(UNDATED) The bishop of Madison, Wis., fired a female church worker with 35 years of service after reading a few paragraphs of her master’s comprehensive exams. She wrote about inclusive language — using female and male metaphors to explain God — and earned a Master of Divinity degree.

From his seminary.

In 2003.

Apparently someone’s told the bishop what’s been going on behind his crosier.

Robert Morlino, 62, is the bishop. Ruth Kolpack, 64, is the employee. Does the bishop honestly think Kolpack is alone in liking female imagery, or in thinking women should be ordained?

Wait until he finds out about Julian of Norwich, St. Therese of Lisieux or Catherine of Siena.

Granted, for a pastoral associate, Kolpack used pretty strong language in her essay exams, each passed by three members of the seminary faculty. A few sentences argue that, like other forms of religious violence, church policy that forbids women’s ordination is an evil foisted on all women. Kolpack also wrote that official insistence on male-only imagery for God results in an unhealthy attitude toward women.

In short, when God is male, the male becomes God.

According to news reports, in response to anonymous accusations, Morlino summoned Kolpack and her pastor to meet with him and his two top officials. The bishop demanded that she denounce her written statements, make a profession of faith, and take an oath of loyalty. She could agree to the latter two — she has no problem with belief or loyalty — but stood by her writings. In 10 minutes, she went from being a cherished pastoral associate to unemployment. Morlino will not let her work in his diocese.

Morlino, who came to Madison after serving four years as bishop of Helena, Mont., exhibits a similar take-no-prisoners attitude against others whom he deems too “liberal.” He has canceled speakers, insisting that his is the diocese’s only voice. His diocesan Web site does not list all its religious communities — only a few with conservative attitudes and full religious habits.

Morlino sits squarely on the right side of the sanctuary, both religiously and politically. He chairs the Board of Visitors of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, better known as the School of the Americas (SOA), the U.S.-run camp that critics say exports torture tactics to Latin America.

Morlino’s backyard, Madison, is a town full of liberal intellectuals, and Morlino is well-advised to fight the good fight against relativism. But, at least from here, his fight with Kolpack looks like a classic case of a bishop who is threatened by church-trained lay leadership.

I have read Ruth Kolpack’s entire master’s exam. It’s neither earth-shattering nor terribly original. It is a workmanlike discussion of how flawed views of human nature are projected onto the God born into history as a man. Kolpack unpolitically shows her frustration when she adds the church’s rejection of women’s ordination to a list of evils perpetrated in the name of religion.

Kolpack’s work languished in a dusty library until a zealot showed the bishop a few sentences. That’s the front story. The back story is the same all over. Women employees of diocesan structures are expendable and cheap labor. Because they are not ordained, their bishops owe them nothing. Because they are “unordainable” — they are not men, after all — their bishops often see them as “nothing.”

That’s the way it is in the diocese of Madison. And that’s the way it is wherever God is male, the bishop is male, and that’s all that really seems to matter.

(Phyllis Zagano is a Fulbright Fellow in Religious Studies at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland. She also holds a research appointment at Hofstra University.)