Washington National Cathedral

Sam Lloyd: Good morning, and welcome to this last gathering for this first year of the life of our conversations at the intersection of faith and public life, and what a conclusion we have today with Sister Joan Chittister. We have with us today one of the most powerful and admired women of faith quite literally in the world. She’s—(laughter)—are you making faces over there already? She is a leading, if not the leading, woman and feminine voice in the Catholic Church today, certainly in this country. The word on the street is that if women were being ordained in the Catholic Church, she’d be a bishop by now, maybe a cardinal, someone said a pope. (applause) Sister Joan is a Benedictine sister, lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. She is a co-chair of two international organizations: the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and the Global Peace Initiative. Sister Joan, we are delighted to have you with us today.

Joan Chittister: Good morning, Sam. I just met Sam. But I learned something very important from Sam in the last two minutes. It’s what clerics won’t say when they’re not under oath. (laughter)

Lloyd: Aw, come on. Okay, I’m going to start with a big question. Some fifty years as a nun, is that right? And we were talking, as we walked up, about how different the world of being a nun was when you entered the convent fifty years ago. It’s gone through huge change, and my question is, why did you go in to begin with, and more importantly, why are you in now, and what’s the difference?

Chittister: Those are both the right questions, Sam. I know why I entered. I knew then, I know now. I was sixteen. I saw two things. I saw sisters, Benedictine sisters, who genuinely loved one another. They had a good time. They liked one another. They told jokes. Why else would you think I’d go there? They were happy.

But secondly, as a youngster, we… in the old European style, our academy was attached to the monastery at that time, and the bridge between the two, not surprisingly, was the chapel. The chapel was on second floor, and as academy girls came out, you could hear the sisters chanting. When you went in in the morning, you heard the chant. When you came out at night, you heard the chant. If you worked after school, the evening prayer was a chant.

I was completely committed to the consistency of that spirituality, and to see that spirituality in ways I’m sure I didn’t have exactly the same language when I was sixteen, but to see it at work among them convinced me. I knew it was a happy life, it was a good life. Those were the two things I wanted. Who doesn’t want that?

And so I found it there and I went for that reason. Now, why am I staying?

Lloyd: It changed a lot.

Chittister: It changed a lot and it didn’t change at all. It’s still happy and it’s still a good life. But there is a basic philosophical emphasis—shift in emphasis, and it’s the shift between the incarnation and transcendence.

There are two great Christian theologies right? The theology of transcendence, that we have not here a lasting city. That what you do somehow or other transcends what you have around you, and you move as close as you can to union with God. And the second theology is an incarnational theology, that the presence of God is here already. That Jesus became just like us, and that somehow or other, our responsibility then is to become just like Jesus here.

After Vatican II we very consciously realized that Benedictinism had always been incarnational. How else do we account for the fact that it’s Benedictines who saved education, it’s Benedictines who began alms for the poor? We used to charge you money to go through our property, and then we gave it to other people. It was Benedictines who preserved learning. Those were all conscious civil issues.

So what we said to ourselves was, what are the conscious civil issues right now that this theology of incarnation must make present in a new way? And we found our way back to the whole question of peace in our society.

Remember it’s Benedictines who made the first rules for war in the 12th and 13th century. By the time the Benedictines got done with them, you weren’t allowed to fight on Monday because that was Mary’s day; you weren’t allowed to fight on Wednesday because that was a fast day; you weren’t allowed fight on Friday because that was fast day; you couldn’t fight on Saturday because that was a special novena, and you certainly couldn’t fight on Sunday. That didn’t leave you a lot of time to destroy the whole world.

Now we discovered we can destroy the whole world in that one day, so we must bring the incarnation to these issues differently now, and instead of separating ourselves from the world, whatever that came to mean in the 19th century, we have the responsibility to be leaven wherever we are.

Lloyd: You don’t look like a nun any more.

Chittister: What’s a nun look like? (laughter)

Lloyd: They have, you know, one of those nice things on their head….

Chittister: Sam, see your eye doctor. You’re looking at nun.

Lloyd: But no, a whole shift could be symbolized in that in engagement with the world.

