No women need apply

You figure the crackdown on women in (some quarters of) American Catholicism has gone pretty far when the popular music director of a major Fairfax, Virginia church is canned for the following paragraph in a WaPo story on the women’s ordination question: Sylvia Mulherin, 69, a former nun married to a former priest, said that […]

Mulherin.jpegYou figure the crackdown on women in (some quarters of) American Catholicism has gone pretty far when the popular music director of a major Fairfax, Virginia church is canned for the following paragraph in a WaPo story on the women’s ordination question:

Sylvia Mulherin, 69, a former nun married to a former priest, said that
Jesus was progressive in his treatment of women but that, over time,
men unjustly pushed women out. “Maybe the women don’t have to come in
the back door, but we still have to sit in the pews,” said Mulherin,
who lives in Fairfax County.

Mulherin says she is not among those pushing for women’s ordination. Indeed, she is a conservative who describes herself on her Facebook page as a fan of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. In December, she gave Newt a round of Facebook applause for denouncing the “deliberate amnesia of the academic Left” in overlooking the “great men” of the American past.

But she did not take kindly to her pastor’s denial that she had been pushed out of her job, and emailed dozens of musicians at the church that in her opinion “women have not achieved true equality in the Church and this fact
deserves further consideration by the church’s leadership. This
position is apparently unacceptable in the Diocese of Arlington.”


WaPo’s Michelle Boorstein is on the case.

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!