Joan Chittister

Despite years of intermittent warfare between the Palestinians and Israel, we have hoped that simple decency, public morality, honest governments and personal conscience would sweep down, writes Joan Chittister. 

As Americans waste our civil duties, the question has become whether the country itself has simply collapsed any and all moral standards. Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister asks: Who tricked us out of ourselves?

Life, the ancients knew, all depends on our willingness to collaborate, to do the things together that are important for us all. That's something we need to remember in this time of agitation and uncertainty.

The last time the church said it was going to make changes was in 1965, but all the changes to be seen were basically meaningless ones. This time, though, the faithful themselves are part of the agenda-making process.

Why are sensible, educated, moral adults allowing the so-called political leaders in this country to go on enabling the militarization of what has always seen itself as a peaceful society?

While our cars are getting faster and better every year, our ideas, our feelings, our insights and our freedom of belief are getting less and less important.

Sr. Joan Chittister wonders: Are we trying to take care of one another? Or not? Have we lost interest in being our best, in being a country of heart? Or has the United States simply become a collection of isolates?

Although some part of Christmas seemed to be dying in 2022, Sr. Joan Chittister wonders if we are in the process of reclaiming a different kind of Christmas now. Maybe we have never been so close to the point of it all.

Nominees of every ilk went on telling us they could save our lives and our government and our future. How? By doing absolutely nothing to change the new tone of division. Of meanness. Such bold and brave leaders.

It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as either a politician or a democratic leader. What can't be so quickly dismissed is the fact that, however weak the character he brought to the position, he was elected.

The question this column purports to answer is a clear one: Will religious life rise again? Yes? But is it sensible in this day and age to even think of such a thing?

The trouble with today's world is that it acts as if there were only one kind of love. And so, we are inclined to overlook the other two. Whether we know it or not, that can leave a lot of life very empty.

Joan Chittister: The sense of "community" in the U.S. is broken in two. How can a nation, an institution, a people, a family function well without the sense of community that carries us through dark and dangerous times?

Joan Chittister: I came to understand that I am simply "this kind of person." The magnet in me pointed to the prayer life, the life of prophetic witness, the life of the conscious spiritual relationship with God.

Joan Chittister: Too often, it is the desire to be perfect that traps us from becoming everything — anything — we might possibly become. Fear of failure is particularly toxic where the spiritual life is concerned.

Joan Chittister: The orders of sisters are dwindling in number. Can the church as we know it function as widely as it has without a body of sisters who model the faith and give their hearts to the world around them?

Joan Chittister: We are all interconnected. When some of us stand up to the bully, we may all be persecuted in the name of God's righteousness. But to do so willingly is the heart of the eighth beatitude.

Joan Chittister: The seventh beatitude is all about motives, with the real reason for what I do, which, however good it makes me look on the outside, may indeed be poisonous on the inside.

Joan Chittister: Under the aegis of "defense," we have come to exalt the kind of violence that undermines every layer of our society. But now, one U.S. bishop is waking us up to what the Beatitudes are really all about.

Joan Chittister: "Blessed are the merciful," the fifth beatitude contends, "for they shall receive mercy." Jesus says that the kind of mercy we give will be the kind of mercy we get when we need it. Mercy is not an event; it is a way of being in the world.