Sexuality and organized religion have been at odds since the beginning of time, but rarely as dramatically — and disastrously — as in the Catholic Church. According to church decree, priests must take a vow of celibacy, women are relegated to secondary status, and homosexuality, premarital sex and birth control are varying speeds on the express ride to eternal damnation. In her new book The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal, Karol Jackowski argues that this repressive sexual doctrine is responsible for the sexual abuse of children.

Since victims began coming forward, the Church has paid millions in damage settlements — $85 million to 522 victims in the Boston area alone. A report released last February set the number of abused at 10,667. The number of abusers: at least 4,392. (Only two percent have been prosecuted.) The Catholic sociologist Andrew Greeley predicted that the number of victims was closer to 100,000.

It's a tragedy of breadth and density; the aftershocks are as deeply felt as the initial rumblings of publicity. Last month, twenty-nine-year-old Patrick McSorley, a victim of a defrocked Boston priest, committed suicide — seventeen years after he was abused. Jackowski, an ordained nun since 1964, discussed the scandal from her perspective, the breakdown of organized religion and her vision of a universal church that incorporates a married priesthood, same-sex unions and women in positions of authority. — Michael Martin

In this book, you don't cut the Catholic Church any slack. You condemn the priesthood, you condemn its leaders.
There is a culture of sexual permissiveness in the priesthood. For a long time, pedophilia was accepted as another sexual preference. Church leaders thought it wasn't an abuse of power; they saw it as a psychological problem a few men had, which they would handle internally. They never looked. And they didn't think that that was harmful to children. In my research, it didn't surprise me how that kind of criminal thinking developed from the very beginning. Last week, someone forwarded me an article in which the archbishop of Mobile, Alabama, says that he did not know sexual activity with adolescents was illegal. This is just last week!

In your view, is enforced celibacy responsible for the scandals?
A big chunk of it. Throughout history, celibacy has always been integral in the priesthood, but I think that when you make it a rule, it's doomed to self-destruct. If it's not experienced as something that's liberating and divine, you're in for trouble.

I also blame the clerical culture of privilege. These men present themselves as Christ in persona. They see themselves as autonomous, not beholden to civil law. It is so ingrained in their mindset that they can do whatever they want. Priests confess to one another, they forgive one another, therefore they're incorruptible. This group is just incapable of development.

In the past ten years, I think sixteen bishops have been charged with sexual activity. And none of these guys has left their offices. Cardinal Law is now a prominent figure in the Vatican. The guy who was just indicted as a convicted felon in Phoenix got a standing ovation from his brothers at the Bishops Conference. They don't see anything wrong with it. Those guys are still bishops. They're going to vote for the next pope. That's why not even the bulk of the scandal has changed anything.

When I talk to priests, I say, "You knew what was going on! Why didn't you come out?" And they say, "Well, we all have skeletons in our closets." But you're not all criminals! Still, no one wants to point the finger at anyone else. When they start pointing fingers, the house will fall.

In the book, you write that you didn't know any pedophilic priests. Have you spoken to any nuns who did, and if so, why didn't they speak up?
The nuns I know knew priests [who were gay], but they did not know they were abusing children. They found out the same way everyone in the parish did: Father disappeared. Most of these women are still working for the Church, and they fear that if they're approached as witnesses, they'll lose their jobs, they'll never get hired by another Catholic college or university again. And I think that's why a lot of priests aren't speaking out either.

I find it difficult to believe they knew nothing.
So many people say to me, "Why are we not hearing from nuns on this subject?" and indeed, "Why are we not hearing from women on this subject?" And I say, "For 2,000 years we were told that our voices were not divine. For 2,000 years, we were told that nothing we have to say could be important, and that regardless of how divine we were, we were nowhere near that of men, who could be priests. We just simply weren't qualified."

We're not even hearing from priests on this subject. When have you ever heard a priest come forward and say, "I know pedophile priests"? I sent a high-school friend, who is now a priest, this article about sexual abuse in the Chicago diocese. I said, "Did you know that this was going on?" I haven't heard from him since. Not a word.

So why are you coming forward?
I've got nothing to lose. I'm self-supporting; I'm a writer. But listen, even if you have something at stake, at some point you just have to do it anyhow. Guys in the priesthood need to start coming forward and saying, "I have been involved with this woman for ten years. For all intents and purposes we are married, but I still want to be a priest." I think if all those guys came out, those relationships would enrich what the priesthood is. The number of priests who have left the priesthood — thousands of them — would love to come back and serve the church.

Did you track down any priests who had engaged in pedophilia?
No.

I always wonder about their motivations and level of regret.
They're sorry they got caught. When you listen to a lot of these victims, they say it went on for years. Unlike the profile of a pedophile dragging kids off the playground, these men cultivated relationships with families for two, three, four years before the sexual activity started. So they become part of the family. When it happens, it's all couched in, "I love you, this is the way we express our love, and this is something we keep between ourselves, this is a sacred secret."

