For centuries the church has confronted the human community with role models of greatness. We call them saints when what we really often mean to say is 'icon,' 'star,' 'hero,' ones so possessed by an internal vision of divine goodness that they give us a glimpse of the face of God in the center of the human. They give us a taste of the possibilities of greatness in ourselves.
Joan D. ChittisterWe talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.
Joan D. ChittisterA hard heart makes for hard judgments; a compassionate heart understands the humanity of the one we presume to judge.
Joan D. ChittisterThe spiritual response is too often a simplistic one: we abandon God or we blame God for abandoning us.
Joan D. ChittisterFeminism without spirituality runs the risk of becoming what it rejects: an elitist ideology, arrogant, superficial and separatist, closed to everything but itself. Without a spiritual base that obligates it beyond itself, calls it out of itself for the sake of others, a pedagogical feminism turned in on itself can become just one more intellectual ghetto that the world doesnโt notice and doesnโt need.
Joan D. Chittister