The church beneath the church: one heart is healed—not by rules, but by love steeped in imitation of Christ

Catholic New Times, Jan 30, 2005 by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I would like to tell you about the church beneath the church.

The ones who told me about the church beneath the church are my grandmothers. I came to know my grandmothers when I was an older adopted child. I was called into the priesthood as a child. I healed broken plants, and children and dogs, and I pounded out hosts from Wonder Bread. The birds took one host a piece, but the dogs were greedy. They ate 40 or 50 hosts at a time! Some of my familiares, my relatives, would say, "Oh, isn't that sweet. She's playing priest." And my grandmother Viktoria would flash a milky eye and say, "She is not playing."

One day I would understand that genealogy is significant, and that apostolic succession is important. But we Catholics have a third tradition by which a woman becomes priest, and that is via parthenogenesis. This means to be conceived by a massive infusion Of grace from One greater than myself, and I must answer the call. Parthenogenesis: developing into a new individual without being formed by merely human means.

My life deepened further when my grandmothers and my aunts, and nuns, consecrated me to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to Santo Nino, literally, "Saint Little Boy" the Baby Jesus. I was consecrated at age six. I took the vow of fidelity, meaning that I would do whatever Virgin Mother and Cristocito asked of me, when and if I could hear them via the Holy Spirit, and when they could give me a sign. I promised that I would try to follow their wishes in all prayerful grace. All of us little girls who were consecrated at that time also promised our eternal virginity to Blessed Mother. As I used to whisper later as a girl-gang leader, "Two out of three ain't bad, baby."

Time went on. When I came home from my high school theology classes, I'd say something to my grandmother like, "I want to tell you what Ignatius of Antioch said about martyrdom. My grandmother would say, "I want to tell you what Viktoria of Dombovar says about living life without being a martyr." Whenever I brought home academic material, including much later during my psychoanalytic training, all my grandmothers and my aunts would correct it. (I know you have relatives like this. Otherwise you wouldn't be laughing)

I am what I am, for one other reason. I was raised daytimes by "the mad women in black." We didn't have day-care back then. We had Catholic school. I was raised by the great nuns of the world. They were fierce and beloved, cantankerous and difficult, horrible and wonderful. They were brave souls who marched for civil rights before the Civil Rights Act became contentious law to some.

During sophomore year in high school, our nun-principal brought Dorothy Day to us. We were in the midst of the Vietnam war. Many Of my male peers had already received their induction notices; to this day those men still remember their draft numbers. When Dorothy Day was asked in our high school auditorium what to do about the war and the draft, she said, ""Fill the jails. Fill the jails."

It was a transformative moment. She was a grandmother of a woman, with huge power of soul. In spirit, she indeed was a nun, a priest, an eternal virgin, a lover of human beings without compare. She changed my life, for I could see that she started fires wherever she Went, good fires by throwing immense sparks from her soul.

People worldwide so often ask me, "How can you still be a Catholic, after all that, has happened?" There are 3,000 reasons, each of you sitting here with me. Also, the nuns, priests, and all the heroes of Catholicism are somehow inside me. They nourish me; help me to enact what I am asked by a Voice Greater.

Grandmothers' Wisdom

When we walked to church with my grandmother and were in view of the church, she would often say, "See that church?" "Yes, we see that church," we would say. "That's not our church," she would say. "Yes it is, grandma, that's our, church." "No, no. Our church is beneath that church. We don't belong to that brick church. We belong to the church underneath that church."

This has stayed with me all my life. When people ask, "How can you still be a Catholic?" I think about the church beneath the church, and who lives there, that Heart of Christ that beats and throbs in the underground church, regardless of the mayhem above it. You can hear that Heart if you lie on the earth. You can hear it at night in your dreams, in prayer, in song, in art. It throbs with endless and immaculate Love. I can feel it in "the church beneath the church," though I often cannot feel it in the church above ground. The underground church is the place I return to, over and over again. Health of the Soul. True Refuge of Spirit.

I have a form of what I jokingly call "Catholic Tourette's Syndrome" (CTA). It makes me say unguarded things sometimes for which I then must go to confession. When CTA first invited me to come speak, they asked for a title for my speech. The Holy Spirit inflamed me, and before I could stop, out came: "Tell them the speech is called "The Holy Spirit is Really Pissed Off and Is Coming Soon to a Church Near You."