Energy in Our Exile

KEYNOTE ADDRESS TO MEMBERS OF CALL TO ACTION NATIONAL MEETING
Cobo Hall, Detroit, November 16, 1997
Michael H. Crosby, OFMCap.

1. Introduction

It's great to be asked again to give this final keynote at Call to Action. While I'm honored to be here, I'm also skittish about what I have to say and how you may hear it. I know I'm now at a different place than 26 years ago when I participated in the original CTA here at Cobo Hall or 25 years ago when I attended its follow-up in Washington where the Bishops effectively dashed our dreams. Even in these last 6 years since I've been part of the national CTA gatherings, I've found myself changing. Consequently my skittishness about what I'll be saving arises from being at a different place than in past years. increasingly I'm finding myself more of a sojourner and not as sure about my bearings.

At this time on our journey as citizens and Catholics, I sense we've at a significant but uncharted point. In our world there seems to be increasing cynicism and disillusionment about government and religion, or at least our leaders. We often feel powerless as we face their modes of operating. With campaign financing reform floundering government seems open only
to the interests of business and the monied people. In the case of the institutional dimension of our Church, it too often seems closed except to the interests of its own hierarchical elites. We seem ambiguous, our efforts more elusive. Increasingly we're asking: "What's it all about?" "Where are we going?"

Possibly because of the influence of liberation theology, we've often thought of being in Exodus. In the U.S. our Civil Religion defines us as the new land of freedom across the sea from our oppressor. In religion too, the language of Exodus describes us. We say we've left the Egypts of Vatican I and patriarchal clericalism and the abuse they represent. our Pharaohs have been Popes and Cardinals. We experience much of our church as a desert.

However, I've found, often there lurks just beneath many Exodus images a dream of some kind of political or religious liberation which can mask nationalism toward our country and triumphalism in our church. I also wonder if it's time we go beyond seeing ourselves over and against various "pharaohs." It's no secret our numbers are down from the increases we've celebrated in recent years, especially last year. But last year a Pharaoh rose up in Nebraska. We also benefitted when Cardinal Ratzinger insisted the Pope's position on the non-ordination of women was infallible. In organizational terms, without a Fabian Bruskewitz or Joseph
Ratzinger, we'd have to invent one to get the troops mobilized. But is it enough for us Just to be seen as being against? I know we view our CTA platform as "positive," but many others perceive us to be "anti" many things that nourish their identity.

Because the metaphor of Exodus doesn't seem to generate energy for many of us, I've begun considering "Exile" as an image for our spiritual journey. I know that the Exile can't be pitted against the Exodus, because, as Norman Gottwald insists: "There is a touch of exile in every Exodus and a dash of exodus in every Exile.` Yet, at this time, Exile images seem to offer me more meaning to me as I live in this society and in this church.

The Exile was seminal in Israel's life. Indeed, scripture scholars say the brunt of the Jewish scriptures, including its interpretation of Exodus itself, arose from Israel's Exilic experience. For key segments of the Jewish Scriptures the Exile provided a metaphor and paradigm for the spirituality of our religious ancestors. We count as key among these Jesus Christ and the original communities that shared their understandings of him with us in the Christian Scriptures. In fact, with Daniel L. Smith, we can say: "The entire New Testament is written from the perspective of exile."

Our liturgy too reflects our exilic Situation. In It we are those who "wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ." Even our Marian piety identifies us as exiles. In the Salve Regina we pray as "poor banished children of Eve." We send up "our sighs, mourming and weeping in this valley of tears" so that "after this, our exile" we may be shown the fruit of our Mother's womb.

Exiles exist somewhere between being resident aliens and undocumented immigrants. "Tell me the landscape in which you live," wrote Jose Ortega y Gasset, "and I will tell you who you are." The more I ponder the landscapes of our church and nations and the more I consider who we are, the more I've begun to envision myself and us as exiles not quite at home anywhere, maybe even here. In exile's landscape, personal identity and collective belonging no longer get sculpted in traditional places but in uncharted "wherevers" that make holy all the places where we stand. Time doesn't revolve around what was or what will be but in the kairos "whenevers" that make God's abiding presence a mandate for fidelity in every moment.

11. The Historical Context of Israel's Experience of Exile

With King Solomon's death in 922 Israel divided into a Northern Kingdom, "Israel," and a Southern Kingdom, with its capital in Jerusalem, known as "Judah." Since, in this talk, I'll be relying mainly on Ezekiel, I'll follow his lead and use the word "Israel" to refer to the whole of God's people.

In 727 Israel fell to the Assysrlans; 27 years later Judah almost capitulated. In 605 B.C.E., the Chaldeans defeated the Egyptians under the leadership of the famous King Nebuchadnessar. With this victory Babylon became the dominant military force in the region. At that time Josiah ruled Judah (2 Kgs. 22:1). He had a brother, Prince Zedekiah. Josiah's successor was his son Jehoiakim. He tried to play off the Egyptians and Babylonians but lost when the Babylonians got the upper hand in 598. When He died shortly after, his 18 year old son, Jehoiakin replaced him. Three months after becoming king, in 597, the Chaldeans under Nebuchadnessar attacked Jerusalem and Judah. Jehoiakim surrendered and was taken into Babylon, 800 miles away. With him went the nation's aristocracy; among them was the priest we know as the prophet Ezekiel.

