By Dolores Klein, Peoria, IL

“They’re not eastern or western.” With this statement, FITNAH was launched in Iran in April. One of the growing number of female-led rebellions, FITNAH demands an end in Iran, North Africa, and the Middle East, to religious-based laws and customs, obsessed with controlling women to “reserve family honor and public order.”

Here in the USA, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is still under scrutiny for “being tainted with radical feminism.” Sister Joan Chittester says: “We are guilty as charged, if elevating the status of women is ‘tainted.’” Nuns built the first schools for Catholic girls after thousands of years of building orphanages and hospitals. Weren’t they modeling Jesus who talked with women, saved the woman taken in adultery, cured the Cananite woman – at a time when females were considered worthless?

(A Question: Were Laura and President Bush “tainted by radical feminism” when they admirably supported elevating women in parts of the world where women are the chattel of men, enslaved by lack of education?)

Pope Francis, who is committed to the POOR, is reportedly condoning the Plan of “reform” of America’s nuns. Two-thirds of the world’s poor are women; stabilizing families depends on elevating women!

The recently deceased Andrew Greeley once said that the priests and bishops have done everything they possibly could to drive away the laity from The Church.

Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton said it well: “The first step in the elevation of women in all systems of religion is to convince them that the Great Spirit of the Universe is not responsible for any of these absurdities.”