In the news sporadically has been the crackdown by the Vatican powers over the women religious in the United States. The nuns that I know selflessly work in hospitals, education, with the poor.  They live simply, quietly and have dedicated their lives to God through service to the “least of us.”  Most of them are in their 60s and older. But the Vatican is all concerned that they may be “radical feminists” and are “contradicting the bishops.” Well, I should hope so since far too many of those guys are hiding pedophile priests and preaching one-issue political positions from their pulpit.  “Radical feminism” means caring for women instead of anonymous embryos and fetuses or simply going out into the world and serving those no one else, including the Catholic hierarchy, can be bothered with.

This current movement from the Roman Catholic hierarchy is just another reason to abandon a church that was allegedly founded upon the simple sayings of a itinerate carpenter who is spectacularly silent upon all the issues that the church leaders are so passionately against: women as priests and church leaders, homosexuals as anything, and women having choices over their own lives.

I cannot understand how thinking Roman Catholics can continue to bracket the prejudice and deep injustices of the church and continue to call themselves Catholics.  Most Catholics compartmentalize  their faith, leaving doctrine at the church door as they rejoin their life in progress.  But why would want one to be part of an organization that has rejected equality for half of the human race and sees homosexuality as a sin against god?  Seriously, why would God care with whom one has sexual relations?  I just wish more heterosexual marriages could mimic some of the loving and dedicated homosexual relationships I know.

However, you might ask: so what?  No one is forcing me to be Catholic and shouldn’t I be respecting their “faith tradition?”  “Live and let live?”  Ah, but here I wonder what Jesus would say when he witnesses dedicated women being hounded and scolded and threatened?  Or women told to bear their rapist’s child?  Or a brave woman asking to be a  priest and told she is not good enough?  Somehow, I think Jesus would be appalled.