Chittister: And so you still have some orders who are calling our attention to the transcendency of spiritual commitment, and those who believe now that their responsibility is to be very incarnational. It’s the difference between the orthodox and the western Christian, isn’t it? The Greek orthodox is much more centered on the transcendent. The music, the icons, the liturgies, everything is otherworldly. It reminds you of the world to come. You and I say, go ye hence and take this with you.

Lloyd: This is the question I’ve been wanting to ask. We’ve been looking forward to having Sister Joan here. She writes for the National Catholic Reporter every week. She has beautifully articulated views on just about every public issue of the day, but when we called her and invited her to come, what she said she wanted to talk about was Benedictinism.

Chittister: Yeah.

Lloyd: Now why, with all the things going on in the world—first we need a brief primer. What is the Benedictine way, and why do you think is has something for us that we need to hear about?

Chittister: Well, it’s not unlike the answer to the first question, but it’s far more specific than that. Stanley Rothman, in a study done some years ago, I think at Brown, said that these are the values that drive modern society and especially our own: power, personal comfort, exploitation, control, individualism, and domination. In a major, in a major study. Rothman’s conclusions were, the values that drive contemporary society are power, personal comfort, exploitation, control, individualism, and domination. I have called in multiple writings Benedictinism the spirituality for the 21st century as it was for the 6th.

Lloyd: 6th century.

Chittister: For the 6th century. You know, the only thing older than Benedictinism in the church is the church, and the society was not terribly unlike what we see right now.

When a young Benedict comes to Washington to study and looks around, he says, there’s no saving this place. There’s nothing we can do here. He said it’s… this is its own world, and we need another world. So he begins to gather people around him.

He hasn’t tried… he doesn’t even try, doesn’t attempt to directly confront the prevailing society in which slavery was a given. The superpower was declining. Rome itself had been sacked. Remember that. The economy was skewed. There were so many poor and so few rich. What he said was, we need to live differently.

So he talks about work and holy leisure and community and stewardship and humility and peace. Where he was, slavery was outlawed. Where he was, everyone was equal—no lords, no nobles, no peons, no servants. Where he was, they… he said, we earn our bread by the sweat of brow, just like our ancestors before us. We’re not looking for handouts. We’re looking for service.

Isn’t it interesting that we live in a culture where the superpowers have declined, or has no one noticed the lack of respect for the United States now? The lack of power in the Soviet Union. But the United States can’t control Israel and the Soviet Union can’t control the Arabs.

We don’t have a superpower anymore except what’s sitting in this church today. The superpower is you. It’s you. The Sufis say, when the people will lead, eventually the leaders will follow.

Lloyd: So Benedict was trying to offer a countercultural vision of the way life is meant to be lived, and brought people to a place away to do that, but also, as a witness, back to the world of what might be a way to do that, to live that.

Chittister: Well, yes, I mean, like Isaiah. He drew small bands around him to teach them another vision and yet, ironically, for those who have traveled in Europe, you know that at the center of every village was the Benedictine monastery and church. The Benedictines became the people who taught Europe how to farm again. Remember that, when the Roman legions collapsed, the roads were no longer being protected. There was pillaging and looting and raping and stealing everywhere.

So what did the Benedictines do? They opened the first Embassy Suites in the world. We called them guesthouses, but our pride was that you could cross Europe and stay at a Benedictine guesthouse every single day for your entire trip and be safe. That was a social service. That was as important socially, and as obvious socially at that time, as opening a soup kitchen now, running a peace center, having a halfway house for women. It’s a very Benedictine thing. The whole 19th-century notion that Benedictines hide from the world is simply an indication that we know no history prior to the 19th century.

Lloyd: But here’s the question, if we… you have identified that we are in a problematic world, and a dangerous and troubling time, and this 6th-century monk has a vision for how that might be lived. You live as part of a community intentionally living that out, but most of us are unlikely to turn up in a monastery any time soon, at least permanently. So what does this monastic vision have to say to us, and what would it look like for us to begin to take that Benedictine vision seriously?

