was also!

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Ripples of  Hope

Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, became a New York Times Op-Ed columnist in 1995. She has written numerous columns on the Catholic Church covering a wide range of issues. I will highlight a few in this blog.

In the “Vatican Code” she says that “For years female historians and novelists have been making the case that Mary Magdalene was framed and defamed, that the men who run Christianity obliterated her role as an influential apostle and reduced her to a metaphor for sexual guilt. The church refuses to allow women to be ordained as priests because there were no female apostles. So if Mary Magdalene was a madona rather than a whore, the church loses its fig leaf of justification for male domination and exclusion.”

She says in the “Nuns Story” that “Nuns were second class citizens then (1960s) and __ 40 years after feminism utterly changed America __ they still are. The matter of women as priests is closed, a forbidden topic. In 2004, the cardinal who would become Pope Benedict XVI wrote a Vatican document urging women to be submissive partners, resisting any adversarial role with men and cultivating ‘feminine values’ like ‘listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.’ The church enables rampant pedophilia, but nuns who live in apartments and do social work with ailing gays? Sacrilegious! The pope can wear Serengeti sunglasses and expensive red loafers, but shorter hems for nuns? Disgraceful!”
In “A Nope for Pope” she condemns Pope Benedict’s continued ban on female priests and his adamant stand on priests having wives. “If the church could throw open its stained glass windows and let in some air, invite women to be priests, nuns to be more emancipated, and priests to marry, if it could banish criminal priests and end the sordid culture of men protecting men who attack children, it might survive. It could be an encouraging sign of humility and repentance, a surrender of arrogance, both moving and meaningful.”

In “Should There Be an Inquisition for the Pope?” she condemns the the church for spending Holy Week “practicing the unholy art of spin. “Complete with crown-of-thorn imagery, the church has started an Easter public relations blitz defending a pope who went along with the perverse culture of protecting molesters and the church’s reputation rather than abused__ and sometimes disabled and disadvantaged__ children. The church gave up its credibility for Lent. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are now becoming Cover-up Thursday and Blame-Others Friday.”

In the “Devil of a Scandal” she claims that the church needs a “sexorcist” more than an “exorcist”. As this unholy week of shameful revelations unfurls, the Vatican is rather overplaying its hand. At the moment, the only thing between Catholics and God is a defensive church hierarchy that cannot fully acknowledge and heal the damage it has done around the globe.”

And, in “Worlds Without Women” she talks about having tea and sweets with a group of educated and sophisticated young professional women is Saudi Arabia. “I asked why they were not more upset about living in a country were women’s rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men’s club than a modern nation. They told me somewhat defensively, that the kingdom was moving at its own pace, glacial as that seemed to outsiders.
How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?
I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing.
I, too, belonged to an inbred and wealthy men’s club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity.
I, too, remained part of an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world.
I, too, rationalized as men in dresses allowed our religious kingdom to decay and to cling to outdated misogynistic rituals, blind to the benefits of welcoming women’s brains, talents and hearts into their ancient fraternity.
To circumscribe women, Saudi Arabia took Islam’s moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Muhammad; the Catholic Church took its moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Jesus. In the New Testament, Jesus is surrounded by strong women and never advocates that any woman__ whether she is his mother or a prostitute__ be treated as a second-class citizen.”

In this way, and in many other ways, Maureen Dowd sends forth “ripples of hope”!

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In recent years many scholarly writers have brought public attention to the admission of women to the priesthood. Those in favor of ordination of women point to the disparagement and enmity of women throughout the history of the church. Those against the ordination of women rely on the pretext of a lack of precedent.
Among the most significant of these writers is Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels. In the introduction to her book, she asserts that by investigating the Gnostic Gospels “together with sources known for well over a thousand years from orthodox traditions, we can see how politics and religion coincide in the development of Christianity.”
In her book, Pagels portrays a great variety of beliefs and teachings that were found among the earliest Christians and argues for an ongoing assessment of faith and a questioning of religious orthodoxy. She reveals how faith allows for a diversity of interpretations as she puts into words the views of many historical and contemporary thinkers: “Now that the Nag Hammadi discoveries give us a new perspective on this process, we can understand why certain creative persons throughout the ages, from Valentinus and Heracleon to Blake, Rembrandt, Dosteovsky, Tolstoy, and Nietzche, found themselves at the edges orthodoxy. All were fascinated by the figure of Christ__his birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection; all returned constantly to Christian symbols to express their own experience. And yet they found themselves in revolt against orthodox institutions. An increasing number of people today share their experience. They cannot rest solely on the authority of the Scriptures, the apostles, the church__at least not without inquiring how that authority constituted itself, and what if anything, gives it legitimacy. All the old questions__the original questions, sharply debated at the beginning of Christianity__are being reopened: how is one to understand the resurrection? What about women’s participation in priestly and episcopalffice? Who was Christ and how does he relate to the believer? What are the similarities between Christianity and the other world religions?”
Elaine Pagels in her reconsideration of the history of the Christian faith provides a startlingly new perspective on the origins of Christianity__and in the process sets forth a ripple of hope.

