Pope thanks virgins for 'total gift' to Christ

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Originally Posted by Nephythys

These women made a choice- so tell me something- why is it we only honor and respect their choices when it agrees with what we would choose?

Who are you, or me, or anyone else- to decree their life is "sad" and imply they only live that way due to some over-bearing male domination?

Isn't that a tad arrogant and hypocritical?

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.