Joan Chittister

Listen: In this episode Sr. Joan Chittister describes how she came to understand the significance of other traditions. Her understanding of the world's wisdom carries practical implications for each of us.
 

Listen: Sr. Joan Chittister still feels the negative effects of being a woman in the Catholic Church, but she also thinks on many levels and in society, things have changed for the better.
 

Childhood memories became a significant force behind Sr. Joan Chittister's relentless advocacy for women in all circumstances, in the church, in society, across cultures.
 

Listen: Sister Joan recounts an incident of struggle in her early life and the lifelong insights that emerged from it.

What kind of leadership will we get? Whatever it is, we must always remember that in a democracy, we put the leaders there ourselves and so we must save it ourselves, as well.

Listen: Sr. Joan Chittister talks with Sr. Valerie Luckey, a 36-year-old who entered the Erie Benedictines in 2016. The two provide a look at where tradition sparks and a new, engaging future emerges.

Listen: The much smaller and aging corps of women religious may suggest that this way of religious life is over. "Wrong," says Sr. Joan Chittister, in episode 3 of her podcast, "Risking the Questions."
 

Listen: Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister has a reputation as one who dares to ask big, bold questions. Explore them with her in this podcast conversation with her friend and biographer, former NCR editor Tom Roberts.

"Until a world at peace refuses to be warmakers, our own lives are in danger of dying for what we have created," Sr. Joan Chittester writes. 

We are, it seems, not asking the right questions, argues Sr. Joan Chittister. Which means that we will therefore be without the answers we need to save the entire country.

Everyone who met Bishop Gumbleton left with an understanding that the world was his congregation and you were simply lucky to have found your way to the center of it.

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. 

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.

From Where I Stand - The 40,000 women at the U.N. Conference on Women 25 years ago in Beijing stood up and said no to invisibility. No to powerlessness. And then they said yes — and listed all the things that needed to be done.