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Easter is a time of hope.  Pope Benedict XVI, speaking during a visit to the Ardeatine Caves Memorial in Rome, lamented the widespread abandonment of religion in Western Countries in a Holy Thursday Homily.  His lamentation should rather  have been for the loss of women’s leadership in the church and the scandal of their subordination in the rise of Christianity.

Karen Jo Torjesen in her book, When Women Were Priests, brilliantly lays bare the historic roots of the church’s prejudice against women.  Commenting on the book, Elizabeth Johnson (author of the book: She Who Is) said: “Torjesen is nothing short of brilliant in tracing the connection between the church’s move from the private to the public spheres and the corresponding move to suppress women’s leadership.  The cumulative effect of the book’s argument is to make more rationally urgent than ever the removal of this scandal.”

Torjensen goes on to state:  ”Understanding why and how women, once leaders in the Jesus movement and in the early church, were marginalized and scapegoated as Christianity became the state religion is crucial if women are to reclaim their rightful, equal place in the church today.  Jesus’ message and practice were radically egalitarian in their day and constituted a social revolution that likely provoked his crucifixion.  It is high time the church, which claims to embody his good news to the world, stop betraying its own essential heritage of absolute equality.”  And in so proclaiming, Torjesen sent forth a ripple of hope.

The pope’s lamentations serve only to make more widespread the abandonment of Catholicism — were he, on the other hand, to address women as equals and restore women to equal partnership in Christian life, he could rejoice in a newfound and widespread acceptance of Christian ideals.  What an Easter message of hope that would be!   

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Another “ripple of hope” was sent forth by Pope John XXIII when he announced in 1964 that there would be a worldwide council of the Church.
“The Council opened a huge door and extended a warm hand for the first time in many years. For Jews, the separation had been long and extremely painful, 2000 years without meaningful dialogue and understanding. For the Eastern Orthodox, they had been separated since 1054 or longer. For Christian Churches that emerged after the Reformation, it had been more than four hundred years of hatred and animosity. For Catholics exiled by their own church, it had been generations upon generations, of broken families and broken hearts.”   The Council, by Bill Huebsch.
Pope John XXIII in a gentle, pastoral opening message uttered words of hope to the world. “Ecumenical councils lead to a more clear announcement of the truth, to guidance in every day life … Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations … we meet the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of our teachings rather than by condemning others … this council will prepare and consolidate the path toward that unity of humankind which is required as a necessary foundation in order that the earthly city may be brought to resemble the heavenly one where truth reigns, charity is the law, and eternity is the timetable.”
Curiously, no mention of women was made in the Pope’s opening message. However, he had approved Cardinal Suenes’ recommendation that the number of lay people present at the Council be increased and that the number include women. And later in the session, eight women religious and seven lay unmarried women were named as auditors at the Council. The first women in history to serve in a conciliar assembly.
In so doing, Pope John, and his successor Pope Paul VI, nudged the Church a little closer to the modern world and sent forth “a ripple of hope” that women would again serve as leaders of the Church!

Ripples of Hope

I have been asked many times since the publication of The Priestess and the Pope what motivated me to write the book.  Truth be told, it was numerous ripples of hope coming from many different sources demonstrating women’s leadership in the early church and the scandal of their subordination in the rise of Christianity.

Over the next few weeks, I will reveal these ripples of hope to both shed light on the issue and help raise the veil of deceit that has concealed for almost two thousand years the powerful roles played by women in the early Christian communities.

One such “ripple of hope” was the discovery in December of 1945 near the town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt of an earthenware jar containing thirteen papyrus books bound in leather.  Excited by the discovery, distinguished scholars and historians hurried to decipher the manuscripts.  Professor Guiles Quispel was startled then incredulous to read, “These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke and which the twin Judas and Thomas wrote down.”

