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In an address last night that was as hard hitting politically as it was
theologically, visiting Benedictine Sister, Sr
Joan Chittister, called on Christian people to rediscover the
spirituality of St Benedict that played such a crucial role in saving
European civilisation at the beginning of the sixth century.
Sr Chittister's address was delivered as the keynote address of the 150th
Anniversary Celebrations in Australia of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan
of the Order of St Benedict. The popularity and appeal of Sr Chittister
was testified to by the fact that the 900 tickets on sale for the lecture
were sold out seven weeks in advance of the lecture being held. Organisers
of the lecture informed the audience last night that the demand for tickets
was so high that the lecture hall at Mount St Benedict's College in Pennant
Hills could have been filled many times over. The audience was also informed
that large groups of people travelled from all States of Australia to
attend this lecture.
The thrust of the lecture
The thrust of Sr Joan's lecture was to link the major ills of Western
society its arrogance; its exploitation of the third world; its
exploition of our environment and our planet's finite renewable resources;
the social disintegration of communities; the relentless measurement of
everything in terms of monetary profit and the discounting of the importance
of understanding the value in leisure and sabbath; the ungodly emphasis
on the production of armaments at the expense of other forms of human
productive effort; a culture that encourages violence and exploitation
rather than the pursuit of peace through what we screen on our media
to a contrasting set of values that sit at the heart of Benedictine Spirituality.
These values, Sr Chittister argued, are the values that St Benedict preserved
and nurtured and which are credited with being the tools that this Patron
Saint of Europe used to save Western civilisation when it was in imminent
danger of being snuffed out at the beginning of the sixth century.
She argues the world needs to urgently re-discover the wisdom and gentleness
of Benedictine spirituality if we are to successfully address the many
challenges that face our present-day world.
Certainly to this reporter, this lecture was a tour de force
probably the single most powerful address I have heard delivered by any
spiritual leader or politician in this country in half a century. Sr Joan
Chittister is such an unlikely figure to project the power and passion
that she does. She could be the favourite and gentlest of aunts to any
of us. Yet the way she modulates her voice; her capacity for "the
memorable phrase" that condenses complex concepts in science, sociology,
economics, politics or theology down to a thimble-sized idea that packs
more power than that contained in a nuclear power plant; her powerful
use of gesture; all these things she uses with consumate skill that it
is little wonder she has become one of the most powerful leaders in modern
Catholicism and is euphemistically referred to as "Pope Joan"
by critics and fans alike.
The full recording of Sr Joan Chittister's lecture is going to be published
on the Good Samaritan's website (www.goodsams.org.au)
in the next few days. To whet your appetite for that here are a few edited
highlights from my reporter's recorder. Please forgive the quality. I
am sure the full recording that will be available on the Good Samaritan's
website will be a significant improvement on this. Any of these excerpts
though could have provided multiple headlines for this story.
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FROM THE CONCLUSION WHERE SR JOAN SUMS UP HER ARGUMENT:
We can take our disintegrating world back, one heart at a
time
let us live Benedictine spirituality for another fifteen
hundred years certainly, at least, for the remainder of our
own lifetimes and illuminate our own darkening world.
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Use controller above to listen to this 3m15sec
excerpt. If you cannot access the controller above you will find
the sound file at: www.catholica.com.au/media/JoanChittister01.mp3
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ON THE BENEDICTINE SPIRITUALITY OF COMMUNITY:
Narcissism has become the hallmark of Western culture
it is a sin against human community
Benedictine Spirituality
of Community calls for more than togetherness. That's the very cheapest
sort of community. Benedictine Spirituality calls for the community
of the open mind and the open heart. It calls for the conscious
inclusion of differences. It calls for the conscious, and conscientious,
enlargement of our comfort zones. It calls us to a commitment to
making strangers our friends. It calls us to ask the question who
have you invited to supper lately?
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Use controller above to listen
to this 5m54sec excerpt. If you cannot access the controller above
you will find the sound file at: www.catholica.com.au/media/JoanChittister02.mp3
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ON THE BENEDICTINE VALUE OF HUMILITY:
The commitment to the development of global community is the
leadership needed in a new millennium
in a culture that hoards
money, and titles, and power, and prestige like gold, Benedict makes
the keystone value of his Rule of Life a chapter on Humility that
was written for Roman men! To live well in this world we must steep
ourselves in the mind of God. We must ask what God wants for this
world rather than simply what we want for our private, personal
selves
So we must all come again to fear God, to know God
in everyone, to become aware that only God is God! We have made
ourselves the God of the 21st Century to whom the rest of the world
pays tribute. Tonight in India, children between the ages of 5 and
15 years are working 70 to 110 hours a week for 6 cents an hour
making jeans and suits and shirts and shoes for us, and toys for
our children, while we practice economic pedophilia on them!
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Use controller above to listen
to this 5m48sec excerpt. If you cannot access the controller above
you will find the sound file at: www.catholica.com.au/media/JoanChittister03.mp3
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