A British Nun's Rebellion

Many sisters feel depressed because their male colleagues have no respect for their work. The church will have to live with the consequences.--Lavinia Byrne

Last week the British nun and feminist theologian Lavinia Byrne resigned from her order, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She left the community, which she had joined in 1964 at the age of 17, after an alleged "campaign of bullying" by the Vatican. Byrne, a prominent writer and broadcaster in the United Kingdom, had come under pressure from the Vatican over a 1993 book arguing for the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church. NEWSWEEK's Carla Power spoke to the Cambridge-based Byrne last week. Excerpts:

POWER: You've said that in dealing with you, the Vatican "behaved like the Inquisition." How so?

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, otherwise known as the CDF, is the former Holy Inquisition. The word "holy" is a bit ironic, frankly. These are ordinary human beings who are struggling to do a good job, but in the modern world. I wrote a book in 1993 called "Women at the Altar" just when the debate on the ordination of women was a key topic of conversation, particularly in the United Kingdom. Just when we were going to press, the pope said there was no longer to be a debate about the ordination of women. He issued an encyclical called Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which said that priestly ordination should be reserved for men only. At great inconvenience, we published the pope's document at the back of the book, so that, as it were, he had the "final word."