Back in Judea life went on. But, in 587 Babylon discovered its puppet "king," Zedeklah was thinking of aligning with the Egyptians (against Jeremiah's warning.) So it laid siege, occupied and severely devastated Jerusalem (2 Kgs. 25:18-21 ; Jer. 52-15ff). This second defeat was devastating. Now all but the poorest people and necessary artisans were exiled to Babylon. This ended in Judah's second deportation. The year this occurred, 587-586, has become known as the Exile's official date. In Tamara Eskenazi's words, "the trauma was not only physical, though it was first of all that. It was also psychological and spiritual, since destruction and exile undermined everything the survivors held secure and trustworthy. A stunned people wrestled with the meaning of their experience. Many no doubt simply gave up; they died in despair or blended with the surrounding peoples. Some, however, turned to the prophets for explanation and direction." One of them to whom I've turned, was Ezekiel.

In 539, Babylon fell to the forces of Persia led by Cyrus. He invited the Jews to return to Jerusalem to restore the Temple. Whether Ezekiel went nobody knows, all we have is his prophecy which is limited to his Babylonian experience covering the Exile years between 593 and 571.

Ill. Components for a Spirituality of Exile or a Spirituality for Exiles

In reading about the Exile, especially from Ezekiel's experience, I've found 8 points that might help us fashion a kind of "Spirituality for Exiles" that may provide us with energy for our journey. I'd like to sketch them for your reflection'.

WE EXPERIENCE ENERGY IN our EXILE WHEREVER AND WHENEVER:

1. The awareness of being uprooted from all that previously provided meaning gets expressed in purifying grief.

Like the original Israelites, our modern countries were created by willing immigrants who displaced long-landed peoples. However, the Vietnamese show us that being forced from your land by circumstances beyond your control represents an unbelievably traumatic experience. Tamara Eskenazi notes: "The biblical account depicts exile as the state of a people who have lost everything. The Babylonian exile meant to the Judeans ... that the ground from under their feet was taken away, both literally and metaphorically." I once read that if a person experiences serious losses around home, job, and loved ones simulataneously It's almost impossible not to become depressed. Depression get compounded when it's dismissed or denied.

With the Fall of Jerusalem, neither Israel nor Judah ever recovered their former political and hegemonic glory and prowess. I find parallels in our Church as well. In many ways, our church leaders still refuse to accept that the once-politically powerful church has been destroyed -- at least in the two main countries represented here. Gone are days when a phone call to a mayor from an Irish Cardinal in New York or a French one in Montreal would engender fear. Now the calls might not be returned! I learned a possible reason why years ago when I visited Washington. I was told the NCCB was concerned that its phone calls to the Reagan White House were not being returned. Reagan's folk knew what the bishops denied: they could no longer deliver the pews. As long as denials define dilemmas and differences, especially in face of death and destruction, darkness and depression will determine that reality. This realization has made me ask where I, or we in CTA, may be in denial.

One clue comes from considering our demographics. The majority of us here represent a generation that's been wandering around almost 40 years since the Council, but what about the next generation? Could it be that our concerns have no relevance for the Boomers and Generation X? They don't seem turned on by our debates about who's to be ordained, what gender is needed for marriages, and whether or not we use inclusive language. As we keep insisting on these issues, could we just be the new conservators of a vision of church that doesn't speak to them in their search? Could this be the Spirit's invitation for us to probe more deeply who we are and what will ground us?

In the Exile, prophets like Ezekiel continually reminded the people that Jerusalem's Fall had nothing to do with the triumph of foreign gods over their's. Rather it was God's way of forcing the Israelites into purification. Quite possibly, our present disenchantment with where "were" at" may be a gift of the Spirit trying to purify us as well.

For exiles purification begins with grief over what's been lost. In this sense Psalm 137 reminds us exiles sit by the rivers of Babylon remembering a Jerusalem that is no more. This remembrance elicits grief for what has been lost. For us what's been lost is the vision hammered out in Cobo Hall in 1976. But, as we sit and weep (or at least wail!), recalling a vision of Jerusalem where all things have been made new (Rev. 21:5), we may also grieve as we know that, despite our desire to "do our dream," the heavenly city still eludes us. The mujerista theologian, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, herself a Cubana exile, notes Psalm 137 is "a psalm of lament in which the author not only was expressing personal grief but was also identifying with the affliction of Israel and grieving for the community." Ada Maria's insight:makes me realize exile represents a place and time for purification that comes through "mourning and tears and pain over [what] will be no more" (Rev.21-4), not by wallowing in it.

If we can grieve over the death and destruction of our dreams, if we can be purified of any pretension or complacency, we can be energized to create alternative ways that will breathe new life into our dry bones. When I imagine what this new vision might entail, the next seven points make more sense.