Chittister: I don’t mean to diminish the question, because it’s real, and I get it in every audience. But the fact of the matter is, here it is.

Whether these people know one another or not, there’s a common monastic question in every heart. They wouldn’t be here otherwise. What you’re doing is… remember that monastery in the center of the city? Here it is feeding the city, bringing the city in and going out to the city itself. The question is not whether or not you live in a geographical community, but that is terribly essential to monastic Benedictinism. But it is how you form these communities of the heart that somehow… you see, as we go, so goes the world.

It’s very interesting and very easy to sit here and criticize everybody downtown. But the whole question is, what is downtown hearing from this community? From you and from me? What voice are we raising?

Lloyd: So the stakes are high for what happens here.

Chittister: The stakes are huge. They’re not high anymore, they’re huge. They’re crucial; they’re urgent. And remember what happens after the fall of Rome. All of Europe tips into what we euphemistically call the Dark Ages. Don’t underestimate the fact that history can repeat itself, even in the United States of America.

Lloyd: And so providing that alternative witness, whether it’s here and other communities represented here, has to do with being in community in some way, reading scripture together in some way, praying together, finding balance, finding leisure…

Chittister: Yeah, holding those values, creative work.

Lloyd: And having a community work at that set of values together.

Chittister: That’s right. Work that leaves a world better when we each leave it than it was before we came. You know, Benedictine, that rule, there’s such a romantic and distorted notion of religious life and contemplative life.

We were confronted with that by Thomas Merton himself. You know, who led, who created the antiwar theology of the Vietnam War? It was this cloistered monk in a Cistercian convent, right? These are the people who stand outside but are not disinterested in their world. They’re totally committed their world and the way it goes together. That whole notion is equivalent; it’s a synonym for monasticism, and it doesn’t mean you run away. It means you stay where you are in order to keep that light. We like lighthouses. These little monasteries are just little lighthouses, that’s all they’re meant to be. So the people can remember those values. In the rule of Benedict, believe it or not, there is as much space and time allotted in the daily schedule to work as there is to meditation.

Lloyd: The problem is, if we start paying attention to Benedict’s rule, his practice, we have to start looking at the patterns of our own lives and finding balance and not working quite so hard and actually having Sabbath, and a lot of things that will start interrupting our busy, important lives.

Chittister: That’s right. And you know, you remember that the Benedictines, as I said, taught Europe to farm again. When the Cistercians when into France, for instance, and they were given land, they refused it. They took the worst land. They drained all the swamps. They reforested all of those valleys. They refused to exploit what was left.

This whole pollution question is a deeply spiritual question. It’s not a question, like as Rothman points out, of personal comfort or control or power. It’s a deeply spiritual question. It comes right out of Genesis. What is taking us so long to realize that it is the foundation for the link between heaven and earth? We can’t destroy what God made, in person or in thing, and say thank God I am not one of these. Thank God, I go the cathedral every week. I have my checklist, so many rosaries, so many novenas, so many fasts, so many conferences, so many teachings, so many passages of the Bible.

No. That’s not spirituality. That’s religion. The function of religion, religion at its best, points the way to the spiritual life. But we can stop before we get there and think ourselves very holy, very good. There’s always, always, always the greater depth. The Sufi talk about, the seeker goes to the master, and the master is dying, and they say to the master, if you die, with you gone, what will we do? How will we know what to do next? And the master looks at them and says, you must remember, I am only a finger pointing at the moon. When I am gone, God willing, you will begin to see the moon.

We’re missing the moon in too many places, using religion and spirituality as synonyms when, as a matter of fact, real religion leads to spiritual change.

Lloyd: You’ve called the time we’re living through a crossover moment in history, when just about everything is changing faster than we can imagine. The stakes are so high in terms of whether it’s nuclear danger, or whether it’s what’s happening to the environment. Do you think this Benedictine vision can make a difference with the rapidity and the sense of crisis and how fast so many things are moving?

Chittister: Well, something has to, and we do have the historical comfort of knowing it did before, and we do see that we’re lacking those same things again.

Lloyd: When Europe went dark, it was the Benedictine monastic communities that kept the light going for a long time.

