This really is a nasty piece of work about the USA Nuns.

This is the sort of stuff that the 'Jockstraps' really get off on.

(He even has the gall to criticize the Mary MacKillop nuns, who came out to ask what he was doing filming by her statue, for not being dressed in the same way as the Mary Mac. statue!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=axVOA96tWOA#!

PS Don't miss the very beginning (before he starts on his rant)!

'Knowing our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is more than saying I believe.
Learn about Catholicism and become a Premium Member today of Real Catholic TV.com because understanding the price paid on the Cross is worth more than the cost of a subscription.'

National Catholic Reporter publisher Thomas C. Fox says he cannot recall any time in recent history that the Catholic church was highlighted twice in columns in a single issue of the New York Times.

The rare development is yet another indicator of the tremendous outpouring of support on behalf of U.S. women religious in general and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in particular as they come under attack from the Vatican for lapses in fidelity.

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=25624

Maureen Dowd in the NY Times.

IT is an astonishing thing that historians will look back and puzzle over, that in the 21st century, American women were such hunted creatures.

Even as Republicans try to wrestle women into chastity belts, the Vatican is trying to muzzle American nuns.

Who thinks it’s cool to bully nuns? While continuing to heal and educate, the community of sisters is aging and dying out because few younger women are willing to make such sacrifices for a church determined to bring women to heel.

Yet the nuns must be yanked into line by the crepuscular, medieval men who run the Catholic Church.

Good on you!

Here's a great closing to the article.

Church leaders behave like adolescent boys, blinded by sex. That’s the problem with inquisitors and censors: They become fascinated by what they deplore.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/dowd-bishops-play-church-queens-as-paw...

.
PS
(What a great choice of word:
CREPUSCULAR 
1. of, pertaining to, or resembling twilight; dim; indistinct.)

I honestly think the Vatican is impervious to any criticism of their policies and outlook. Benedict is increasingly isolated and like we saw in the declining years of his predecessor lower functionaries are becoming out of control. The "best and brightest" left the institution years ago, or were kicked out, and those in control of the agenda today honestly and sincerely do believe they have been appointed by Almighty God to read his mind and they are the only ones with the authority to do so. The whole thing is an enormous tragedy but as I keep arguing there is no "bridge of communication" possible with the particular mindset of the people who now control the institutional agenda. No matter how much protest there is in support of the majority of the American Women Religious those at the top will be completely unmoved. They want happy, smiling, docile, naive young nuns in habits back in the cloisters and they literally couldn't give a damn if that means they end up with very few nuns and very few cloisters.

The entire Morris affair in Australia graphically illustrated the landscape today. We do know that some of Bill Morris's colleagues endeavoured to mount arguments in his defence. They got absolutely nowhere. The people they had to communicate with are literally incapable of listening to any opinions other than their own.

Not me. I would not aspire to that honour. I have known many in my life, from the first young nun who came with the priest for the fortnightly Mass in our country town for the "sunday school" before Mass. She remained my friend for the rest of her long life.

She taught me how to serve as an "ältar-boy", yet she could not be an "ältar-girl"herself..Years later, she told me of a great experience when there was no altar-boy, and she was allowed to kneel at the altar rails and answer the priest in the responses which she had taught me. But no shifting the \missal from side to side, or messing with the cruets. She was only a woman.

Years later, I met another nun who became a good friend. With the rest of her community she reverted to secular dress, and was delighted with my sincere comment that |I could '"see" her ïnvisible habit. Before she died, I was privileged to attend the golden jubilee of her profession in Sydney. [in 2001].

Althought of different orders, I was privileged to intoduce them at a minor celebration of my own which they both attended.

But I was never taught by nuns in any school.

I reckon the PR people in the Vatican will be working over time in order to couteract the fall out of their zeal in keeping the sisters in line.

They are also among the bravest, toughest and most admirable people in the world. In my travels, I’ve seen heroic nuns defy warlords, pimps and bandits. Even as bishops have disgraced the church by covering up the rape of children, nuns have redeemed it with their humble work on behalf of the neediest.

So, Pope Benedict, all I can say is: You are crazy to mess with nuns.

In effect, the Vatican accused the nuns of worrying too much about the poor and not enough about abortion and gay marriage.

What Bible did that come from? Jesus in the Gospels repeatedly talks about poverty and social justice, yet never explicitly mentions either abortion or homosexuality. If you look at who has more closely emulated Jesus’s life, Pope Benedict or your average nun, it’s the nun hands down.

Sister Joan Chittister, a prominent Benedictine nun, said she had worried at first that nuns spend so much time with the poor that they would have no allies. She added that the flood of support had left her breathless.

“It’s stunningly wonderful,” she said. “You see generations of laypeople who know where the sisters are — in the streets, in the soup kitchens, anywhere where there’s pain. They’re with the dying, with the sick, and people know it.”

Sister Joan spoke to me from a ghetto in Erie, Pa., where her order of 120 nuns runs a soup kitchen, a huge food pantry, an afterschool program, and one of the largest education programs for the unemployed in the state.

Exactly!

.
Then, a great anecdote:

Elias Chacour, a prominent Palestinian archbishop in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, recounts in a memoir that he once asked a convent if it could supply two nuns for a community literacy project. The mother superior said she would have to check with her bishop.

“The bishop was very clear in his refusal to allow two nuns,” the mother superior told him later. “I cannot disobey him in that.” She added: “I will send you three nuns!”

.
Oz even gets a mention:

Nuns have triumphed over an errant hierarchy before. In the 19th century, the Catholic Church excommunicated an Australian nun named Mary MacKillop after her order exposed a pedophile priest. Sister Mary was eventually invited back to the church and became renowned for her work with the poor. In 2010, Pope Benedict canonized her as Australia’s first saint.

“Let us be guided” by Sister Mary’s teachings, the pope declared then.

Amen to that.