I Cogitate

June 27, 2005
Mark Roth
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Thinkers
This monthly series will highlight people from Western Pennsylvania who are on the forefront of new ideas in their fields.

Sister Joan D. Chittister

When Sister Joan Chittister was 7 years old, she raced home from school one day, bursting to tell her mother what she had learned from her teacher.

She ran, Chittister recalled, because she wanted to get home before her stepfather, who was Presbyterian.

The nun had taught her that day that only Catholics go to heaven. When her mother calmly asked her what she thought of that, she said, "I think it's wrong."

"Why?," her mother asked.

"Because Sister doesn't know Daddy," Joan replied.

"And then my mother said, 'And what did you say, Joan?' and I hung my head. I said, 'I didn't say anything.' I was so ashamed of myself.

"My mother put her arms around me and she said, 'I'm very proud of you, darling. That's very wise. When you grow up, you can tell Sister later."

You might say Sister Joan Chittister has been doing that ever since.

Chittister, 69, is entering her sixth decade as a Benedictine nun, based in Erie. Known worldwide as a speaker and writer, she has just authored her 32nd book, "The Way We Were: A Story of Conversion and Renewal," about the changes the Benedictine sisters have gone through since Vatican II.

Her 2004 book, "Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir," last month won an award from the Catholic Press Association as the year's best hardcover book on spirituality.

The struggle to resist

In that volume, Chittister wrote at one point about the struggle she has faced living in a church whose official policies she often disagrees with.

Best known for her belief that the Roman Catholic Church should be open to women's ordination, Chittister wrote:

"There is no doubt that women need to tell their stories. But at the same time, there comes a time when you are too tired of trying to be heard in a place like the church where no one wants to hear you. Then, you walk out of it, past it, beyond it. And often, invisibly. They think you're still there, but your heart is long gone and your spirit is free. I know."

None of which means that Chittister plans to formally leave the church or to violate its rules against ordaining women.

As she repeats the answer she has often given, "I have always broached the question; I have never breached the discipline."

But the way she has broached the question has landed her in hot water more than once.

In 2001, when she was the keynote speaker at the National Catholic Education Association, the Rev. Kris Stubna, who was then secretary of education in the Pittsburgh diocese, said the diocese would not subsidize or give continuing education credits to any Catholic teachers who attended.

And last year, she spoke at a conference on women's ordination in Dublin, Ireland, despite attempts by the Vatican to prohibit her appearance.

After Vatican officials ordered Chittister's superior, Prioress Christine Vladimiroff, to bar Chittister from speaking, Vladimiroff met with the sisters in Erie and all but one of them voted to oppose the ban.

Chittister delivered her address, and the Vatican backed away from its threat of a "just penalty."...

...She knows that some people cannot accept a God who can't or won't fix the overwhelming problems that exist in the world.

Getting beyond that view is a matter of spiritual growth, she believes.

"When your spiritual life and your faith life are in their infancy, God is a lollipop God. Heaven is Disneyland, and the divine is a Fourth of July magic act. But as you grow, you realize that that wasn't a picture of God ---- it was a picture of you, and of your needs.

"We're always trying to whittle God down to size, because we can't think about anything bigger than we are."

Her belief in the essential mystery of God, and of not knowing the end of the story, has strengthened her on her sometimes bumpy journey in the Catholic Church, Chittister said...

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