American nuns have been helping poor and sick people too much, so the Vatican has appointed a strict supervisor to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to make these liturgical ladies behave.

And as the Voice reported yesterday, the Conference has since shot back at the Church, slamming Catholic leadership for failing to address longstanding concerns over child molestation. They're protesting today in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and hope that their pray-in will prompt Cardinal Timothy Dolan to demand a retraction from the Vatican.

But this isn't the first time in recent history that nuns have openly rebelled against the church.

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The Vatican thinks that nuns are wasting their time on human rights and social work -- you know, typical helpful nun stuff.

Instead, the Catholic Church wants America's nuns to spend more time doing things that don't typically help people, like telling them not to have premarital sex, according to USA Today.

That group of nuns -- the Leadership Conference of Women Religious -- has shot back at the Vatican, and is planning to protest in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan on Tuesday. They want Cardinal Timothy Dolan to ask the Vatican to take back this criticism.

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This Easter Sunday was not free from politics and controversy for Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who in addition to giving a sermon at Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral today, appeared in a segment that aired on CBS' Face The Nation. In the interview Dolan weighed in once again on the nation's contraception debate and the president's coverage mandate. "I don't think religion should be too involved in politics," he said. "But I also don't think the government and politics should be overly involved in the church. And that's our problem here. You've got a dramatic, radical intrusion of a government bureaucracy into the internal life of the church. That bothers me."

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It's Cardinal Timothy Dolan Week (no, really), and the conservative Catholic leader has certainly not let the eponymous 7-day shindig go to waste.

Dolan made the rounds in Albany on Monday, where he and other top Catholics made clear their anti-abortion and anti-pedophilia prosecution positions.

The church top honcho emphasized his opposition to the Reproductive Health Act, which basically makes state policy "up to date" with Roe V. Wade.

("America's Pope" said that the pedophilia measure, which would extend the statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases, would irreparably drain church coffers.)

If you were a little confused why New York -- a state with very pro-choice policies -- would still be debating abortion, not to worry.

Though the Empire state was the first in the union to decriminalize pregnancy terminations and remains one of the most pro-choice places in the U.S., reproductive health advocates want to fix a few legal loopholes that might undermine choice.

Runnin' Scared has put together a very brief guide explaining what this is about.

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New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan has arrived in Rome, NY1 reported, after leaving from JFK International Airport last night. The flight was the first set in Dolan's journey to be elevated to cardinal. The New York Daily News caught Dolan as he was leaving his St. Patrick's residence yesterday evening. "I can taste the pasta already," he said. Aside from eating, Dolan has official duties to attend to in Rome before the ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica Saturday. According to the New York Post, he will speak Friday at the Vatican on the subject "the topic of new evangelization to ensure people living in European countries steeped in the Catholic tradition remain faithful." He will also be "interrogated by the pope -- in Italian -- in front of all current cardinals."

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New York's Catholic organizations have found themselves at the forefront of church news recently, as a controversial healthcare provision is fought over in heated public debate with the president.

In January, President Obama signed into law a federal regulation which would require employers to cover contraception in their health insurance plans, even if they are religious organizations. When the Catholic Church complained, Obama proposed a compromise based on an existing New York state law, and now local Catholic charity groups and women's health organizations find themselves at the center of the most recent birth control debate.

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We're sad to say that another institution has vetoed allowing same-sex couples at prom. This time it's St. Anthony's, a co-ed Catholic high school in South Huntington, Long Island. Angelina Lange, a 17-year-old at the school, asked for permission to bring an ex-girlfriend as her date, and school officials vetoed her request, saying "It would send a mixed message to OK her request." Thus, instead of grasping an opportunity to encourage acceptance, the school issued a perfectly clear message: The only acceptable couples are heterosexual.

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We have to run a photo of the Flying Nun with every nun story. It's the law.

The Daughters of St. Paul are suing Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston, in an attempt to get out of an archdiocese-run pension fund. The Boston Globe reports that the group, which consists of around 135 nuns, wants the right to control the pension plan for their lay employees. These aren't your average nuns; they run a multimedia publishing house which publishes Catholic books, e-books and programs for iPhones and iPods. It used to be that if you talked during Sunday school, you'd get smacked across the knuckles with a ruler. Now, you mess with a nun's tech start-up, your ass gets taken to court.

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Monsignor William Lynn

​The Catholic Church's sex-abuse scandal veered into uncharted waters Thursday with the indictment of one of former Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua's top aides. Monsignor William Lynn, now 60, is accused of shielding molester priests from detection and transferring them to unsuspecting parishes.

As the Philadelphia Daily News notes:

It's believed to be the first time a high-ranking Catholic official has been accused of being criminally accountable for covering up priest abuse. . . .As Bevilacqua's secretary for clergy, he was the Archdiocese's personnel director and responsible for investigating reports of priest sexual abuse from 1992 until 2004.

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Abortion. Saying the word in the midst of a cocktail party will hush even the most intrepid of irreverent souls. Because even if you're pro-choice, you can't actually be pro-abortion, at least not in any public fashion. Baby killing is always, always, always bad. Right? Which is perhaps why the much-maligned pedophile-priest-troubled generally rather sexist and without-a-clue Catholic Church has glommed on to abortion as one of the things it can censure in New York City without fear of public ridicule.

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