Chittister: That’s right. All of those pretty books, you know, the Book of Kells, all of that illumination was simply the spiritual commitment to keeping the word of God alive, so that when Isaiah runs through the streets for three years, shouting power, greed and corruption, trying to… that’s not a recommendation, that’s just a historical reference. I have a footnote for that one. What they’re doing, both of them, in the prophetic tradition and the monastic tradition, is refusing to allow the word to die. Refusing to have the call suppressed. Refusing to allow the world to forget that we lack something, we lack something, and here’s what it seems to be.

Lloyd: So it’s not numbers, it’s not having the vast crowds in every congregation represented here or in this cathedral so much as the integrity of the witness because those were small communities spotted all over England… all over Europe that kept this living, breathing alternative vision of what human life can be going.

Chittister: That’s exactly right. There is… will be very few people in this church at this time, who know exactly how many people moveon.org is. We at least can name twelve, and the Benedictine communities, these small groups, where it’s the level of the commitment, it’s the degree of the willingness to risk. You know, those who risk nothing, risk much more, and that’s what’s happening in our own society.

We’re more inclined to go along because it’s easier than to say at the office party, “I have to tell you I don’t really agree with that,” or at least, “I have some serious questions about that,” or, “I’m not quite at peace with that.” We have learned, some place along the line in the 19th century, that it’s a lot better for us to keep our thoughts in our house than to try to talk them out with anybody or to learn more from the person who thinks very differently than you do, and to hold up to that conversation the criteria of the word of God. Ask how it fits, where it goes. If we’re not in a seeker’s conversation, how do we ever expect ourselves or anybody else to find it?

Lloyd: So maybe the best thing we can do, for the sake of what’s going on around us, is to form these communities of prayer and practices with each other, within our local congregations, wherever they are.

Chittister: What I have found successful, and what I find myself doing, and I thank you for that, Sam, because I probably wouldn’t have thought if it in this arena, but what I do everywhere, in every group… I have people, usually women, who will stand up in an audience, and they’ll say in essence, that’s fine for you, Sister Joan, but you have a community to go home to. You’re surrounded by like-minded people who give you support. If you could see my neighborhood, my office, my family, you would know that I’m just out there alone. And I’ve found myself telling people, you know, when it doubt, subvert. (laughter)

I think one of the most effective spiritual disciplines of this day is to gather your friends around you in discussion groups. Pick a good book, pick any book, and allow people to discuss it one chapter at a time. Choose fifteen people. Go to fifteen houses. One-and-one-half hours a week or a month.

It legitimates the opening of difficult and wonderful conversations. It legitimates faith sharing without calling it faith sharing ,and it will give you the opportunity make sure there are a couple Muslims, a couple Jews, find a Hindu, see a Buddhist, get them in the group—get them in the group. Bring the people that you go to church with or go to the club with or raise your kids with, and get to know one another and learn from one another. Share, share the journey, share the search. It’s the only way I know to really immerse a society, in a non-threatening and very spiritually developmental way, in the questions, the issues, the concerns of our time.

Lloyd: I should respond to that and say that, here at the Cathedral, we are starting something called a community of reconciliation, which is a Benedictine-grounded practice. We’re in the early stages, with a kind of pilot group trying to learn what it would look like here to bring people together for regular patterns of prayer and working with the rule. But that’s a model that could be taken to lots of congregations and lots of gatherings, as well as the more ad hoc kind, when people may just need to find each other first and get started along the way.

Chittister: That’s exactly right.

Lloyd: Let me ask you… I want to turn over questions to the audience in just a minute, but tell us something about the global peace initiative of women that you’re apart of. It sounds like it’s both interfaith women-focused, and addressing the large issues of the time.

Chittister: It’s a marvelous new model, I think. In the first place, religious figures, in my opinion, should indeed be a lighthouse, but I don’t think they should be a political force. I believe very strongly that, in a separation of church and state, and I believe if we do it right in our churches, without intimidating people spiritually or in any other way, then one is taken into those discussions will be the best that the Jesus has to offer.