People say, "Well how come nuns didn't know?" And I say, "The mothers in the homes didn't even know this was going on! They had no idea, and they would not have questioned." When I was a child, our pastor lived with his housekeeper, and nobody questioned that. You certainly never would have suspected anyone was a pedophile.

What was the extent of your research, and your most shocking discovery?
When I was researching the book, I was getting emails from all over the country. And just when I thought I'd heard it all, I got this phone call from a friend of mine. She said, "You're not going to believe what I just heard." We have a friend who's gay. One night, this guy comes up to him. Our friend recognized the man from the gay bars and knew he was a priest. This guy was really upset and wanted our friend to have dinner with him. So they go across the street, and while they're eating, this guy says, "Wait until it breaks in New York City. It's going to make what happened in Boston look like nothing."

He talked about the epidemic of AIDS in the priesthood, and how the Church is silent. He talked about how priests are really upset because of all the money being paid out on the side to keep people silent. There will be no pensions. They're losing their jobs. The closing of parishes has nothing to do with the lack of people —the Church needs the money.

Then he said — and this is the thing I just about died over — "Wait until the news organizations find out the archbishops and bishops are chartering planes to fly nine-year-old boys from Thailand into their sexual orgies." That was the third time in one week I had heard the word "orgy" associated with the Catholic Church.

A friend of mine is a lawyer in Chicago. She asked me if I knew Cardinal Bernadin. [ed. — the widely respected former archbishop of the Chicago diocese, who died in 1998.] And I said, "Well I didn't know him personally, but he's one of the good guys." She said, "Well, let me tell you about your Cardinal. He routinely held orgies in the Archdiocese office; he had what he called a boys club. The kids they got to come to these orgies were all from underprivileged neighborhoods, so they weren't going to tell anyone."

Has this been reported?
An article in The Irish Examiner talks about Cardinal Bernadin's boys club and two murders associated with priests coming forward to expose it. I thought, why in the hell is the church sitting on that information?

Before this, the most shocking stuff happened in the Boston area. This guy who just got defrocked, Richard Lavigne, was convicted of pedophilia about seven years ago. He served no time, was placed on probation. Of the 4,900-whatever priests who have been reported, only two percent were incarcerated. The others are just out there somewhere.

Richard Lavigne is still a prime suspect in the murder of one of his parishoners in 1972. [ed. — A 13-year-old boy Lavigne was suspected of sexually abusing.] And they just now reopened the case. The Archdiocese has blocked it for years. They're not only covering up a pedophile, they're protecting this guy from a murder charge. Pedophilia is one kind of murder, but this is actual murder! The kid was killed because he was going to come forward. How they could put those guys back on the altar? It's just scary.

To clarify, should priests be allowed to marry and have sexual relationships?
Absolutely. I think if there were a married priesthood, we would have had a much healthier priesthood. We would not have seen this happen.

And you believe that women should be priests.
Yes. If you had a married priesthood, you would also have women as part of that priesthood. Every woman I know is outraged and would never, ever, ever accept pedophilia as just another sexual preference.

So you think there is a place for same-sex marriage within the Catholic church?
I do.

And gay priests?
It's the same thing. Look at the Episcopalian church, which just ordained a gay bishop. Anyone who is in a long-term, monogamous, committed relationship — that's what religion holds sacred. It's not gender. Look at the state of marriage today. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. I think we can say that model of marriage is not exactly something that's been really successful.

In terms of the priesthood, one of the principles you would emulate as divine is a loving, committed relationship between two people. Male, female, doesn't make any difference. Did you hear about the bishop who said, "Well, if gays are going to marry, then we might as well be able to marry our pets." And I thought, for you to be anti-homosexual — excuse me, fifty percent of your population is!

I have a hard time believing that the conservative factions of the church will accept those changes.
I see signs of hope in a group called the Voice of the Faithful. They're sort of a mainstream group; they don't support a total undoing. Tens of thousands have joined this group all over the country. This is first time I've seen hard-line Catholics — those who have tried to be so faithful to the Church — standing up and saying no more, no more, no more.

One thing they're calling for, which is a first step, is financial accountability, to have some input. Because if Catholics stop giving money, then we have no church. They are totally supported by the money that's coming from the people in the pews. And there are some parishoners who are withholding money, or writing on their envelope, "I'm not giving anything else until this stops."

Aside from misinterpreted biblical lore, why is homophobia so pervasive in the church?
The same reason it's pervasive in the whole country. There's this sense that it's dysfunctional, that the model for the healthy individual relationship is male/female. I think most people look at the pornographic websites, they look at the bar scene. On practically every radio show I've done, particularly the conservative ones, I've heard, "Well don't you think this is a problem of homosexuality?" And I say, "No, it's pedophilia, not homosexuality." The proportion is bigger; there is a greater percentage of gay men in the priesthood. But we don't look at the priest who molested a little girl and say, "Well, that's a problem of heterosexuality." It's a dysfunctional sexuality, whether it's homosexual or heterosexual.