Contemporary scholar, Elaine Pagels, in the introduction to the book The Gnostic Gospels, provides insight as to the history of these documents:

Why were these texts buried and why have they remained virtually unknown for nearly 2000 years?  Their suppression as banned documents and their burial on the cliff of Nag Hammadi; it turns out, were both part of a struggle critical for the formation of early Christianity.  The Nag Hammadi texts, and others like them, which circulated at the beginning of the Christian era, were denounced as heresy by orthodox Christians in the middle of the second century.  We have long known that many early followers of Christ were condemned by other Christians as heretics, but nearly all we knew about them came from what their opponents wrote attacking them…This campaign against heresy involved an involuntary admission of its persuasive power; yet the bishops prevailed.  By the time of Emperor Constantine’s conversion, when Christianity became an officially approved religion in the Fourth Century, Christian bishops, previously victimized by the police, now commanded them.  Possession of books denounced as heretical was made a criminal offense.  Copies of such books were burned and destroyed.  But in Upper Egypt, someone, possibly a monk from a nearby monastery of St. Pachomius, took the banned books and hid them from destruction – in the jar where they remained buried for almost 1600 years.

Muhammad Ali, the person who found the jar, later admitted that some of the texts were lost – burned up or thrown away.  Nevertheless, what remains is astonishing: some 52 texts from the early centuries of the Christian era – including a collection of early Christian gospels, previously unknown.  Besides the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip, the find included the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Egyptians.  Another group of texts consists of writings attributed to Jesus’ followers, such as the Secret Book of James, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Letter of Peter to Philip, and the Apocalypse of Peter.

About the dating of the manuscripts themselves there is little debate.  Examination of the datable papyrus used to thicken the leather bindings, and the Coptic script, place them A.D. 350-400.  Though scholars disagree about the dating of the original text.  Recently, Professor Helmut Koester of Harvard University has suggested that the collection of sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, although compiled C. 140, may include some traditions even older than the gospels of the New Testament, possibly as early as the second half of the First Century (50-100) – as early, or earlier, than Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.

The find at Nag Hammadi, indicates that the early church was different than what evolved after Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire.  The early church held a simpler and purer form of Christianity.  In the apostles time all members of the Christian community shared their money and property; all believed the same teaching and worshipped together; all revered the authority of the apostles.  It was only after that golden age that conflict, and then heresy emerged.

Yet by A.D. 200, the situation had changed dramatically.  Christianity had become an institution headed by a three-rank hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons who understood themselves to be the guardians of the only true faith.  The majority of Churches among which the Church of Rome took a leading role, rejected all other viewpoints as heresy.  The efforts of the majority to destroy every trace of heretical blasphemy proved so successful that, until the discoveries of Nag Hammadi, nearly all of our information concerning alternative forms of early Christianity came from the orthodox view of the Catholic church.

The Gnostic text tells us that the early Christian movement was itself far more diverse than orthodox sources chose to indicate.  We now begin to see that what we call Christianity and what we identify as Christian tradition, actually represents only a small selection of specific sources, chosen from dozens of others.  Who made that selection and for what reasons? Why were these other writings excluded and banned as heresy?  What made them dangerous?  Now, for the first time, we have the opportunity to find out about the earliest Christian heresy; for the first time, the heretics can speak for themselves.

“The discovery will revolutionize the traditional understanding of the origins of Christianity, which is the fear of the orthodox thinkers.  The orthodox thinking is that the priests are needed to guide the flock.  The Coptic gospels place greater responsibility in the individual.  When Jesus says, ‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.’  The orthodox thinking speaks of God only in masculine terms.  The Coptic gospels speak of the feminine element in the divine, celebrating God as Father and Mother.  The orthodox thinkers minimize the role of Mary Magdalene. The Coptic gospels elevate the role of Mary Magdalene, ‘the companion of the savior is Mary Magdalene.  But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth.  The rest of the disciples were offended.  They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’  The Savior answered and said to them, ‘Why do I not love you as I love her?’”

By investigating the texts from Nag Hammadi, together with sources known for well over a thousand years from orthodox traditions, we can see how politics and religion coincide in the development of Christianity.  In the process, we can gain a startlingly new perspective on the origins of Christianity.

So from the small village of Nag Hammadi, an Egyptian peasant unearthed sacred books of one of the earliest Christian sects illuminating the world of a broader version of Christianity – and sending forth a ripple of hope…