2. The realization of being held in captivity leads to repentance for the conditions that caused it.

In chapter 12 Ezekiel portrays Israel's Exile as a "captivity" (12:11). I never perceived myself as being held in "captivity" especially when I was young. After ordination, I had all the answers. Nobody could tell me I was wrong. I was messianic enterprises. But gradually I came to realize I'd become captive to my own ideology. I was a pain in the neck (and other body parts) to those around me. My thinking was either/or, my feelings were defined by "being with me or against," and my behavior reflected a stance Of "us and them." I didn't need to listen to anyone, Including the Spirit. Not until I realized I possessed just part of the truth and, even more, that I might be wrong did I begin my first steps in becoming free of a captivity that controlled my heart and mind, my spirit and soul. I began to learn the wisdom of what Bernard Lonergan wrote in Method: "'It is not argument but religious faith that will liberate human reasonableness from its ideological prisons."

My own ideological tendencies enable my antennae to pick up ideology around me. In many parts of the institutional church, I find it expressed in the attitude certitude that the male, celibate, clerical model of church is what God wills. The latest expression of this, it seems to me, comes from the NCCB's Doctrine Committee Staff. Just last month, Origins published its response to the Catholic Theological Society of America's reflections which the CTSA had made to the Dubitum response of Cardinal Ratzinger on the issue of women's ordination. When I read this I found myself lamenting: "Why have our Bishops felt the necessity to give ideological support to the very system that is undermining their effectivity as Shepherds"? At first I felt sorry for them, but then I recalled how Ezekiel wrote about those shepherds who fed themselves rather than the sheep (Ez. 34-1-10). At this I shared my concerns with the head of a Theology Department at a Catholic University. He reminded me that a century ago, Karl Marx said two of the main roles for ideology are to serve one group's own interests and to make its adherents incapable of self-criticism. Ideology immunizes its adherents from self-critique; without self-critlique, spirituality becomes an antiseptic.

Many in the Roman Church seem to have a working ideology that parallels what we heard our political and military leaders say during Vietnam. In effect, with the decrease of priests, the landscape of the Catholic Church is experiencing a kind of saturation bombing even as we speak. In the process, it appears that the Vatican and the Bishops seem ready to destroy this church in order to save it. As happened in this city and in so many others, there seems to be a willingness to send long-standing worshiping communities into exile just to save the male, celibate, clerical form of the church. In face of such a contemporary setting, this makes a passage from Ezekiel sound very apropos: "You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and my silver that I had given you, and made for yourself male images" (Ez. 16:17).

At this point, I want to be clear I believe in the magisterium - in its fullest sense. It can never be limited only to the Pope nor to the Bishops nor the People. The magisterium is given the church and the statements of our leaders must flow from and into the best sense of the faithful. When I was preparing my remarks, I talked with a friend about what I'd be saying. At this point she said: "Mike, the magisteriurn is an anchor. We need that." And I agree. However, as we teased Out the anchor image, it became clear that all anchors must be grounded themselves. In our church, this ground must be that triune God who's been revealed in Jesus Christ. Otherwise, if the anchor has too much weight or is given too much weight and has no grounding itself, it can destroy the whole boat.

This reminds me of what I heard some years ago at Roncalli Society in Peoria, a CTA affiliate. A priest told me of meeting a young woman. Her eloquent waxing about the pope led him to say to her: "You know, the more I hear you talk about the Pope, it seems to me that, if you had to choose, you'd take the Pope over Jesus Christ." Without hesitation, she responded: "Oh, sure I would." "Why," he asked incredulously. "Well, after all, the Pope's infallible!"

In our own approach, I wonder if we may not be doing ourselves a disservice if we only find magisterial tendencies in the hierarchy. I say this because of a comment by Thomas J. Reese, the Jesuit. He is often quoted in the media about issues related to the Vatican and Catholicism in the U.S.A. In a June article in America, he intimated that we in Call to Action may actually mirror those in the Vatican whose hard-line approach and attitudes we find so burdensome. He asked: "How do we change the Church to make it ready for the next millennium? Answers are not easy or clear. I do not claim to know the answers, and I am suspicious of those who do claim certitude, whether they be Vatican officials or members of
the U.S. Catholic group known as Call to Action." I don't think we should easily dismiss this comment from someone so respected. Because I couldn't, it's led me to investigate where our ideology may be binding us in ways that sap our imagination to offer healthy and holy alternatives to the present situation in our church.

I got a glimpse of what process might help us do this when I met over these past years with some members of Call to Action. Originally we convened to discuss what we might do in response to the 1994 Republican sweep of the U.S. Congress. While we ostensibly met to talk about political strategy, the more we shared, the deeper we found ourselves going to issues related to our spirituality. At our first meeting it became clear many of us had overly-identified with the Democratic Party to the point that we found ourselves silent as the religious right was used by Republicans to further its agenda. Not wanting to be manipulated in our faith, we found that we had become compromised, confused and even silent about it. For some of us our politics had little soul; others even wondered whether, socially, we had become spiritually bankrupt. As the trust among ourselves grew, we began asking who Jesus was and is as the Christ for ourselves and what it really means to be his followers in this generation. We began sharing what our justice agenda might entail if it really would be infused with faith.

