I consider myself a “Bible geek.” I’ve learned my trade – imperfectly – outside the academy, but in the tradition of most folks throughout history who try to follow the path of the Human One, Jesus. We study the Word. We take it out walking in the world. We let it shape our soul in worship.

If you’re a Bible geek too, then you need to know St. Jerome. Today’s his feast day in the church calendar. He’s also the patron saint of librarians. Take particular note that Jerome began his “finest work” when he was in the company of women he loved.

Monk and doctor of the Church. St Jerome is considered to be one of the greatest Biblical scholars. Born of Christian parents, at Strido in Dalmatia around 348, after being educated at his local school he went to Rome to study rhetoric for eight years. He then set up a community of ascetics in Aquilea. When the community broke up, he travelled east where he met a hermit called Malchis who inspired him to live in a bare cell, dressed in sackcloth and studying the Scriptures.

St Jerome learned Hebrew from a rabbi and then returned to Antioch where he was ordained priest. He travelled to Constantinople and became friends with St Gregory of Nazianzen and St Gregory of Nyssa. He became personal secretary of Pope Damasus and struck up a lifelong friendship with a widow called Paula, her daughter Eustochium and another woman called Marcella.

He began his finest work at this time, revising and translating the Bible into the Latin version which is known as the Vulgate. But when the Pope died, his enemies forced him to leave Rome.

He travelled to Bethlehem with Paula and Eustochium and lived there for 24 years, establishing a monastery and convent and hostel for the countless pilgrims who came to see the birthplace of Christ.

St Jerome was immensely learned and a prolific writer, matched only by St Augustine. His views were often considered controversial. He said: “Plato located the soul of man in the head. Christ located it in the heart”.

He died at Bethlehem in 420 and was buried in the Church of the Nativity next to Paula and Eustochium.

“…If we are called by God to holiness of life, and if holiness is beyond our natural power to achieve (which it certainly is) then it follows that God himself must give us the light, the strength, and the courage to fulfill the task he requires of us. He will certainly give us the grace we need.” —Thomas Merton

Life and Holiness by Thomas Merton (Image, 1963,  p 17)

I’ve heard from women and men in Ireland, England, Canada, New Zealand, El Salvador, and across the United States who took time and action today to pray for change in the Catholic Church (go here for the map). If I haven’t heard from you, please drop me a note telling me how you prayed for change today.

Jennifer Sleeman from Clonakilty in West Cork called last August for the Sept. 26 boycott of Mass by women “to let the Vatican and the Irish church know that women are tired of being treated as second-class citizens.” Yesterday, she spoke with the Irish Times:

Of the expected success of the campaign, Sleeman said: “I have no way of measuring it. I loved a letter in The Irish Times where someone said, the boycott will be a failure because so many people will go to church to see how many people didn’t go – I thought that was lovely.

“I actually think the boycott itself now is irrelevant, the message is out there so loud and clear so that whether people go to Mass or not, I don’t think really matters very much now – I don’t think it really matters in terms of numbers.”

She said she was hugely encouraged by the letters and messages of support she had received over the past six weeks or so from as far away as America and Australia and she noted men as well as women had supported her call for change. Ms Sleeman said she was glad to hear that prayer groups supporting her call for greater involvement of women had started in Dublin and Waterford and said she hoped the focus would now shift from her to others who share her views.

“I hope the powers that be in the church have listened and heard because without change, I fear the church will diminish and I think a lot of people feel that way because they’ve just got stuck in a time warp – as Newman said, ‘To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often’.”

Irish Radio also did a story on the Mass boycott. Martin Long, Director of the Catholic Communications Office in Dublin said the Church encouraged people not to absent themselves from Mass, no matter what their views. “The celebration of the Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation is essential to the practice of the Catholic faith as the Sunday Eucharist is a pivotal aspect of the spiritual lives of Catholics.”

Many women attended Mass on Saturday night but absented themselves from their regular Sunday morning Mass. Others, such as Nuala Kernan, a regular Mass-goes in Limerick, made the decision to boycott Mass “not lightly”.

“We have been trying, women in Ireland, to be heard a long time,” Kernan told the RTE. “It’s 40 years since Vatican II and one way or another we have been using every possible opportunity to [be heard]. We wish to contribute; some women ache to contribute, in meaningful ways. ”

She told RTÉ radio the Bishops’ assertion that women were included every day in decisions in the Church did not “match” her experience. “The change has been so token.” She asked why the ordination of women as priests could not be discussed by the Catholic Church adding “the very least” she could do was to support Ms Sleeman’s call.

Thank you to everyone who worked to make this day of change a success. I look forward to hearing from you.

Kristine Ward, chair of the National Survivor Advocates Coalition sent me a statement of support for the Sept. 26 “Sunday Without Women.

NSAC is a volunteer organization of practicing Catholics and men and women of goodwill working to educate and reform the Church and society about sexual abuse and its consequences. NSAC sent an envoy, Mike Coode, to the United Kingdom to bear witness to the need for justice and reparation for the survivors during Pope Benedict’s U.K. trip and to search for advocates. NSAC envoys have also been sent to Ireland and Germany. Read Ward’s statement below:

The United States-based National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) supports the Sunday, September 26 Mass boycott in Ireland and calls upon Catholics in the United States and around the world to boycott in solidarity.

NSAC takes this action because the boycott is rooted in a response to the sexual abuse scandal and justice for women.

The coalition does not take this action because we do not understand the value of the Mass or the Sunday obligation. We do.

The Irish boycott was called by Jennifer Sleeman, an 80 year old Irish woman in Clonakilty, Cork, who is the mother of a monk and 54 years a convert to Catholicism. Her call to action came after the release of the Murphy and Ryan reports in Ireland through which horrible revelations of abuse of children came to light along with the protection of abusers by bishops and religious superiors.

NSAC’s founders know that there is aversion by Catholics in the pew to raise their heads above the water line to take any visible actions against priests and bishops even when the cause is just and right.

We don’t understand this aversion but we acknowledge its exists. We also know the weight of it contributes to continued suffering by the survivors and buttresses a hierarchy’s deflection of responsibility. Sexual abuse is a crime. There has never been an hour, a day or a year when it was right for the innocent and vulnerable to be raped and sodomized.

No one should know this better than Bishops, the Pope and the Vatican Curia. Yet it has taken massive news coverage on three continents and investigations by two civil governments to provoke even the weakest of responses from the Church. To add insult to injury the weak response is touted as major reform.

Pope Benedict XVI has more than 20 years of experience in seeing the very reports of sexual abuse that the people of Ireland and the rest of the world have come to know in the news media revelations. His knowledge comes both from being the Archbishop of Munich and heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It is against this backdrop that the boycott is called.

This Sunday presents an opportunity for Catholics in a quiet, private absence from their pew in their Catholic parish to open a slit for the piercing of the darkness. No rabble rousing is needed only silence.

By standing in solidarity with the Irish boycott we hope for its success that in the emptiness Wisdom may enter in.

We encourage our readers, women and men, to re-arrange this week’s usual encounter with the Lord at Mass to leave a visible openness in their usual pew in their usual parish.

Out of the void, God created.
Kristine Ward, NSAC Chair