Sent to b-mcmanus@rogers.com
National Catholic Broadcasting Council
Dear NCBC,
I lived and worked with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Sr. Joan Chittister's religious associates, for eleven years. I am well acquainted with both the strengths and the weaknesses of her public witness to the Faith.
Inasmuch as Sr.Chittister will appear with your sponsorship to discuss a theology of aging, it seems unnlikely that she will broach the subjects for which her unfaithfulness to the Faith and Morals of the Catholic Church have made her notorious: abortion, contraception, and unlawful ordination.
However, the public prominence she has given to these grave errors makes her unsituable for your forum, or for any Catholic platform.
I wish to give you only one example, though these could be multiplied. Sr. Chittister has often voiced the following error:
“Men, men can kill for a number of reasons,” she continued. “Men can kill to defend themselves, men can kill to defend the country, men can kill to punish the people that they believe should be killed. And we never call those deaths absolute. ... But in abortion, we allow no discussion whatsoever of possible times when it would not be a matter.” Sr. Chittister has been casting the moral condemnation of abortion as discrimation against women, in exactly the terms described above, for 40 years. She has been corrected many times on this. I have done it myself, directly, both in privarte correspondance and in person.
Knowing that she has repeatedly had the elemntary moral distinctions explained to her in a manner than any person of adequate intelligence could understand, I don't know how to explain her continued rebarbative errors.
I sincerely wish her well. We must pray for her.But we must not give her a platform, or honors, or an increased capacity to mislead and to scandalize.
Sincerely,
[signed]
Seems like we should contact her Bishop about ex-communicating her.
It may not work, but we could give it a try.