Of all the prophets, only Ezekiel declared that infidelity to God had been Israel's sin from the beginning (see 20 and 23 particularly); he said Israel had never been obedient to the Lord. By "Israel," did he mean the leaders? Did he mean the people? Does he mean us? It's hard to say. However, in this sense, it makes me wonder if either we or our leaders in the Roman Church have ever been obedient to the fulness of what it means to be discipled to the Risen Christ. The realization that we've all failed invites us to repentance. However, this repentance can't be absolved by a gesture of regret like saying "I'm sorry." For authentic absolution to occur there must be a resolve to "sin no more." More than reinstating meatless Fridays, this demands that we transform those petty and self-serving individual and institutional ideologies that are not large enough to evoke the majesty and mystery of our God.

We often quote Galatians which states: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female;for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). It took the First Ecumenical Council at Jerusalem to implement the first part of Paul's insight regarding Jews and Gentiles; yet our Church still struggles over a document repenting to the Jews for its anti-Semitism. Secondly, it took 1800 years to accept the political and economic implications of being followers of a Christ in whom there is "no longer slave or free;" yet only now are we even beginning to discuss the appropriateness of a national apology to the descendants of the slaves for the treatment they and their ancestors have had to endure. This makes me ask: "Why haven't we begun to address the third issue about our sexism in the church, much less move toward a repentance, that includes a renunciation of those petty and tribal views that are not enough for God nor, I can add, views that "are not large enough for Jesus Christ whose resurrection breaks all boundaries of sin.

3. Babylon's seductive culture is undermined by the creation of alternative communities of resistance

Ezekiel didn't limit his oracles to his own religious Institution (Ez. 4:24); he spoke against the surrounding nations as well (Ez. 25-32). As we consider our efforts at social justice in the political and economic spheres, we might learn a lesson in tactics from him. Ezekiel was clever enough not to attack Babylon directly. Instead he prophecled against the surrounding nations. One of these was Tyre, the small Hong Kong-like territory that, like its contemporary counterpart, wielded huge economic power (Ez. 26:1-28:24). As we struggle from the seductive spells of our own Babylons, it's not hard to find semblance's in and around us.

This realization makes me recall the original brouhaha that accompanied the release or the Canadian Bishops' letter on its economy and the first draft of the U.S. Bishops' letter on ours. Upon the latter's appearance the bishops were attacked as leftists, if not Marxists. They were unpatriotic; they had not sprinkled enough holy water on capitalism. In face of this barrage, each succeeding draft muted any systemic critique of Babylon. Now, 10 years later, precisely when increasing globalization reveals the ever-greater disparity between rich and poor within our nations and between the North and the South, virtual silence exists regarding our political economy. Despite significant, but periodic, statements from the Pope on the "savagery" of our system, too often we, the church, represent the managerial and business class. In the process, we have fled the workers here and abroad. This fear of addressing the inherent injustice in our political economy is evident in "The Working Paper" for the Special Synod for the Americas that begins today in Rome. Our economy is the new religion; it has indoctrinated us well. Whether we're women or men, we've all become its altar servers.

Ezekiel prophesied to the people to create an alternative community to keep from being destroyed. In chapter 9 Yahweh told Ezekiel in a vision: "Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it" (9:4). In Ezekiel those who accepted the need for change were to be marked with a sign (which we've come to associate with the "Tau") on their foreheads.

As a Capuchin Franciscan, it's inspiring to me that, to symbolize the need for church reform, Pope Innocent III adopted the "Tau" as a symbol for the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Francis of Assisi, responding to a vision he had to "repair my house which is failing into ruin," embraced the Tau to stand for his effort to create an alternative community within the church of that era. If Ezekiel heard that there could be an alternative to a Jerusalem in desolation and Francis discerned that an alternative community would be his response to a church failing into ruins, it seems we're in good company if we do the same in our exile. At the same time, this alternative community can't be just a subset in the wider whole, the wider whole must be established through these communities. It must not be a church with communities but a church of communities. Small communities can't be regarded as a practical way we express ourselves as church; they must be the preferred way.

4. The experience of Jerusalem's destruction invites us to experience and image God's presence beyond that mediated by the Temple's priests.

With Jerusalem's destruction and Temple destroyed the key components or Israel's religious underpinnings vanished. Israel believed it was God's chosen people, a race set apart. Now, under other gods, another nation had conquered it. Its God's Temple was destroyed. It had lost two kingdoms. Its land lay conquered. "Robbed of all these elements of her identity," Paul Joyce notes, "it is hardly surprising that profound theological questions were raised in her." Probably the greatest one dealt with Israel's understanding of God and its relationship with this God. Once clear about who God was and where this God could be found, with the destruction of the Temple, Israel's intellectual Image of a God too-often confined in a building evaporated. If God was not dead Israel had to re-imagine who God truly was. Now, if God's promises were not to be invalidated, they had to be interpreted in entirely new ways.