At the same time, I believe that when we being to look for these models, they’re rare and, forgive me, but especially for women. So it’s a lot of women who have begun to gather around these books and these discussions. Out of the gatherings like that, incidentally, initiated by Kofi Annan at the U.N. In the year 2000, the U.N. had a summit of spiritual leaders, and Kofi looked around the room like this, and discovered that 85% of the people in pews were all male, and everybody knows who’s feeding the poor and arguing about housing and trying to find peace.

So Kofi said, this is insufficient. So he called another summit a couple years later in Geneva of spiritual… of women spiritual leaders. Out of that came this small body called the Women’s Global Peace Initiative, of which there are six of us. There’s a Protestant ordained woman, clergywoman—you know her, I’m sure, very well, Joan Brown, past secretary of the World Council of Churches. This little erstwhile Roman Catholic nun, a Hindu nun, Buddhist nun, a woman Jewish rabbi, and an orthodox Islamic scholar.

What’s our role? To go into places of conflict, to bring women together, either from both sides or from the entire society, to help them bond and raise their voice for what their society needs for their families, for their government, for their future. And it’s a kind of network building around globe.

We’ve been everywhere: Taiwan, Israel, Palestine, India, Africa. We have youth movements now, Japan. All of these, and in the youth movements it’s both male and female. In the adults sessions, we’re more inclined to work with the women in conflict situations, in order to help build very particular bridges between the so-called enemies.

Do we have any power? None. Do we have any money? Less. Do we have any great agendas? No. Then what are we doing? We’re bringing people together. We’re refusing to allow governments to choose our enemies. We’re subverting. We’re allowing people on the bottom a legitimate way and means and invitation to get to know one another, and to hear one another’s sufferings and pain.

It’s hard for me to believe that this little seed, this model isn’t growing very rapidly everywhere, because once you bring the differences into a room, they’re not differences any more, and they multiply themselves. It’s a wonderful, it’s a wonderful thing to be part of.

Lloyd: Sounds great. Over to the questions.

Deryl Davis: Do we have some questions? If you would, come forward for us. Thank you.

Question 1: I think you touched on this, but I’m wondering if there is a unifying paradigm that you see that would bring about the greatest transformation in the world. I’m talking about individual paradigms, how should we be citizens of the world, and what will create a more sacred sustainable life?

Chittister: I’m not exactly sure if you’re talking about a personal paradigm, I think I heard you say that, or a social structural paradigm. I really believe that, as we are, so goes the world.

Now I don’t believe you wait until you are perfect to do anything else. I think that’s a distortion. At the same time, I really meant to give the paradigm, in terms of those six or seven basic values that literally saved Europe in the 6th century that are badly needed here. You know, creative work, and stewardship and holy leisure that allows us… it’s holy leisure that sees people sleeping on the streets and says, why? It’s holy leisure who sees them starving in Darfur and says, why? It’s holy leisure who knows that a woman’s body is now the major instrument of war. Rape her to death and destroy that society. Holy leisure says, why?

This is not the separation of the spiritual and the actual. This says, we’re ruining the forest, why? We need stewardship, we need community where we had individualism, we need creative work where we’re looking for power and profit only. That is the paradigm. Humility.

If we had more humility we would be… we’d know our place in the universe. We wouldn’t think that we had to have strawberries in January regardless of the price to the pickers. We would know that we can live on, what we have, and not have to drain other countries to get it. That is the paradigm. That is the paradigm. (applause)

Question 2: Sister Joan, I’d just like to first of all say thank you for coming back to Washington. It’s a pleasure to have you back with us. I’ve read most all of your books, not your most recent one on aging, which I intend to get today, but of all the books that I’ve read, the one that has touched me the most deeply is your book called Called to Question, and the reason is that you put yourself out there. You reveal your vulnerabilities, your struggles, your deep questions, and how you have become the person that you are. So my question today is, in the years that have gone by since you wrote that book, what question or questions have emerged for you, and were you to add a chapter today, what question would you write about?

