Let us exercise the supernatural power of love which Christ has given us, and pray for Joan Chittister OSB and her dismayed sisterhood. I knew her very well 25 years ago: very well. I do pray that the Lord Christ can work the enemy's grappling hooks out of her and pull her to safety at the last. (What I would want for myself, too.) She will be 76 in two days, April 26.
You are welcome.
Was Joan Chittester pro-life back then?
Nearly thirty years ago, I sent a Christmas card to the nun who had taught me in nursery and kindergarten. Sr. Frances Julie of the then still Catholic Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She has retired from the classroom and was running the gift shop at the Mother House in Fairfield, CT. Unlike the others at the Mother House, Sr. Frances insisted on wearing her habit at all occasions when she might be in public or at worship, that she had taken her vows as a young teenager, had lived them all of her long life, had earned that habit and would wear it so long as she lived. I had asked her in my Christmas card what had happened to each nun that I had as teachers at the grammar school I had attended. She reported that fully half had left the convent altogether and that other than Sr. Frances, the rest had made their peace with the rising radicalism in her order. Sr. Frances wrote that she would have left the convent in disgust but that her entire family had been dead for many years and she had no place to go. She was an heroic and magnificent and beloved nun. Each time she was transferred, the parish she was leaving would hold a testimonial dinner in her honor. I knew of no other nun who was so honored.
The Lord Jesus Christ can certainly work the enemy's grappling hooks out of Sr. Joan Chittester but he likely will not violate her free will in doing so. He may well provide her with an infinite supply of unearned graces of repentance but it will still be up to her to accept them or to reject them. And, of course, she is not alone in the perceived misbehavior that has marked so much of her career when she should have been pursuing her vocation instead in faithfulness to Jesus Christ. I join in your prayers for her and for them all.
May God bless you and yours!