Bishop Does Job, News at 11

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that a bishop who stands up for Church teaching makes the evening news?

Bishop D'Arcy rebukes the President of Notre Dame -- news. Bishop Martino forbids then-candidate Joe Biden from receiving communion -- news.

Now Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk tells a Sister of Charity whose picture and name appeared until this week on the web site of the Women's Ordination Conference that she can't teach catechists in the Archdiocese and again -- news.

Objectively, it shouldn't make page 6, much less page one. A Sister whose classes for parishes in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati draw a few dozen people isn't exactly a major celebrity, and Sister Louise Akers is not a household name.

But it's news because, as a country, we don't like authority figures telling people what to do, especially if it's a man telling a woman what to do, and especially if it's a member of the Catholic hierarchy telling anyone what to do.

Who does the Archbishop think he is to tell a nice, hard-working, poor-people-loving Sister of Charity that she has to stop saying women should be ordained priests? Just because he's a bishop, he thinks he can tell people what to think!

Well, no. Nobody -- priest, bishop, post, or even religious sister -- can tell Catholics what to think. But teaching is another matter. There's actually a word for teaching something that is contrary to the official teachings of the church as sound Catholic theology, though we don't use it much anymore. The "H word."

No one has accused Sr. Louise of the H word. The Archbishop simply told her that, if she would not say that the Church was right and she was wrong, she couldn't teach classes in the Archdiocese. Again, not exactly front page stuff. But the front page is where it ended up, because it seems that the good sister is staunchly committed to her position on women's ordination, unless it results in any sort of negative consequences for her personally. Then it's just not fair.

Call me picky, but it seems to me that compared to the martyrs of old, Sr. Louise has nothing to complain about. And when "Bishop Does Job" makes the front page, well, it must be a slow news day.