Chittister: The funny thing is, I know the answer to that question. I do have… and I find this question becoming more and more serious for me. I think the whole question of the way God works through all peoples, in other words, the question of the sanctifiability of all dimensions of the God question, and the place of Jesus in that for us, of course, but for the globe, is going to be the central theological question of this century. Because you cannot… if you want to avoid the next barbaric excursion into a new set of crusades, you are going to have to answer that question.

Question 3: I’m going to go from global to very personal. The book that you wrote that I live by is the Rule, the Benedictine rule, and in the rule there is a very small section that I want to ask you to talk about for everybody, and that is the Benedictine statement that there is to be no grumbling…

Chittister: The day we do without that, there’ll be nobody in the monastery either. (laughter) We have a line of monastic stories about grumblers.

Question 3: I’m sure of that, but there’s a reason why it’s in there, and I thought maybe you could comment on that.

Chittister: I was a Prioress for twelve years. (laughter) And a president for eight. I could comment for the rest of my life.

The fact of the matter is that what is happening there is, as that book, I think, shows over and over again, it isn’t so much what is said, but why it’s said, and what it has to do with spiritual development. And what Benedict is trying to teach us there is to realize that every moment in life is a spiritual moment.

If we don’t like it, what are we getting out of it? If we do like it, what are we getting out of it? That has more meaning than the meaning of the moment. When the rule says, don’t grumble, at the realistic level, at the pertinent level, I think he’s meaning, don’t polarize. He doesn’t mean, don’t face the fact that this cook is going to kill us. He means, deal with what must be dealt with, but do not allow it to become a threat to the Christian community. And we have the same issues on a family level, on a neighborhood level, on a country level, on a global level. Keep things in perspective and understand that whatever is your irritant now, it’s teaching you something. It’s meant to teach you something spiritual, and whatever your joy is now, maybe unbridled, it’s meant to teach you something on spiritual level too. It’s been given for a purpose. All of life is given for a purpose.

Question 4: You cite Rothman’s survey of power and domination, and yet, on the other hand, we should work against it. One, isn’t society basically the collective result of individual decisions, either to participate in that power domination paradigm or not? And two, aren’t you saying to the individual fighting against this, basically, you’re crucifying yourself, because you’ve got so much that you’re working against? And it’s a very unequal, David and Goliath is a great understatement.

Chittister: Well, you’ve put it very well. That’s exactly what we’re doing to ourselves. There’s no doubt about it. I’m a social psychologist by professional training, however, and we would be the first people to tell you out of that discipline that narcissism was never part of the mental health manual in this country until after 1980.

There is such a thing as the psychological tipping point, where a personal, immediate satisfaction can blind those who are blindable to even the effects and influence of what they’re doing to themselves. Translate you question differently. Why do people smoke cigarettes? We have all sorts of information that tell us that it is destructive of our own individual bodies. Because we’re addicted to something else. Because somehow or other we’ve missed the spiritual linkage between “thou shalt no kill” and “thou shalt not kill ourselves.” This is part of the human condition.

I’m always fond of reminding people that there was a time in Christian history when people made only one confession all their lives. You were only supposed to go to confession once. And then, after you went to confession, the assumption was that you would become immediately perfect. So what did people do? They’re not so dumb. This is when you began to get the concept of the deathbed confession. Put it off and hope. So you live it out here because you know your weakness, and you’re sorry about your weakness, even while you’re weak.

And around here someplace you say professionally, I’m sorry, I wish I hadn’t done it. It’s the whole notion of the fact that we are human that the spiritual life is a process. You don’t get it… I don’t care what they tell you about the age of reason at 7. You don’t get it then… You’ll be lucky if you have it at 97.

We had an old doll die in the monastery last week and she was worried about her spiritual life. She was 96. It’s part of the process. It’s part of being alive. It’s part of being spiritual. And you pray for… you always, you’re not, as mistress tells you, pray for the grace of conversion, pray for the grace to confront yourself.

Lloyd: Picking up just quickly on your comment about the appearance of narcissism on the scene in just a prevalent way, we could argue that the continuingly increasing sophistication of media, advertising, the ways we’re immersed in electronic information everywhere, and it seems always, to always be about yourself, and what you want, and you’re asked to vote on everything electronically, to offer a thought on everything, it’s all about you. Obviously that’s always in part of us going on, but the immense electronic communication that’s shaping the soul in some ways is really what you’re saying. How do we push back at that?

