In recent weeks when the news spread that the Vatican is making significant strides to revise its handling of clergy sexual abuse cases–all while allegedly linking the severity of these sins to the ordination of women–the questions came in, and I started to ask myself, “How are you feeling about this, Jessica?  How are you doing?“

I couldn’t stop thinking about the story my friend Katie told me the other day. During a recent weekend, she volunteered at a middle school camp for inner city youth run by the Catholic parochial school where she taught for a few years after college. On that Sunday morning, she went to Mass with the students and their teachers in the camp’s quaint wooden chapel. The presider was gracious with the kids, and a good homilist, too. “But the tabernacle there–” she told me.  That’s what got her. “The tabernacle looks just like the boy’s Catholic school down the street. Like the shape of their building.”  I began to smile as she went on.  I delighted in the fact that this friend anticipated the wonder I would share with her as she recounted this experience for me.  ”This is what Catholicism is about, isn’t it? Recognizing Jesus inside an inner city school like that? Like that?  Believing that Jesus dwells with the underprivileged so much that you make a symbol of it with the most important part of your sanctuary?”

I nodded as we savored this moment that captured the best of our Church.  In that small moment, we didn’t have to convince ourselves that we are so blessed to belong to this Church.  We are blessed to have  church that views inner city schools as tabernacles, and tabernacles as inner city schools.  And blessed to be raised in a church that has given us the eyes to see the world in this way, too. “I wish I had moments like that more often,” Katie said. I think she was referring to the tabernacle at the camp, but I was thinking the same thing about the moment we had just shared–that moment of unwavering pride for our faith.

I’ve been telling a lot of people that, for many reasons, I feel sad and disappointed about the recent Vatican stirrings.  And, really, I’m feeling tired of feeling sad and disappointed. But I am also trying to tell a lot of people about my hope. I’m trying to talk about that, too. I’m trying to tell them about the eyes this tradition has afforded me–Katie and me.  Eyes that recognize miraculous transformations in places and people that much of society overlooks. Eyes that see Jesus in the sometimes harsh and unglamorous realities of our cities.  Eyes set on recognizing God’s redemption of our world in any and every place.  Even in our Church.

A woman said this to Karen during her recent trip to Honduras. Along with a group of students from Harvard Divinity School, Karen was there to learn from the women of this rural Honduran community whose lives are plagued by rape and murder.  She had proposed a moment of silence to initiate the gathering of local women and foreign students that day, but she learned there was no more tolerance for silence in this community.  For too long violence and abuse has been hushed.

So they clapped.

Increasingly, I am aware of how silence shapes my formation as a young Catholic theologian.  Beginning with my early undergraduate years, I was schooled in the politics of Catholic speech: there are theological statements—even questions—that one simply cannot ask before certain audiences.   Over the years, however, I have learned that with meticulous care, one can find ways to articulate these inquiries in a language that veils its hints of potential “uncertainty” or “disagreement.”  If I break this decorum of speech, even in the nascent phases of my theological career, I fear it may cost me a professorship or a ministry job. I can already name numerous theologians and ministers for whom this is the case.

It is unsettling to recognize the many ways in which I must privately silence myself for the sake of avoiding potential silencing from others.  What kind of theology can happen in this environment? Can I produce relevant theology when I often feel that I cannot outwardly address the probing, courageous questions of my community?  Maybe once I’m tenured.  Can these questions wait twenty years?

For years, the unfolding public recognition of the Church’s orchestrated silencing of clerical sexual abuse victims has shaped my life as a Catholic.  These clergymen stood up and spoke before their congregations week and week—year after year—while their victims sat silently in the pews.  Yesterday in a report on Pope Benedict’s Palm Sunday Homily, the New York Times analyzed what sounded like an implicit response to critics who implicate his guilt in the European abuse scandals.  Granted, the Times reads between the lines of the Pope’s homily, but in the context of his public indictment, his words strike me as a clear attempt to hush his critics: “The pontiff said faith in God helps lead one ‘towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.’” The silence continues–and I continue to wonder what kinds of faith development, worship, or social justice work can happen in a church of whispers and hushed voices.

How can a young theologian, situated within her own matrix of silence, speak out against the perpetual silencing that enabled—and continues to enable—the grave injustice of the global clerical abuse crisis and its mismanagement at seemingly every level of church leadership?  My silencing—as a woman, as a lay person, as a theologian and minister—will never amount to the painful silence imposed upon so many abuse victims in our church.  Breaking my silence will not cost me nearly as much either.

I do not know how to speak to our Church right now. In fact, these days I find myself so hurt and angry words feel useless for articulating the magnitude of our situation.  But I know there must be noise. “We don’t need a moment of silence.  There has been too much silence already.”  There must be noise.