How was your experience on The O'Reilly Factor?
Well, other than trying to get a word in edgewise, this issue is probably the only one in which he and I are totally on the same page. He is just outraged.

It was interesting to hear you describe a Catholicism based on inclusion rather than exclusion. It's almost like you're talking about an entirely different religion.
Well, I think it is new. And it's based on what I'm already seeing. People say to me, "Why don't you be a priest?" I say, I already am. There's already a whole other kind of priesthood out there, out West, in parishes where there are no priests, sisters are essentially functioning as priests. I'm sure these institutional churches say, "That's not sacramental," but you try telling these people that. And I think that's how it's going to work. It's already there, and people are going to come to that. And I think that people who are going to stick to the institutional church come hell or high water will probably continue to do that.

I think most intelligent Catholics decide for themselves how they're gonna live their lives. They're not paying attention to teaching about birth control, even the teaching of sexuality. When it comes to one's personal life, people are making their own decisions and trusting their own consciences, which is church teaching.

And that's encouraging for me. I think the Mormons are next, with pedophilia and incest. Certainly the Christian right. The more people trust blindly in what they're being told . . . well, I think you're just asking for it. To put that much power in a person just breeds abusive behavior.

Have you seen The Passion of the Christ?
No.

Do you plan to?
I don't. There's something about the violence that's disturbing to me. There's something about Mel Gibson's stature and his brand of Catholicism that are disturbing to me. I'm disturbed whether or not the intent was anti-Semitic. I'm disturbed that a movie about Jesus would have that effect on some people. And I'm disturbed that he's made $500 million off the crucifixion of Christ.

Kind of a microcosm of what's been going on in the Catholic Church: perpetuating harm in the name of God.
In terms of the gospel message, I mean it's how Jesus lived that transformed humanity, not who killed him. Mel Gibson has taken three paragraphs and made a movie out of it. There's not a message in how Jesus dies, except that he loved the people who were tormenting him. To separate the death from the life totally distorts the message.

Have you been reprimanded by the Church for the book?
No.

Do you expect to be?
In some ways, I don't. I think they'll ignore it. A) because it's written by a woman, and B) because it's written by a nun. They'll just pretend it doesn't exist, and it'll go away.

I was a guest on a call-in show at a radio station in Phoenix. It was the first major conservative market I'd done. Two hours of callers, and I thought, I'm just gonna get skewered. They're just gonna nail me. Instead, they said, "Thank God somebody is saying this. This is what we think; this is what we feel." And I think they all need to be told that the priesthood is in your hands. I said, "You're not alone out there. Talk to people of other religious communities. Talk to the Episcopalians, talk to the Lutherans. This, as in any time of crisis, is a time to come together just as much as it is a time to pull apart".

How do you counsel people who hear these kinds of stories and decide to leave the faith?
Most of them make the distinction that what we're talking about here is the priesthood, and the Catholic Church is really the people. I'm not in full communion with the Church. I'm not in that church every Sunday. I celebrate with the people in their homes or whatever, but I am not at that altar. And I think for at least the next few years, that's where a lot of us are trying to sort this out.

How can abuse be stopped in the future?
My conclusion is that it's time for the people to take the church back. It started with house churches; let's start there all over again. Let's pick our own priests, hire and fire our pastors. I think that's the only safeguard against this happening again, to get the people involved in all decision making. Some people say, "The Catholic Church is not a democracy." Well, why not?

What do you see as the future of organized religion?
I think, just in terms of this country, we are seeing and will continue to see the breakdown of organized religion and a movement toward spirituality. Of people cultivating a life with some service, some social consciousness. Some commitment to something bigger than yourself. An attitude of acceptance.

We know what happens when you take everything literally, and how abusive that gets. After 2,000 years of Christianity, there is still killing and hating in the name of God. In this country and all over the world. Look at the number of religions where wars are based on hating the other person in the name of God. And in terms of groups like gays, the Church still believes we have a right to judge and hate and exclude in the name of God. And I think the more people who have homosexual couples for neighbors and find out how nice those people are, and how healthy they are, and how they live better lives than we do, things will change. It certainly has in terms of homosexual marriage. It used to be that something like twenty percent of Americans accepted it, and now almost half the country accepts it. Which is anti- every Christian religion in the country. And I think, "Wow, that's encouraging." The consciousness in this country really is changing. People are thinking much more independently than they ever have, relative to religion.

That is encouraging.
Yeah, I think so too. I mean, we've seen mayors flying in the face of law and marrying gay couples. That's the only way change is going to happen: you must just go ahead and do it. It's like the sisters I know who, for all intents and purposes, are priests, but would never want to join the priesthood. We're just doing it. It's just happening. n°

To buy The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal, click here.

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