 16 Jun 2007 @ 20:48, by Unknown
Sister Joan D. Chittister on "spiritual action".
The following is an extract from, "Be Not Silent," from her interview with James Kullander, published in the June 2007 issue of The Sun.
Kullander: You’re engaged in political affairs, but you’re also a religious person. Do you feel more politically engaged than religiously engaged? Or is this a false dichotomy?
Chittister: I wouldn’t be involving myself with social questions if I weren’t a Benedictine Sister. I am not a politician. Nor was Jesus. But he kept pointing out how the system failed the people it purported to serve.
(…)
My own efforts are not political acts for me. What I do has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with justice, equality, compassion, and mercy. We’re here to take care of the garden, but we’re tearing it apart. If you have a religious heart, how can you not speak to this? How can you not be there with the poorest of the poor, who are bearing the brunt of the sins of this system? This, for me, is a religious and spiritual obligation — nothing more and nothing less.
Kullander: Isn’t the religious Right making the same argument you’re making about the fundamental connection between religion and politics?
Chittister: It is one thing to contribute to the public discussion of political issues so that laws can be passed on behalf of the common good. It is entirely another to attempt to cement one’s own religious principles into the law of the land in a pluralistic society. For instance, the Catholic Church has always opposed divorce, but to my knowledge no Catholic group has ever attempted to outlaw divorce for those whose religions allow it. Nor did Catholics try to get the government to close hamburger stands on Fridays because we didn’t eat meat on that day. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union tried banning alcohol in this country, and it didn’t work. That doesn’t mean people approve of alcoholism. It simply means that trying to outlaw all alcohol because some people are abusing it is a greater injustice. There’s no reason we can’t have laws against public drunkenness, but we don’t have to criminalize every glass of wine.
In a pluralistic society such as ours, it is up to the churches to try to influence public behavior according to their own moral values. We Catholics can encourage people to stay married, but the possibility for divorce should still be there when the alternative is worse.
Kullander: We hear a lot today about “spiritual activism.” Can you define that for me?
Chittister: I don’t call it “activism.” I call it “spiritual action in response to the call of the prophets and the psalmists.” It’s that simple for me. I can’t make it theoretical. I just know that after I sit in a chapel and read the Scriptures and pray the Psalms, I want to go into the world and help. And the energy for helping comes from that tradition of God’s justice and mercy.
(…)
Kullander: Your writings have a profound urgency about them. They convey outrage, compassion, frustration, impatience, patience — so many deeply felt and contradictory states of mind.
Chittister: If you define as blind acceptance of a bad situation, then I’m not serene. But if you define serenity as being willing to surrender to present circumstances while keeping a vision of a better future in mind, then I am that. I know things move slowly, and I know that massive injustice continues if nobody points out that the emperor has no clothes. Was Mahatma Gandhi serene? He was indeed, but he led one of the greatest revolutions we’ve ever seen. Was Martin Luther King Jr. serene? Yes, he had a rock inside him. Serenity is being aware of both what is and what can be, and having the patience to get from the former to the latter. The opposite of serenity is when you destroy what is, in pursuit of what ought to be. And those who take that route destroy themselves as well as the society around them.
Kullander: Like Mao Tse-tung in China and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union>
Chittister: Yes. They each had a vision but… they would not permit dissenting voices. They imposed change by force, jus as we are now imposing democracy in Iraq.
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