Letters

Today I'm going to plug one of our newer books, Dear Joan Chittister: conversations with women in the church that was published a few months ago. It's a very, very interesting little book, put together by eleven 22-35 year old women who attended a spirituality institute here that Benetvision sponsored a couple years ago. All of them are somehow involved in theology or religious studies or a similar area. In the book they each write a short letter about an issue and Sister Joan responds in a letter back to them.

The topics range from such things as:mentoring younger women, divorce and its effects on women, how to handle patriarchy in parishes, how to live authentically. In this month's US Catholic magazine, with a cover story ironically on Benedictine monks in Chicago, they ran a excerpt from the book---a full letter to and from Joan. The subject was: male only pronouns versus inclusive language. I don't know where to buy this issue, outside of libraries such as ours, but here's a 5-minute youtube video of the editor, Jessie, giving an overview.

The whole concept of young, educated Catholic women musing over the things about "church" that interest and bother them, is very attractive and interesting. Listen to Jessie and enjoy. BTW, six of the eleven letter writers are going to be here this weekend for a kind of reunion and to celebrate their project.

P.S. if you'd like a copy of the excerpt in the magazine, I'll send you one, just ask.