Among American Catholic religious women, there is no better-known personality than Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, the aging enfant terrible of “progressive” theological dissent. The media, Catholic as well as secular, have seen to it that she sustains that role long after its pertness has worn off. Ever since Pope John Paul II slammed the door shut on women’s ordination with Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), Chittister has been holding the candle for it even higher before many audiences—ones sprinkled, I notice in the pictures, with the same generous proportions of gray hair as she and most of the herd of independent progressive minds. Her latest salvo has been launched into the current C of E flap about the looming prospect of women bishops, over which many traditionalist Anglican clergy are threatening, rather to her bemusement, to bolt to Rome. Freshly written for the Natholic Catholic Reporter (known among non-cafeteria Catholics as “The Distorter”), Chittister’s piece is an object lesson in theological fatuity.
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