In the Exodus experience, the Israelites discovered God's abiding presence in a cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night as well as in the manna. Unable to control the elements of creation in the cloud and fire, they took the manna and put it in the arc of the covenant and then they put this in the Holy of Holies. But then the Holy of Holies was destroyed and the priests and people were deported. Now, where would God be found? Before the priestly-mediated rituals enabled the people to be in conscious contact with God to such a degree it seemed only through the priest could the people be touched by God's real presence. With the temple destroyed, Ezekiel's vision revealed a mobile God who couldn't be locked in a box. God's presence now could be found in Invisible sanctuaries, in the lives and experience of the exiles themselves (Ez. I; 11:16).

One of the greatest challenges facing us in a Roman Church that too often boxes the Holy of Holies into clerically-controlled sacramental systems can't be just to critique this bondage that effectively limits people's experience of the divine, it demands that we become witnesses to the Holy through our own religious experience grounded in prayer. This invites us to imagine what priesthood may mean in its fullest sense free of the abomination of clericalism.

I experienced this challenge several years ago when my Province faced the shame of having some of its members accused publicly of pedophilia. I see pedophilia not just as a sexual issue but as a control issue as well. One day in the midst of it all I broke down and wept when I realized we've yet to imagine a church free of Western European ways of thought and patriarchy, as well as one free of clerical control.

I hope I won't be misunderstood in what I say, especially when we know many exceptions exist. Critiquing a system's ways need not imply a rejection of the system itself. While I might castigate clericalism (by which I mean priesthood plus power exercised as control), I can't envision Catholicism without priests. For Ezekiel too, despite his problems with the priests, Bruce Vawter and Leslie Hoppe have shown that, "the central emphasis of the Law for Ezekiel was the reorganization of the priesthood at the head of this community. The prophet envisaged the restored Israel as a sacral community" not as one without priests. Consequently I envision a church with priests but without control and priests defined not by gender or orientation but by their communion with God and God's people.

What makes Catholicism unique is its sacramental and sacral dimension. I believe we can't remain truly "Catholic" without these essential characteristics. In the Exile Israel didn't abandon its Judaism. But it did use the occasion to be purified of its sinful accretions. In this we can learn from our ancestors in Faith.

Ezekiel's experience of a mobile God experienced beyond the Temple or its priests invites us to a deeper understanding of the fuller implication of what the "real presence" based in the baptism of all of us in Christ means. It challenges us to contemplate so we can be open to be touched by the Iiving God. It calls us to share the fruit of our prayer in structures and rituals that mediate God's "real presence" in inclusive ways, beyond the control of one clerical class.

This realization has made me ask why we Catholics have placed such emphasis on our identity as a Eucharistic community when baptism gets a greater stress in the New Testament. Could it have anything to do with the way we've had to Identify ourselves cultically through the priests? I believe the exile offers us a wonderful time to re-imagine baptism as foundational and from this sacral ground find other ways all or us can experience and be mediators of the real presence, including its eucharistic and reconciling expressions and rituals. This reminds of a wonderful gift I received two weeks before this past Christmas.

A woman who was a tangential part of a group who resisted the inevitable racial changes in the parish where I had my first appointment called me. "Father Michael'?," "Yes," I replied. "This is 'Wanda Wagner.' I'm calling you because I need to be reconciled to you." At this point she told me how she had hated me when I was a newly-ordained priest at St. Elizabeth Parish In Milwaukee in my messianic days. The Parish had lost over 1,000 white families as the black Community moved into its territory. My welcoming attitude was something she saw as a threat.

She said-. "I went to the sacrament and confessed I hated you almost 30 years ago. I got absolution from the priest, but I never got reconciled with you. And now I'm getting old and want to have my life right with God. So last week I went to confession to Father "Smith" and told him that I had received absolution for hating you but never got reconciled. He suggested that I call you and tell you what happened so that things could be made right between us."

"Oh, Mrs. Wagner," I said, it's wonderful that you'd call. "But I want to tell you that, in those days, I can see why you would be so angry with me. I didn't go about things in a good way. So, if you feel you need to be reconciled with me, I think I better ask your forgiveness for any pain I created for you as well." And, thus, the two of us were reconcile

Neither of us received absolution with that phone call. But both of us were reconciled. And I am convinced we celebrated a sacrament in God's real presence that morning.

When I've talked about the need to celebrate God's presence in new rituals beyond the control of clerics, some priests have become quite upset and threatened. But this shouldn't be surprising, especially since the anthropologist Mary Douglas has demonstrated that the priestly class' preoccupation with ritual controls around purity and pollution arises in response to danger, especially when a particular group feels threatened. Yet, all human rituals worthy of divine worship must be expressed in ways that break the control of one group's mediation of God to the whole. For all the more reason, then, our time in exile demands that we create rituals to lead us to encounter the Holy in ways not always dependent on ordained priests.

