Joan Chittister

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.

Joan Chittister: I saw recent hints that our country — after years of protests about police brutality, women's equal rights, justice for all — may be beginning to boil over.

Joan Chittister: We must allow ourselves to face, to mourn, what is happening to our lives, to our country, to our church. And the Beatitudes are clear: What we ourselves do will be what will "comfort" our mourning.

Joan Chittister: Without poverty of spirit, simplicity of desire, or contentment with enoughness, there can be no awareness of the riches that come with simply being alive, of being loved and loving earth and all in return.

Joan Chittister: In a world of warring tribes and ever larger bombs and the displacement of thousands, how could "blessed are the meek" possibly have real meaning for us in this day and age? I'll tell you.

The renewal of the United States depends, Jesus' declaration of the Beatitudes implies, on us, on our own integration of these values in life — regardless of the system we see being bent out of shape or the toxic individualism that is poisoning it.

From Where I Stand: In 2020, common good, the general welfare, collapsed in the United States. Many lost their rights to life while others crowed their freedom to do whatever they pleased in the name of "Americanism."

From Where I Stand: Benedictinism is about the essence of the Rule of St. Benedict and its place in the culture and in the soul of humanity, now. That's what Patrick Henry preserves for us in his upcoming book on Benedictinism.

From Where I Stand: The greenness of life is withering, and we are late in coming to consciousness about climate change while we wait for the government or science to save us as we ignore the damage we are doing to ourselves.

From Where I Stand: As long as we silently accept Donald Trump's big lie and do nothing to expose it, he will see that the people he lied to about it keep voting the lie's carriers into office.

From Where I Stand: Now in its infancy, a new form of synodality — such a rare model of operation in the Roman church — is fast becoming a new sign of both hope and despair.