Perhaps on Good Friday when I approach the cross of Christ’s suffering with our suffering, there will be no moment of silence.  Perhaps I will do as Jesus did—I will shout. “God, why?”

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I don’t just come for the poems; I come for all the white space that fills these poetry books.  The white space actually comforts me more, I think, reminding me  of two things:  First, reminding me of the arduous silence–all the wordless thinking–that accompanied very worthwhile word I have ever written.  Wordlessness can be precious and productive in its own ways.  Second, reminding me that I do not need to say everything–I do not need to say everything–only a few beautiful, dangerous, honest-to-God, true things.  Poems are so captivating because they say so much with so little.

I am so little, and I want to say something worth so much.

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“Speak your mind, even if your voice is shaking.”  -Maggie Kuhn

I have memories of being a typically-gregarious little girl who was afraid to speak in class.  Maybe it was more self-consciousness than fear. My young male peers taunted me on the basketball court at recess and inside the classroom walls–”like children do”–because I was a young female with something she wanted to say.   They told me this.   They explained to me my boundaries “because I was a girl.”  Even though I sensed that all of us knew these were untrue, these young men said all this because it had power.  It had power because we all knew it had once been thought to be true.  And that was a powerful reminder.  (Where do second graders learn this?  Probably Nickelodeon sitcoms).

Generally speaking, I imagine these situations evoke two types of reaction: Either young females learn not to speak up in class; studies have confirmed this.  Or, they start talking louder.  With the impassioned cursive script of a second grader, I decided to report gender confrontation after gender confrontation in our class “Conflict” notebook, which my teacher read aloud once a week before facilitating a detailed lesson and class discussion concerning conflict resolution skills.  I started talking louder.

And I’ve been loud ever since. I’m the kind of person who steps out into the middle of Boston traffic to yell at taxi drivers who spit out racist and homophobic slurs in moments of senseless road rage.  I have this intense moral compass (undoubtedly learned from my mother) and I will simply shatter if I don’t speak up sometimes.

That’s why I don’t know what to do with the trembling voice and unsteady pen I have found myself with in recent times.  In moments like these, I don’t recognize myself.  I ask myself, “What happened to that little girl with that strong, loud voice? The young woman who believed in the potential power of her voice?”  I am second-guessing my words, projecting onto myself the presumed judgements of others.  I doubt whether anything I have to say could possibly make any difference for the causes I address.  My voice trembles when I speak, and I struggle to silence its shaking doubt.

I keep speaking, though. I keep writing, clearly.  One of my favorite quotes reads, “No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.”  It’s from Rilke, the writer who told a young poet to keep writing when he doubted himself.  I think my voice shakes these days because I have given myself to a sort of danger–to the danger of a challenging academic environment, to new friends and brilliant peers, to a world far from the comforts and tangible love of home.  It feels vulnerable. But it is getting better.

I still believe that one day I will open my mouth and the words won’t shake anymore.  I hope they will resound louder and stronger than before.

Until then, I’ll keep talking.

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Scruples literally means “an uneasy feeling arising from conscience or principle that tends to hinder action,” or “a doubt or hesitation as to what is morally right in a certain situation.”  In the context of religion, where I have most commonly encountered the the term, scruples describes the plaguing skepticism surrounding one’s eternal salvation, particularly as it relates to moral works.  Martin Luther, for instance, is said to have suffered from from a bad case of the scruples.  His struggle with scruples has been cited as a major impetus for some of the views that eventually led to the Protestant Reformation: because he was plagued by his perpetual inability to perfectly execute Christian moral teachings, he constantly worried that his moral imperfection would prevent him from attaining eternal salvation. Tortured by these scruples–this belief that one can never be assured of their salvation through moral works–Luther (along with a chorus of other Protestant Reformers) asserted that we are “justified” or “saved” by faith alone. (I must qualify that this is a very simple explanation for a really complicated moment in Christian history, but I hope you get my drift for the sake of my present aim).

You see, I have scruples. A different kind of scruples than Luther suffered from, however. I am currently suffering from a mean case of the academic scruples.  No matter how many hours I spend in the library, regardless of how rigorously I labor over an assignment, despite any grade I receive, I find myself anxiously wondering whether my works are good enough.  ”Good enough for what?” you  may ask.  Good enough for the type of impact I hope to make in my religious community. Good enough for the doctoral programs I dream of pursuing.  And sometimes, simply good enough to succeed in this degree program!

John Calvin, another big mover and shaker in the Protestant Reformation, wrote that since we can never know whether we are saved, one must live like she is predestined for eternal salvation (again, this is Coblentz’ current take on Calvin–I speak as a student not an expert). Only in believing that one is predestined for heaven can one gain the sense of liberty necessary for an anxiety-free, good-deed doing, God-serving life.  In other words, good works do not lead one to salvation; rather a belief in one’s salvation enables one the freedom of conscience to do good works.

