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

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Janet B. Campbell Click photo for larger image. Sister Joan D. Chittister Age: 69 Position: Benedictine nun; author; speaker; columnist for National Catholic Reporter and Beliefnet; executive director of Benetvision: Research and Resource Center for Contemporary Spirituality; co-chair, The Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and other Spiritual Leaders. Education: B.A., English, Mercyhurst College, 1962. M.A., communication arts, Notre Dame University, 1968. Ph.D., speech-communication theory, Penn State University, 1971. Previous positions: President, Conference of American Benedictine Prioresses, 1974-90; prioress, Benedictine Sisters of Erie, 1978-90; president, Leadership Conference of Women Religious, 1976-77; co-chair, U.S. Catholic Committee, Project Global 2000, 1991-94; Walter Brueggeman Chair of Ecumenical Theology, Xavier University, 2001; teacher, Erie parochial schools and St. Joseph Catholic High School-Venango Christian High School, Oil City, 1955-71. Professional honors: Hildegard of Bingen Women for the World Award, St. Scholastica Academy, Chicago, 2002; Distinguished alumna awards, Penn State and Notre Dame universities and Mercyhurst College; Pennsylvania Honor Roll of Women, 1996; U.S. Catholic Award for Furthering the Cause of Women in the Church, U.S. Catholic Magazine, 1992; 11 honorary doctorates. Publications: Thirty-two books as author and editor, including "The Way We Were: A Story of Conversion and Renewal" (2005); "Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir" (2004, 1st place award in spirituality, Catholic Press Association); "Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope," (2003, best general interest award, Association of Theological Booksellers); "The Story of Ruth: Twelve Moments in Every Woman's Life" (2000); "Passion for Life: Fragments of the Face of God" (1996, 1st place award, Catholic Press Association); "There Is a Season" (1995, 1st place award, Catholic Press Association). The Series Click here to view other installments in this continuing series.

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."

Sitting in the lounge of a home in which her office is located near the Lake Erie waterfront, Chittister said she would like to be known for her advocacy for the world's poor and her pursuit of peacemaking.

But like it or not, as the Roman Catholic Church struggles to find enough clergy to serve its parishioners, the issue of women's ordination, not to mention married priests, won't go away.

Neither will her uncomfortable questions.

"I have simply argued for years that if a woman is not half a person, if she is really a full person ---- if her baptism is really as authentic as anyone else's baptism, and her call to discipleship is as deep as anyone else's, then don't we have to discuss the theological implications of this as a church?

"Now, I have said I don't see any reason at this stage to deny women ordination. But the real question is, I fear that if we don't study this as a church, to the point where the next step is obvious to everyone, no matter how painful, it will affect the church deeply."

She believes in change

To those who argue that God's revelation through the church calls for priests to be men, she asks some more questions.

"Is everything we were ever to know about religion, about faith . . . did we know all that in the year 3 A.D.? Did we ever learn anything about it since?

"Now it seems to me that we have.

"For instance, we learned, thanks to the Protestants, that people could read the Bible for themselves and not lose their souls.

"We learned that you could hold a telescope and it could tell you more about the cosmos than the Book of Genesis did.

"We also learned that you could charge interest for the use of money ---- which we once considered a mortal sin ---- and still be considered a moral people. . . .

"We even learned you could have black skin and be a full human being, and therefore we had to stop segregating our churches, our schools and our society."

So it seems quite possible to her that all the answers about women and the priesthood are not in yet.

Joan Chittister is not the only nun who has spoken out on women's ordination and other controversial issues.

But she has been doing it longer than many others, and her life experiences have taught her from the beginning what it means to be different.

Her father died when she was 3, and when her mother married a Protestant, she became the only girl in her Catholic school "whose parents weren't both Catholic."

Today, when Catholics are "just as likely to come home married to Hindus or Muslims as Lutherans," she says, it is hard for younger people to imagine the sense of scandal that a Catholic-Protestant marriage once caused.

These tensions "broadened me and deepened me," she recalled. "There were a lot of things as a little girl that I had to think through."

She entered the convent at the age of 16, and almost immediately faced her next test.

Overcoming polio

"I entered the Benedictines Sept. 8," she said. "I got polio Oct. 15."

Her case was severe enough to paralyze an arm and a leg and put her in an iron lung for months. It took her four years to recover, and there was a question of whether she would be able to continue her religious vocation.

From that ordeal, she learned endurance and a sense of balance. Those who recover from polio know, she said, that they must always use their limbs ---- but never too much.

Chittister also realized from that experience that "you can make a wonderful life out of all the pieces you are given. There is no magic set of pieces for a good life or a happy life. You can choose how you deal with the circumstances of your life."

There were other painful lessons along the way: her mother, a brilliant woman who Chittister believes could have been a doctor in another time and place, suffered from progressive Alzheimer's disease the last 28 years of her life; her stepfather had a lifelong drinking problem, and its physical toll contributed to his death after an auto accident several years ago.

But none of these ordeals, she said, ever affected her faith ---- and that has much to do with her understanding of who God is.

"I've always been very clear about the fact that God is God, and humans are human.

"Let me give what seems to be a very remote example. I've been arguing for 20 years that to pray to God to eliminate nuclear weapons, if what we're praying for is a magic act by God, that is some sort of blasphemy.

"We made nuclear weapons, and we can eliminate them when we decide to. This was not an act of God."

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.

But she feels the pain of seeing what the church is doing to many faithful women.

"Every time I speak to a group, afterward people flow up to the dais, basically women, and I have now heard the phrase 'I was raised Catholic' so many times it breaks my heart.

"All the surveys indicate that well over 50 percent of the [American] church supports a married priesthood and the ordination of women, for instance.

"So what you have here is a body approaching critical mass. And if the church ceases to grow, if it refuses to deal with these questions . . . , the church will become a cult, not a church."

When Catholic women ask her what they should do, she has this characteristic advice:

"I always tell them, if you're going to leave, don't leave quietly.

"And if you're going to stay, don't stay quietly."