A Bit of Hope from Rome

I recently got back from two months in Europe, where I visited a dozen countries and the remains of countless Saints. I spoke to American, Maltese, Dutch, and British crowds, with assorted other nationalities mixed in throughout. I boarded a thousand planes, trains, and buses, it seems, and logged many, many miles on the one pair of shoes I took.

As always, God did incredible things. I had powerful conversations and beautiful encounters with him and his people, living and deceased. And I gave quite a few talks where he really, really showed up.

But with all the sights (and tastes) of Europe, all the beautiful and wearying moments, all the times that I saw him working when I had the good sense to get out of the way, there’s one series of events that stands out.

Last fall, when I made plans to be in Europe for January and February, it became clear to me that God was asking me to be in Rome for the abuse summit.¹ At first, I assumed that I ought to sit in St. Peter’s Square holding up a sign. “Dear Bishops, do your job or burn in hell” was my best plan—that being not a threat but a statement of fact about what’s expected of the successors of the Apostles—but it occurred to me that the caption on the picture of that spectacle would likely be something to the effect of “Disgruntled Catholics demand change” and not “Disgruntled daily communicants urge bishops to grow in holiness,” so I scrapped it.

Next I thought that perhaps I ought to be trying to meet with different bishops while I was in town. This was complicated by the fact that I didn’t know anybody who could arrange such a thing. Given that I can’t get the bishops even to send form letters in response to my anguished cries for action, it didn’t seem likely that I’d manage any meetings.

Besides, what could I say? I talk a big game, but I’m no Catherine of Siena, nor do I want to be. How could I know which bishops needed to be encouraged and which needed to be convicted? My only thought was to ask them how their prayer life is, which I’m sure would come across as tremendously presumptuous (though, to my mind, a fair question to pose to a man who has been made a shepherd of God’s people). I must say, I was quite relieved when it turned out that I couldn’t arrange any meetings with bishops—no need, then, to figure out what to say.

All I could think to do was to walk the perimeter of Vatican City praying the rosary, so I did. And it felt good to do something, perhaps even better to assure people back home that somebody was, indeed, doing something. And if that’s all that had happened, I would have trusted that God was working in that, in the prayer or in the social media witness.

But while I was going to be in town anyway, I figured I’d ask if anyone wanted me to speak. So a friend who’s a Dominican friar put out some feelers and found me a few events. One was speaking to college students, which is something I’m quite used to. The other three were to priests and seminarians.

I’ve written before about how deeply I love the priesthood, how much I love priests and seminarians. But in the last six and a half years as a hobo, I’ve only once been asked to address them.² You can actually listen to the talk I gave here—it’s the most I’ve ever felt like Catherine of Siena, to the point that I was still shaking twelve hours later at having spoken that way to priests of Jesus Christ. Given that I took as my text “The road to hell is paved with the skulls of mediocre priests,” that reaction may have been warranted.

This time, though, I wasn’t given such a commission. The first talk I gave was to a group of young English priests and a few seminarians. I was asked to speak on evangelization and twenty men gave up their free evening to listen. They came with hearts eager to hear how they might better draw souls to Christ and responded with beautiful questions about how to speak truth to those who hear the Gospel only as a condemnation of their choices, how to speak about the scandals, how to love their people well. My heart swelled with joy to see these men who weren’t put off by the fact that I was a woman or an American or a layperson. They saw in me someone who knows Jesus Christ and proclaims his name and those were all the qualifications they needed.

The next day, I had the audacity to give a talk on preaching to Dominican friars. I sat before the Order of Preachers and told them how to preach. And again, they came. They listened. They wanted to hear how they might better speak the love of Jesus from the pulpit, and I think they took what I said to heart. I sat before the Lord afterward wondering how on earth I had convinced myself that I had any right to tell the Order of Preachers how to preach, but somehow there was peace. God had given me a word, I had spoken it, and nobody had held up his years in the pulpit or degrees in Scripture to demand that I sit down. They were willing to learn from me.

Finally, I spoke to another group of seminarians (several of whom were already deacons or priests). I spoke on preaching and storytelling, but I began with an exhortation to remember that in being ordained they’re being conformed to Christ the victim and the great high priest. We spoke about being falsely accused and I begged them to unite themselves to the victim heart of Christ that their suffering might be for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, even (God forbid) should they be wrongfully imprisoned.

And again, they listened. They asked beautiful questions about how to build community with lay people, how their priestly fraternity might strengthen their service of their people. One even asked how priests could better respect and listen to lay female theologians, an earnest question that really moved me. They wanted to know how to make their preaching both educated and accessible, how to respond when people make accusations against men they respect. These men gave up their Friday evening to listen to a woman they didn’t know from Adam tell them how to suffer as priests and how to preach.

My friends it gave me so much hope. After months of wondering who the men who lead our Church are listening to, I had become awfully discouraged. My letters went unanswered. Our Holy Father has said nothing. The bishops are wringing their hands but generally not acting. And while I love the Church desperately, I was becoming weary. I’m not going anywhere, but it’s been rough.

And then God put before me dozens of men who have laid down their lives for this Church, men who long for holiness, men who are willing–even eager–to seek wisdom from laywomen. And not only did I remember how much good there is in our priests, and even in our bishops, I began to see how much more good there is in our future. The Holy Spirit is at work for the renewal of his Church. In the midst of ugliness, he is raising up Saints. He’s opening hearts to see the gifts that women have to offer, the gifts that lay people have to offer. He’s speaking to the faithful the truth that the only way the Church is healed is through their becoming holy–each individual, ordinary man and woman.

It’s going to take some time. It’s going to take a lot of work, on each of our parts. But praise God, it’s going to be beautiful.

1. Great summary at that link if you want to read all about it. [↩]
2. Perhaps that’s purely a matter of circumstance. Perhaps there’s something about being a lay woman that makes people think you might not have anything to say to clerics and young men in formation. My suspicion, unfortunately, is that it’s often the latter, which is deeply concerning. [↩]