Oh, brother.

"Men but not women get to preside at Mass. Men but never women wear the cassock of a cardinal, the vestments of a pope. Male clergy are typically called 'father,' which connotes authority. Women in religious orders are usually called 'sister,' which doesn�t."

Says Frank Bruni in the middle of a rant titled "Catholicism Undervalues Women."

Whatever else he may want to say about Catholics and women, there's no lack of parallelism in that father/sister terminology. Men in religious orders are called "brother," and female leaders of orders are called "mother."

"I questioned the morality of breaking into high-security nuclear sites: What if someone got shot?"

"What about the trauma a young security guard might experience after realizing that he or she had killed a nun rather than a terrorist? Sister Ardeth replied that nobody had been harmed in the more than thirty years since the first Plowshares, and that the Lord should be thanked for that. She betrayed no doubts. 'I will continue doing direct action for the rest of my life,' Sister Ardeth told me. 'If I can walk, you�ll find me out there.'"

From "Break-In at Y-12/How a handful of pacifists and nuns exposed the vulnerability of America�s nuclear-weapons sites," by Eric Schlosser (in The New Yorker).