The current Pope's policies have all but buried Vatican II and sent
women scurrying to the shadows. The next pontiff could make things
a lot easier for the female sex. Women like Angela Bonavoglia will
be waiting.

This book shows how "good Catholic girls" are coming out of the
closet. I take the symbolism of the closet literally. A friend of
mine still has nightmares about being shut in one and told to pray
when, as a child, she dared to speak back to her nun teacher at the
parochial school. Nuns are still complicit, in some cases, in the
adoration of maleness that pervades the Catholic Church, but many
more are speaking out.

GOOD CATHOLIC GIRLS is a catalog of the Church's sins against
women. The male-dominated hierarchy considers women who use birth
control or who have an abortion in almost any circumstances to be
all but lesbian (not a good thing), offering the devout Catholic
female but two alternatives for piety: to be motherly virgins or
virginal wives. As an example (and the book is full of them), one
faithful communicant had her "Excellence in Catechesis" award
rescinded when the local priest learned that she was a single mom
who happened to be homosexual.

The author points out that "women who have abortions are far easier
targets than…men who wage war." There is greater leniency,
and many more options, for men who transgress. Witness the
pedophile priests. Those whose sins were committed against little
children are condemned and those whose sins were against boys in
their teen years are condemned --- but if the abuse was perpetrated
on a young teenage girl, there is a tendency to look the other way.
Complicity is assumed. Even now "the church is unwilling to see
teenage girls as victims."

GOOD CATHOLIC GIRLS contains a list of "progressive organizations."
Bonavoglia, widely published on women's issues, wants her readers
to have helpful resources and to make it easier for women to band
together in order to change the Church. We wish Bonavoglia and her
sisters well.