5. The Temple's abomination and idolatry that worshiped "man-made" images is replaced by a worship worthy of God's holiness.

One of the most-used phrases in Ezekiel refers to God's holiness being revealed to all the nations. Walter Brueggemann says Ezekiel discerned "the enormous mismatch between the disinterested holiness of God and the utilitarian unrighteousness of Israel." In Ezekiel's vision, Israel had violated God's holiness with Its ritual impurity. He called this abomination and idolatry. "Abomination" meant "anything unspeakably offensive to true religion." And what he described as idolatry wasn't "any crude sense of wooden or stone images but [is used] in spiritual terms as whatever has alienated this people from its Lords and rendered it inaccessible to God's ordinary Communication."

At last year's CTA I listened to Brian Swimme. I left his talk awed at the timelessness and expansiveness of this creation and its continually creating God. I felt even more convinced about the timelessness or "wheneverness" and expansiveness or "whereverness" of our Creator - a good image for us exiles as we sense the lack of boundaries around time and space. But almost immediately deep rage rose within me. Brian Swimme invited me to a transcendent God continually authoring this universe's story. But the leaders of my church were insisting I must believe in a tribal god who wills that only one class of people be priests. They also tell us it's God's will that one group of people made in God's image whose members are sexually oriented to each other can show their love to each other no more genitally than those of us who have supposedly freely chosen to be celibates. How can anyone worship so small a god with such constraints and who exhibits such arbitrariness?

Earlier this year at the New England CTA I spoke about my reaction following Brian's talk, I concluded by saying something like "our God could care less whether women are priests." By this I meant God can't be boxed in by any human definitions. After the talk someone challenged me saying she felt God really does care about this. I didn't want to argue about the semantics of what I meant and don't want to do it here. However, I am prepared to argue about and defend my contention that God does care (and a lot!), when our church leaders purport to speak in the name of the Author of the universe and undermine their authority when they insist it's God's will that only men be priests. I believe this indicates not only a manipulation of the truth of God's holiness but a contemporary abominable form of idolatry.

Ezekiel used the term "prophet" pejoratively of any religious leader of Israel claiming to be or was acclaimed to be one who gave voice to the mind of God, who "envisioned falsehood and lying [as] divination" (Ez. 13:6; see 13:9). This makes me wonder what Ezekiel would say of our present religious leaders who insist they divine God's will by their insistence that it's infallible truth that God wants only males to preside at the altar. When ideology gets Identified with infallibility exiles better be on guard. Bruce Vawter and Leslie Hoppe say that "These prophets, whether in good faith but self-deluded or in bad faith and deliberately deceiving, have professed to speak the mind of the Lord when in reality no spirit other than their own moved them. They have been, he [Ezekiel] says, 'like foxes among ruins. ''

If we don't imagine a notion of God that's bigger than our human concepts, our Jerusalems and its Temples deserve to be destroyed as well. Until we understand God's triune holiness and translate it in our structures we'll miss that Spirit-grounded energ promised in Ezekiel's great vlsion: "I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give You, and new spirit (ruah) I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart or stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within You, and make You follow my statues and be careful to observe my ordinances" (Ez. 36: 25-27).

The necessary reorganization of our structures will be impossible, Walter Brueggemann insists, "if life is reduced to human control. It Is precisely this indefatigable power of God's holiness that makes newness possible. My urging. then," he writes, "is that the holiness of God is a theological theme we do well to recover if there is a will among us for newness. Without this focus on the holiness of God, we are consigned to life as a profaned, flat human enterprise that can only end in despair,"' Wherever any form of human control undermines God's holiness, be it in the institutional church or our nations, in our gatherings here at CTA or in our own relationships, it must be exorcized from our midst. And when we do work to exorcize this control from our church, we will be truly responding, to the one, authentic call to holiness itself.

Until we truly worship a triune God in whom all persons have equal access to all resources, and until we realize that all of us were made in that image and that all godly institutions and relations must mirror this Trinitarian God of unity and community, we will be worshiping idols and being told these idols demand our obedience. However, once we do worship the eternal and holy One as our God we will find ourselves in creation acting less as gods and centers of Its life than as just part of its awesome whole.

Just this week I was talking with some dear friends from Minnesota who helped me with what I'd be saying here today. The more we talked the clear it became that we really are at a kind of watershed. On the one hand we've rejected limiting images of God, on the other hand we're only at the frontier of believing in a Triune Creating God and only beginning to imagine what kind of structures and processes will be demanded of us if we'll be faithful to this God. This brings me to my next point.

6. The boundaries once structured around dynamics reinforcing one clerical group give way to those defined by the Spirit.

All people and groups need boundaries. With these they can identify themselves as belonging to this group and not another, this nation or that culture. Boundaries always involve at least some degree of separation. Until the Exile, the Temple in Jerusalem distinguished the sacred from the profane, the Jews from their neighbors, and the priests from the rest of the community. With the Exile, however, the sacred had to be found within the profane. Israel was forced to develop new identifiable boundaries and express these in rituals free of abomination. In our exile too, we'll be needing new boundaries and, while I'm not against meatless Fridays, I think it's going to take a lot more than this to free our church and society from their abominations.

