I didn't say that they made that choice due to over-bearing male domination. I said they weren't able to choose to be a priest because of it.

And I *do* think their lives are sad. I've known far too many sad priests and nuns not to. Watching them play with children they can never have, watching them look wistfully at happy couples they can never be. And I've known far too many women who make the choice to be nuns because they feel they have no other option. (And many former nuns, too.)

And these women aren't nuns. They are choosing to spend their lives neither connecting fully to other people, nor fully connected in service to the church. It seems, to me, quite a half-life. And - perhaps this is the better phrasing - I would be quite sad to live it that way.

*this is not to say that one's life is fulfilled only through coupledom and child-rearing. Not the case. But to ask those who both want to lead a church and raise a family to pick one but not the other - it's long been a beef of mine with my church of origin.

**and to ask someone to neither lead a church nor raise a family, that seems a bit odd too. Maybe my question is: why? If the Catholic stance is that one, in order to lead, must not be distracted by the complexity of one's own family/sexuality... what is the reason consecrated virgins are asked to refrain? Is it that sexual behavior is impure? Because - in their own teaching, sex for procreation IS pure. So it brings me back to my very first statement: is this an exhaulted thing because it's the only permitted process of population reduction?

I think Christ is massing tons of virgins in Heaven so that the Pope can start recruiting terrorists.

"You get 85 virgins with us!"

I don't see what the attraction to virgins is all about. I prefer someone with who knows what they're doing.

1. With a virgin, you will be the best she (or) has ever had (at least until the next one).
2. With a virgin, you can get them to do things someone with experience might not, "oh, that's a very normal thing to do."

Not that I have ever put any thought into the subject.