While it is applied to Roman Catholicism, it is also true of some Anglo-catholic dioceses and their unholy union with the evango-fundies running Sydney Diocese.
St Peter's Basilica, the Vatican 2002: we paused in front of the strangely compelling body of a dead pope in a glass coffin when we heard it: shuffle shuffle squeak, shuffle shuffle squeak. From across a vast chamber they headed towards us - a dozen or so priests walking single file through the bowels of the cavernous church on their way to some meeting, some ceremony. The shuffle? The sound their gorgeous robes made as they billowed around their ankles. The squeak? It emanated from a tea trolley pushed with a lot of effort by a bent-up old nun bringing up the rear.
Typical, I huffed. Catholicism in a nutshell. The sight of that nun seemed to sum up how nuns were treated by a church that could not run without them. The nuns did the hard slog and the priests got all the glory - this was so drummed into the Catholic girls I went to school with that it was treated as fact. The sun rose in the east and the priests got the good cake at afternoon tea. The message to nuns from the church seemed to be: by all means push those tea trolleys, nurse those lepers and teach those brats - just don't go thinking you will ever be able to say Mass.
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