Many years ago we were invited to participate in a service of profession of holy orders in a Roman Catholic Church. A friend of ours was taking his vows to become a member of a religious community and he asked us to share in the ceremony. For millennia, faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church have chosen to live their faith in intentional communities. Sometimes known as monks or nuns, often simply as brothers or sisters, individual take solemn vows to live a common life according to the religious rules established for each particular order. Some religious orders establish monasteries as shared residences and places of worship. Within the monastery, faithful members participate in regular prayer and worship, do the work of providing food and shelter for one another, and serve the wider community.

Not all of the participants in religious communities become priests. Lay members serve the church without being ordained or becoming part of the religious hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

The names of some of the orders are familiar to Protestants as well as Catholics: Benedictines, Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, and Trappists are among the names of religious orders, but there are many others. There are monasteries in Protestantism and religious orders outside of the Roman Catholic Church. The Priory of St. Wigbert is a Lutheran monastery that follow the Benedictine tradition. Protestants have become oblates in Benedictine monasteries. And there are non-monastic orders within the Catholic Church where members do not share in communal living, but are connected to the order without living together.

As part of our participation in the ceremony of our friend’s vows to join a religious community, we were vested with stoles from the sacristy of a Roman Catholic Parish. In preparation, we received instructions from the Bishop about our participation in the ceremony. As we received those instructions it was clear that the Bishop was a bit nervous about our participation. Such ceremonies are generally reserved for those who are members of the Catholic Church. In general, Roman Catholic priests and members of religious communities take a vow of chastity and we were openly married Protestants. It was not a violation of the rules of the order or of those of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, but it was outside of the usual and outside of that particular bishop’s comfort zone.

I have since frequently told stories of that experience and the thoughts that ran through my mind. Of course I wanted to show respect for the traditions and the ceremonies of the church and I wanted to support my friend in his genuine commitment to a life of religious service. But my role in the ceremony was as a supporter of my friend. I was not an officiant in any way. The fact that I had been ordained as a Protestant minister gave me a certain authority within my own church, but none in the Roman Catholic church. Still the bishop’s instructions about when to sit, stand, and kneel; what to do when the host was consecrated and elevated, how to appear in front of the congregation was very serious. When the host was elevated in the ceremony, the Roman Catholic clerics would raise their hands along with the priest who held the bread of communion. We were to keep our hands at our sides. I understood. I am not a Catholic priest and have no intention of pretending to be one. Still, I couldn’t keep from wondering how it was that whether or not I raised my hands could affect the sacredness of the eucharist. Did I actually hold the power to disrupt the ceremony? Could I have made the process somehow less holy by the position of my hands?

I would not have made a good priest. There is too much of the trappings of religious ceremony that does not make sense to me. While I have a deep respect for spiritual life and religious tradition, I am full of questions. I don’t submit to the rules of the hierarchy. I could not take vows of obedience to religious structures and authorities.

Memories of a few meaningful times of sharing worship with Roman Catholic friends, including the profession of orders by our friend, came to mind last evening as a small group within our church was discussing the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard, as he is often commonly called, was a Jesuit priest. He also was a scientist and a mystic. We know of his life primarily through his writings which were published after his death in 1955. The fact that those writings were published and have become available to the wider community is the result of what might have been considered to be an act of disobedience on Teilhard’s part. While it is common for those who are part of religious communities to leave their writings and personal effects to the community, Teilhard arranged for his writings to be published after his death in direct disobedience of the instructions of religious superiors that he not publish his writings. His ideas were controversial. As a scientist he had lived and done research in China. He had developed ideas that stood in contrast to mainstream religious thinking. While he obeyed the order not to publish his ideas during his life, he made arrangements for them to be published outside of the church after he died. It was this act of disobedience that made his writing available to us today.

From my perspective, his writings are not radical or revolutionary. He recognizes the feminine as well as the masculine in a life of faith. He argues for the unity of science and religion. He experiences the sacred in the everyday matter of life. He senses the presence of God in the rocks and soil and living things of this planet. He does not expound on heaven as some distant other place, but finds the sacred in the stuff of the earth. In that I do not disagree with him.

Perhaps Teilhard caused a minor confusion by his act of disobedience in arranging for his books to be published, but he did not disrupt the order of the Catholic Church. In some ways his ideas have had more impact among Protestants than among Catholics.

I know that had I lifted a hand or an arm during that ceremony I did not hold the power to disrupt the ways of the hierarchy of the church, but I can’t help but wonder what might have happened had I shown some small sign of disobedience. Perhaps my presence itself was sufficient to open a few minds and get some people thinking. Our community is much wider than we think and we are connected in ways that reach beyond the definitions and vows of a particular community.