This interview with American Benedictine nun, Joan Chittister, continues the series recorded for Eureka Street at the Parliament of the World's Religions held in Melbourne in December 2009. It is sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Centre for Inter-Religious Dialogue in the Australian Catholic University. (Continues below)
As well as advocating inter-religious dialogue, Chittister is an articulate and fearless feminist voice in the Catholic Church. In the interview she explains the vital importance of forums like the Parliament that promote dialogue, and how her mixed religious upbringing gave her an appreciation of other belief systems and a new interpretation of the story of the Tower of Babel,. She also speaks about the vexed place of women in the Church.
Chittister's biological father died when she was very young, and her Irish Catholic mother remarried a Scottish Presbyterian. So, while growing up, she experienced and came to appreciate both sides of the bitter Catholic/Protestant sectarian divide.
In the mid-1950s she joined the Benedictine Sisters of Erie in northern Pennsylvania, and for 12 years served as Prioress of this branch of the order. From 1974 till 1990, she was president of the Conference of American Benedictine Prioresses, and also had a term as president of the US Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organisation representing over 75,000 women in religious orders.
She is one of the founding members of the International Peace Council, a group of high profile religious leaders from all the major faiths, including the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They meet annually at trouble spots around the globe and try to help resolve concrete peace and justice problems in each particular location.
She is a prolific author, and a regular columnist for the US National Catholic Reporter. She is the founding director of Benetvision, a resource centre for contemporary spirituality located in Erie.
In 2000 she and the Erie Benedictine nuns became embroiled in a very public dispute with the Vatican. She was invited to be keynote speaker at the first Women's Ordination Worldwide Conference in Dublin. The Vatican's Congregation for the Consecrated Life wrote to the then prioress asking her to stop Chittister from attending.
A letter written by the prioress, and signed by all the Erie Benedictines (except one dissenter), in the name of a higher obedience, expressed her refusal to comply:
'I cannot be used by the Vatican to deliver an order of silencing. Benedictine