I am woman, hear me bore.

Ye gods. Our Sunday Visitor recently offered a fairly mild cover story calling for more "manly" priests, and featured a picture showing a pair of muscled male arms holding a pipe wrench. Naturally, one of American Catholicism's Perpetually Irritated Womyn was threatened and went into a nuclear-powered hissy:

The cover of your Aug. 10 issue ("Priestly Men, Manly Priests") depicts a "manly" priest--a very muscular man holding a monkey wrench. I am appalled.

Why, of course you are, dear! Please, continue.

To think that image connotes what is needed in the priesthood is offensive to me, and I would think, to anyone who reflects on the Christ presented in the Gospel?

You mean the cordwhip-wielding carpenter who overturned tables in righteous fury?

What our Church needs is a balance of the male and female in its institutional structures, its spirituality and its ministry.

Oh, oh! Pick me! Pick me! I know this one: Ordain women, right? What do I win?

Besides a migraine, that is...

God save us from "manly" priests who are more comfortable holding a monkey wrench than the hand of a person in need of healing.

--Jeanne Keating
by e-mail

More handholders like Rembert Weakland, perhaps?

Now that we know how Jeanne feels about her plumber and other muscled blue-collared inferiors....Translation: God save me from ordained ministers with a developed backbone who are likely to preach uncomfortable truths/stand up to me/tell me to put a sock in it. Keep ordaining the malleable Fr. Whipples who refuse to discomfit me in any way, shape or form. Note that there's no such thing as balance in JeanneWorld--you're either an extra-y chromosome type with a sloping forehead and a pipe wrench or Leonardo DiCaprio without the testosterone. There's no middle ground.

But, don't worry [Irony Impaired Alert!] your pretty little head [End Alert!] about it, Jeanne. You're likely to keep getting your way for the next forty years or so.