A British Nun's Rebellion

It was only when the book was being reprinted by the St. John's Press in Minnesota that the local bishop, John F. Kinney, intervening on behalf of the CDF, demanded that it be warehoused or burned. If that doesn't smack of the Inquisition, what does?

Did you get any support from within the church?

It was when I met with [Britain's] Cardinal Hume [after the banning incident] that I had my first suggestion of comfort. He said to me, "Lavinia, it's not about obedience, it's about justice." I think he recognized that it is profoundly unjust for a judgment to be applied after the event. Subsequently, in April 1998, the CDF demanded that I make a "public declaration of assent to the specific teaching of the magisterial documents" about birth control and priestly ordination--the famous, or infamous, Humanae Vitae. I think this was totally misjudged, because what does a public declaration mean? I broadcast regularly with the BBC. What kind of image of the church would be projected if its most famous media personality in the United Kingdom appeared to trivialize the full body of Catholic teaching and the wealth of the spiritual tradition of Western Christendom? [It would have seemed that I was] reducing them to a couple of documents about sex, and about the inconsequence of women in the church's life.

How does the CDF have to change?