Boundaries get expressed in rituals, like the Sign of the Cross. But, deeper, at the heart of many powerful ritual symbols, we find notions of purity that involve separation. Separation is about maintaining order and control. If one group can be defined as ritually impure, or at least, not pure enough, the control of the dominant presiding group will abide in those acknowledged as pure. Consequently, Mary Douglas show that "impurity" is not sexual as much as social. It refers to any threat coming from any entity that does not fit clear, Identifiable, and therefore, culturally controllable categories. She writes: "Pollution behavior is the reaction which condemns any object or idea likely to confuse or contradict cherished classifications."

As we find ourselves rejecting classifications that have been made around patriarchy and clericalism, I think we need to ask what kind of boundaries and alternative rituals will we need to crate if we actually do prevail in our dreams about a truly inclusive Church. In this was struck by a recent column in Commonweal. Written by one of its editors, David R. Carlin,
Jr., it was entitled, "Don't Tear Down Fences.- First Ask Why They Are There." He writes'.

... religions need boundaries. Neglect the boundaries of any church for a few generations, and the church will begin to wither away - a process far advanced among Protesta ant denominations and visibly underway in American Catholicism. This is not to say that a church's boundaries should never change; nor is it to say that the church must always utilize the same boundary makers. From time to time there may be good reasons for expanding or contracting boundaries, or for discarding one set of boundary markers and replacing it with another. Boundaries and markers, however, are necessities of organizational life, and woe to the church that forgets this fundamental truth.

While American Catholics in general have tended to forget this fundamental truth during the past thirty years, the most forgetful among them have been "liberal" or "progressive" Catholics, for example, the kind of people who write letters to the editor of The National Catholic Reporter. If the average Catholic has adopted a denominational mentality, the liberal Catholic has adopted a hyper-denominational mentality. The former favors a policy that leads to gradual ecclesiastical suicide; the latter a policy tantamount to jumping off a cliff.
Progressives who want to reform the priesthood usually talk about justice, power, and a "priest shortage." These are certainly themes worthy of consideration. But so is the need for boundaries. As long as liberal Catholics remain oblivious to this need, they mustn't be surprised when some people suspect them of not having seriously thought through the consequences of their proposals.

So here's a challenge for the priesthood reformers: Tell us what you have to offer as new boundary markers once we eliminate the all-male, celibate priesthood .

Carlin makes a point that I don't think we can take lightly. In this, I hope that elements of what I'm presenting here may offer pointers for such new boundary markers.

As we re-define our boundaries, we must resist another temptation of exiles:to have our boundaries defined by dualisms. When this happens we get labels like "felt" and "right" or "conservative" and "progressive." A good example of this exists when many of "those" on the right are so preoccupied with issues around abortion that they are silent on women's rights and how many of "us" on the left stress the rights of women in a way that results in silence about the rights of the fetus as a human. As we prepare to mark the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights next year, it's my hope that we might do two things. First I hope we'll work to broaden the notion of rights to go beyond human to include those of creation itself. Secondly I believe we need to reaffirm that the fundamental right for all humans is the right to life and that, instead of only thinking In "either/or" categories about how this can
be ensured, we'll commit ourselves to a "both/and" approach more reflective of the compassion and wisdom the Exile teaches. This will find us insisting that women have equal rights with men from the womb to the tomb, that the disabled and able-bodied among us can't be denied
their reproductive rights, that gays and straights have the same rights from conception to death, that the South and the North have mutual rights and responsibilities to help each other in face of need, and that, in our God and in any reality identified with this God, there can be absolutely no systemic discrimination, only truth, justice, love and peace.

While I say this, I don't think it's time for us exiles to begin setting any boundaries in stone. What we need is an imagination grounded in the essence of our Catholic tradition that enables us to transcend the secondary issues that hold us captive and be-in wrestling with points like the ones I'm trying to share here. Because we're in such liminal time, it's too early to set boundaries. We need to keep pushing the boundaries until the Spirit stimulates us to sense we're headed in the right direction. Having made this cautionary remark, I do intuit that any boundaries worthy of the name "catholic" will have nothing to do with the elements of injustice in Catholicism that presently exist; rather they will define a catholicity recognized for its healing inclusivity. And if such boundaries will no longer be defined by place they must be determined by persons in relationship to each other. This leads me to consider two virtues which may offer a character to our boundaries with each other and our world.

7. The way of vengeance and exclusion gives way to compassion and wisdom.

During the Exile the dominating and patriarchal images of God were balanced, at least from our perspective, by a more inclusive one that revealed feminine characteristics. The people also changed from thinking about God as vengeful to being full of mercy. This experience evoked in Israel's hopes a particular form of God's mercy which began to be described as compassion (ruhamah). In fact Walter Brueggemann notes that, "God's compassion seems to be the primary and powerful theological emergent of the Exile."

