Joan Chittister: Her Journey from Certainty to Faith by Tom Roberts (review)

This in-depth biography of Sister Joan Chittister, a Catholic nun, member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA, and a very active public participant in the ecclesial and cultural life of the contemporary church is written by Tom Roberts, well-known to many progressive Catholics as a long-time editor and now editor-at-large of the prizewinning independent weekly newspaper, the National Catholic Reporter. Roberts is also the author of the perceptive analysis of post-conciliar Catholicism, The Emerging Catholic Church: A Community’s Search for Itself (2011). His interest and expertise in this subject of contemporary ecclesial renewal influences his approach to Joan Chittister’s life and work and emerges explicitly in one of the most important sections of the book, chapter 10, “Into Uncharted Waters.” In this thoughtful concluding chapter, he places Chittister’s life in the context of the renewal of the church and especially of U.S. women’s religious life in the post-conciliar period, showing her to be not only one of its major catalysts but also a striking exemplar of both its challenges and its promise. It is this larger focus which will make the book of interest not only to Catholic insiders, especially women religious and those who have profited from Chittister’s broad contributions to the spiritual, ecclesial, and justice agenda of the church, but also to those interested in developments in the wider sphere of religion in the second half of the twentieth century.

The Chittister biography began in a routine assignment. Roberts was asked to “refresh the file” of the NCR on the well-known activist nun, that is, be sure the paper had an up-to-date resource in case an obituary for Chittister were needed on short notice. Chittister, born in 1936, turns 80 this year but this book certainly suggests that her life story is far from over. She remains in high demand as a writer and speaker and deeply involved in the ongoing renewal of religious life, the Catholic Church, and the world. The initial contact of Roberts with Chittister, with its very limited objective, led to a lengthy process of wide-ranging and even intimate interviews and extensive research that became the material for this fascinating biography of one of the most influential women in the contemporary Catholic Church and indeed among social activists of our time within and outside the church.

The work is somewhat unusual in the “life-story” genre. The subject, Joan Chittister, is not only alive but highly active and deeply involved in the contemporary Catholic scene. What she will do and become in the years ahead is in no sense pre-determined or predictable. So, this is neither a completed biography nor exactly a “memoir” although it involves a great deal of deep reflection on her part, shaped by Roberts’s probing interviewing and interpretation, about the significance of much that has transpired in her life and in the church and world, especially in the fifty years since Vatican II.

Nor is the book a “vicarious autobiography” because Chittister did not read the manuscript prior to its publication. Consequently, this is the story of Chittister, a woman religious, interpreted by Roberts, a lay man, which raises some interesting questions about interpretations of some aspects of religious life, at least for this reviewer.

And, although there is no fudging of the more unsavory aspects of the institutional church’s treatment of women in general and intelligent, influential women like Joan Chittister in particular, there is nothing vindictive in Chittister’s account, even of the patent injustice and psychological violence to which she and her community were subjected by the Vatican’s curial office charged with the oversight of religious congregations which treats Chittister as not simply an irritant but as a threat to its absolute authority. The book is not a “tell all” or “get even” manifesto in any sense although it renders a real service in the agenda...