The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal by Karol Jackowski Page B
Authors: Karol Jackowski
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supports are absolutely essential and two of the biggest and strongest are community and service, sisterhood and work. Gertrude Stein understood celibacy perfectly when she wrote, “Sex is a part of something of which the other parts are not sex at all.” Two of the other parts for me are also community and service, best friends and creative work. That’s where I find sublimated sexual energy made so “sublime,” so divine, and so full of everlasting kinds of life.
It’s not hard to understand how a celibate life without sisters and soul mates can easily become meaningless and unbearable, and how a celibate life without a commitment to sisterhood can slowly but surely wear down. The only way we can bear the depth of solitude that we embrace in vowing celibacy is in knowing thedepths of its sisterhood. As sisters, we are never as alone as we sometimes have every reason to feel. There’s always a community of women who are as soulfully solitary as we are, and just as soulfully together. There is no greater comfort to any woman than the divine comfort found in true and lasting sisterhood, both in and out of the convent.
Creative work is the primary divine path that sexual energy in the sisterhood takes to naturally. Not just any work, although it could be just any work, depending on how creatively and lovingly it’s done. The most important part of everything we do is how much we love doing it and how much it expands our ability to be more loving and compassionate, more creative and fun to be with. When Gandhi discovered the call to celibacy, his divine insight was similar to that of Gertrude Stein’s. Sex isn’t just physical energy. More than anything, sex is the energy behind love and creative work. Sacred sexual energy can be channeled anywhere. Sex is one of its manifestations. Writing is another, as is all creative work. In the sisterhood, sexual energy becomes transformed into the creative part of everything we do, part of the prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of our days. That’s how much sex is a part of our lives in the sisterhood. And in that way we can’t live without it, either.
So prepare yourself now for something entirely different in looking at celibacy in the sisterhood. The vow is treasured, experienced, understood, and lived quite differently by women called to religious life, which is why we do not read in the news about the deviant sexual activity of nuns. It’s not happening today because it hasn’t been happening for centuries. In looking at the church’s priesthood from its beginning, we see a history of celibacy despised, ignored, and lived so consistently wrong. And in looking at the sisterhood from the beginning, what we’ll see is an entirely different history. A liberating history of what religiouslife was like among the Church Mothers, and most important of all, a history of women divinely capable and committed to reforming themselves and changing the misguided thinking of their medieval ways.
In the sisterhood, celibacy has everything to do with being touched by God and called to lives of service, and nothing to do with sexual activity or the lack of it. Among the sisters I know, our celibate lifestyle comes from an extraordinary experience of God, a liberating way of loving, and an independence that frees us to do the work we’re called to. That’s how much celibacy in the sisterhood has more to do with God and a life of prayer than it ever does a lifestyle with no men or sex. With all due respect to both, we’re simply not that interested in either—at least not in the way the rest of the world seems to be. In looking at sisterhood from the beginning, we will see in every age how celibacy emerges as a great liberator of women, inside and out—altogether contrary to how we saw celibacy emerge in the priesthood, as the great oppressor of men, inside and out. The history of the Church Mothers is not that of the Church Fathers, no more than women’s experience of life is
It’s not hard to understand how a celibate life without sisters and soul mates can easily become meaningless and unbearable, and how a celibate life without a commitment to sisterhood can slowly but surely wear down. The only way we can bear the depth of solitude that we embrace in vowing celibacy is in knowing thedepths of its sisterhood. As sisters, we are never as alone as we sometimes have every reason to feel. There’s always a community of women who are as soulfully solitary as we are, and just as soulfully together. There is no greater comfort to any woman than the divine comfort found in true and lasting sisterhood, both in and out of the convent.
Creative work is the primary divine path that sexual energy in the sisterhood takes to naturally. Not just any work, although it could be just any work, depending on how creatively and lovingly it’s done. The most important part of everything we do is how much we love doing it and how much it expands our ability to be more loving and compassionate, more creative and fun to be with. When Gandhi discovered the call to celibacy, his divine insight was similar to that of Gertrude Stein’s. Sex isn’t just physical energy. More than anything, sex is the energy behind love and creative work. Sacred sexual energy can be channeled anywhere. Sex is one of its manifestations. Writing is another, as is all creative work. In the sisterhood, sexual energy becomes transformed into the creative part of everything we do, part of the prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of our days. That’s how much sex is a part of our lives in the sisterhood. And in that way we can’t live without it, either.
So prepare yourself now for something entirely different in looking at celibacy in the sisterhood. The vow is treasured, experienced, understood, and lived quite differently by women called to religious life, which is why we do not read in the news about the deviant sexual activity of nuns. It’s not happening today because it hasn’t been happening for centuries. In looking at the church’s priesthood from its beginning, we see a history of celibacy despised, ignored, and lived so consistently wrong. And in looking at the sisterhood from the beginning, what we’ll see is an entirely different history. A liberating history of what religiouslife was like among the Church Mothers, and most important of all, a history of women divinely capable and committed to reforming themselves and changing the misguided thinking of their medieval ways.
In the sisterhood, celibacy has everything to do with being touched by God and called to lives of service, and nothing to do with sexual activity or the lack of it. Among the sisters I know, our celibate lifestyle comes from an extraordinary experience of God, a liberating way of loving, and an independence that frees us to do the work we’re called to. That’s how much celibacy in the sisterhood has more to do with God and a life of prayer than it ever does a lifestyle with no men or sex. With all due respect to both, we’re simply not that interested in either—at least not in the way the rest of the world seems to be. In looking at sisterhood from the beginning, we will see in every age how celibacy emerges as a great liberator of women, inside and out—altogether contrary to how we saw celibacy emerge in the priesthood, as the great oppressor of men, inside and out. The history of the Church Mothers is not that of the Church Fathers, no more than women’s experience of life is
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