I never thought I’d say this, but I think Calvin was on to something with this whole predestination thing–as it pertains to my present case of academic scruples, at least.  I keep telling myself that I need to study, write, and learn like I’m saved–like I am good enough already–like my works are not a means to an end, but an outpouring of where I am already.  Like my works are not a means to becoming a theologian, but an expression of the fact that I am a little theologian already. This wouldn’t mean, of course, that I don’t have much to learn and much improvement to gain.  In the meantime, though, it might liberate me for an anxiety-free, good-work doing, God-serving academic life.

Believing I’m saved might just save me.

And if there is one thing—one thing—I have learned in my two months at Harvard Divinity School, it is this: this whole inter-faith dialogue is easy talk and hard living.

Mind you, I came to Harvard Divinity School for inter-faith dialogue. Instead of attending a Catholic university—the natural choice for someone studying Catholic theology—I felt an unshakable tug toward this rare environment where I would have to give an account for my scholarship and faith tradition among those who would not share my assumptions and belief systems. I presumed this would be more like religion in the real world—as in our multi-religious, multi-denominational real world.   I also heard that being in diverse environments can lead one to recognize biases that would often go unnoticed if left unchallenged in settings full of like-minded people.

And my reasoning has proven itself true thus far: more than ever before, I am given daily opportunities to give account for my tradition, beliefs, and personal practices in a way that makes sense for people with varying degrees of familiarity with Catholicism. Concomitantly, I must face the assumptions that I take for granted about my faith when my peers and professors respond with, “Why?” or “How?” or sometimes, simply, “Huh?”

Amid all this, I’ve learned that it is a lot easier to talk about the logistics and importance of inter-faith dialogue (in its many forms—across denominational or religious divides), than it is to actually engage live in a situation where one must face it in every day life.  Constantly explaining one’s self to others while trying to earnestly consider their own unique religious identities and traditions—the inter-personal realities of living amid multi-faceted religious diversity are mentally and spiritually exhausting.

Although I came here to be in an environment “like the real world,” I’ve come to realize how religiously segregated my life “in the real world” has been, for the most part.  Most of us don’t discuss religion with people who have very different religious backgrounds on a day-to-day basis, right?  Most of my theological education has taken place among people who are Catholic or extremely familiar with (and generally sympathetic to) the tradition—I now know that played a huge factor in our discussions! What’s more, HDS also reminds me that it is difficult enough to learn to talk about religion among the people with whom one shares his/her tradition!  Really, a Catholic university presents a student with plenty of challenges concerning internal church dialogue.

So how will we learn to thrive in this situation? I keep asking myself this question. I keep asking my HDS friends this question.  There are days when I long for people who understand my unvoiced religious assumptions, who relate to my deep ineffable connection to my religion, or the strange ways that I negotiate my theological convictions within my tradition.  Having said that, I continue to engage the challenge presented by this inter-religious environment because, among some good things and a whole lot of struggles, there are small moments of dialogue when I recognize my friends’ love for their respective traditions, and it’s not threatening—it is familiar.  I may not recognize his/her tradition itself, but I recognize the mysterious devotion one possesses for it.  And there are moments when I feel really heard by someone as I describe my tradition, or deeply accompanied when someone attends my strange liturgy for the sake of gaining insight into who I am.

I think there’s something to this—to this whole loving people of different faiths and the subsequent presence of more productive dialogue.  We, world religions, need to become friends.  For when conversation takes place among friends, there is a different orientation to the subject at hand; it is one of companionship in difference. It is hard living, but with love.  How can we learn to do this better?

Mémorial is Pascal’s cryptic account of the two-hour mystical vision he experienced one night at age 31. “Fire” begins the montage of parsed phrases, utterings of fear, wonder, reverence, and conviction. Pascal had the text sown into the lining of his clothes, which is where the account was discovered upon his death.  Perhaps he brought it with him because he could not escape it.  I have often found that if you listen closely, you can hear his heart racing between the words on the page.

Sometimes when I am sitting in the library here at school, I look out the large windows at the burning trees, and I think of Annie Dillard.  In one of her essays she describes a moth flirting with the flame of a candle, irresistibly circling its blazing wick.  The moth moves closer and closer, until it is too close; the fire consumes it.  The moth is burning, but it has become the wick of the flame it so desires.  Then my gaze returns to the book over which I hover. Fire.

It isn’t strange to me that God spoke to Moses through a burning bush. Aren’t we all met with moments of fire? “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up,” concluded Moses when he saw it (Exodus 3:3).  There are moments of fire that capture us so much that we cannot cease returning to them.  They are people, and experiences, and visions we must circle around; we must return to them. We must sow them into our clothes.  We must give ourselves to them even if they consume us. Fire.

Fire.