Chittister: Well, that’s where I think, see over time including our own, the religious education of my own generation was, as a matter of fact, very individualistic. Because America was the big melting pot, right? So you kept your religion to yourself so that we could all melt. Instead of recognizing that in each of those traditions was a great history of salvation that we should all be respecting and learning from.

So we lost meaning in some very important words. We talk very glibly about communion, community, now. Communal, community, we love to talk about, and what we mean is us. It’s as narcissistic a use of a word as you’ll ever hear on this earth.

Community at this moment in history has got to mean my real concern about Darfur. My insistence that somebody tell me how may Iraqis we’ve killed, because I want to weep for their families too. That’s community. And when my community is defined by a boundary that says something as superficial as “well, anyway we’re still the best of all possible worlds,” or, “we had to do it. We had no choice”… Nonsense. Nonsense. You have to have somebody who wants to make a choice instead of a deal. Wants to make community instead of power. Wants to make globalism instead of nationalism. That’s a choice. (Applause)

Question 5: Hello, sister. I think I may be the only Italian in here, coming from San Benedetto del Tronto in Italy.

Chittister: All right!

Question 5: I never thought I would see a Benedictine sister in an non-Catholic parish. I’m thrilled.

Chittister: So are we!

Lloyd: So are we! So are we! We’re thrilled!

Question 5: I also happen to be an Italian tour guide in the city and when I told my Italian group of 55 yesterday that there would be a Benedictine sister in church, they thought I was cuckoo. Anyway,…

Chittister: You go back and tell them you are far more sane than they are.

Question 5: I will. I’m elated to be here and hear you. I’d like to ask if there are young women entering the Benedictine order these days?

Chittister: Well, in the first place let me tell you the definition of young has already changed. (laughter) Let me give you a parallel. Let me remind you that, when the perpetuity of marriage was finally defined and became a universal concept, the average age of a woman at death was 28, and the average age of a man was 40, and since that time we’ve added almost two other lifetimes to hers and almost another lifetime to his.

So we wonder why, then, we are in the throes of a marriage question. The same thing is true in religious life. No, they don’t enter at 16 anymore. We wouldn’t permit it, and furthermore, we wouldn’t know what to do with one if it ever appeared! (laughter)

You can be absolutely sure the monastery would go mad with this kid bouncing around the refectory someplace. Now we live in a society were we have extended adolescence almost to the age of 30. When kids go to college they get college degrees, they walk off of the stage with a, what do you call it?

Lloyd: Diploma.

Chittister: A diploma in their hands, and you say to them, this is wonderful, John. Congratulations, what did you major in? The kid says, I don’t know. I didn’t ask in the office. How many credits I had in what? They’re still in process. They’re still learning, they’re still coming into something else.

The second thing is that you do have an institution in flux itself. You have to have a very mature spirituality now. It’s not just the promise of the hundredfold. Yours is a higher vocation. This is a way of life. It’s not a labor force that we’re talking about. It’s always been small, it’s always going to be small. So the answer, that’s a long answer, but it’s a real answer to your question. Yes, women are coming. No, they are not children anymore, and no, they are not coming in those great postwar groups where every… I did a study once, as prioress of the community, about the growth level of our own history. It was 1.81…an average of 1.81 new members a year. Now, I don’t know who the eight-tenth was, but that’s what the math was, if you like math. So I argue that we’re pretty much back to normal now, and that’s probably what we begin slowly the rise of this new awareness—yours and ours—of what it is to be part of that lighthouse in society now.

Question 6: Sister Chittister, thank you for Chautauqua last year and your example in interfaith dialogue. I find the concept of atonement a barrier in interfaith dialogue. Renee Gerard, a Catholic scholar, and I just took a course in Gerard, claims that Jesus did not die for our sins, but rather he was murdered, executed, and that his killing was as a scapegoat. I wondered if you would…

Chittister: His killing was what, Miss?