The root-word for compassion is "womb." Thus, Jeremiah, another great prophet of the Exile, gave voice to God's word when he prophesied: "Therefore my womb trembles for him [Israel]; I will truly show motherly-compassion" (Jer. 31:20). With no home in the exile, God's people needed to return to the womb, to the principle of their life, in order to be touched by God's abiding presence. There they could be called to emerge as recipients and mediators of God's compassion in a troubled world.

Another way of considering God that arose during the Exile that we would consider feminine came with the rise of that particular form of literature known as "Wisdom." The Book of Wisdom reminds us: "in every generation she [wisdom, hochma] passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets; for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom" (Wis. 7:27-28). Wisdom equips us with courage to keep working for what in our church and nations can be changed and with the serenity we need in face of what will not change. Wisdom is the feminine face of God that enables us to discern the difference.

As we look around our world, it's not always easy to find examples of people who live with this kind wisdom and the kind of "hearts moved with compassion" that characterized someone like Jesus. Failing many human models, I've found a great description of how they might get personified in a literary figure. This is Shug, one of the figures In Alice Walker's The
Color Purple. Upon telling Celie: "When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest," she then says: "God ain't a he or a she, but a It."

But what do it look like? I ask.
Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something You can look at apart from anything else, Including Yourself . .

She say, My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen You can't miss it.

Shug received the wisdom that comes from universal compassion. The Exile teaches us compassion and wisdom. In boundary-less Babylon, I believe, our only place or rest can be the womb of compassionate wisdom. What a dream this can be for us who have tired of political correctness and conventional wisdom. What a hope it can instill in us who still yearn for our dried bones to be inspirited with some newly-graced energy. This brings me to the final point I'd like to offer that might offer us energy in our exile.

8. The indifference generated in race of long-standing structures of control gives way to a new vision of hope.

In chapter 37, immediately after the Jews are promised a new heart and a new spirit, Ezekiel contextualizes this transformed people with his vision of the valley full of dry bones. If on our iourney we've experienced ambiguity, anomie or even asphyxiation as we consider our milieu in church and society, perhaps the image of the dry bones coming to life with a new heart and new Spirit might give us new energy to continue with each other in greater fidelity.

Like people in the concentration camps, exiles without a sense of purpose, without, will never experience hope. But for exiles grounded in God, hope provides energy to transform life with meaning. Hope tells us that, even in Babylon, with God's presence in our midst, no higher authority can claim our hearts and no other god call control our allegiance. In this sense Walter Brueggemann declares: "Babylon cannot stop the energizing of God."

However, at this point I see a caution sign. If we do beam to get energy from an Exilic spirituality, like Ezekiel, we need to watchful (see Ez. 16-21;1 31:1-4). Beneath exile's assumptions there call lurk a false expectation. Ezekiel, like the other Exilic Prophets, always held out the hope of some kind of political restoration for Israel. And, for Israel, it did come to pass. However, I don't think it will occur for us. I know many Catholics envision a kind of "Restoration" of the institutional church to its former triumphallstic ways. I think we'll kid ourselves if we imagine ourselves heading toward some kind of Promised Land or Restoration in the sense of having a politically or even culturally powerful church and religion again. We must find hope for any restoration grounded elsewhere. This will not be in religion as much as in spirituality, the kind of spirituality I've tried to outline here.

As I conclude my remarks, I'd like to offer a summary of the spirituality I've tried to outline for us in the "here" and "now" that I've called "Exile." Spirituality involves three elements: an inner, an outer and a comnunal dimension. It involves 1) an experience of God that 2) gets expressed in concrete ways 3) In the context of some kind of community. In this sense, I've suggested that a Spirituality for Exiles invites us to continually search for God's immanent presence in our midst and to find ways to worship God's transcendence in rituals which do not
limit God to human categories. It challenges us to create boundaries characterized by compassion - toward creation and the "crowd" -- in ways modeled on Jesus whose return we still await. Its actualization demands that, as we find ourselves not "at home" or "unwanted" within the religious and cultural institutions that previously nurtured us, we keep coming together seeking the wisdom that arises in us from the Spirit and from being part of a community of hope.

With hope we can find life in our Exile as wait in confident expectation for what lies ahead. Hope roots us in a deeper reality. Hope ignites our imagination in a release of the Spirit's energy within and among us. Hope invites us to recognize that "everywhere" can be home and that all our "whenevers" can be kairos moments of grace. Hope, Brueggemann reminds us, is: "the 'wind of God' which creates a new future. That wind is beyond resistance from the empire or anyone else."

In novitiate, one of my favorite poems came from Charles Peguy. It's called "Hope." I want to use one of its verses to conclude these eight points that I've suggested might sketch for usa spirituality of exile on our journey wherever and whenever we may be. He writes: "Faith is she who remains steadfast during centuries and centuries. Charity is she who gives herself during centuries and centuries. But my little hope is she who gets up every morning." What more energy to continue in our exile can we ask for than that!