Question 6: A scapegoat.

Chittister: Scapegoat. Let’s…you have to bear with me. I mean, you people ask such good questions, yes and no doesn’t work as an answer.

Lloyd: Would you say what atonement is for everyone?

Chittister: Yes, that’s where I’m going to go. The atonement theory… the atonement theory, it’s never been called an atonement doctrine. It’s the atonement theory, and I think it is first verbalized by St. Anselm, is that about the 13th century, just like we’re sitting around trying to figure out what this means and this means, and why this would have happened and how that is, so were they. They were seeing a world in great upheaval, and they were looking for a reason.

Let me interrupt myself and digress for a minute. Up until the bubonic plague, the major image of Jesus in the cathedrals and in the roof of the cathedral was Jesus the Pantocrator, Jesus God, Jesus giver of the word. When the bubonic plague hit Europe, and we lose almost half the population of Europe within a matter of a couple years, people needed to know why that happened. Why? And the answer came back, it had to be because of your sin. And all of a sudden the images in the churches changed to hellfire, to damnation.

So when they’re trying in the 13th century to make sense of Jesus and the relationship between heaven and earth, Anselm says, we’re all sinful people. Anselm came off of a conversation like this and said, look, we’re all struggling, and none of are really going to make it, and we know that. We will struggle through our spiritual lives all our lives. So we’re not worthy of God. So how can we even begin to think that we’ll go to God. Ahh! Because Jesus came and already took care of our sins, died for our sins.

Now, people are now trying to call to our attention the whole notion that the atonement theory was a theory, but it makes God… now the question is, why would God send his son to die? That’s a human sacrifice theme. So the scholars say, look, you have to understand something. Jesus was executed by the system he threatened. Like Stephen Biko, maybe, was executed by the system he threatened.

Now, which is right and which is wrong? In the first place, none of us can say definitively. I always go back to my second grade teacher, who told me that God was pure spirit, and nobody knew anything about God. Then, in third grade, they began to tell me every single thing down to God’s buttons… I put my money with my second-grade teacher now. I have a notion she was lot more right than the rest of them. So the fact of the matter is, they’re asking us to quit looking at the death of Jesus as if God just threw Jesus away for our sakes, not to worry, don’t be concerned, and understand that systems destroy good. That systems can be so evil that they work against the will of God, and once you know that, you know the whole story, not just one-half of it.

Lloyd: One more very brief question I’m afraid.

Question 7: Good morning sister and thank you for being here with us today. I met a group of women this morning at our Catholic parish in Maryland, and one of them said, isn’t it ironic that we’re driving away from our Catholic parish to go here a Catholic religious speak in an Episcopal nave? Thank you, and I hope someday we will be able to welcome you into our nave.

Chittister: Thank the Episcopalians, they’re great.

Lloyd: We’re glad to do it.

Question 7: I have the privilege of teaching in an Episcopal school, and we begin our day in prayer, we do many of the right things, we’ve become a green school, we are partnering with an orphanage in Kenya, but what should the overarching themes be for those of us who work with children and for parents raising children, because it is for, after all, the children who will change this world?

Chittister: I think it’s a short one, and I think it refers back to that woman’s question about the paradigm. I think we have to teach children that God is no one’s color, gender, or flag. That God speaks in many tongues and comes in many faces, and that we are not anymore God’s chosen than anyone else is, and that learning and hearing how God has worked in all those other magnificent traditions can only increase our understanding of who Jesus really was. Teach them to be a saint of the world ,and teach them to see sainthood in this entire world. You do that, the rest of us won’t have a problem. (applause)

Lloyd: It is painful to bring this conversation to an end. What a wonderful way to end our first year of the Sunday forum and we hope that in the second year of the Sunday forum we can get Sister Joan back to continue the conversation. (applause)

Sister Joan is going to stop by briefly in the back for coffee but she also is preaching the sermon at the 11:15 service today so she won’t have long. We would love for you all to linger for the service that begins at 11:15 today. One more time, join me in thanking Sister Joan.

Chittister: Thank you, God bless you.